Tattoos and the Pink Panther

I've been thinking of getting a new tattoo. I already have two - the ironman symbol just above my ankle and the word courage written on my wrist. I did ironman in 2008 (ironman is a long distance triathlon - 3.8km swim, 180km cycle and then a full marathon 42.2km run) so that tattoo commemerated the achievement. The word Courage is a reminder to keep picking myself up and trying again and again even when things are difficult and I want to opt out. I read a quote once that said something like
"The greatest victory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall". So I have courage written on my wrist not just to remind myself to keep going, but also to acknowledge all the times when I have fallen and picked myself back up again.

For my next tattoo I was originally thinking of two things which are symbolic to a lot of people. A lotus flower grows and blooms in muddy water. It symbolises new beginings and the ability to rise above obstacles. The hummingbird represents overcoming difficult times and can also mean joy and hope. They are beautiful birds and I also love the colours of their feathers. Of course there are other interpretations of these two things but to me, together the lotus flower and hummingbird would mean acknowledging the difficult times I've been through with my mental health, the growth I've achieved and the hope I have for the future. However....once I started looking around at ideas I realised how many people have this same idea and started wondering whether I would be better with something more personal to me.

So what I am thinking about at the moment is the Pink Panther (cartoon character) as an artist like he appears in either The Pink Painter Show (season 1, episode 14), or The Pink Painter in the 1993 series.

The Pink Panther is pretty special to me. When I was little my godfather brought me a soft toy one back from England. I never had a teddy bear, just my Pinky as I called him. He was what I cuddled when I went to bed, and what I reached for when I was upset. Then, when I got married, I was given a large pink panther on my wedding day as a gift by my immediate family. My support crew for Ironman all wore pink t-shirts with a picture of Pink Panther on them and "Go Iron-Cat" on the back. And a few years ago when I finally had to throw my childhood Pink Panther out because the his fur had rotted and all the stuffing fell out, my daughter gave me a new posable soft toy which sits in my room.

I thought it would be pretty cool if I could somehow incorporate my past (symbolised by Pink Panther) and what I've learnt (being art - I had lessons when I was unable to work during the first of my major episodes) into a tattoo. Then I remembered seeing the Pink Panther as an artist several times and so that idea has been floating around in my head for a bit. Not sure where I'd put it - I'm thinking lower left leg as my ironman symbol is on my lower right leg. I still have to be careful about covering things up for work as I'm a professional and meet with clients all the time, but lower leg tends to go unnoticed and can easily be covered by pants if I have to. Might be time to go and talk to a tattoo artist and see what ideas come up...

On BPD, anger and depression

Things haven't been going too well for me mental health wise in the last couple of weeks. Having BPD makes it hard for me to control my emotions, and my highs and lows tend to be much greater. Couple that with a tendency towards depression, and an Aspie brain, and you can see why my mental health seems to be a roller coaster ride most of the time.

I refer to my lows as episodes, much like someone with bipolar probably would do. During a low I can be extremely depressed, suicidal, indulge in various self harming behaviours, angry, emotional, belligerent, argumentative, manipulative....you get the idea. It's not pleasant for me or for anyone around me and it does a whole lot of damage to my life which I have to try and repair when I am well again. It's also very frustrating for me, because often I am aware I am acting badly but lack the skills to do anything but react.

One of the things I have been struggling with most during this particular low is anger. Often having a low with strong anger as the dominant feeling means a depressive episode is on the way. This is because as the anger or rage causes me to do things that I regret, I start hating myself for being like this. This begins a cycle of thought about how I am not trying hard enough, people would be better off without me, I'm not good enough, I'm a horrible parent/family member/friend/person in general. Then leads on to thoughts of death and finally suicidal ideation. Occasionally I hallucinate if I get really emotionally fraught - I have gone for bush walks and thought I have seen bodies hanging in the trees. 

So the anger I have been feeling this time has scared me. I have had several severe major episodes in the last 3.5 years and every time it is a long hard journey to climb out of that hole and keep living. My daughter has been and continues to be my reason for living, for climbing out of bed every day even when things were at their worst. But returning to a place where you can see a future again and have a little hope takes a lot of hard work. Severe depression is unlike mild and moderate depression in that the traditional things that doctors recommend don't work, at least initially. No matter how much exercise, good food, quality sleep, social connection etc you get, your whole life basically falls into a pit of doom and you become unable to do the most basic of things for yourself. At my worst I couldn't read or watch TV because there was too much effort involved in concentrating and trying to understand the plot, and my ability to speak was severely impaired because I had trouble following conversation and forming opinion.

I think what I also find hard about anger as a dominant symptom of a low is that it makes me inclined to be extremely difficult to deal with as a patient. As much as I need help I will take offence to suggestions or instructions from my nursing case manager and my psychologist. I will feel like nothing anyone suggests is good enough and I will interpret attempts to help me as "people interfering" or them "telling me what to do". I vocalise this opinion to the people involved and I have been effectively fired as a patient by several psychiatrists and one psychologist for becoming angry and verbally agressive in appointments (just to clarify - I've never hurt anyone, just damaged the patient/therapist relationship).

I am currently receiving DBT therapy for my BPD and have made huge improvement in a number of areas. But anger still remains one of the emotions I find hardest to control. 

For whatever reason, this morning I woke feeling better than I have done in a while. Work was busy but not as stressful as it usually is, and after work Little G and I went to a local swimming pool. We bumped into friends and she played with their girls while I chatted to the mums, then Little G and I swam laps together. After dinner her and I walked to the dairy for an ice cream and sat in the park to eat them. Her and I sat in companionable silence and I tried to just be in the moment, enjoying the last of the evening sun and the taste of the ice cream and the company of my child. I think my peace is slowly starting to return. I am hoping that I hit the bottom of the low and because I am getting better at resisting self harming urges and limiting angry outbursts, it hasn't lasted as long as it normally would.

I'll leave you with the lyrics from one of my favourite Six60 songs, and in their words "Ain't it good to be alive?"  That might be a strange thing to say when I've just spent this post telling you the difficulties of mental illness, but I believe that I wouldn't be the person I was if I was not forced to face these challenges.

SIX60 LYRICS

"Only To Be"

Only to be, I live in expectancy
No wonder it feels like this wasn't meant for me
Though my mind is so confined
That there ain't no point in reasoning,
Now that it's clear to see,
It was all in front of me
And I'm right where I'm supposed to be

Yeah yea, I'll live just turning pages
Yeah, well I know that it's worth the ride
Ain't it good to be alive?

So what will it be?
My dreams are my company
To lose what is me,
I follow the path I see.
My mind is so confined
That I don't even know where to begin.
But it took me so long to find
That I can leave it all behind.
Cause I don't got everything I'd ever need

Yeah yea, I'll live just turning pages
Yeah, well I know that it's worth the ride
Ain't it good to be alive?

Cause only to be,
Was all that you've got from me
You told me it's real,
And nothing comes easily.
Cause that was the truth, I was losing all my youth
To a world that's fit for someone else

Yeah, I'll live just turning pages
Yeah, well I know that it's worth the ride
Yeah, I'll live just turning pages, yeah
Yeah, but I know it was worth the ride
Ain't it good to be alive?

Opening post - introductions, dementia and death

So...this is my first post. I didn't intend to start a blog tonight. I had to sign up because Little G's homework included her commenting on one of her classmate's blogs. I've always wanted to have a go myself so here I am.


A little bit about myself and my life would probably be in order right now I guess. I'm a single mother in my 30's with one daughter (Little G) age 8, who is the light of my life. I have a busy professional job and I work full time. I also have severe recurrent major depressive disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and Aspergers. Little G has multiple diagnoses including ASD (the modern term for Aspergers), auditory processing disorder, anxiety, hypermobility of almost all her joints, mild low muscle tone, and sensory processing disorder. She's also gifted, with an IQ in the range of 145 - 150.

As well as my professional job I dabble in art when I have the time. I am current trying arcrylic and coloured pencil, but prefer detailed pencil portraits. I've also worked in watercolour. Tonight I am working on an arcrylic of a river scene. The painting's got to that awkward stage where it looks ugly and I want to give up so I've put it down for a bit. Usually that just means the detail needs to go on and it will start looking a bit more like what it's meant to.

On a different topic entirely, my grandmother died in December and Little G and I went down (travelled about 5 hours in the car) to the internment of the ashes in the weekend just been. Unlike her death and funeral it was just so hard for me to feel any emotion. The plaque is nice, and its nice to have something in memorial to her and my granddad, but I couldn't really feel attached to it at all. Once the body is ashes it loses its meaning for me. I think maybe because it's so at odds with my memories of her that my brain can't really process that the box of ashes is what's left of her.

My gran died of dementia which is such a cruel illness. Last year wasn't a great year for my family. January my Dad's Dad died of Alzheimer's and December my Mum's Mum died of dementia. Poppa had been going downhill for a long time and suffered several bouts of pneumonia, and then he lost the ability to form words and speak. After that it wasn't that long before he couldn't swallow and he had no control over most of his muscles. It was pretty horrifying sitting there watching his eyes roll back up in his head constantly and his mouth hang open and then keep snapping shut. His mouth had to be swabbed regularly to keep getting some moisture into him because he couldn't swallow. And of course all his dignity was long gone as bowel and bladder control was one of the first things to go, after his memory. It's just such a sad thing to sit there with someone who once commanded troops, ran a thriving business, had a dairy farm and five boys, and all the rest, and watch him essentially lose every function he'd gained since the day he was conceived.

My Gran's demise was just as horrifying but in slightly different ways. She had been in secure dementia care for about 3 years (my Poppa was also in secure care), and fell and broke her hip back in about July/August. From there she gave up the will to live. Going into hospital frightened her and she refused to take pain relief or even to eat or drink. She would not do the physio or get up out of bed and try to walk. The pain confused her because she could not understand that's what the feeling was, or associate taking pain relief medication with expecting to feel better. She just knew there were feelings, she didn't like them, so she wanted to be left alone because she was scared and confused. Once back at her care home she never really left her bed. She refused food and drink and her insides started basically breaking down. She took sips of water after a bit, and the odd teaspoon of icecream, but she could go days without anything. She started hallucinating. Sometimes her speech was clear and her legs would move around involuntarily (something to do with twitching because of the minerals leeching from her system). Sometimes she barely opened her eyes and her speech was garbled and unintelligible.

I never realised how long you could go without food and water if you are taking a few sips and mouthfuls here and there. Gran lasted roughly 2 -2.5 months of just a little food and water, and then about a week of none.

The end was so sad. We were chatting to her and each other around her bedside. The whole family were there - her 3 kids, her son-in-law & daughter-in-law, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. We took turns sitting by her and stroking her hand. Then her breathing changed and stopped. Just like that she was gone. Suddenly there is just a body and no person in it. It's a bizzare feeling, knowing that even though they are right there in front of you they will never open their eyes or say anything to you again. 

Anyway, enough about death. I didn't start writing tonight with the intention of telling my grandparents' stories but it feels cathartic. There is plenty of other things I'd like to say about dementia, death and my grandparents but I'll leave it with this little picture.