My Bitter Insanity

The wild ramblings of a bitter woman and her messy, unpredictable, work-in-progress life.

I’m Burnt Out.

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It’s been a fairly long couple of weeks. School is ramping up, my volunteering is getter busier, and I’m becoming more and more stressed about my recovery.

I am burnt out.

I am busier than I have ever been in the last two years. And though I’m dealing with it better than I would’ve even six months ago, it’s still kicking my ass.

In the last seven days, I’ve volunteered or been in unpaid training for fifteen hours; I’ve had six hours of classes; I’ve studied for ten hours; I’ve spent five hours working on My Bitter Insanity; I’ve baked four dozen cookies; I’ve been to therapy and my support group; and I had brunch with my mother. For some people, those almost fifty hours doesn’t seem like all that much when it’s nearly all I’ve done over a week.Continue Reading

My Terrible Sleep and the Itsy-Bitsy Spider

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This week, I’ve got a piece from the archives. Here’s a piece that I wrote almost a year ago when my blog was on hiatus and I never published. It details the spiralling thoughts that used to be absolutely constant for me.

It’s 5:50 am. I haven’t slept yet. Granted, I woke up Friday at around 11:30 after falling asleep only six hours earlier. My sleep has been weird.

Sleep has never been ‘easy’ for me, at least as long as I can remember. I’ve always tossed and turned, took too long to fall asleep, woke up often, and alternated between too much and too little sleep. With my mental illnesses, it’s only gotten worse. Between incessant fatigue and the intrusive, repetitive thoughts at bedtime, I just can’t win.Continue Reading

I Don’t Fit in the Eating Disorder Community

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> This post talks about bodies, my eating disorder, and food. It deals with ideas and thoughts that I struggle with. If you are in active ED recovery, I don’t suggest reading it. <

I have an eating disorder. It’s something that I’ve been coming to terms with over the last year or so. It’s a label that I still don’t always feel comfortable with.

Don’t get me wrong. I like labels. (Okay, maybe I love them.) They help me sort my life and the things in it into neat little boxes. They help me explain what I’m going through — they help me find peers and the resources to help me. But this one isolates me.

I don’t fit in with the eating disorder community. My Binge Eating Disorder (BED), while the most common eating disorder, is often not what people think of when they hear ‘eating disorder.’Continue Reading

Why I’m Bitter About my Insanity

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bit·ter
/ˈbidər/
adj. (of people or their feelings or behaviour) Angry, hurt, or resentful because of one’s bad experiences or a sense of unjust treatment.

Yeah, maybe it is super cheesy to start with a definition, but I’m doing it anyway. And, looking at that definition, I’m wondering if I even need to explain why I’m bitter… (Though I will.) When you’re looking for mental health support, it is unfortunately really likely that you’ll come out of it feeling angry, hurt, or resentful — hey, maybe even all three!

The truth is, it’s not easy to talk about mental health, but once you do, it can be even harder to live with, and seek treatment for, a mental illness. Above and beyond the standard difficulty of fighting my mental illnesses, I’ve also had to fight for the treatment that I deserve.Continue Reading

I’m Living My Life on Hold, Waiting ‘Until…’

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I had planned a different post for today. I’ve even got most of it written out already.

Except, when the inspiration for this post instead popped into my mind, I wasn’t about to scoff at the sudden flow of words I felt coming. I’ve mentioned on Twitter a couple times that I’ve been struggling with some good ol’ writer’s block, so this feels like I’m nearly out of the woods.

After I got sick, and after my first severe depressive episode, I put school ‘on hold.’ I’d decided that I’ll focus first on getting better, and then I’d get back to school and work. If you’ve been following my blog, you might know that that didn’t turn out quite the way that I had hoped.

Over the course of my recovery, I’ve gone back and forth in these periods of working or school alternating with this intense focus on ‘getting better.’Continue Reading

I’m Not Here To Be A Role Model (I’m a Bad One)

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I mean, if I was trying to be a role model, I think I’d be a pretty crappy one.

Most of the time, my posts end up turning into a little lesson that I’ve been needing to learn, and though I still hope that people read and take something away from my blog, this post is one that really is mostly for me. It’s something that I ‘know,’ but for me, it’s counter-intuitive and I seem to keep forgetting it.

I’m also fairly anxious that at first glance this post might make me look pretty conceited, as though I’m trying to imply that people somehow look up to me, and I want to clarify, that that’s not at all the case… I know how many people actually read my blog!

But this post isn’t really just about my blog — it’s about who I am in my day-to-day life, too.Continue Reading

Why Mental Illness Recovery is So Hard

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Well, the last two weeks, I haven’t written much (or at all) and I’ve missed it. Just like it did before I started my blog, I’ve sat at my computer and written a few sentences before my mind went completely blank. To be honest, I hated it, but this is what my life is like with depression: it was something so simple that I’d been really enjoying and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If I were to be more fair to myself, I would admit that I’ve had a lot going on in the last two weeks.

Most importantly, though, these last couple of weeks have felt like something is actually happening and have filled me with a renewed sense of direction and dedication in my recovery. I’m not necessarily feeling better, I just have some strength and passion back. It feels wonderful.

Continue Reading

My First Post and the Week it Took Me

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I wasn’t planning on writing a post like this. I wanted to try and avoid the ‘First Post: Here’s Everything in the World About Me’-thing, but I’m starting to think that it might be inevitable.

I finally decided to write a blog on August 30th (if you’re keeping track, that’s over three weeks ago), and since then, I’ve spent tons (and tons and tons) of time on the design and layout of my website. I think I’ve fallen into the all too common trap of waiting until everything’s perfect to even start on a project. For me, this is nothing new. I’ve gotten a lot better over the years, but my gut reaction is still that I can’t start something until it’s ‘ready’ (read: perfect).Continue Reading

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