No One Crosses the Wolf by Lisa Nikolidakis

This is a memoir about a troubled childhood full of abuse and neglect. It’s not an easy read and I wasn’t looking for one. It follows her growing up years with her brother and parents and all the trauma you can imagine.

Her father is a piece of crap, to put it lightly. He is an alcoholic that spends most of his at-home hours terrorizing his family. When he isn’t home, they dread his coming home so they are never truly free of him. After reading her recollections of him, I can understand that fear.

And her mother isn’t much better in comparison. She doesn’t abuse the kids but she doesn’t stop the abuse either. She puts her head in the clouds and pretends that everything is just fine. Domestic violence doesn’t go away because you want it to, you have to stop it! Her mother failed them all.

When her father finally snaps, I expected more somehow. More untangling the emotional threads of her life. More in-depth onion peeling. I wanted to see her do the hard work to undo all the lessons that her upbringing taught at such high prices. But she did none of it. She drank, slept around, and went to Greece. I’m healed!!! The end. What?? Yeah, I’m confused too.

My first inclination was to give this a 2-star review. I mulled it over though, for several days I might add. Three is as high as I can go. She writes well. She knows how to create an atmosphere and add texture and shade to a story but in the end, there’s no story. There’s no healing final chapter. There’s no Oprah “Aha!” moment. And that is a true letdown.

⭐⭐⭐ /⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

O/U, Missing Book Reviews and a Bit of Rambling

CONTENT WARNING

For early readers of this blog my struggle with mental illness isn’t new. I’ve blogged about it in open and not so open terms. This post will fall into the latter category. I hope.

Before I go any further, I think I should explain the O/U in the title. It’s not an affiliation with a sports team. Good guess though! It’s just my shorthand for the bad days. It means Overwhelmed and/or Underwater. In other words, my anxiety is like a Grizzly Bear that’s clawing at the door, demanding to get in and I’m throwing my body weight against it and praying it doesn’t break through that thin line of defense. I use this shorthand when I don’t necessarily want the people around me to know that I am really struggling. That can be looked at as living with a secret but it don’t think everyone needs to know how often I struggle, because it’s a lot.

I’ve spent my life leaning against that door because my anxiety has always been present. As I grew so did my list of fears. Some of it was fact based and very rational like being worried about a sick relative. Others were irrational and completely unfounded. I’ve always been aware when they’ve been irrational but knowing doesn’t make that fear disappear or easier to handle. Sometimes it can make them worse. Maybe that’s false. Maybe knowing that it’s irrational makes me feel worse without actually being worse. I honestly don’t know.

As a very young child I had irrational fears about things like car tires that had been removed from a car. I was always afraid they would roll on their own. I don’t know the origin of that fear but it haunted me for years. Going to the tire store was torture with the huge towers of tires leaning against a wall. If I could see the racks of new tires I would stare at them in much the same way that someone would stare at a tiger that about to pounce on them. I was a teenager probably before that one went away finally.

I was also always afraid of being forgotten. Maybe this is middle child syndrome. Not being the oldest or the youngest is a hard spot. Being female didn’t make it easier as both of my brothers were very rough and tumble. I was a very capable and responsible young child. I knew my address and my full name. At 5 years old I got off the school bus at the wrong stop and crossed two busy streets and approached an adult. He called police and explained the situation. When the officer arrived, I told him exactly where I lived and was promptly delivered home. Why I was afraid of being forgotten is a mystery. Knowing that I could find my way home in the event it actually happened should have been a comfort, but it wasn’t.

As an adult I’ve learned some coping skills that are both beneficial and not so beneficial. I’ve learned that walking out of loud rooms and getting to a quieter place allows me to breathe and calm myself. I’ve learned that spontaneity isn’t my forte. I’ve learned that saying no for my own mental health is better than saying yes to be a people pleaser. I’ve learned that sometimes nothing is better than a good cry.

However, I’ve also learned that avoiding crowds means you miss out on a lot of fun stuff like movies. I’ve learned that being a planner means that your friends don’t call and ask you to do things like meet for coffee in twenty minutes. I’ve leaned that saying no as often as I do generally means that people stop asking you to do things and eventually stop calling altogether. Loneliness a high price to pay for peace.

I used to keep my mouth firmly shut when it came to my mental health issues. I didn’t want to face the stigma. I never wanted to see a look of sympathy on someone’s face and know that I put it there. I didn’t want the looks of curiosity or worse, derision. I didn’t want the inevitable flood of questions masked as advice. I didn’t want my private struggle to become public.

It’s hard to maintain the façade of stability though. It’s actually exhausting. It’s not just trying to stay calm. It’s a million little things that maybe don’t come to mind. It’s the simplest of things made complex. Something utterly simple can throw me for a tailspin; a conversation in the produce section of the grocery store, a detour in traffic, a phone call as I’m going out the door, anything. It’s not just the things that happen outside the house though. Something as ordinary as watching someone else fold towels or worse, a fitted sheet can set me off too.

Once my anxiety has a foothold, a panic attack isn’t far behind. I don’t just get anxious though. I tend to get angry. It’s weird, but I push the anxiety inward and them push it back out as anger. I always hate myself for it. I hate the yelling. I hate the angry words such as, “I wish I were dead!” that more often than not have no basis in reality. I hate the feeling of frustration and worthlessness that inevitably follow. I hate myself for not being strong enough to bear up under the crushing weight of my life. I hate the crash that comes after the anger and anxiety ebbs away.

Crashing, like in a car accident, hurts. My muscles have been so tense for so long that when they relax they feel overworked and so far past fatigued that I feel almost boneless. My mind goes blank and I struggle to be coherent. Sometimes I cry a little in relief and other times I nod off. The muscle pain can last for days but the guilt lingers far longer and feels heavier than a lead blanket.

As you can see, it’s not just a single symptom issue. It’s not even a two symptom issue. It’s a constellation of symptoms and can’t be shrugged off like the typical bad day. It’s anything but typical, unless you suffer from a similar fate. Then, it sounds entirely typical and mores the pity.

I am a bit more open these days but I still don’t announce my struggle to everyone. I don’t tell people unless I think they’ll be non-judgmental or won’t offer pseudoscience advice like a 15 minute walk a day cures depression or walking around outside without shoes grounds you and instantly banishes anxiety. If the shoes thing were true, I would never have been anxious in my life. I rarely wear shoes. I hate them. That’s not actually the whole truth. I love cute shoes. I like looking at them. I hate wearing them. More than a few have recommended chamomile tea. Don’t get me wrong! It tastes great but only without salty tears streaming in it.

Once I open up, it’s been amazing how many other people are struggling with their own secrets. They don’t show any outward signs and have ‘normal’ day-to-day lives. Some of them work in very chaotic and pressure filled professions like medicine and are very successful and thrive in spite of their inner turmoil.

There are a few facts that are not in question. Yes, everyone has a bad day, now and again. Sometimes they happen consecutively. Sometimes you don’t feel like getting out of bed. Sometimes, people get on your nerves by just being in your space. Everyone has been scared and lived through it. Everyone has fears that they wish to conquer. The only difference is that for most people, (those without anxiety and panic disorder) this is our everyday.

Good days for us is when we don’t have a full on meltdown. Good days for us are days where we don’t cry or flee a room on the edge of tears. Good days for us are when we laugh freely and honestly without first gauging the room. Good days for us are days that we don’t spend the day hiding in our room, seeking solace and solitude. A friend recently described a bad day as “too people-y” and it’s as apt a description as I can imagine.

Since the night that I went to ER, I haven’t posted a book review. There’s a good reason for it. I’ve been trying a new medication and I was worried that any review I’d write would have been “tainted”, if you will. It may have been too soon for it to have had an adverse reaction on my mood, but I worried about it anyway. It’s kind of my thing. I’ve also been experiencing blurry eyesight or some inability to focus clearly on text making reading nearly impossible so it has been pushed to the back burner. I hope to get back into it in the new year. My scheduled reviews were all reassigned to new reviewers and I have apologized heartily to everyone involved.

I’ve been struggling with this new medication, Paxil. It’s used to treat all of my conditions so I was extremely hopeful. I have generalized anxiety, panic disorder, PTSD and OCD. I had to gradually increase my dosage to get to the treatment level that my doctor wanted me to try. It made me very foggy and sleepy. I hung in there hoping the side effects would get better quickly. They didn’t. They actually grew worse. I was so incredibly tired that I started spending about 10 hours OUT of bed a day. For someone who only needs three or four hours of sleep a day normally, this was a big change. During those periods of sleep I had nightmares. I would wake up screaming, mouth dry, and heart pounding. Then my eyes wouldn’t focus on written text. It was disconcerting but expected to be very short-lived. Even worse things were coming though. Lucky me!!

Soon, I began to be warmer than normal. The heat built everyday. I became so uncomfortable I phoned the doctor. She told me to cut my dosage in half and stay the course. I did but incredibly it grew worse. I eventually became so overheated that icy cold showers felt heavenly and never lasted long enough. When dog walks in 45 degree weather in shorts and tee shirts without shoes weren’t enough, I called the 24 hour nurse line and explained my misery. They encouraged me to follow-up with my doctor. I couldn’t because she went out of town for the holidays. Without doctor approval, I quit the med two days ago. I’m still hot but hoping that it will diminish a bit everyday until I’m closer to normal and not roast chicken.

Quitting feels wrong because it’s just another thing I couldn’t do. It makes me feel like a loser, a failure, like I do everything wrong. The voice of my OCD says other people could hack the heat, that I’m just weak and worthless. Ironically, the voice of my OCD also says that the chemicals in the medication that were making me overheat can’t be good for a person if they affect me this way. To almost quote Golden Girl Blanche Deveraux, I’m magenta and I really hate it. This link will explain that to anyone that doesn’t understand the brilliance of that quote. Magenta!!

My old medication, Celexa, was effective for about two years before it suddenly stopped working. It was like a light switch had been flipped off and wasn’t ever going to come back on. I only had one very minor side effect with it. It was so much more manageable. I only had light sensitivity but thankfully with my history of migraines I had coping strategies right away. I wore a lot of ball caps and dark sunglasses and stayed out of direct sunlight for the most part. It’s a rare side effect and it wasn’t life limiting.

I started Celexa when I finally tired of the daily struggle. I was finding myself sliding down a slippery slope where I would occasionally think about suicide. I wasn’t yet in the active planning stages but I had begun to think about self harming. I used to be a cutter in my teens. Back then I used a disposable razor that I broke the blade from but this time I bought a box cutter. I never used it, but I bought it and even sterilized the blade. I admit to staring at it on bad days, sometimes I stared a lot. As I said, it’s been an ongoing thing for years. I’ve had periods of relative ease but then it hits again. Thinking about something makes it feel like something I should do, like making an appointment. I don’t know if it’s the same for others but I almost feel compelled to do it after thinking about something even once.

Those thoughts sneak in like a thief in the night, slowly creeping up the creaking back stairs, announcing it’s presence without care, daring you to run, to fight. All the while you’re filled with the dreaded knowledge that you can never outrun them. They don’t suddenly burst into your brain and demand that you listen. They’re far more insidious than that. When their voice grows too loud to ignore, you break and give into the sick thoughts. I don’t want to break. I’ve been there before and I now I know I’m not helpless. I know I can defeat the thief again but the battle is long, exhausting and scary.

I’m going to be 40 soon and I know this will be a battle I’ll fight for another 40 years, God willing. My hope is that medication and treatment options will continue to expand and improve to the point that this isn’t such a war within. I’m going to follow-up with my doctor in the new year and we will come up with another treatment plan. If it becomes necessary, we will come up with another and another. I won’t quit trying to get better. Life is worth living. Sun rises and sunsets and puppy kisses and honeysuckle on rain-soaked wind is just too good to miss.

If you’ve held on this long, hoping against hope that I will finally come to the point of this post, don’t worry. I’m circling the airport. I wanted to give all of you a complete picture of my life, my trials and a good dash of hope. Treatments are available. Help is just one ask away. You just have to reach out and let someone in

Resources:

• Free Online Support Group (International)
• A Short List of Options
• An App Available on Google Play (may also be available on Apple)
• Facebook also has many peer to peer support groups. You can find them by simply typing depression or anxiety into the search feature. They’re usually private and moderated by caring admins.

Also available is your doctor. Call today! You’re worth it and deserve a life free of anxiety and/or depression.