Wednesday, May 4, 2011

All In A Days Work II

~ May is Mental Health Awareness Month ~
Monday's Post: Mental Health Awareness Month: Our Introduction 
http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/05/mental-health-awareness-month-our.html
Yesterday's Post: We Just Need A Good Map:
We end up forgetting to do a lot of things at work. We are reminded later, before anyone else reminds us, that we have forgotten things, that we have done things wrong. There are those of us that are excellent at reminding some of us that we suck at what we do - we don't need to hear it, or be reminded, from anyone else. 

People don't even have to be negative to us to make us feel like we are being criticized. It's that look we're given when we've done something that we should clearly not have, mixed with our own guilt; like leaving a cash drawer in a place where money could be stolen, not respond to a request for information, forgetting to do an entire portion of our job, not remembering what we do on a Thursday....misplacing and/or losing the work keys....again.  Some days we do a great job, for days on end we do a great job, but the times we don't seem to make up for everything we do right.

We're lucky to have a job (at all) that affords us the ability to be on the computer, and not have to deal with the public 100% of the time. The days we have to work with the public a lot, are hard. People talk to us, and a lot of the time we have a hard time concentrating on their words. We can multi-task, as long as people aren't talking to us.

It wouldn't matter if we were on Twitter (which we know we shouldn't be, at least not on our personal account, but we work on other things at the same time), writing a report, reading/responding to e-mails or dealing with anything else; being disturbed causes a disturbance in the head. It's almost like pain, but not, and it makes our eyes want to cross. It's that feeling right before we have an anxiety attack that makes the head feel like we should take cover.

People tell us to make lists, so that we remember our duties. We do make lists, we love lists. The thing about lists, though, is you have to remember where the lists are; and if you are us, make ourself check the list - which sounds easy enough, for us, it is not. It's like trying to get us to do anything that one of us doesn't want to do.

It's so frustrating. Why can't we just do things right.

It used to be much easier when we had mindless jobs of repetitive nature, where we didn't have to deal with people, like our factory jobs; but then we'd get bored by them and leave anyway.

This job is the first job we've had for more than 6-9 months since we were 18 years old. Going to school was always easier for us, we've spent easily the last 6 of the last 13 years studying. In school you go to class for a bit, and the rest of the time is spent doing homework, reading and writing, alone. You don't have to deal with the outside world as much, plus you get to learn and read, which makes most of us happy.

We suck at our job. We are always in fear of losing it because where will we go from here? We have such a hard time keeping jobs, staying at them. The older we get, we can imagine, the harder it will be. Our physical problems, the arthritis, annular spine tears, the spurring and posterior protrusions, the disk degeneration and desiccation, end-plate deformities, and mild spinal depressions...all from the car accident we had six years ago; they make it harder than it ever was in the past.

It's just one of those work weeks...it's only Wednesday and already we feel like the week will just end in complete failure.

Where is the weekend, can we crawl under the desk and cry, instead of sitting at it fighting back the tears?



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the month of May, Mental Health Awareness Month, we will be posting this at he bottom of each of our entries, to help provide additional information about us, and about DID/MPD

10 Things You Should Know About US That MIGHT Surprise YOU:
  1. We used to be a Baptist missionary (yeah, can you fucking believe that shit?!) [we are NOT religious]
  2. We were once married (didn’t last long) [one of our stories talks about him]
  3. We have had nearly 30 physical addresses in 30 years, mostly as an adult (nothing could contain us in the early days) [we actually own a house, but choose not to live in it]
  4. We’ve lived in 2 countries: 1 province and 6-7 different states (running much)
  5. We have lost 120 pounds since the age of 24 (100 of it when we were 24) [and it's close to 140 pounds now)
  6. We have a full time job (well, now it's 32 hours a week - but they actually let us work around the other humans!) [it get's harder everyday, and this is the longest we've ever had a single job since we were 17. We've been there almost a year]
  7. We deal with social anxiety type symptoms every day (and these days we choose not to leave home much, but for going to work) [there are about three people we feel comfortable with being in public with and sometimes we have to be out there alone]
  8. We have multiple “mental illness” diagnoses (doesn't everybody?) [p.s. all misdiagnosed]
  9. We have two beautiful cats, who piss us off every day (but they are special, because they put up with us) [though one of us hates them beyond belief]
  10. We have struggled to survive, over and over, defeating the odds thrown against us (read our stories) [seriously, how are we not dead yet?]

    We've copied the stories written here that are specifically about our past (mostly abuse) and moved them to our other blog, called:
Addressing The Issue of Frank: The Origins, History and Life Story of Frank, from "Just Call Me Frank: One Womans Endeavour At Being Frank"  
Some of our writing on this blog we like to promote, these are those entries since mid-January 2011. There are bits of writing in this blog that we do not actually promote due to embarrassment over things that some have written - they are here for our own tracking - they are angry, mean, scary things. If you feel like it you can find them on your own. Here are the highlights of what we have written so far this year:

The Mental Health Entries: 
Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder
Health:
Relationships/Friendships:
Life:
Opinion:
Art/Poetry:
Humour/Random Fun:

If you have any questions for us we are very open and will answer to our best ability - this is totally the month to ask us questions. You can either ask us on Twitter, in the comment section of a blog entry here, or e-mail us at justcallmefrank2010 (at) gmail.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources for You - facts, figures and personal stories of other people can be found on these sites:
National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml
American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
Canadian Mental Health Association: http://www.cmha.ca/bins/index.asp
Mental Health Europe: http://www.mhe-sme.org/
World Psychiatric Association: http://www.wpanet.org/

1 comment: