Labelling the steps regarding what happened last year:

1. So...last year was a crazy and stressful year. I decided to change careers. I switched from being a classroom teacher to studying environmental conservation and served with AmeriCorps at a Land Trust teaching Environmental Ed. My daughter stayed at her daycare, which was awesome. It was the only constant in our lives. I felt like I was living the dream but I was a bit stressed- a lot on my plate with a 2.5 hour round trip commute daily, being a mom, and being back in college. But my excitement drove me in the beginning. I was proud of myself for making the change.

2. Now, I have a tendency to go through these bouts where I almost obsessively dwell on death. I know we all have existential moments and fears and what have you, but when this happens, it's like an all-consuming thing that I can't escape and it comes on out of nowhere and turns into a constant hum in the back of my day no matter what I try to do to distract myself from it. The pattern seems to be that it happens every 8 years, and lasts for anywhere from 3-9 months, with varying degrees of severity, and has nothing to do with my faith in a higher power or after life. It's like all of a sudden, I'm terrified that none of that matters. In between these bouts, it will come and go but it's mild and seems more typical to the human experience. So, I mention this, because one of these bouts began right as I was starting AmeriCorps and I was fighting to get through that, as it was.

3. Next thing I know, my supervisor is getting down on me for some of my ADHD tendencies. Paper makes me feel overwhelmed and usually gets lost, so *shrug*. I wanted to use my cell phone as my primary calendar but that was a problem for this guy, one that he felt a constant need to remind me of. So that was stressful and made me feel like I was reliving teaching and would never escape the criticism. Despite that, my service year was going extraordinarily well and so were my college courses. I kept ignoring the crazy death moods even though they were constantly there and making me feel extremely insecure. 

4. We visit my immediate family for Thanksgiving, where something crazy happens between my father and brothers that I would have never seen coming (because, despite their moments, my family is reasonably functional with hints of dysfunctionality, but nothing like this). Guns were involved, people were restraining each other, furniture was being thrown, my childhood home was being destroyed, injuries were taking place, horrifying things were said that can never be taken back, and I cowered in my teenage room with my husband and 18 month old daughter, hoping with all my heart that the most enraged one, my brother, wouldn't be able to get in and hurt us, which he tried to do twice and we had to barricade ourselves in with furniture to make sure he couldn't get in. I wanted to call the cops, and while the men were outside fighting, I stuck my head out to tell my mom I was calling and she replied, "If you do that you'll be disowned from this family." After that, several more events unfolded whenever we would visit because my parents started having marital issues and I was being blamed despite keeping my opinions to myself and having nothing to do with it. 

5. My husband's mother has some urgent medical issues two days later and we fly out to the west coast to see her. 

6. My service year and schooling continue. I end up needing to drop classes and cut back on service hours because of stress. I begin seeing a therapist. It's now December. More stuff happens with my family when we are visiting over the holidays.

7.The winter progresses, I start to feel better, though the looming death thoughts are still present. I find something else to think of that makes them go away. It's a bit of a day dream/fantasy/something I'm toying with in real life. My marriage isn't going well. We are fighting a lot more but otherwise I'm feeling OK. I start to eat weed gummies recreationally on the weekends (only once or twice a month because I'm not big into weed but it seemed like a fun thing to try since its been legalized in my state.)

8. I started cutting out calories and drinking excessive amounts of coffee to get through my days. Next thing I know, my day dreams are becoming persistent in my daily narrative. I space out on the way to work and think about them. I start picturing ways in which they might come true. As we glide into Spring, I start feeling this need to act on them. I still know they're day dreams, but I start persistently believing that they could be true. It takes my mind off the death thoughts and the potential depression that I'm sensing in the background.

9. Next thing I know, I go into therapy feeling completely off balance and like I'm ready to be done with it. But then I start talking about the day dreams as if they're true and I literally do this as I'm trying not to...it was a terrifying and out of control experience. Next thing I know, I have a major panic attack and get diarrhea for the rest of the week and fall into an instantaneous depression. This is when I start feeling completely unreal.

10. This "unreal" feeling becomes my new daily reality, combined with feeling sick to my stomach, depressed, embarrassed, and enraged all the time. It was like an on/off switch. I went from "stressed but managing" to this. I also start having this urge to prove that my day dreams and fantasies could be real and notice myself trying to act out on them, as if I'm 15 and trying to learn about myself for the first time all over again and don't know what the outcome will be, and also feeling like my adult self doesn't have any control over what this other part of myself is doing, even though it's aware of what's happening.

So this "dissociated" state, went on for, like, the whole summer, into August. When I went to see my new therapist, I related it to my adult self being tied up to my wrist and floating over my body like a helium balloon while looking down on someone else but having no control over what that someone else was doing or saying and then realizing that the someone else is me and feeling deeply ashamed and going through that cycle over and over again. It's wierd though because she has never once suggested any different diagnosis than ADHD/Anxiety/PTSD but I don't feel any of those things accurately describe this. She also gave me a referral for a psychiatrist but only after I practically begged multiple sessions in a row for her to do so and then the pyschiatrist never even picked up their phone or got back to me. I tried to get over it by not drinking any coffee or alcohol and completely refraining from weed. I also joined a CrossFit gym and have been eating very clean. I've always been into thinking holistically about these sorts of things. I finally started feeling much better in November and tried smoking a little weed but quickly slipped back into the story I had been making up. So, now I drink one cup of coffee daily and no weed and alcohol at all. I'm FINALLY starting to feel normal but every now and then become a little anxious or ashamed when I think about how I was acting during that time. Reading up on this thing called derealization/depersonalization has been making me feel a little better. That means this isn't just me, I guess. But it was so embarrassing.