A lost soul in limbo

I am tired. And really tired.

Life took a big turn after I hired a lawyer… Well, I gotta admit that quite a bit of exaggeration.

I got to be very energetic and started thinking about positive outlooks. What have I accomplished since my last blog?

I joined three professional organizations and applied to be a reviewer for various associations. Within one week, I put up a grant proposal for a program focusing on empowering the potential positive impact of computer games, targeting youths that are at risk of dropping out of the school. I cut my “dead horse” dissertation to 30 something pages from 100 plus pages, with the wishful thinking that I might be able to submit it to some dead horse journals. Today, I finally submitted the final draft of my dissertation to my advisor. In between the jobs and all that jazz, I am managing to get an A from this statistics class about multilevel analysis.

I had gotten home a bit early today. Arrived at about 8:30 and decided to watch the film “Mystic Pizza”. Ya. That’s a chick movie but I think it did somehow touch my heart. In the movie, Julia Roberts acted as a young woman who used faul language and was supposed to be considered as a slut. At one scene, when her mother mentioned to her that she did not want her to be an academic kind and just wanted her to make something out of herself, Julia Roberts replied, “I am worried about myself, too.”

That sounds far too familiar to me. That’s exactly the same feeling I have been secretly holding about myself.

When am I going to find a job? When will I start feeling settled and no longer like a rootless plant that floats along the flow of water? And when will I find a partner to share with me our lives (even though this should be the last of my concern at this stage just like quitting smoking)?

These questions haunt me like nightmares and all that I could do is to dig my head into projects after projects to bury my fear and insecurities deep down in my heart.

I often wonder what my life would have turned out to be shall I have not let myself gone with my dreams and started a pseudo-nomadic life for the past 10 years. I managed to call Vancouver my home before I started identifying myself as a New Yorker.

Or, how life would have turned out if I had gone into medical school rather than digging into the black box of human psychology?

I used to be able to say that, if I could change my life and start all over again, I would not make a change. Now, the rootless plant is a lost soul in Limbo. She knows no more.

The day after I upped my dosage in Zoloft

To day is the second day that I upped my dosage for Zoloft.

Believe me. I would never imagine that this day would come when I actually told my psychiatrist and therapist that there is a need for me to increase the dosage of my medication. For the past few years, I have been working on cutting meds down rather than asking for the increase.

Starting from a couple weeks again, depression hit me like the asteroid that hit the earth and resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs (of course, if this theory holds true). Life hasn’t been pleasant. I have been constantly experiencing anxiety and depressed mood at the same time. I couldn’t stop telling myself, “This is not a way to live.” I tried very hard to make myself believe in the positive thoughts that are available once in a while. However, at a stage when the generation of positive thoughts is rare, there doesn’t seem to be much hope in making myself believe in these positive thinking.

Yesterday was a day when I decide to find an alternative way to help myself see alternatives. The dosage of Zoloft was upped. It got rid of most of the anxiety. However, what I experienced was pure apathy… Today, still, flatness is what I feel and what I see. Speaking is an activity that consumes too much energy for me to engage in.

I am lucky that my coworkers are supportive and empathetic. Also, regardless of my psychological downfalls, I am still capable of performing most of the tasks that are required at work. The entire day, I put myself into work. Funny that I could work but I found it so difficult to either smile or talk.

Like what I did for the entire day today, yesterday and all those days before, I could only live one moment at a time and expect a better time to come in the near future. Maybe, in a few days, the antidepressant would really start helping me lifting my spirits up, rather than simply turning me into a zombie with no joy, no pains, and no sorrows.

At the very beginning, there was Ratopia. Then, there's ratology.

My name is ratprincess. I was born in the year of rat. That's the reason why I call myself "Ratprincess."

I first came up with the term "ratology" when I was going through my first psychotic episode. In my delusions and auditory hallucinations, people were gossiping about me and people were spying on me. I decided to start writing about my experiences as the center of gossips and attention. I gave "ratology" as the title of my writing. Ratology is equivalent to psychology except it's for the rodent population in the utopia of rodents.. also known as "Ratopia". Eventually, I stopped working on my book "Ratology".

Time went by fast. I had recovered from my first psychotic episode and still recovering from my second psychotic episode. Within this time frame, I had also gone through the process of coming up with a dissertation topic, running my dissertation study, and finishing my dissertation. Along the way, I managed to present my study results at conferences.

Recently, I have undergone a lot of changes in life.. I broke up with my boyfriend, my sister move out from my place, I felt my work on my dissertation was not being appreciated, I need to find a job fast, and my legal status to remain in the US is up in the air. The synergistic effects of all these have caused me to be at the brink of breaking down once more. In the face of depression, I decided to take the risk of upping my dosage of zoloft with the hope that the medication will help me to see the world from different perspectives.
My blog will be a way for me to preserve my life as a loony and hopefully will be helpful to some. What I will be reporting here would be my real life stories. I can not imagine whether it would be a comedy or a tragedy. I could only hope that, despite of all the ups and down in the story line, there will be a happy ending.