Schizoaffective Anxiety Over Driving Continues

I was making a lot of progress with my driving, but now I seem to have slipped back. Here’s what happened.

I haven’t lost so much ground that I am back to where I started when I was driving to the Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP). I’m pretty confident driving the 10 minutes to my parents’ house. But, for some reason, I’m afraid again to drive in the rain, even though I know I can do it. I thought I was over that. Last Friday, I drove home from my parents’ in the rain, but it was just a drizzle.

I think a big problem is that I don’t want to take an as-needed antianxiety pill before I drive. I was drinking Gatorade for the sugar before I drove several months ago, but now, guess what, I’m on a diet again. I’m even seeing a new dietitian.

A few minutes later: I’ve been sitting here reading over the paragraphs above, and it really isn’t “just” about driving, although that’s what I fixate on most. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I’m trying to keep up with driving, I’m seeing a dietitian and giving up most of my comfort foods, and I’ve stopped seeing my therapist (I’m looking for a new one because my former therapist just wasn’t working out). Then there’s really loud construction going on in my building (overstimulation), and the list goes on.

But if I weren’t anxious about driving, it would solve so many of my problems! I used to love to go on long drives. Why not go out driving instead of sitting at home eating? Well, I shouldn’t characterize myself that way. I’m not just “sitting at home eating.” But, you get the idea. I could go out and do things! I could get away from the construction in the building!

At the same time, my driving phobia does stem from an overall more anxious thought process. I used to be on a medication called Clozaril. It was prescribed to me when I voluntarily went to the Emergency Room and then the psychiatric ward for suicidal thoughts in 2008. Clozaril is prescribed for suicidal thoughts and risks in people with schizophrenia. It worked really well at first, but then it caused me to have symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). My anxiety was at its all-time high during the OCD days. I went off Clozaril and did not experience as many OCD symptoms for years. Lately, however, I’ve been having “Clozaril thoughts.” These thoughts are characterized by thinking that something bad did happen because it could happen. Labeling them Clozaril thoughts is a way of “defusing” them (like a bomb; defusing them takes away their power). I learned this skill in the IOP. I’m proud of myself for still using the skill over a year later.

Anyway, I just thought of something that could help with my driving: my favorite music I used to listen to on my long drives was bonus music from the Tori Amos album Under the Pink. I also liked to play her album Boys for Pele. I’ll try it–I will listen to that music again the next time I drive somewhere!

 

Tomorrow Will Be Better

 

Today, I:

Ate too many carbs

Drank too much diet lemonade (It’s five calories

A serving!)

Waited for the rain to end

(it never did)

Did not drive anywhere

(anywhere being the drug store)

Waited in shame

For the hours to go by

Waited in shame

To be graced with a poem

Waited in shame

For my period to come

Felt like a bad feminist

Because I had been glad I got married

Before I was 30

You know, the closest I come to listening to Bob Dylan

Is listening to Suzanne Vega and Leonard Cohen

You know, I want this to be about depression

But it’s really about apathy

About being plagued so much

I am forced to have no more fucks to give

And now the rain has stopped

But it’s too late

To drive to the drug store

My waiting is almost over

And I’m already back in my pink

Hello Kitty pajamas

Why This Schizoaffective Doesn't Shave Her Legs Anymore

 

I’ve stopped shaving my legs for good. I know I’ve been on and off about shaving them in the past, and even declaring I would never shave them again before, but I literally physically can’t shave them anymore. Here’s why.

A couple of years back, I had double knee replacement surgery. My knees don’t hurt anymore like they did before the surgery, when I had bone-on-bone arthritis, but there are certain things I can’t do now. Especially since I got a fracture in my right knee in April, and overcompensating on my left knee made that one suffer, too.

So now, I can barely go up and down stairs, and even before the fracture I couldn’t run, jump, or—and this is where shaving my legs comes in—sit down in a bath tub.

I used to love taking baths. I took one every day, instead of a shower. I would wash my hair in the bath, which I hated, but I loved shaving my legs. Now I only take showers. I’m getting used to it, but it’s almost impossible for me to shave my legs in the shower. I cut myself up so badly. Even with shaving cream, which I just started using again to shave my armpits.

I used to crusade against shaving my body hair. This went back to my teens in the 90s with my riot grrrl friends. (Riot grrrl was 90s feminist punk that included bands like Bikini Kill, which group was fronted by seminal, outspoken feminist rocker Kathleen Hanna.) I really didn’t see why it was okay for guys to bare their hairy legs and armpits, but not girls. For that matter, I didn’t see why it was okay for girls to dye their hair blue and have tattoos and body piercings, but it wasn’t okay for us to have body hair. (I had blue streaks in my hair for a week, and I also used to have a navel ring.) All of this is to say that I’ve never been a devoted body hair shaver. So, it’s strange to me that I miss having smooth legs so much, and that I religiously shave my armpits now.

One reason is that I am now very overweight, and I don’t feel good about my body. I shave my armpits because I don’t want to feel any grosser than I already do. Most of the weight was gained in my 20s from taking an antipsychotic that causes catastrophic metabolic effects. Yes, I have tried other antipsychotics and, yes, I am seeing a dietician and have been on other diets. All the weight loss medications I have tried have made me very ill.

I have also considered getting my legs waxed and using depilatories. With all I’ve been through with my body, if having smooth legs makes me feel better, I feel I should look at my options. It’s just that I’ve been removing body hair by shaving all my life. Waxing sounds expensive, and depilatories sound messy at best. My husband, Tommy, said depilatories work by chemically burning the hair off. Now I can’t get that description out of my head! I care more about me shaving than he does. He doesn’t care at all. But it is my body.

The other thing is that my leg hair is growing in a lot more slowly and is lighter than it used to be. I am 46. Maybe Mother Nature is letting me off the hook as I get older. Also, I bought loose-fitting, breezy pants to wear in the summer instead of skirts or shorts. They cover up my lower legs. So no one can see my leg hair.

I guess all of this is to say I’m trying to figure out how much having smooth legs means to me. What I really don’t like is that instead of choosing hairy legs, it seems to have been forced on me.

Hearing Voices of Faeries at the Renaissance Faire

 

My husband Tom and I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Wisconsin twice this summer! We had a great time, except for a couple of hiccups for me. Let me tell you about the biggest one. This hiccup is the reason I decided to write about going to the Faire in the first place, because it illustrates the problems I have with schizoaffective disorder, anxiety, and my knees. What happened was that I was taking a picture of a faerie who was perched on a balcony. Yes, it’s the picture you see above, and the faeries are part of the roaming cast at the Renaissance Faire. I contorted my body in a weird way to get the shot, and I stumbled and almost fell! It was very scary–if I fall on my knees, it may ruin my knee replacements that I had to get due to my bone-on-bone arthritis.

That was part one of the biggest hiccup at the Faire during our second visit. We were actually leaving the Faire, wrapping up this second adventure there. But part two was yet to come. I was tired, freaked out about almost falling, and my head was pounding even sheltered from the sun in my Art Institute of Chicago baseball cap. As I went into the “privies” (bathrooms) for the last time before the trip home, the pounding in my head got worse. It was really crowded at the Faire that day, so I had to wait in line. Finally, when I closed the door to my stall, the voices hit, those auditory hallucinations that used to plague me all the time.

Okay, so maybe it was only 45 seconds at most in this case. But I haven’t heard those kinds of voices in years. When I say “those kinds,” what I mean is loud, screaming, angry voices. I have heard voices that sounded like someone was watching TV in the next room, and they were very quiet, but ever since my mood stabilizer dosage was raised a few years ago, I haven’t heard voices that were so distressing.

Like I said, the episode only lasted about 45 seconds, maybe 30, and all the voices were saying amounted to mockery of me for taking a long time to pee. Even though I knew they weren’t real, I couldn’t help but think it was ironic that I was hearing them at the Renaissance Faire, amid the faeries. A long time ago, when I thought the voices were real, I thought they were faeries. Remember, this very short episode was indirectly related to a faerie.

I also had to remember that, when I used to hear the disturbing type of voices regularly, I’d be like, “Okay, I know the drill, gotta pop some antianxiety pills, drink a crap load of ice water, and watch Tori Amos: Live from the Artists Den.” When they happen less often, they’re scarier. Not that I want them to happen more often again! My therapist thinks this was just a fluke, and I’m going to talk about them with my psychiatrist in two days.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal. And I hate to make it sound like that was my only takeaway from these two fun days at the Renaissance Faire. We did have a great time. There were lots of laughs, like when Tom bought us Sassafras (root beer with licorice) and asked the servers if they sold Black Cows (Sassafras floats). When they said they didn’t, and he made his patented sad face but tipped them anyway, they rang the bell for tippers and cried, “Huzzah for… the sad tipper!” (They always ring a bell and shout, “Huzzah for the tipper!”)

We did lots of shopping, too. The Renaissance Faire is pretty much the only time I go shopping in person, meaning not online.  During the first visit this summer, Tom bought me everything I wanted! Lots of jewelry. The second time, I wanted to buy myself something. I found a journal with a three-dimensional face on the cover! I think it’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever owned (and that’s saying a lot), and I love it!  Since she has a face, I named the journal Agatha.

On our first day, Tom got me lots of water-themed jewelry because our 17^th wedding anniversary is coming up, and both our bridesmaids’ and groomsmen’s attire was aqua blue, and there just so happened to be a huge, major flood after torrents of rainfall on our wedding day! Tom said, “If it’s good luck to have rain on your wedding day, we are going to have the best marriage ever! Well, flash-forward 17 years to our first day in the summer of 2025 at the Renaissance Faire, there was a 20-minute downpour. We thought it was so appropriate! And people were singing and dancing in the rain (while we took shelter in a shop).

This coming weekend is Cottagecore weekend at the Faire. Cottagecore romanticizes the kind of lifestyle emulated by hobbits. It’s all about escaping to coziness. Cottagecore interests me since it reminds me of hygge, which is also a philosophy of coziness that I was obsessed with a few years ago. But this is the first summer I’ve been to the Renaissance Faire more than once already, and it’s supposed to be hot and sunny (yuck), so we’ll forego Cottagecore. Maybe next year.