Each month, I go to Korle Bu Hospital’s Melody Centre for review of my antidepressant medications. Each visit, I see a different doctor, because I am on the basic plan, GHS 150, which means you see whichever doctor is available; you don’t have an assigned psychiatrist. In over six months, I have not seen the same doctor. It’s actually incredible. I guess it must mean they are pretty well-staffed. Anyways, the Korle Bu records system has been down for a while, so during every visit, I end up repeating all my diagnoses (medical and psychological), my medications, and my past, present and ongoing symptoms. I keep these in a notebook I update before each visit, then read them calmly and coolly to the doctor. And I get the same reaction from every single doctor: Wow. All of this? Do you have a caregiver? And are you working?
And my answers are always the same: No, I do not have a caregiver, and yes, I am fully working.
During my last visit, actually most visits, a senior psychiatrist is called in to help with the consultation. I can understand. Someone walks in with chronic depression, borderline personality disorder, complex PTSD, non-convulsive seizure disorder, undifferentiated autoimmune disease and some endocrine challenges, including obesity (the WHO has declared that obesity is a chronic disease); so yeah, you do need a senior doctor in the room for the evaluation.
The senior doctor wanted to understand the source of these diagnoses. I gave her the names of my specialists, and my neurologist, endocrinologist, and rheumatologist are all Korle Bu-affiliated doctors, so that lends credibility to the diagnoses I’m carrying around. Sometimes I show them labs. Eyeballs pop.
Each time, the doctors are stunned that I am sitting there, with a notebook, calm, poised, clinical, rattling diagnoses and medications like I’m talking about food. It reminds me that something is wrong with me.
To be honest, I don’t always want to be poised in front of the psychiatrists. I want to collapse and be fragile, but if I do that, they might up my dose, and I feel fully drugged out already. I need a safe container that will listen, and not just a container that will throw drugs at me, or even something worse.
This last visit got me thinking deeply about something that has been on my mind a lot lately, the true dichotomy of my mental and chronic illnesses. The extremes I experience are due to all that I am dealing with.
Craving isolation versus seeking connection
My natural inclination, my natural state, is to seek isolation. I just want to lie on my bed, flat on my back, resting, sleeping, cosy, reading, doomscrolling, watching TV, sometimes playing games with my son, but for the most part, just lying down. I just want to be home, safe, sound, secure, with no pressures to engage. And yet, YET! I also get sad when I come across pictures or information of people I know out and about, having fun, bonding. I feel sad that I couldn’t go, wasn’t invited, or didn’t want to. I want to be around people, and yet I don’t want to be around people. I want to have community, and yet I want to be alone. I feel a heaviness in my heart when I feel left out, not informed, not invited, and yet, half the time, I am most likely to decline. It makes no sense to me, but I want to feel wanted, I want to feel connected, while still desperately craving aloneness from people.
I have always been an introvert, but I used to be a social introvert. During my days at Wesley Girls’ High School, I was studious but also pretty popular. I would perform and dance almost every weekend, even choreographing performances. I was in a clique, multiple cliques. Same attitude at the University of Ghana, learn hard, play hard. Study and go clubbing – two sides of the same coin. Sure, the partying went down over time, but even just three or four years ago, I was meeting friends and family for drinks and dinner. But now, I am practically a hermit. The deterioration in my social life is stark and sad. I do not wish it to be so, but it is a conflict I am struggling to resolve.
Ignoring messages versus communicating
Just recently, I told a girlfriend I didn’t have the emotional capacity and the bandwidth to maintain a close friendship. I can’t text often, call daily, or be available. I see the messages, I see the texts, but something holds me back from clicking on them because I feel my emotional battery will be drained. So messages keep piling up, and I go days without connecting or communicating. I don’t want it to be so. I do want to talk to people, see how they’re doing, but I feel like I don’t have the capacity to share or to listen. I’ve ignored messages that have cost me opportunities.
A member of one of my book clubs tried to connect me with a prominent scriptwriter who could have helped my work, but I didn’t read her messages for days. When I finally got to it, I had to send her a voice note to explain that it wasn’t on purpose. It is never intentional, but I pick up the phone and cringe, freeze, and instead decide to doomscroll on Instagram, read a book, watch TV, or do something else. But respond to actual people? That’s a lot. And sometimes I go through periods of repeated engagement with someone, only for it to die out. I wasn’t like this three or four years ago. Maybe it was happening, but now it’s definitely worse.
Source: Boakyewaa Glover