Because I like to practice what I preach...

I've spent the past 6 months researching the therapeutic value of art, music and writing and after struggling with various neuroses, which include, but are not limited to, depression, anxiety, hypochondria, sick father, (f)ailing marriage, stressful professional life, and a tendency to wallow and ruminate in the muck of despair, I am going to make a guinea pig of myself and see if writing about my problems will somehow help me work through them - or at least understand them.

So, let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start... (yes, I really was quoting "The Sound of Music" and I know what you're thinking... "Wow, she really does need help!") I have always been a little on the neurotic side. Ruminating. Obsessing. Occasionally engaging in ritualistic behavior.

Then, in college, I began experiencing periods of deep depression alternating with periods of extreme elation... which went unchecked for quite some time. In 2000 I rang in the new milennium in a deep depression and had my first encounter with therapy. Therapist considered me cured and I moved abroad, thinking that it was the midwestern monotony that I was living in that was somehow to blame for my funk. Well, things didn't quite work out there... long story... and a month and a half after I ended a 4-year relationship, I married suddenly and unexpectedly and moved back stateside to begin a new life.

This new life involved grad school and a rocky marriage. Several months later I ended up getting pregnant and at this time doctors discovered a mass on my right ovary during a routine ultrasound. 7 months later, it was discovered that I had a form of borderline ovarian cancer. None of this phased me at the time...

Several months later I started with the mood swings again, and my marriage began to deteriorate slowly. I also spent hours researching imaginary symptoms online, crying uncontrollably, convinced that I had every rare form of cancer imaginable. I imagined my daughter growing up motherless. I imagined myself dying a horrible, painful death. I pictured many a horrible ending to a troubled life.

But turns out that at that time, I hadn't a clue what horrible was. This past August my father suffered a seizure and was later diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer. Two days before his seizure, he had been backpacking though Asia with my 23-year-old brother and now here he was, with a horrible illness. I began fear my body, certain it was out to betray me. So, I sought help. And the diagnosis was (drumroll...)

Bipolar type II
Hypochondria
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (because of my brush with illness myself)
Depression

And now I am trying to deal. Some days are better than others. I have recently decided to end my marriage and am on another emotional roller-coaster ride because of that, but I am working my way through it the best way I know how. I hope that blogging through my ups and downs here will help me gain insight into myself and why I am the way I am... And I hope that it may also help others gain insight into their own neuroses.

I don't know where this journey will lead, but I welcome anyone who wants to accompany me on the ride...