My New Blog As I have stated several times I am broadening my horizons. Where they will lead me who knows, but here is my new blog: amarvelouscalm I hope you all will follow me and help me through the days to come. love to all. love, lelly

Bad news guys… After only a weeks forth of hard work and research I have come to the conclusion that I must create a new and better blog via WordPress.org. I have yet to do so and will keep you updated on how it’s going. While blogging with WordPress.com is fine and swell for the mean time it will not be suitable for the goals and needs we will have established in the future. This is a long term project for me, and to get the best quality and to be able to provide better content and services this move is absolutely essential for the needs of everyone. Everything will work out just fine. 🙂 –Lelly

Why General Practitioners are called General Practioners Good day everyone, or night! I am out and about today with my fiancé! We are venturing far beyond our usual destinations and I’ve got the wheel! Oh! But don’t worry! I’m not actually driving right at this moment. Haha You see, for the past month, maybe longer, my fiancé…. Hold on. I get tired of saying fiancé. Until further notice I will call him Barnes. Okay. Barnes has been experiencing excruciating pain in his shoulder. He’s been to the doctor and she told him he has tendinitis and that he should start physical therapy immediately, but she gave him no cortisone shot for relief. It’s a good thing that “Barnes” is quite smart. He did some research and found out that physical therapy is the last thing he should do. So, here I am waiting for him to get done with his one hour appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon. This is why you cannot always rely on your general practitioner or family doctor to give you the correct treatment when you are needing help and answers for depression or anything else. General practitioners are called such for a reason. They are educated on the very basics of human health. If you have a good doctor they will have a good inclination as to what your problem might be, but they will or should refer you to a specialist. As for myself and our plans after this… I am getting that money order and renewing my liquor license. One or two days a week serving can’t hurt my psyche too much. And the money is always nice. 🙂 I will surely have an update later this evening. UPDATE!. We are back home. Barnes was NOT feeling up to the journey to downtown Indy, so we just came home. After, 4 shots into his rotator cuff and bursa sac…. I can’t blame him. He has bursitis and impingement in his right shoulder. Ouch. 😦 poor baby. That being said, no liquor license. Wah wah waaaah…haha. I’m honestly not bothered by it much.. I’m still debating whether or not serving is a healthy choice for myself. I did stop by the good old sports bar and pick up an application. I felt so strange being in there seeing all these new faces (employees) and the familiar ones. It was a combination of nostalgia and awkwardness. All these new servers stared at me as if I was just another customer, but once I spoke to the GM and had that application I my hands I could sense all their eyes on me and I felt like I was an enemy invading their territory, which was once dominated by myself, Princess Warrior Lelly. So, shall I or shall I not reclaim my territory? — A question that is constantly on my mind. I obviously can’t continue to be unemployed, although I have enjoyed it. I have bills, and pets, and a wedding to pay for. And poor Barnes can’t support us both just with his paychecks. Alas! The struggles of life have bitten me in the ass once more. How do I feel today? I feel relieved to be home after driving around an unfamiliar area. That was stressful. Oh!!!

If you live down south or on the west coast then you surely have eaten at or have heard of a fast food chain called Jack in the Box! Well, we were lucky enough to encounter the grand opening of a new Jack in a Box in Indiana. I don’t know if this was the first one opened in Indiana or not, but it was absolute chaos. Police cars were needed to assist traffic due to the unbelievably long line in the turn lane going into the parking lot. It was nuts. Anyways, I also feel relieved that my love, “Barnes” has finally received the proper treatment for his shoulder. Hopefully, what the surgeon did this time was enough for him to heal properly. Which, brings me back to the subject of today’s post ( which I really didn’t focus on much, but you get the idea)…. If you have depression and you’ve been seeing your family doctor often and nothing helps, then perhaps you should see a specialist like I am. If money is an issue most mental health clinics have charity assistance or income based pay rates. Your general practitioner knows only the very basics of whatever disorder you may suffer from, but they are hardly well trained or up to date with the best medications. Often, you may encounter a doctor who is uncomfortable treating your mental illness and they will do the right thing and refer you to a specialist. In this case it would be a therapist/psychiatrist. There are so many places you can go to get help. And you can also google search for hotlines that can help direct you to the closest mental health clinic in your area. 🙂 So please, do yourself a favor and take the first step to get the professional help you need. It took me many years to learn this. And I learned it the hard way, so this is my personal advice based on real personal experiences. —Lelly Photo of the Day

Saves The Day- 0 Me and my fiance have found this song to be quite powerful and personal to our relationship. Honestly the entire album, which is called Daybreak by Saves the Day, hits so very close to home. I hope this song finds a place in your hearts as it has in mine.

Sleeping the Day Away Good afternoon everyone! As I’m writing this, the current time is 3:46 pm in Indiana, and I just woke up a few minutes ago. Thank you, Depression. I truly appreciate you helping me get through most of the day without any turmoil. Awesome. In all seriousness, I truly can’t blame the depression 100%. I should have set my alarm clock. Today for me, is kind of a chill kind of day now that I wasted half the day sleeping. I had plans to get a money order and renew my liquor license so that one of these days, hopefully soon, I can go back to one of those wonderful sports bars I used to work at. Which, brings me to the subject. Am I ready to deal with general public again? Isn’t that part of the reason I left my job at my favorite hardware store….to get better. So, that I can come back someday? Those were all very good questions I asked my therapist yesterday. She raised the question as to how will dealing with my panic attacks at a sports bar be any different than my last job? There is a very fine line between my answer making sense and it not making any sense. What I am dealing with in this particular situation is a case of agoraphobia. Which is the following… The fear to be in large spaces, large crowds, and the fear to have a panic attack within the two prior cases. There is much more to this disorder. For the most extreme cases may be the fear of leaving one’s home. When my therapist brought up the fact that I might have agoraphobia, I was so very confused. I’ve never actually thought to myself directly,” I’m afraid of this huge space.” I’ve definitely been in very large spaces without freaking out. But, I can relate in some sense to the disorder, because I do dislike large crowds, and they do make me anxious. That part makes sense. So, while working at a sports bar I’d be dealing with large crowds and the general public. It has been a year since I last served at a sports bar. Can I do it this time without losing my cool? I’m not sure. But, enough about that. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I can bring more interesting content to the table. I’d love to hear suggestions. I’m thinking about adding a page where I will upload my art. But for today, I am going to share a picture of one of my silly little rats. I have 3 males, and two females, and of course I keep them separated. 🙂

Mental Illness and How Society Views People Who Suffer From It. If you are someone who lives day to day with some sort of mental illness, lets say depression for instance, you might have already experienced what I am about to address. For people who live a healthy and normal lifestyle, it may be hard to understand what depression and/or anxiety is all about. Especially if they have never experienced even the slightest form. There are many reasons why society has a bad stigma on mental illness. For the longest time someone considered to be mentally ill were only the most extreme cases of schizophrenia or insanity. Depression in an idealistic sense is fairly new in our culture, and is growing faster every day. The pressure of money, work, and relationships are just a few of the causing factors to name off. It can be derived from environmental circumstances or it can be an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, or a combination of the two. But, I am getting off the subject…The media plays a huge role in why people misunderstand mental illness. Mass murders by “deranged mad men” being on the news, psychotic serial killers with chain saws and masks in the movies, or just personal beliefs that have been formed due to any number of reasons. It doesn’t matter how these beliefs and sigmas were formed, the fact remains that something needs to change. I’ve worked for a few restaurants and sports bars, and most recently retail. Every job, I have always had to put up with some form of insensitive, judgmental jerk who misunderstands me. It can be very difficult to control your anxiety while working, depending on the severity of your circumstances. People can sense weakness, and if you come across a bad person they just might feed off of that. Some days when you are feeling really low and feel like you’re on the bottom of the ocean, working can be nearly impossible. Sometimes it then becomes impossible. Recently, at my last job I was having one of those days, expect mine was filled with overwhelming anxiety. Over the past year I had been working there my anxiety and panic attacks sky rocketed. Some days I would go on break and walk into the bathroom and instantly burst into tears. This went on for a while. I was lucky enough that one of my managers could relate to me. She became somewhat of a go to person at times when I would break down. However, not everyone was as empathetic and understanding as she was. For example, one day over Memorial Day weekend, I was barely holding myself together. The fake smiles and quick and friendly customer service are hard to uphold when you are on the verge of a panic attack. My heart started pounding, my chest and lungs became tight. Breathing was getting difficult, but I had been working on managing my panic attacks with breathing techniques. Wasn’t working. I knew I needed to just sit down, get away from all the people, and just calm myself down. So, I go over to one of my supervisors and I tell her what was going on. She rolled her eyes and boldly, almost in a yelling tone, tells me to go to the back. I could have stopped that panic attack from reaching the severity of tears, suffocation, and pain. Instead, because of the way she rolled her eyes along with the tone of her voice, it all caused me to completely loose it. I lost all control. Ir took almost an hour being alone in a small room with my awesome, empathetic manager to calm myself down. Finally, I pulled myself together and was ready to go back to work. But crappy, “Roles Her Eyes” Supervisor came back and told me that it had taken far for too long, and that I’ve become an issue to the functionality of the business in so many words. She then told me to go home. For the entire 35 minute commute I cried hysterically. Looking back at it now, I realize how dangerous it was for me to be on the road like that. How that woman reacted to me that day truly hurt. That was one of my personal experiences dealing with the intolerance and misunderstanding that people can have about mental illness. There’s so much more to tell, but I will save my stories for another day. If you have a story or personal experience related to the way society views people with mental illnesses I’d love to hear about it. It is so important that we all try to remove these misunderstandings and stigmas. All it takes is a little courage, and the ability to speak up and stand for what you believe in. Mental Illness is no different than any other kind of illness or disorder, and nobody should have to feel guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed by what they suffer from. Stand up, and tell the next person who discriminates you because you have a mental disorder to educate themselves about something they know nothing about. 🙂 You can do it! Just be polite about it. It gets you much further. Have a wonderful day or night to all. Lelly out! Picture of the Day

Writing Can be Therapeutic for Depression and More. Blogging is a lot of work. I knew that when I got myself into this there would be many challenges, but I will figure everything out one way or another. Needless to say, bear with me. I always love learning new things. The first and foremost reason I started this blog was to keep record of my progress during my journey back to a healthy frame of mind. I’m not crazy. Sometimes I can be difficult. :] However, for me this blog is more than just a track record or a journal, its therapeutic. You’d be surprised at how much writing down your thoughts and feelings can help you. It is an outlet. A way for you to expel those nasty demons from your belly and brain. Once you’ve started your journal, of any kind, you can look back and read yourself from the past. It’s like looking into a mirror that shows who you were prior to the present. Does any of this make sense? Well, at least for me it does. Be open minded about it, and most importantly, be honest. If you aren’t honest with yourself, then you will get nowhere. That is all for now. Later tonight or perhaps tomorrow I will discuss a very serious topic that I recently have found personally disturbing– Trying to Function in Society and the Stigma Society Has With Mental Illness.

Quality content for sure with this one. :] ; -Lelly out! Picture of the Day

That Awkward, but Somehow, Peaceful Feeling When You Wake Up and Realize You’re Unemployed You know that feeling you get after you wake up in the morning and remember some horrible, embarrassing, or just down right makes you feel like the world is ending. Your heart stops, your stomach gets weak, and your blood races through your veins. It’s a feeling of,”Oh, what have I done?”. Yeah, that. Good morning! Good morning! Good morning to me! If only… But then, after I took my medications and walked outside and absorbed everything around me. The fresh warm breeze, the sound of birds singing and squirrels chattering amongst each other. And then I realized I have the whole day to myself–for as long as I want! Well, until I get “better”. So, basically what I’m trying to say is that (if I wanted to) I could draw, I could paint, I could run laps around the block. You get my point. But what so many, what I like to call “normal people”, don’t understand is that you can’t do any of those things or anything at all when you’re depressed. Depression, at least for me, is more than just a feeling of constant sadness. It takes over your WHOLE body. Depression can be physical. A few of the symptoms I experience are fatigue, aches and pains, frustration and anger, a feeling of paralysis- in a mental sense. The list can go on, but my point is that if you or someone you know has depression, maybe you should listen to them and take them seriously when they say they can’t do something. One of the best things you can do is educate yourself and others about depression or other mental illnesses. I have provided a list of some websites that I personally feel are helpful and educational.

National Alliance on Mental Illness WebMD.com Mental Illness The National Institute of Mental Health





. Picture of the Day