STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Dizzy · Marc Jacobs

Has anyone else gone completely bonkers before?

poptart · Coach

Aww, dizzy. I'm worried about you (purely hypothetically)! You have got to get out of the crazy town with the cold McDonald's french fries and stepford people!

Here's my hopefully encouraging story. I guess I kind've did lose it once. No men in white suits or anything - just moved home to my parents and cocooned for a little while. It was during my sophomore year of college, when my HS boyfriend got married and I started to believe that he was right when he told me that no one would ever love me as much as he did. Weird, creepy s*** kept happening to me, I hated one of my roommates, and was just generally overwhelmed by realizing (for the first time in my life) that bad things might happen to me. I was only 19, too, and had gone to college as a crazy party girl at 17, and worked two jobs and took insane class loads, which all helped. I lost a few friends b/c of it, and realized that they weren't good friends, and it took me about 6-8 months to get it together again, and it was a total turning point in my life and an experience (albeit an awful one) that I wouldn't give up for anything.

So ... what's going on (if you want to share)?

Dizzy · Marc Jacobs

Thanks sweetie - I'm just stuck in a paradox: the things I do to make myself feel better here, actually make me look worse, which ultimately makes me feel worse. For example, I say somethign sarcastic because it amuses me, but the recipient of my sarcasm gives me an extremely puzzled look, then backs away slowly. Then I start to wonder what exactly they are going to add to my already eccentric profile in the rumor mill. Which starts the loop of "I'm six figures in debt, but no one is ever goign to hire me because they all think I'm really weird..." And then I go home and eat ice cream. I really like ice cream.

Anyway, I'm just a bad fit here. So, one more year. But it couldn't hurt to stay up on the signs of impending insanity, just so I know when I've pushed it too far...

Elle · Hermes

I'm sorry Dizzy .

I felt similarly when we lived in Spokane for 2 years. I actually frightened myself with some pretty serious coping mechanisms that emerged - things that had I seen someone else doing, I would have thought they had quite literally lost it.

I started a job (which is always really stressful anyway) where the people where really twilight-zone weird. At that point FH was out of town for a long time and I didn't know a soul in that town. You know what I did? I kept my Friends DVD cued up in the DVD player and I'd come home for lunch and watch as much of an episode as I could before I had to go back - in my mind, they were familiar and as close to friends that I had, and I could escape into that 'reality' when I watched. Oh, and I also gained almost 30 lbs on that ice cream you speak of.

C.R.A.Z.Y.

Talking to people on ST helped alot too - reminded me that there are in fact 'normal' people out there, and that I wasn't the one that is crazy, it was the people that I worked with!

This too shall pass, my dear Dizzy. And you will be a stronger, even more sarcastic person for it .

-- Edited by Elle at 14:23, 2006-06-30

Kincali · Dooney & Bourke

I may have missed this but why did you choose Indiana?

Dizzy · Marc Jacobs

fairlight wrote:

I may have missed this but why did you choose Indiana?

Oh. You know. I was married to someone at the time. He didn't want to move too far away from his family. So I told him he could pick the school. He picked Indiana. And then, well, he moved out the first week of school.

blubirde · Chanel

No one who is really going crazy asks themselves if they're going crazy. So that's one good thing for you.

And to answer your question, yes, I went off the deep end for a period of time also.

It was after my first year in law school. It was summertime and I was working at a firm part-time and taking 2 classes (so I could get my student loan money and afford to pay my rent). I had no break between that horrid first year and more classes and real work. My boyfriend at the time went away for most of the summer on an archeological dig and I was living at his apartment while he was gone (to take care of the cat and because I was between leases - mine didn't start until August).

I started skipping classes, which I never would have thought to do before then, and I never left the apartment, except to go to work. All I did was lay in bed with the phone by my head and read Edith Wharton books (bad idea). I was terrified to leave the house for fear my boyfriend might call and I'd miss it, since he was in Romania at the time. (Although I had a cellphone, sooo....) I never went to the grocery store, the drugstore, or out with friends. For those few months I saw no one but work people, myself, and the cat.

I didn't realize how bad I'd gotten until I looked back on that period of time from afar. I was probably just going through some kind of depression due to stress but I didn't know it at the time. I thought it was completely normal to sleep a couple hours a day and lay in bed the rest of it, reading crazy, Victorian literature. I honestly felt like everything in my life was spiraling out of control and at that time not only didn't I recognize myself but I didn't recognize anything around me.

So yes, I've been there. Only I didn't know I was there until I wasn't there anymore. Make sense? You're not alone but try to hang in there. It's just one more year, ya know? Oh and by the way, I had to decide when my 2nd year of law school started, that to hang on to my sanity I had to stop giving a damn what those fools thought of me or what I said. There wasn't going to be anymore attempts (by me) to try to make friends with idiots and I wasn't going to engage in their world anymore. It took awhile but I finally decided just to live my own life and if they wanted to be dumb and unhappy, that was their business but I wasn't having any of it. It was the only way I got through the last two years of that hellacious school.

kenzie · Chanel

One of my favorite quotes from 'Lost' is Locke saying, "Crazy people don't think they're crazy. They think they're getting saner." And it's true (as blubirde already mentioned).

That said, yes, I definitely went throug a time where I didn't feel like myself. I never went to therapy or took any medication for it (although, in retrospect, I probably should have). I did, however, find myself doing and saying things that weren't 'me' and also having extreme reactions to relatively mundane things. I definitely lost friends because of it (although, if they were real friends, they'd still be around). This was all due to my awful job situation and my awful relationship situation and friends who weren't real friends.

It happens to the best of us, but the best of us can also recover from it!

Renee · Kenneth Cole

Dizzy, I PM'd you.

Luv2Shop · Kate Spade

Dizzy, I am so sorry you are going through this. I started dating a guy who lived in Indiana and I went there a lot. His house and the town he lived in were big piles of shit and his family, who we always hung around when we were there, were pure white trash. I pretty much forced him to move to the city but- you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the counry out of the boy if you know what I'm saying. Anyway, while I was there we took the train a lot to the city for school so we didn't have to waste gas. It was about an hour train ride. I know several girls from ST live in the city, and I live in the suburbs and would be happy to meet you up there for a Saturday or Sunday of shopping! It sounds like you need to get out of that state as much as possible!! Let me know if you even need to!!!! Feel better, HUGS!!!!!