Terminal Mind

I see depression as a terminal illness, responding to treatment for a time, but for many it inevitably comes back more aggressive than ever. The cycle continuing, drug after drug until eventually one day the medications will stop working altogether and quite understandably, one simply loses the will to fight any longer.

Don’t ask me to be ok, I can’t and knowing that only makes it harder.

After struggling with general existence for so long, the thought of suicide becomes so ingrained in your being that it’s not even a thought in it’s own right anymore, but as unconscious as taking a breath of air.

For such a long time, dates are important. Timing, is important – not too close to a birthday/anniversary/special holiday etc. Then eventually you realise that there is never going to be a good time. Much like having a baby there is always a reason to put it off even though your heart aches for it so. One day you will find that the pieces simply fall together at just the right moment and you will take the plunge. And much like making a baby, once the deed is done there is no going back, it is done forever.

As I write these words I have a sense of guilt. I feel like I should be offering my readers some sort of happily ever after, a traditional phoenix from the ashes story.

Sadly, much like Lithium the truth can be a bitter pill to swallow. There is no happy ending here, It always was and always will be a roller coaster ride. The best I can offer is a retelling of the lessons I learned throughout my journey.

The highs are like buying cocaine that you can’t really afford. It’s so damn irrisitable but there is a terrible price you will have to pay later, one way or another.

…and the siren song of Mania lures me in deeper still. Now I am standing at the crossroads, I can still make a choice but of course, I already know that I will choose the path in the wrong direction. It’s impossible to say no as you feel the clarity wash over you, nothing matters now anyway, after all you have a world to conquer. Places to go, people to see! The consequences? Laters’ problem.

 

………….After all, we cant sue god because the world didn’t come with a trigger warning.

I wish I was allergic to peanuts...

People comment about being worried that they are feeling suicidal, I guess maybe I have been suicidal for such a long time that I am completely used to it, that it is just who I am. Perhaps I want to want to live, but I don’t want to live, I want to be suicidal. All the time. When I am not feeling actively suicidal I am plotting and planning, enabling myself for the next time I am hit with the god awful energy depression must-die-now rush that comes with a mixed episode.

I had a fairly hypomanic day, I unfortunately bought a whole stack of useless crap and knik knacks, then I got home and started coming down a bit, as I was making dinner and remembered that I ate a litre of icecream this morning for breakfast which along with the glass of wine I used to wash down my morning meds was like a weeks worth of calories for me. I chucked a mega tantrum (poor hubby) and went to bed crying just wanting to die, of course I couldn’t sleep and my mind was going a bazillion miles per hour, so I ended up getting up to watch a movie with hubby, couldn’t sit still and then started binge eating. Again. L

We went to bed after the movie but I still couldn’t sleep, plotting all the ways I could escape and off myself should my Psychologist/GP/Shrink try and commit me. Then I decided to combat the binging I would write a menu plan, so I got up and over the last few hours I have been simultaneously looking at you tube videos, facebook, the news, pintrest, writing lists of stuff I want to sell on e-bay, writing a menu plan for next week and now typing this. I don’t quite know how the browser in my 4yr old laptop is coping at the moment! (Shout out to Toshiba)

Bloody rapid cycling, its doing my head in, have to see the GP tomorrow morning, don’t want to confess my actual thoughts, maybe I should. If I do get locked up there are SO MANY things that will come with that that are worse than death, not that I am frightened of death anyway – when I took that overdose I didn’t regret it, even a few days later when I was warned my liver could fail – I was still hoping it would, I was high as a kite, happy as larry and still completely fine with the thought of impending death.

 I wish I was allergic to peanuts, imagine how easy that would be? Tombstone could read "She died with a snickers in her hand..."

God Theory

Depression sucks, being high is awesome. I’m the happiest I have been and yet I am ready to cease my life. I guess that I want to go out on a high. Does that make me sound depressed? LOL

I feel better than I have in forever, I am so complete and fulfilled and to the amusement of anyone who has ever known me, I think I found God! OK, rather I have summarised my interpretation of the meaning of the word ‘god’ and how ‘god’ fits into the creation/ development of our perceived world.

I watched a movie today called Lucy. Very long story very short, u know how humans only use 10% of their brain? Well this lucy chick ends up using 100%. The movie speculates what would happen if we had this ability. (*Spoiler alert*)When she reached the 100% she disappeared and essentially became everything or as we humans would view it, a god like entity.

Anywho, I was thinking about it after and came to the conclusion that using 100% of brain function is you become so in touch with your structure and the environmental structure at a cellular level that you become one with all matter which is equivalent to ceasing to exist. So therefor you are unable to use 100% of your brain potential until you are using none at all. Death is equivalent to complete life, in the way that all colours are white. This is probably where the perception of a god like after life state or going to be with god when you die originated from. If you think about it, the fact is that we are all simply energy particles forming and changing shapes.  Perception truly is the only reality, we perceive energy particles around us to form in a predictive manner, what ever causes these particles to connect together to create and duplicate cells until they form a ‘physical’ being surely potentially causes a energy image or shadow style effect of the previously existing cellular structure that is left behind once these cells die and go back into the energy pool. It would therefor be plausible that people who are more sensitive to changes in energy levels around them to pick up on these ‘energy shadows’ and perceive them in the shape they once held as a physical being thus giving rise to the theory of ghosts.

If purely energy based, these apparitions would not have any intentional function to visualise such as walking or spontaneous movement, they would merely behave in a replicate manner  or photographic style model of the physical form they had been previously connected to, for this purpose the existence of a ‘soul’ for example would more likely be present in the replicated energy field than within the breaking down cells from the physical form.

Depending of the energy frequency the human perceiver is tuned into, these ‘spirits’ for want of a better term may be able to communicate although this would only really be possible using implanted imagery or word based thoughts transmitted via energy particles. Actual ‘speech’ as we know it would not be possible for the same obvious reasons that tree frogs don’t verbally communicate the same way dogs, cats or even ppl do – the ‘speech’ or method of communication using sound relies on physical structure through a collection of cells. The sub atomic structure that goes into creating just one physical cell is nearly infinite and can only be increased via duplication. Always continuous equal parts, always in pairs – DNA, Reproduction as a general – to create the existence of any cell based object it must involve a level of duplication. This process is not (by sheer natural design) supposed to be reversed. The splitting of an atom, creates an explosion – this almost proves the big bang theory in one simple step, we reversed the natural process and created an explosion, thus an explosion would have created an atom in the first place, atoms must be duplicated in order to form anything else. – What would be interesting is to know exactly what substance was released in the explosion of the atom splitting as that substance is essentially what creates life as we know it, that substance IS energy, the molecular everything or “god” not in the man with a beard way, but in the true scientific sense of the word.

We can never harness that substance as it is God, there for it is everything. Halving one atom creates “God” energy. Halve the “God energy” and we would cease to exist, one can only imagine what comes before that – unfortunately our 10% brain capacity doesn’t quite stretch that far… 

As far as the alien debate is concerned, I think the forming of physical structure in such a predictable manner (ie humans are one form, cats are another) is probably magnetically based, when we look for life on other planets we need to pay particular attention to places that have a magnetic core like earth rather than focusing so much on oxygen and water. Our physical structures have evolved like that due to their environment however if another planet had a life, it would be plausibile that it is the magnetic structure of the planet that governs the way atomic particles cluster together, creating a unique environment which in turn would see life forms model physical designs based on their individual environment ie lungs might not be required at all but cells may form from gasses absorbed through the bottom of a foot or hoof or talon. 

What ppl need to remember is that HOW and WHY don’t always matter. Just because we have the ability to ask these questions doesn’t always mean it is necessary, or ideal to do so. Sometimes simply being present in the moment and knowing what IS and observing what CAN be will be a far more powerful and liberating thought process that dwelling on the things we have no control over.

As previously stated perception is reality and therefor reality is perception, we can choose our perceptions and how we react to them. Your life is your choice, take today to take charge.

THAT is the true reality.

Clearly Blurred Lines

I don’t know what the fuck I want, I don’t know what I am thinking anymore or more often what I’m not thinking. I think I know something/ understand something/ want something and then five minutes later I do a total 180 on the subject. My memory is fucked, I am doing random shit like cleaning the car to within an inch of its life even though I am planning to crash the bloody thing anyway. I am trying on and buying dresses that are on SUPER special and SO nice while simultaneously throwing a cocktail of drugs down my throat with the intention of overdosing.

Asked the Guru for details of her sound system today via text (super awesome sound quality) I told her I want to get one for DH for fathers day. She commented that she was pleased to see I am planning for the future – I sent her the txt mostly cause I felt guilty for putting her in the spot I did yesterday. I shared enough that she could have and arguably should have put me in hospital, but I talked my way out of it – the text was kind of a silent “see Im still alive, like I promised”. The fathers day thing was just a good excuse to buy something expensive, lol. I do want one, yet its stupid because I just took a fatal overdose. Hey look subscription to H&G is reduced, and OOH it has free mixing bowls *clicks and orders*, hang on wait a min – why am I wasting money, I just took a fatal overdose…. Part of it might be I’m a touch manic so wanna have fun and spend money rather than actually thinking about the fact that I wont be alive in a week or less anyway!

I guess one good thing is the constant in all of this is even when I realise that I wont get to give DH that sound system, read that H&G mag or wear those dresses – I don’t mind, I have been resigned to the fact for so long now that its more a passing – hmm shame, could have worn that to A/B/C…

Augghh! I’m so messed up! Thank god I took the overdose I’m better off without me LOL.

A reflection on how mental illness has affected my life

The brush has claimed yet another clump of my rapidly thinning hair, I pull it from the knobbely pins and drop it in the waste basket. Taking a deep breath I look down over my skeletal frame briefly acknowledging the place where my breasts used to be. My skin has become a dry slightly greyish colour and the dark circles under my eyes could make people begin to question my husband’s integrity.

The sad thing is while I endure the day in day out nausea and dizzy spells caused by this war I am fighting, it is inevitably a losing battle. This battle is not against cancer as an outsider looking in may imagine at first glance, no, this is a war against myself and one entirely of my own making.

Suicide is a funny thing, usually a quick solution to a painful situation that feels inescapable, in my case it is a long slow drawn out process, but one that can no longer be stopped, and one I have no will to stop. I have anorexia nervosa and bipolar disorder, I am putting a psychologists children through the finest collage and keeping the pharmaceutical industry running.

Whatever motives I had when this journey first began, back when I still had a choice in the matter, have long since been replaced by a compulsion, the simple terrifying phobia I have developed about gaining weight.

My relationship with food and weight loss isn’t because I want to look like some super star in a magazine or attract a man, it never was. This began as a teenager when I was bullied for being overweight and decided to do something about it, lose weight or kill myself. When I did manage to lose weight the thought of ever going back to that dark place was so terrifying that gaining even a gram was unacceptable, in fact I needed to keep losing a few, just in case… Of course that spiralled out of control quickly and soon I was in the grips of Anorexia.

Lots of things happened after that, long story short I moved out of home at 16 and met the love of my life, that relationship saved me in so many ways, I slowly stopped caring about my weight, I was truly happy, one thing led to another and at 17 I was expecting my first child. That pregnancy forced me to give up my vegetarianism due to anemia and that let me cut my final tie with the weight obsession that had owned me for so long.

Over the years 3 more children followed, my weight issues came back from time to time but only in a mild manner, I was able to acknowledge that I didn’t want to go back to that place and chose to eat in a more health conscious manner to avoid excessive weight gain.

Although my weight issues weren’t taking over my life I was still waging war on myself, I had always been at the mercy of my moods, I was generally fairly content and had no reason to complain at all however I would go through months of severe suicidal depression which I tried very hard to hide from the outside world, I had the perfect life after all I shouldn’t be unhappy, it was WRONG to feel that way. In stark contrast to these bleak times I would sometimes find myself so increadibly happy and grateful for the things that I had, my spiritual oneness with nature would bloom and blossom, I would make it my mission to inspire those around me, I would join groups and committees and come up with hundreds of brilliant and grand ideas that I would stay up all night filling notebooks with lists and lists of the things I would do and achieve, telling anybody that would listed all about them.

I went through different phases and tended to spend too much money for our meagre budget on these things, like the time I spent $2000 on Christmas lights after seeing a house all lit up on TV and deciding that I could DEFINITELY win that competition the following Christmas. The time I joined AMWAY which my family and friends have kindly never spoken of again, or that time when I decided that I was going to immerse myself in learning how to cook – a task I have always loathed – so I looked up and saved hundreds of recipes off the internet, I went and bought a stack of expensive pots and pans and cook books and made spreadsheets and lists of menu ideas putting them in catagories. This phase, like all the others ended when eventually I would burn out from trying to do absolutely everything on my list at once and plunge into another deep depression as I was a failure who couldn’t do anything right and generally rather broke given the unwarranted spending on my latest failed venture.

Fast forward several years of similar scenarios and I finally cracked it totally, I went through one of my energetic excited learning phases when I got a new job, this started out great as my bosses loved my enthusiasm and drive and the fact that I was inspiring others too, I won a stack of office awards and life was peachy, then the depression hit again this time was different though, I was still energetic and felt electricity running through me but simultaneously wanted to die. I won another award and hated myself for getting it, I knew I didn’t deserve it, the other staff were whispering about me behind my back and how I was the teacher’s pet. ( A few childish types really were)

 I didn’t trust anyone, they were all against me. I started getting really forgetful, I couldn’t control my thoughts their fast pace I usually used to my learning advantage had gotten out of control, I would sit staring at my work not having a clue what I was doing, I was struggling to remember my name. In order to concentrate even a little bit I had to put headphones on with fast paced dance music, this seemed to occupy the part of my mind that was running away from me and let the other part get a little bit of work done.

Every lunch time I would go for a fast walk to get the energy out and try and hopefully lose a bit more weight while I was at it– I couldn’t control my thoughts but I could control my eating. I didn’t want to sit with my colleagues, they would notice I wasn’t eating and whisper about me even more. I would walk up the little hill and work out the best place to go to die, should I run down to the highway and jump in front of a truck? If I popped out just past the bridge they wouldn’t see me so definitely wouldn’t have time to stop, I didn’t want to fuck it up and end up quadriplegic or something.

Just as Christmas approached it got too much, I thought my head was going to completely explode, I was fairly aware I was going crazy and trying desperately to hide it. I had to go to my in-laws for a big family Christmas do on Christmas eve and I was terrified, I could barely construct a sentence, they would surely know something was up, they couldn’t know, they could never know. The only solution I could come up with was killing myself before Christmas eve.

In a brief moment of clarity I thought perhaps I should see my Dr, so I rang to make an appointment but she was away. I then asked a friend if I could have the number of a psychologist she was seeing, she wasn’t available until after Christmas. So fete had spoken, suicide it was.

I dreamed up several different ways of performing the act which were all dependent on circumstance, I guess I knew I was nuts because I had a paranoid fear of people trying to lock me up in the psych ward and most of my suicide plans involved escape scenarios and fast acting suicide for that exact situation.

My favourite scenario at the time was to do 180km into a particular tree I had picked out. I was doing a lot of high speed driving, the 100km speed limit of my daily journey to work and back felt like snail’s pace to my racing mind and so I tended to float around the 140 mark and on a quiet stretch where the police don’t hang around I tended to do 160 to 180km p/h I had a personal goal to hit the 200km but I kept running out of road.

I had decided that 180km into the tree should be enough to kill me, retrospectively 100km was probably enough but it felt so slow at the time that I remember thinking I would be lucky to sprain an ankle at that low speed.

The trouble with Christmas time, is that our family has A LOT of birthdays in December, so trying to pick the optimum day to kill yourself that wont make the death anniversary on or too close to a birthday proves very difficult. I felt bad for the kids and thought that if I knocked myself off before Christmas it would screw up Christmas for them as someone would have to arrange a funeral and insurance etc so ppl might forget to give them their presents.

So I decided I needed to wait until after Christmas and try my very very hardest to get through the holiday period without giving away my position.

This post is becoming very long and drawn out, but after one failed suicide attempt I did make it through Christmas, My birthday, New Years and just barely my sons birthday in Jan – which there is a post somewhere on here about, the rest is pretty much documented below.

Limbo

So many hours are lost to this disease, the ‘unhelpful thinking’ patterns as the Guru puts it. It’s ridiculous when actually put into words or thought about in any logical way. But still it remains, every hour it creeps in, at some point a comment, something you see or hear that reminds you or god help it you catch your reflection or need to go to the bathroom.

Eating is the worst, it’s a constant battle of instinct vs mind. Your body takes over gorging everything in its path while all you can think is how worthless you are and how desperately you want it all to stop.

If I had a dollar for the amount of times I have glanced at that knife block while stuffing bread down my gob just longing to plunge it deep into my flesh or slice deep into my wrists. End the torture.

Silence. Inside, outside. Peace.

My husband walked in just as I typed that sentence and I slammed the computer down like a 14yr old girl hiding something from her parents. Now he’s upset because I wouldn’t tell him what I was doing, what I was hiding. Is it wrong that I would almost rather he thought I was having an affair than writing a diary like this? Honestly, I don’t know which one of those would hurt him more.

I hate myself every time I eat at the moment. The trouble for my messed up mind is that I am eating constantly and I cant stop. It’s too hard.

Doubt, is it just the crazy talking?

Sometimes I doubt myself, I doubt the prophecy. Perhaps I really am just crazy and these beliefs I hold so close are nothing but the delusions of a mad women, lost in her sea of darkness and false sense of clarity.

I don’t want it to be that way. I need this to be real, I guess I am frightened of what will be if it isn’t, I am not prepared for that. I have spent so much time conditioning my mind for this that for it not to happen is simply unfathomable.

My best friend was frightened by me the other day. I hate that, it fills me with guilt. They stayed for the Easter weekend and I was getting a little hypo, not even very much, but enough to say more than I should – including telling her that I was off my meds, that was supposed to be a secret. After a conversation that admitted things I normally would save only for this blog she went off to bed and I decided the children HAD to have a easter egg hunt with riddle clues, so I stayed up to write that, and then I cleaned up, and then around 4am I thought the kids and adults for that matter should have a lovely fully cooked Easter breakfast so I set about baking fresh bread, hot cross buns, cooking scrambled eggs and pancakes…

 So while they loved the breakfast I was apparently getting a little too “fast” – I just wanted to get a whole heap done, there was washing up to do and I wanted the egg hunt to go perfectly so was trying -arguabley with limited success - to wrangle 7 children.

It turns out my friend hasn’t seen me like that before and she just happened to already be there otherwise she still wouldn’t have. I normally keep away from friends when I am in those moods, more than anything else because I am busy doing whatever. I certainly get a whole hell of a lot worse than that, didn’t even have crazy racing thoughts or anything but she was freaked out by it and actually went off on a walk wondering if she should do anything.

It may have been because I stopped taking my original meds, I was supposed to keep them up until I next see the pdoc but I was gaining WAY too much weight and I couldn’t take it anymore so I stopped them - and I might add, dropped 4kg in a week, must have been mostly fluid retention.

The meds must have been doing something though because although not even close to as severe as in the past, my moods have been becoming all over the place again, I was pretty steady there for a while, not hyper not even feeling depressed at all and starting to looking forward to some sort of imaginary future.

This reliance on meds makes me seriously question, what IS real?

The ‘me’ on some sort of pharmaceutical induced normal or the me that is ME, pure.  Sure I might be ‘depressed’ and ‘over the top,’ sometimes in one sentence, and yes I might have some ‘alternative’ beliefs about myself and my life that others don’t agree with or seem to understand.

But I have to ask, if I have to be drugged up to conform with everyone else in this mainstream society then isn’t that really the biggest self -delusion of them all?

I think my biggest problem is that I have a family and I need to be able to earn money. If I am going to work where I do I need to conform. I find myself wishing more often than ever that I could just run away and live in the hills, with nobody to answer to but myself. Helping others when I can and then moving on as I choose, nothing to force me to act like everyone else and free to fly from the roof tops or end my life if I choose to. Freedom.

Meds and Mania

I have been taking my medication for 9 days now, the first 7 I experienced no change, still caught up in the whirlwind glow of my most recent hypomanic enthusiasm that left me aware of my inability to work but completely un phased by it. On day 8 however, something changed. I woke up, which was pretty special in itself as it meant I had actually slept the night before. This should really have been a good thing, but instead I had risen irritable and tired with my mind still racing but my body feeling as slow as a snail.

The children bore the brunt of my angry outbursts for the morning and I shipped them off to school only to come home and sink into the pit of depression. The knowledge of some of the goings on in my most recent hypomanic phase were slowly sinking in, the fact that I had gambled, drunk and OD’d myself for no decent reason, spontaneous road trips at 200km/ph all alone while spending to the tune of $1000 we don’t have spare, on junk I didn’t need and then feeling that turning up to work while hallucinating was perfectly reasonable had very nearly cost me my job, and had most certainly cost me my integrity.

Yes, the aftermath wasn’t pretty.

I find now days that there is a very fine line between, ‘I’m not feeling happy’ and ‘I must die’. In the old days, I would slowly get more and more depressed until the only way out that seemed reasonable was the permanent one. Now the dive to rock bottom is almost instantaneous.

My mood remained unchanged for the rest of the day and I was due to see the GP that evening. The journey to the medical centre was wholly uninspiring, I didn’t feel she could help me anymore so why bother going at all? Every tree was looking like a more attractive target proposition and by the time I arrived I think I only went into the building because my body was acting on autopilot.

 I had to wait 45 or so minutes as she was running behind. The last 43 of those minutes were spent hatching an escape plan, I shouldn’t have gone in and wanted to leave, I wanted to die right then and there yet my body felt frozen to the seat. What would I do, where would I go? I decided to amend and enact the emergency OD plan I had concocted and prepared for previously.

I would get up and walk out the next time the secretary left the waiting area and run up near the train tracks where I would hide in the ditch as I would not be easily seen there in case followed and take my concoction before falling blissfully asleep never having to deal with this awful feeling again.

While I was waiting for the receptionist to leave I had the sudden realisation that there was one massive flaw in my plan, I didn’t have a water bottle with me. How was I going to swallow a few hundred pills without water? FUCK. It was an evening appointment and the local store was shut and the waiting room unfortunately didn’t have a water cooler. I was still trying to work out a way around this ridiculous blip when the doctor appeared and summonsed me in.

 I was so angry with myself for not having a drink with me that I could barely talk, I didn’t really need to – she sensed my tide had turned a 180 since my last visit and did most of the talking for me. I neglected to mention how her lack of putting a water cooler in her waiting room had probably saved her a late night visit from a policeman and begrudgingly took a card for the mental health crisis team from her as she was going to be away for two weeks, I was instructed to call ‘just in case I felt un safe’.

A useless proposition really as I would never call, because when I feel that way I DON’T WANT HELP and when I do want help, I DON’T FEEL THAT WAY. Catch 22. I also hate the term un safe, I know perfectly well what is meant by it but frankly when I’m suicidal I feel perfectly safe, because I want to be that way Thank. You. Very. Much. I feel like I actually have an ounce of control for once.

 I’m certainly not afraid to die, there is no “oh no, help me, I don’t want to kill myself”. I cant really imagine that people who are actually want to die anyway, surely they are just crying for help. No, I am quite at peace with the concept of death generally and am utterly desperate for it when in such a mood, however irrational my motives at the time may seem to be later on.

I have just as yet been unable to get my shit together in the moment and the moments are relatively fleeting so I am distracted or interrupted and plan and prepare to do better job of it next time.

Yes the “mental health crisis team” card is about as useful as the “suicide prevention plan”. I think they just give them out to make the GP/Psychologist feel better, or at least reduce their risk of being sued by a disgruntled family member later.

 

Organisation

Organisation is currently, the hardest part of this whole mentally unstable suicidally minded thing,

I have been a compulsive list writer for as long as I can remember, many a list of all the ‘brilliant’ ideas and plans and to do’s and how to’s has been cultivated via the unable to sleep must write this down RIGHT NOW in list format in the wee hours of the morning.

Now though, I have So much to organise, So. Very. Much. I am just so tired that I simply can’t be bothered to sort out anything at all. Part of me just doesn’t care anymore, I figure I still have the best part of a year, and knowing how this goes I will have boundless energy again at some point, I just don’t know if when that energy strikes that I will be able to focus to the task or I will be designing that laser tag course again.

Pah! Laser tag, I was hell bent on that. God I’m stupid. I can’t believe TBH still has the patience to listen to my crap and smile, nod and gently re direct me again, since the poor guy has to do it continuously.

Speaking of staying focused.  Must prioritise and organise the important things first, insurance for example, sort out paperwork into a filing system that actually makes sense to other people so they can find stuff. Gotta make sure kid 4 can read, I don’t trust the school and once she starts the boys will be able to help her. So many letters to write. Names, address’s, phone numbers to consolidate – Christmas card lists to make, at least there will be 12mnths for them to figure out Christmas the next year, should be right by then. Teaching someone to give a damn about the garden, worked hard on that and would like it to go on after me. A really big one is sorting out the post timing for 365, that’s critical to the plan.  

So much to do, too overwhelming. Kids occupied with technology, Nap time for me. Bye now.

Eutopia

I have spent some time in “Eutopia” recently, I don’t have much opportunity to visit this place and I need to force myself to. I mentioned this in passing to my psychologist, it took her a minute to realise I was referring to a physical place not a metaphorical one.

“Eutopia” is an oasis for me, it is in all its reality a private garden carefully and painstakingly crafted to the point where the love poured into it leeches from the trees and grasses and merely spending time there has the power to heal your soul. The owners are very special people, and I feel a deep connection to them too.

When I enter its gates I have the instant feeling that all my questions have answers, and all negativity is neutralised. A complete sense of spiritual oneness.

It is my sanctuary.

Lure of the dance

In one past life I was a ballerina, I would dance to the song of some of the most famous opera singers of the time in large concert halls with orchestras and wooden ceilings that had been painstakingly nailed by hand piece by piece to ensure acoustical perfection.

We glided across the stage light as feathers, our feet flying in time to the symphony in an effortless trance as if guided by a magical spell. An enchanting lure of passion and dreams as if a marriage of music to the soul.

Eventually years of starvation to ensure perfect weightlessness gave way to damaged feet and broken bones. A career finished by 23, collapse of a soul and shattered ideals, the river called out its offering of eternal solace and once again I followed obediently.

3am

I glanced up at the clock on the wall, 1:30 – not so bad, I thought to myself, should probably try and go to sleep again soon though, big day tomorrow. Then I looked at the clock a bit closer and realised that it had fallen silent, no longer making its methodical tock that familiarises me so often with the wee hours of the morning. My clock had, in fact, stopped hours earlier, it was actually 3am. Shit. I had done it again, I just have no desire to sleep, there is research to do, stories to write, things to plan and photos to reminisce about. Over 80 hours awake and I still can’t be tired.

I wonder, at times like this, how long it will be before something gives as it invariably will, and I simply crash. Either to an 8hr slumber waking with as much exuberance as I had going in or falling instead into a deep and lasting depression that will crush my soul and threaten my existence.

Rapid cycling is taking its toll, my body starting to crumble but my mind wants to run free – I’m not happy anymore, but I’m not sad either. I just am. Here, now, in the moment. 3am zombie with a back beat of dance music whirling on repeat in my busy little headspace. I should go to bed, lie down rest my legs if nothing else.

I keep checking my email to see if there is a reply from the Guru, which is logically ridiculous, its 3am she’s in bed sleeping, like a sane person. I feel like a kid checking the mail for the 4^th time in the wee hours of a Sunday morning hoping for a card or a letter. There’s no post on weekends, she knows this, but let’s take a peek again, just in case.

Tomorrow is already here, and it will come again with or without sleep. The rooster will awaken in an hour, a 4am call that I always feel must inadvertently alert the foxes to the flocks presence, a move that has probably proven deadly to many an unsuspecting hen over time.

 

Goodnight 3am,
Our chronic friendship really must end.
Flying high on whispers and whims, nothing good comes from hearing your siren hymns,
I can’t stay another day awake, fighting for my freedom and running straight.

The voice it calls my name through the wind, it lures me closer, absolves my sins.
So much to do, so little time, so much music has captured my mind,
In my dreams my songs will fly, but so many more were left behind to die.

The rooster cries and dark becomes light. Let the final dawn end, the final night.
Goodnight 3am.

 

On Hallucinations (and not having them)

 

"So Bel, have you had hallucinations?" "No Dr, I have never had them, except one time when I was a kid and had a bad fever...."

She said.

So turns out I may have been wrong about that after all- I have done some reading after stumbling upon something in a you tube clip and apparently standard hallucinations are a little less severe than I thought they were…. I watched a beautiful mind once upon a time so there for I sort of assumed that when ppl said they have hallucinations they were seeing complete people / objects etc talking and walking like the furniture in beauty and the beast….

According to the literature hallucinations can be shadows and dream like imaginings crossing into reality while awake type stuff – erm, I do actually get that. And I get it quite a lot... Usually when I’m fairly hypomanic. It’s particularly bad (and a pain in the neck) when I’m driving as I keep thinking that the shadowy things are are Kangaroos etc beside me about to dart out in front of the car, (let me add that that’s quite realistic where I live) it can be a bit of a problem really because I tend to drive a little over the recommended speed when high so swerving imaginary wildlife isn’t practical.

Now while I was aware these little migraine-like flashes /shadowy things weren’t real I assumed that it was either A speeding related phenomenon or my eyes were just playing up because my body was tireder than my mind (I also tend to not sleep for several days when ‘up’) and had considered seeing an optometrist in case I needed glasses for driving.

As for the dream like imaginings kinda like a little scene playing out in my peripheral usually with mild audio should I care to listen – which I don’t –  you know when you first wake up in the morning and someone is talking to you but your still kinda dreaming? Yeah that. Thankfully this is less common and generally more annoying than anything else, unless I’m mega hypo and then they blur into reality a little too much and it can be hard to judge wtf is real or not. Now I’m wondering if these are actually visual hallucinations…??? God I hope not, that’s weird. I have had a few experiences which may have been hallucinations where I have seen cars plain as day and then they have miraculously disappeared into nowhere and I hate to admit that on one occasion driving to work while reasonably hypomanic I saw two such ‘ghost cars’.

 The first car looked like an unmarked police car (commodore, thick antenna… Aussies you all know what I mean) and I was mildly paranoid that it was tailing me as someone may have dobbed me in for my rather persistent and reckless speeding along that stretch of road, and by mildly I mean thought crossed my mind stayed there for a while and resulted in my working out a getaway plan… then the car disappeared into nothing on a country road with nowhere to turn off.

This experience freaked me out a bit and then closer to town there was a marked cop car doing a speed check on the other side of a straight stretch of road – as I passed I saw it pull out in my rear view mirror and pull a u turn behind me, I was thinking “shit I’m sure I’m not speeding”, looked at the speedo (not speeding) looked in the mirror again and the car had vanished – again nowhere to turn off. That freaked me out a fair bit as I thought that’s two things that I thought I saw, how much of what I am seeing now is real and how much isn’t? It all looks real, but then so did the cop car…

Ok. That sounds WAY crazier when I write it down. Hmm. BUT in my defence when the car ‘vanished’ I was aware that I must have imagined it (so that makes it NOT a delusion. Right?)  In the end due to *hallucinational content I put it down to some sort of subconscious guilt about speeding.

So, I guess there appear to be a few things about me I thought were totally normal/ marginally quirky that don’t actually happen to everyone else and I’m finding it a wee bit disconcerting and am very glad I didn’t TELL anyone about it.

*MS Word claims “hallucinational” isn’t a word, but I think it should be, particularly in this context, it just works.

Anxiety?

 

I don’t know anymore, don’t know how I feel, think I’m possibly sobering up from my latest high, starting to be normal, maybe? Hopefully?

I think I have forgotten what normal feels like, I know I forgot how boring it is to be at home all day, forgot how it feels to have children, forgot to call my friends.

Everyone is asking how I am, haven’t seen me in ages apparently, somehow through the last several months I have managed to avoid everyone, mostly and then in the last two weeks I have seen everyone, its weird. A lot has changed for me in the last half a year, I am still the same person on the outside, but inside I have changed, intensified, too much realisation in a short time is starting to take it’s toll.

I’m actively socialising but it’s different, I don’t know why. I have always been and liked being a social butterfly, the ‘life of the party’ chatterbox, can be relied upon to talk too much too loud and regret things later. Generally this is cause I socialise when I’m hypomanic and hide when I’m depressed but now shit is changing.

I have been rapid cycling so fast for the last three months that now I have held the same emotion for a few weeks I don’t quite know what to make of it, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, expecting the fall but it hasn’t happened, I’m not depressed at all. Maybe, just maybe the meds are starting to work?

 I’m still hypo but calmer, clearer of head, but I still want to avoid people, the thought of socialising is freaking me out, part of me is like YES LETS GO, LETS DO EVERYTHING! And the other part is like, oh my god I hate people. I think I’m kind of scared to make plans in case I get too high and embarrass myself or the shoe does drop and depression swallows me up. I haven’t been to work in ages, and the only ppl that know this are TBH, one friend and work. I have been hiding supposed to be at home “resting” but instead I go gallivanting across the country side, shopping.

 I go back to work on Friday and I don’t know what’s going to happen or how to explain my absence to my colleagues. There will be questions that demand answers and I haven’t got them.

 I wonder if this is anxiety? – this is pretty new to me, except for in totally whacked out and entirely reasonable situations or occasionally during intense psychotic manic paranoia…

This, however, is like a generalised social phobia, I’m nervous all the time despite being generally euphorically high when on my own, as soon as someone else enters the picture I start shaking and getting dizzy, check out chicks in woolworths, the road worker guy that yelled at me for speeding, I’m even nervous to see the school bus driver in the mornings, a meeting that merely consists of a ‘good morning’ and comment about the weather.

People keep asking me to do things, I can’t say no, I’ve never been any good at saying no, so of course I say yes, and then spend several hours writing to do/ how to lists relating to whatever I am supposed to do or organise but instead of the usual enthusiastic excited all be it slightly disjointed list writing I regularly participate in when hypo manic, it’s more of a shaky, trembley nervous compulsion, like I gotta do it now, GOTTA or, or I dunno I will forget or something bad will happen and I will fuck it up, I don’t know why but I GOTTA DO IT NOW.

Ugh, it’s an uncomfortable feeling and I don’t like it at all. It does make me a tad more productive than usual, as I have actually been checking items off my list and today I COMPLETED a list – which is big for me as I tend to run around in circles all day very busily getting distracted from one task by another until it’s time to pick up the kids from school and I have half started everything but completed absolutely nothing. Geeze it’s 3am again, that went fast! Last time I looked it was 1am, I’ve been writing non-stop for two hours, I wrote some songs, a rant, a letter I will never post and now this. I should stop writing, Im still not tired – guess I wont sleep again tonight, how unusual. Y doc said the new med Im on should help with sleep, and I think it has a little bit as there is a definite pattern of sleeping every 2^nd night emerging for me at the moment – much better and more sustainable than the 3,4 or 5 nights of no sleep- they generally end badly.  Might go play with you tube now.

Au revoir

Decent into madness

It feels as though, in an effort to regain ones senses, the crystal clarity of madness becomes all too bright and glaring, and it is a scary proposition knowing that when one is at their maddest, they are perhaps actually at their most sane.

I believe in cause and effect, up and down, gravity and of course Newton. Fucking Newton.

In many ways, at least true of human beings, the world runs solely on the basis of perspective, for everything can only be the way in which it is viewed. I view my time in the world as ‘completed’. Yes of course there would have been more things I could have experienced had I chosen to stay, that’s a factual observation. But I finished all that I wished too and have no regrets.

Everything I have done, and for my age I feel I have experienced rather a lot, has been a lesson in gaining this perspective, the low times have sucked at my very soul and challenged all that I thought I ever knew. Yet the high times have always allowed me to reflect positively and often in giddy humour, about those low times and appreciate the insights learned from them.

At the point of writing this I am terribly frightened of the future, or more to the point of having a future. I have experienced before the decent into madness which feels very much like living through the second half of “Flowers for Algenon” and thought to myself that I would never, ever again have to go down that road, that road was done, a mere rest stop on the map of life.

 I naively believed I would not have to experience it again, and if I ever would that with such experience now I was most certainly equipped to handle it. Except I forgot in all my infinite wisdoms and positive reflections of that time, exactly what it felt like. I remember now all too vividly, and I don’t like it.

It certainly isn’t a feeling I can or am willing to try and repeat or maintain over the course of my adult life. It is such things that make me question whether the path I ended up following, the one I was so thrilled to have happened upon was perhaps a mere deviation from the unchangeable ending? Except now it’s not myself I am hurting, it’s everyone else. That is simply not acceptable.

coming down

I hate myself sometimes, stupid shit you say when you are high that you know you will inadvertently regret when you come down again. The worst part about that is, while high, you are fully aware that you will have those regrets but you don’t give a fuck and do/say/write those things anyway. Ugh.

Yesterday we went 4wd ing with the Gypsy & The Replacement. It started off awesome, I had about 2 maybe 3 hrs sleep that night and was still tripping happy (so happy I bloody ate two chocolate bars for breakfast… but anyway…)

We went out into the mountains, up hills, down dales and I did my first ‘bush wee’ – I am aware that at my age and being a country gal from Australia it is a tad unusual to be a virgin bush wee-er, but I have some awesome holding power and it is something I have been too much of a snob to consider in the past!

So we were having a great old time, I even made a couple of videos (man my voice sounds so different to the way I hear it) and at this point we had headed roughly 2hrs into the middle of nowhere. I am known for getting motion sickness at the best of times and my head was still travelling WAY TOO FAST so of course the rockier the track got the slower the car was going. I think the wired brain combined with the bumpy windy slow turns is what fucked me over, I felt SO car sick, I couldn’t move, I just wanted to die – not in the usual suicidal manner to which I have become accustomed but in the more traditional “end the physical pain” kind of way.

We eventually made it back to civilization and I made TBH park at some random camping ground so that I could get out of the car. I just needed everything to STOP – The feeling was kind of like when you walk up an escalator that isn’t moving, it fucks with your vestibular system or something and makes everything related to movement impossible.

I eventually was coaxed back into the car by TBH as we were travelling in a convoy of 3 cars and had lost our companions who also had some of our kids with them. We eventually found them at a little waterhole area with a playground along the river where they had let the kids out for a swim – I sat on the bank watching them until I started feeling better (it turns out the best part of a pack of dorrito’s can do wonders for motion sickness).

While I did start feeling better physically, underneath the nausea I was still high as harry and so my thoughts were galloping my vision was slightly blurry and it was making me generally dizzy. We left the river, went back to the Gypsies place and headed out for dinner, I felt good again at this point and ate a shit tonn of chinese food, it was really nice and I was still feeling happy but I suddenly got hit by a sudden incapacitating tiredness, my eyes drooped and I felt like I had just thrown down 6 shots of straight whisky.

 The being awake for the best part of 5 days straight had finally hit me.

We left then and I refused to take the kids in my car, this clearly worried The Better Half and I had to quickly convince him that I wasn’t suicidal, I was fucking exhausted and didn’t want to risk hurting them if I passed out at the wheel. I just needed to SLEEP. Somehow I made it home, luckily the car is like an old horse and seems to know the way by itself. I crawled into bed and didn’t wake up until 7:30 this morning!

I woke feeling quite agitated, not happy high, not depressed just irritable and a bit fast. The water truck came and delivered some water (hasn’t rained in a really long time) and a lady down the road called asking if I can mind her kids. Every part of my brain was saying NO NO NO NO! so of course I said yes because I’m hopeless. My best friend is coming up today and I really didn’t need random extra kids. The Guru sent a text regarding contact within 24hrs if need to cancel an appointment to avoid a fee – for some reason this is upsetting me a bit, logically I know due to it’s word structure that it’s probably automated but I had only emailed with her yesterday about changing a time because I had stupidly forgotton that school holidays finish this week and the kids have to go back. She emailed back saying she wanted The Better Half to come so we can work out some sort of ‘plan b’ for my suicidal moods – something else dumb I did when high was agree to her talking to TBH and I told her that I was happy to act in “my best interests”.

The trouble with that was I was fucking off my nut happy when I said it and forgot that I actually feel down quite often and that means “my best interests” can result in my loss of freedom.

I really need to have that freedom. I won’t cope at all locked up in a psych ward somewhere based off someone else’s judgement of my temporary mood and the only way I can see getting out of that situation is a final and likely unpleasant one for those around me. I want to go out on my own terms, in my own time, not like that.

 Now I am just plain scared to say how I really feel in case they trip out and act on it. I can’t believe I put that in writing. Fuck this, maybe I am coming down again. That was a pretty big high, which traditionally means I’m in for a pretty big low. I’m still really tired, maybe simply getting more sleep will fix it.

I sent a message in reply to the cancellation text saying not to worry about this appointment, we can do it next week when we have a new time so I can sort it out properly with work, she still thinks I’m high so I don’t think that will backfire, but I really have to learn when to stop talking.

parents, birthdays and mania

Oh my fucking god.

I am so frustrated right now, my parents just came to visit and they are driving me bat shit crazy. I don’t know why it’s such a pain in the arse right now, they didn’t do anything specific, it’s just their nature and the way they deal with things, they have been the way they are forever so I should be used to it, but at the moment I just can’t see through that and let it go.

In a random fit of stupidity a few weeks back, I told my mother about the bipolar thing, at the time I was glad I did but upon reflection it was a dumb ass idea and I should have shut the fuck up about it. She keeps going on and on in her way about stuff and she is really quite stupid. I mean naive as all holy hell and really not very bright – the older I get the more I realise she has absolutely NO CLUE about anything. It really explains how I got away with so much as a kid. Not blind eyes being turned just plain naivety.

I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer myself but I am a damn sight more intelligent – both intellectually and emotionally than she will ever be and I have trouble accepting that when I need my mother to be there for me she is incapable of offering more than a “oh my pooooor dahhling” which although not intended as such is so FUCKING PATRONISING that it makes me want to slap her across the face repeatedly.

Auggggghhhhhhhhh!

It’s fucked up too cause yesterday ended up being AMAZING. Over the past week I had been so worked up about going to my MILS bday dinner that I was more than ready to jump off a cliff before contemplating actually going, but I actually managed to get 3 hrs sleep yesterday morning and woke up feeling – to quote flo rider “43million feet up in the sky full of diamonds”. So had an awesome morning took the better half to the doc for his repeat antibiotics, avoided seeing her myself ( I knew I was a tad hypomanic and didn’t want that taken away from me) by taking the brats to the shop and filling them with ice creams while we waited for him to finish.

Then went to the chemist to pick up the script where while I was waiting accidently bought some new $50 sunnies, a first aid kit for the car and some herbal sleeping tablets…. Oops.

So the day evolved euphorically and full of spontaneous iTunes purchases (80s fever, 101 songs YEAH!) took the kids to my wonderful friend The Gypsy to babysit while we went to the dinner. I was getting pretty damn high by this point and so fucking HAPPY- it had been so long since I had had a pleasant high that it was like a warm bath of relief swept over me. According to the better half apparently I was talking 100miles p hour and changing topics quite rapidly but I don’t think I was that bad really. We went to the shop to grab a present (long live my FAB organisational skills) and who do you think we ran into but the bloody GP! We just smiled a quick hello but then I got the giggles, felt like I was 14 again trying to cover up being stoned, though the better half had mentioned to her that I hadn’t slept in days as she had asked after me when he saw her that morning so she probably had already guessed how I was travelling. I didn’t care though and was actually totally unphased about the impending dinner, had to watch my speeds while driving (constant reminders from back seat driver TBH) as it’s a long weekend here and they have double demerit points – I suppose I do tend to be a little more lead footed than usual when I’m in that kind of mood…

The dinner was lovely, wonder baby was there and so I took her for a little walk outside to try and get her to sleep and also an effort to calm down – didn’t work so well for either party as she seemed as wired as me. All in all it was nice, good food, good company and I reckon I held myself together pretty well although TBH commented later that I was all over the place – eh, could have been a hell of a lot worse – good times like that make me glad I didn’t take out that tree the other day.

As I was a little chatty, I somehow ended up blurting out EVERYTHING about the last few weeks to TBH in the car on the way home, actually made him a little teary eyed which I feel bad about, but it was good to get it off my chest – And realistically I am aware that for the sake of my health I need to be open about this to him since I CAN trust him – and this way if The Guru feels the need to ring him it’s not all coming at him from left field.

We picked up the brats and stayed for a while there, met the Gypsy’s friend who was visiting from up north. The Gypsy always said this girl had replaced me when she moved and fuck was she right LOL! I instantly loved her, she’s kinda like my clone and seemed similarly as high as me and for that matter so did The Gypsy – although there were a few empty red wine bottles floating about the house...

We laughed in a way I haven’t laughed in such a long time and generally felt awesome. I drove home from there still not tired and we got home put the kids to sleep chatted a bit and I took some of my new herbal sleeping tablets because I was still not tired and knew that eventually something was going to crack if I don’t sleep. So fooled around a bit with TBH and listened to music for a bit then around 1am a miracle happened. I actually fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 7am!

I woke still high as a kite, really jittery though, kind of not the pleasant euphoria of the previous night – didn’t have that head clarity anymore. I went for a run down the back paddock which although my mind needed the speed my body was clearly too tired for and I just ended up dizzy with racing thoughts that were more paranoid than not. Hot shower cured the dizziness but not the irritation and I realised that The Parents were going to be arriving with my brother and SIL whom I haven’t seen in 18mths in just a few hours.

 I was kinda mean to the kids while I was trying to clean up – My mums a neat freak and I get the desire for it from her but the brats put a harness on my efforts and trash the joint in my wake which makes me supremely irritated.

House was acceptable but by the time they got there I was marginally calmer but still annoyed and stewing again over and over in my mind about the comments made the other day and of course my mother felt the need to bring it up again right after “hello” – I managed to deflect and change subject somehow but was internally boiling over -as per the beginning of this now unintentionally long winded post.  

Note to self: GET OVER IT!

So now its only 7:30pm and I’m really tired all of a sudden but the brain is still wired. Going 4wheel driving tomoz with The Gypsy and The Replacement so very much looking forward to that and knowing at least I can be however I am and don’t have to struggle to ‘act straight’ without fear of judgement!

 

changing of the moods

Well I guess this rapid cycling / mixed episode I have been having over the last few months is hopefully or at least currently turning into a regular old hypomanic episode now and while my body is definitely a bit tired now, my eyes are heavy but my brain is on and I really can’t sleep at all and I have been trying since about 7pm. I feel really good considering I’ve had around 3hours sleep since Wednesday and its now nearly midnight on Friday.

For the first time in ages I don’t actually feel depressed at all– more enlightened than anything at the moment. My head is super clear which is a really welcome relief, It’s like cleaning a dirty window and to be honest I think I had actually forgotten what not feeling depressed felt like – it’s actually really fucking good!

Funny to think how hell bent on suicide I was just yesterday. Quite happy to hang around for now. I don’t know how long this good feeling is going to last and want to write its existence down here while I am enjoying it so if I wind up depressed again tomorrow I can remember that the fog can clear and it can actually be great.

I am not actually sure what prompted the positive change…This morning I was suicidal and a really, really deflating kind of tired, I nearly fell asleep at the wheel driving to work and didn’t care and actually cursed that I hadn’t. The last few nights were sleepless but also an uncomfortable combination of a crazy running mind but instead of awesome ideas they were filled with depression and suicide plans and this came along with deflating exhaustion and bursts of irritated adrenaline where I needed to just run. Sort of flight or fight response to absolutely nothing.

Yet although I haven’t actually slept yet, around I think midday today I ‘woke up’ suddenly like a light switch, decided to put dance music on my iPod and started feeling completely re energized in a great way, mucking around with some of the other staff, giggling and being heaps more productive at my actual work again, which was great since recently I have had a lot of trouble managing to complete or even start the most menial of tasks.

Driving home started to put me to sleep – more my eyes demanding rest than anything, my brain was still wired – I got home and thought it would be a great opportunity to go straight to bed while I was tired enough to maybe actually sleep because I KNOW I need it or bad things will happen. So I tried and tried but sleep evaded and I have just given up on that and come out here to write hoping that it will be enough to slow my brain enough to fall asleep. I have discovered a new trick – playing dance music when I am hyped up and trying to sleep keeps my mind occupied enough to actually start thinking about resting. Whereas silence drives me completely nuts and slower paced music doesn’t take up nearly enough thought space and the other restless part of my mind sort of thinks over the top of it like speaking over the top of someone in a conversation I guess. Not a productive thing  in the sleep department anyway!

Tomorrow I have to take the better half to the doctor for more antibiotics ( he has pneumonia) and then tomorrow night it’s the MILs b day dinner, which I think I will be attending alone as the better half isn’t really up to it. I don’t want to go if I am still this racy though- that little paranoid part of my mind thinks they are on to me and I really don’t want that half of my family knowing about my not so healthy mental state if it can be helped. I have also been so seriously close to breaking point in the last week that I would hate myself to end up snapping into psychosis at a family dinner without my support person present – a rather terrifying thought!

I should go try sleep again – although I think it’s a pointless venture sitting here writing won’t make me saner.

Nighty night peeps, see you on the flip side!

 

night becomes day

Dawn is creeping slowly through the windows, the birds have started their morning call a few hours after the roosters daily 4am sound off begins echoing through the district like an eerie night version of Farm-Yard-Idol.

After the worst day in a long time it was so hard to make it through, continuous reminders to myself that it was my son’s birthday and that just isn’t ok. Stick to the plan girl. But it’s so hard to stick to the plan when just breathing is a soul crushing effort. Went past the doc to pick up her note thingy to the psychologist so I can get bulk billed sessions, she came running out as I got there – she looked pleased to see me alive, I was prob a bit too honest with her on my feelings the day before and she took me at my promise as it was my sons b day the next day so I wouldn’t do anything.

I have to be so careful not to fuck myself over and get locked up – being locked up isn’t conducive to the plan at all.

Got so bad as I was driving that I decided to ditch work and see a friend in an effort to honour the ‘not on a birthday’ rule, but when I rang her hubby answered so had to do a quick change of plan and went to work anyway *insert pretend happy voice here* Work is onto me, I keep getting asked how I am, today I just played the FIL in hospital card, which I feel kinda guilty about not really actually caring about… I would normally care, I blame the depression numbness effect – its making me a heartless bitch. Oh well.

Was a hot one here, 42degrees C, but the aircon at work is set to minus 5 so I went for 3 walks in the heat, one at each break – just to give my poor goose bumpy skin a rest. Only sucky thing about being skinny is feeling the cold. The day petered out and became evening, went for a family dinner with friends which was excellent, I ate too which I feel guilty about but hadn’t had anything all day so probably necessity really.

The good company was exactly what I needed to shake me out of my funk, *insert light switch effect here*and sad became happy, evening became night went home again and then without even closing my eyes night has become day again all of a sudden. At least it was a productive one, knocked a few important items off the ‘do before I go’ list and it’s no longer a birthday so I have exit options. It’s funny how knowing I can makes me less inclined, I guess it’s like a smoker who runs out of cigarettes will crave again moments after their last one, whereas  if there had been more in the pack they probably wouldn’t have thought of another for a few hours.

So im still trippin happy – or higher anyways, at least it’s not crushingly suicidally depressed, I wouldn’t really call it hypomanic either, Im not tired yet, thoughts speedy but not out of control- not sure if this all-nighter will effect me or not, usually if they don’t I think its more hypomania and if they do its just plain insomnia. I feel good now but I don’t think I can handle this rapid cycle shit for much longer, on the whole its bloody exhausting the lows are getting too low and I might not be able to carry out the plan – not ideal, I really, really need to get my most important shit together so everyone isn’t screwed just in case.

Should go have a shower and get ready for work, hopefully I can concentrate today and then off to dinner with my friend tonight.

 

Pumpkin Hour

The last several days have been low ones, yesterday the worst ending in an ugly state of mixed irritated shaky suicidal depression.

I finally broke down in front of the better half. It was awful, letting him see me like that.

The hardest thing was the absolute support he gave me, his desperation to understand the way I was feeling and his obvious need to fix it. But sometimes we are so broken that we can’t be fixed, or at least that is how it feels. I just wanted him to run, save himself from me, a burden that will last a life time, the good times no longer worth the bad.

The best description of my emotional self I could offer him at that moment was to imagine someone had just given you a million dollars cash and was throwing it over your head like a TV game show when they suddenly pulled out a gun and shot your child in front of you. Some bitter and twisted combination of restless nervous excitement so blatantly destroyed by sheer terror and helplessness.

I have a lot of trouble being in that place, I can reason intellectually with myself that it will pass as it always has - and thankfully it usually does within a few hours – but emotionally I don’t feel it. In those moments I just need to die, I need to end the extreme intensity.

He held me close in his arms for a long, long time until I eventually drifted off to sleep, the firm hug felt… safe.

When I woke up this morning the need to die immediately had passed but the restless irritation had not. I was so damn shaky, like a junkie needing a fix. I couldn’t concentrate and I was still very depressed. I managed to load the kids into the car and take them to the school bus, they were all missing hats and I think one of them had yesterday’s shirt on, but they got there.

I knew at that point I probably wasn’t in the best state to go to work, but I didn’t know what else to do. I thought pretty hard about swallowing my pill collection and tried to figure out the best place to do it. I had heavy traffic into town and on auto pilot I ended up at work anyway.

 It’s all a bit hazy from there – I felt a bit like I was drifting in and out of a dream, I went in and started my work, I was feeling really dizzy at this point and kept losing touch with what I had thought about doing and what I had actually done. I was wondering if it was just because my blood sugar was low, I hadn’t really eaten much over the last few days. It dawned on me that being there was pointless and couldn’t remember if I had already asked to go home or not, I realised I was still sitting at my desk so I couldn’t have asked, this kept happening until I forced myself up to the team leaders and simply stated that I had to go home as I wasn’t feeling too well. The boss said I looked awful and to go, I must have looked pretty bad as I stumbled out of the office towards the car I was met with a lot of worried faces and ‘are you okay?’s.

I sat in the car for a bit trying to get my bearings and then started driving. I wasn’t sure where to go, I still desperately wanted to die but was too vague to properly act on it. I thought about driving to the beach, the coastline is only about 2 1/2 hours away, I could lie on the sand listen to the waves crash on the shore and take my final medicine. Lost in this thought, I nearly ran up the back of a cement mixer stopped at a red light and decided I probably shouldn’t drive very far as I could end up hurting someone else, so I decided to ring my BF, if she was home I could just go there and… I don’t know what… I didn’t really expect her to pick up the phone, but she did.

So I made it to her place, and we talked for a few hours until her other half got home, it helped immensely, we made plans for her to come to my place on Sunday and I was to go to the shops and buy food for a BBQ on my way home – she’s good like that. I was still quite shaky but not feeling feint anymore when I got to the shop. I decided to get a haircut on a whim in the hope that it would make me feel better (I was due for one anyway) and then I also bought a bag and some other crap I didn’t need. Nothing like spending a few hundred dollars you don’t have spare…

I headed home, arrived still shaky but a ton better than when I had left, the evening progressed and I started feeling quite ok again, not happy but not really depressed anymore, I hesitate to use the word “normal?”. I even ate some dinner and TBH and I watched some ‘once upon a time’ episodes. I snapped out of my funk suddenly and felt good, actually happy. I went and binged on chocolate mousse, that particular guilt hasn’t hit me yet and TBH fell asleep.

So it’s nearly midnight and here I type, pumpkin hour approaching, wide awake, quickening thoughts and slightly shaky again. Fuzz dog keeps jumping on my lap mashing the keyboard with his little paws and I wonder if sleep will come tonight.

I wish I knew what tomorrow would bring, I am so sick of this rapid roller coaster. I just need to get off somewhere, don’t particularly care if it’s at the top or the bottom, but at this moment I just want a month- hell, even a week -of some kind of stability.