They look at me...

They look at me, judgingly and then they ask "why?" What the hell is so wrong with your world? And it’s a hard question to answer, well perhaps it’s actually very easy to answer – There is nothing wrong with my world. Its picture perfect actually, the only thing that is wrong, is, well me.

You see the thing is that I have become a ghost, just a ghost that everybody sees… and I cant go on haunting myself forever – and I will, because I am the unintended master of self sabotage.

My head is fuzzy from the exhaustion of living, eyes too heavy to lift. The drugs only a mast to the outside world so perfectly fake that although I know the watchers are always watching, nobody really sees what is hidden beneath.

If I could have convinced myself, things may have changed but now my workds are the only relics left from the invisible demons of my mind. Demons so consuming and buried so deep within that nobody could ever find them.

If you’ll excuse me know, I need to go and put some music on. These lyrics in my head are killing me even faster than before. Although, perhaps there is time for one last cup of tea before I lay back on the cool earth and let the sun go down around me. After all, the only real proof of life having even existed at all is in the memories of its time and the wallowing of its death.

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.

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.

Betrayal

I don’t usually throw around sentences like “Breach of confidentiality”. This time I was hurt.

The Guru sent my GP a long letter, I don’t actually know what was in the letter exactly but I feel completely betrayed by it. I specifically did not sign the piece of paper allowing her to contact my doctor. I know I shouldn’t care and that she’s ‘trying to look out for me’ and all but frankly she can get fucked. All trust has gone, she should have told me first and she didn’t.

The letter thing was coupled with the fact that the GP suddenly seems to have forgotten which drug she has put me on and after a slightly frenzied discussion on my eating disorder which I hadn’t previously mentioned and must have been in the letter put me way out on the defensive she added that she was glad she put me on something or other starting with L as its not known to cause weight gain where the others do.

I got home and googled it thinking that it might be another name for the one I’m on and it fucking isn’t. It’s a totally different drug and now I’m guaranteed to be back to being a fat fucking whore in no time.

Also the one I am on is supposed to be monitored with blood work so they can make sure it’s not fucking up your liver. Lucky for her I want to die anyway so it fucking my liver would be great news, but other people don’t want to die and they should have the right not to be fucked around. So as general angry retaliation I have researched how many I need to overdose on so maybe that would be the best way to go down, that way she can feel a little bit fucking guilty and think in future before writing down the wrong thing.

I have been hungry as fuck and eating way more than I am comfortable with, my stomach is getting really really flubby and my thighs are so devastating I just want to cry when I see them. I might not be manic but feel far more out of control than I have in a really long time. I would much rather be manic. I am trying to make it to the end of the month as I’m supposed to be going to Melbourne with some friends for a girls weekend, haven’t seen them in a while and should leave them with some good memories I suppose but frankly I can’t be fucked and it doesn’t matter to me.

But at this rate I might not be able to last that long anyway, its prob better before to keep it away from bubba’s birthday after melb doesn’t leave much time, I am pretty much left with the 15^th.

Now I don’t even have a psych I can vent too, before seems like a much better option the more I think about it, I will have to still see her still and pretend I’m not seething at her betrayal and that these meds are making me all fucking better and I don’t need her as much anymore – make up some bull shit that I’m looking forward to so she doesn’t twig something’s off before I get a chance to finalise this thing.

 I am so done with trust betrayal. I have REALLY gotta get some sort of control over my eating too, I can’t believe I could come so far and fuck it up like this and right at the end too. It’s like stopping just before the finish line. At this rate I won’t even fit in the bloody coffin.

A Somewhat Innappropriate Article

Forgive me if this is inappropriate but I am kinda manic right now and so I am going to post it anyway!

*Extra Trigger Warning*

This is hands down best anti suicide article ever written and it’s hilarious to boot. If it doesn’t change your plans at least you get to laugh once more before you go!

http://www.cracked.com/article_15658_the-ten-minute-suicide-guide.html

And yes, I do stupid shit like google suicide, even when I’m high as a kite and not feeling remotely suicidal. I do however challenge myself to re-read this article next time I am about to end it all, I have a feeling it might just be enough to stop me…

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.

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.

 

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.

Late Night Manic Ramblings...

I did this thing once where you just had to write what you were thinking,

Like everything that came to mind at that moment and make a story out of it. It was pretty cool, you had like 5 minute time limit and then BAM you just wrote. I am thinking at the moment all the time. Like ALL THE TIME and thought , hey maybe – I should do that now, because then I can look back on it later and work out if I’m crazy or not, cause at the moment I kinda think that I might be but I dunno. I have that eat sleep rave repeat song whirling around in my head at the moment, I don’t think it’s helping cause I’m like thinking in tune to it. Weird man. Anyway I have this awesome set of coffee mugs, I got them in Kmart on special and they have owls on them, I love owls- but this one has a butterfly on it- and I’m drinking tea not coffee, so its ok to use the butterfly mug. I like tea, black no milk no sugar straight from the tea bag none of that fancy pants swirl it around in a metal sticky thing for me, just tea. I have to write this letter to the local minister about the project in our town and how it sucks and it’s a bad idea. He already thinks it sucks but he wants everyone to write in and say it anyway so he can show it to his big bosses as proof or something, even if you’re a minister it apparently doesn’t matter what you think there is always someone bigger with the money that pulls your puppet strings anyway. Have you ever noticed how the word puppet looks like puppy? Heh I can see like a little marionette Pomeranian dancing now. Eat sleep rave repeat. Its only like 1am right now, still really early but I’m probably  supposed to be sleeping, I wish I wasn’t eating though, that guilt is starting to creep up on me, I’ve been binging like a mother fucker for ages now, fucking ate like a whole tub of ice-cream today AND fucking a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise, god knows how many calories, too many FUCKING CALORIES, my thighs are MASSIVE and they are just growing, I weighed myself the other day fucking DEPRESSING I’m like 5kg heavier than last time. Fuck chocolate I keep fucking eating all the bad shit, I spend the whole day NOT eating anything only to stuff my fucking face at night, seriously it’s not that FUCKING hard to just go to bed and not get up and eat. Except it is cause I can’t sleep cause my brain is like a fucking goldfish on crack and all I do is think about shit that means shit and how fat I am and how really I COULD TAKE OVER THE FUCKING WORLD with my fucking awesome ideas – if I just could remember them long enough to write them the fuck down and act on them later. If I had a secretary or something following me around with a note book and some staff it would be great cause I could have my ideas and they could like, make them happen and we would be SO FUCKING SAVED from all the shit – The social services could save so much money if they had time to listen to some of the ideas me and other ppl get. But we don’t matter, cause we don’t earn much money and we are technically crazy but so was FUCKING BEETHOVEN – fuck you know what? Charlie Sheen probably has it right and he does have a fucking legendary save the world idea which works, and if they’d listen he’d have the money to pull it off too! It’s just going around TOO FAST  in his mind for him to articulate it properly – kinda like Pauline Hanson without the racism, some of her ideas were actually good but she SUCKED at describing them and then the media twisted it all up and out (like Charlie Sheen) and VOILA all of a sudden he’s a loop and she’s a racist – poor fuckers, we (misunderstood people like Charlie sheen, Pauline Hanson and all us bipolar types out there) just need a FILTER and a like slow down regulator, something that doesn’t make us dumb zombies like lithium but something that sorts our thoughts- hey that rhymes, I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it! and then it like, sends them out slow, so we think them fast and they come out so normal people can understand us. It’s like our own secret manic language but it ALL MAKES SENSE to us, what happens if you get two hypomanic people into a conversation together? I bet it would either be the best conversation ever or come to blows cause nobody can get a word in. BUT I reckon there would be a shit load of laughing – or fighting either way, would probably make for some sort of awesome reality TV show. I don’t have TV now but my friends say that everything is still REALITY TV everywhere you go, ha! Its been like 5 years, has everyone forgotten how to write? Are we all so damn ADD that in 5 years all we can keep up with is the fucking Kardashians? That show, is that still on? I haven’t even like seen it ever. God I say “like” a lot, even when I write, even when I think! Fuck how did that happen? I used to “like” laugh at people who said “like” all the time. LOL My big niece does it A LOT too. I wonder how much my baby niece will do it by the time she gets old, though it will be old by then so they will probably have a new word to replace it. I think it started as ‘um’ became ‘like’ and now kids are saying ‘hectic’ which I think means ‘cool’ ,FUCK ME it’s all so confusing. I think I just swear, “like fuck, um I dunno, whatever.”

Wow I could just ramble all night couldn’t I, maybe I will, there is nothing else to do at 1am- except clean stuff, but I’ve been doing that all week, time to change it up. FUCK I really REALLY want to go to the beach, see my calm blue ocean through my rose coloured glasses, I dunno why in particular, wanna hear the waves crash on the shore, hear the power of mother nature, makes me feel free. FREEDOM the mountains and the waves, that’s where I want my ashes scattered one day, through the mountains so they blow down to the sea and I can be free again, to fall down to the earth only to grow up into the trees. Imagine the beauty of being part of everything, nothing and everything at the same time, just little particles of energy floating, resting, being all and nothing, less and more opposite and equal oh total euphoria of sweet non/existence.

My tea has a milky layer on top where I didn’t rinse the cup out after I had coffee, milk in coffee, skim of course, no milk in tea, only black. Black coffee is good too, when I’ve eaten too much just too hot, have to be able to add hot water, like at work where they have the hot / cold instant thingo then it can be just perfect black. I kinda miss work, I want to go back but I’m scared to go back too, they are gunna wonder where I’ve been, they are going to ask questions. SIL wants to have lunch on Friday, that’s cool, she thinks the egg baby is ADD, she’s very busy apparently – glad she doesn’t know about me or she’d really be freaking out – no the 10 month old isn’t bipolar, just hyper fucking intelligent, like maybe I was put on this earth to create her so she can like save the world or something? Seriously, no 10 month old should be that advanced, though I guess she was like engineered in a way, as much as you can engineer a people that is. Who’d a thunk I could create something that smart? God I hope she isn’t like me though, not like this, always thinking, wishing, wondering, feeling, regretting, holding onto guilt and going fucking nuts. Don’t get me wrong it’s great when it’s great too like oh my god the PASSION, of EVERYTHING when its good it’s AMAZING, but when its bad its just so fucking devastatingly awful that none of it was EVER WORTH IT. Until it’s amazing again and you forget. FUCKING GOLDFISH ON CRACK, see, told ya! It really is the only way to describe me, forgetful as all fuck but swimming around in circles so fast I’m making a whirlpool out of my little bowl. I want to REMEMBER stuff, I wanted to be a doctor SO FUCKING BAD, I remember that doctor telling me that I could be a doctor if I believed it enough, I did and went home and fucking studied my ass off, I knew the names of all the bones and all the muscles and half the fucking diseases in the world, and I can’t remember a fucking one of them now, it’s like all in there somewhere, the whirlpool sucked it into the bright blue gravel at the bottom of the bowl and its buried between the algae and shit never to re emerge. Funny all that medical shit I studied and I wouldn’t have a bar of psychology, I think its cause I knew subconsciously I was a fruit loop and didn’t want to actually read it and know my subconscious was right, didn’t want to recognise myself in the pages. But I am fucking crazy cause it all comes around again in circles like a roundabout, its true times, 3 the rule of threes, like the craft with less magic. So many years I like changed the channel on TV if a program on anorexia or something came on, I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to read about it in magazines either – if I didn’t see it I still had plausible deniability. WHY NOW ??? after all those years, like half my life of hiding, WHY NOW can I actually scream out loud that I’m fucked up? What changed? Did I just get so full of bottling shit up that it finally burst over the top, fizzing out like that can of hot Pepsi max that exploded in my car? Fuck, I really need to write that letter, I can’t believe how fucked up our town is, so much HATRED so much anger in one place, it was crazy, I’m fucking officially mental but I was like the SANEST most RATIONAL person at that meeting by far, wow. I really want to write that letter, or a letter to the editor of the paper maybe. I don’t know something, something has to be done before the town loses it. Maybe I should climb to the top of a windmill and sacrifice myself in the name of ending the bullshit??? LOL imagine it, fuck that would be funny, except id be dead and wouldn’t get to see the outcome, probably back fire anyway, they would find me first and hide the body where nobody would know about the stand I took, fight for the cause. Pah! They have too much money, easy enough to cover up! Though, I suppose if you wanna die, might as well make it for a cause or at least cover it up as being for a cause. Makes ppl think twice about doing bad stuff in the future. I don’t get suicide bombers though, no cause should ever include hurting someone else, if there was a god I’m sure as shit he/she/it wouldn’t want you destroying a whole stack of its creations in its name. well otherwise it’s an arsehole and doesn’t deserve your ridiculous devotion. Macklamore & ryan lewis, same love. Good song – really good song. Eminem, heard some of your new stuff the otherday, man you sound like me, fuck remind me of myself a little bit too much LOL! Suppose that’s how good lyracists work, they write stuff that appeals to / relates to heaps of different people so no matter what your goin through it will mean something to somebody. Hmm I need to go look some stuff up on you tube and write some angry letters, but I promise myself won’t hit send, that’s the rule of all rules, no hitting send after 11pm EVER.

Ciao now.

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.     

Sleep Is For The Weak!

“You need sleep.” They all say it. The Doctor, The Guru, The Better Half.

YES I KNOW. I KNOW I NEED TO BLOODY SLEEP!

I am fully aware of the fact that if I am too high to sleep it makes it worse, but It’s just not that EASY to sleep. I mean it’s not like I don’t try. Apparently according to regular people all you have to do is lie down and sleep comes. *poof* Just like that.

The guru actually said in our last session she simply can’t understand how people can go without sleep. I told her to go do a line of coke and then try – it’s a fairly accurate comparison, so I’m told.

You see, a couple of things happen to me when I’m hypo/manic and lie down to go to sleep:

1.       A beat that has been playing quietly in the back of my mind all day decides it’s quiet enough around the place and it must be karaoke time. The tune rises and comes forth with great gusto, unrelenting until I give in to the urge, slip in my earphones and play it. At least once, sometimes 20 times…

2.       I can’t turn off my thoughts. Now these aren’t life changing thoughts or worries at all, they are really fleeting random things or images which lead off into other silly things or images or notions with lead on again and so forth, eventually one of these gets the better of me and I have to write it down immediately, google it or act on it.

3.       I get irritated REALLY easily when I’m trying to stay still. My head is usually 100 miles an hour and so trying to stop thinking/ jittering usually just pisses me off, the sheets make me itchy, The Better Half snoring grates me (even more than usual), I hear the kangaroos creeping around the garden, undoubtedly eating more of my petunias and that really pisses me off.

4.       I need to pee.

5.       I need a drink.

6.       I NEED to clean the linen cupboard/ unstack the dishwasher /sort out the photo album from 1997.

7.       I start writing that biography in my head again.

8.       I finally think of an awesome tune to go with those lyrics I wrote in 2003 and HAVE to go and nut it out on the guitar before I forget it again.

9.       I think of a BRILLIANT product idea, think of a name, create a Facebook page, Gmail account, web address and blog site even though the chance of me ever looking at any of them again is slim to none, even if I do remember the password...

10.   I figure out how to save the government millions of dollars by doing something that will take 20 committees 5 years to consider thinking about but start drafting a proposal to send to a ministers department somewhere anyway.

Basically it simply boils down to IM JUST NOT FUCKING TIRED. OK?

I do understand that people who are not on a natural speed like high must find this inability to sleep difficult. Hell when I’m depressed I have trouble NOT sleeping, my mind runs on turtle speed and I will quite happily stay in bed for… well until I am manic again.

Meanwhile Its 2:30am (again) the coffee table is dusty, I need a “to do” list for tomorrow, I need to write a shopping list for the school fundraiser and that spare room could sure use a tidy up…