Dear Meredith the mental health worker

Dear Meredith,

Fuck I have had a long, long, long life, so many life lessons learned, so many missed but the opportunity is there if I take it if I want to but then one wonders ‘what is the point of all these lessons? Why do we need them at all, can’t take them with us so Why?

Because ladies and gentlemen it ENHANCES your current state of being, become at one with all that you need to and then die before while or after you are ready. Nobody dies before their time, they just die and that was that. Their time.

NOW YOU need to experience what YOU want to out of life, it’s your place to do this nobody else can make this decision.

Miss Meredith, you are simultaneously lovely and a pain in the arse. How can this be?

I can imagine you hunting me down like a fox, but apparently for my own good. Alas my dear I am no rabbit, I am also a fox, a slyer quicker and daintier fox who can outsmart you easily lest you try.

If it must end that way it will, you know? We will have a Waltzing matilda scenario on our hands – Im the swagman and you’re the ship, but I can’t go on the monopoly board with you, you understand me? I am a free spirit and that is the end of that. NOTHING will prevent the inevitable, NOTHING and the fact that you are automatically applying algebra to that sentence shows your lack of insight. The world isn’t made of maths or I wouldn’t survive in it hey, 1+1= go fuck yourself after all. So Leo made a movie but in the end he lost –lets forget that bit, not that movie in that one he went down with the ship, literally, no in the OTHER movie he was the cunning fox and if we scrap the part about the ending then we wont have to worry about the flying men catching us. Once a jolly swagperson temporarily halted by a water source, under the shade of an indigenous species of eucalypt treeeeeee….. as he or she sang as he or she watched as he or she waited by that water source…. With your consenting adult permission will you come perambulating round the dance floor with Meeeeeeee.

I wonder right now if they are coming, the policeman? I feel like I want to run and hide away but I know it’s not real, nothing is real. You aren’t talking to me after all (thank goodness) so how would the policeman know? ESP? Nope not feasible. Run rabbit run rabbit just in case, I would but I can’t find my keys. The keys to the Car you might ask? NOoooo the keys to the gun safe, what do you fucking think my dear!? Although either might do in a point of crisis one would imagine, I wonder if there is an imaginary crisis then are imaginary keys going to suffice???? I THINK NOT.

The end, must love you and leave u now but if the phone rings or I see a coppa Im gunna give em a fuckin whoppa. Love always, Swaglady

I did something naughty...

 I stopped taking my meds.

The Lamictal, Lithium and Seroquel combination. Stopped the lot of them, cold turkey.

After some killer withdrawals for approximately 48hrs I am feeling more clear headed than I have in I can't remember how long! I actually feel like a person, heck I can FEEL - I have been numb as hell for so long I forgot what it feels like to be human. - I LIKE feeling human!

That being said I only got 4hrs sleep last night and its currently 2:44am and I am not even remotely tired that coupled with some other mild hypomanic symptoms that I have been having over the last week or so, it is possible that I am heading up.

I think that feeling like I was going up is part of the reason I have now stopped the meds, I really NEED to go up and don't want it jeopardized the suicidal zombie self was getting old and I cant live like that for much longer.

I am pretty much thinking that even if this isn't simply a lovely hypo productive plateau and if this does tailspin into a full blown manic episode in a few weeks time, its fucking worth it, heck what have I got to lose?

Best that will happen is they are all wrong, it's not bipolar and I will be fine and dandy and never have another episode anyway.
Worst that will happen is I go nuts, they lock me up and medicate me back to zombie- again.
Nothing lost, just a chance of normalcy for a while or more or at least a little fun along the way.
I hate being controlled by doctors, meds, people in general!

Nope, screw everyone its ME TIME!

Suicide attempt and the week that followed

Hi people,

I have just uploaded the below posts which I had stored on my computer but never posted. I decided to upload them all and start doing this blog properly as in the past writing has been good therepy for me. If you are reading this in order I need to add a pretty big TRIGGER WARNING. If you have any thoughts of suicide AT ALL, this is NOT the blog to read. Stop, turn around and leave now!

Quick.... off you go!


I will wait.....


Ok, now that the crazies are gone ( I can say that cause they aren't supposed to still be reading),
The most recent post below was during a mixed transitional state which peaked out the next morning (Monday) when I couldn't handle being in my own skin anymore.

I tried to crash the car twice (ended up being harder than it sounds) and ended up just damaging it and then I went to work where I promptly lost the last of my marbles in the car park and ended up ODing on the only available substance I had with me at the time which was paracetamol, I took enough to do the deed and started feeling nauseous pretty quickly. I had been under the impression that it took several hours if not days to work so I was a bit taken aback by how fast I was affected.
I went into my work, told them I was sick and had to go and went back to the car.

I was quite disoriented at this point I drove (very stupid and unsafe decision) I wasn't sure where to go but was feeling increasingly unwell, I thought I would head out to a look out area I like around 40km from my small town, unfortunately (or fortunately upon reflection) I was getting dizzier and dizzier and realised I wasn't going to make it. I reached the small town before my small town and started vomiting uncontrollably, this is not ideal whilst driving and made a huge mess of the car while trying not to swerve into oncoming traffic.

The vomiting probably saved me as I think I threw up a large portion of what I had ingested, I managed to make it home and had a bit of a freak out regarding the children coming home from school and finding me, I even contemplated calling a friend to take me to hospital so that wouldn't happen but didn't want to risk them saving my life.

At this point all I could think about was crawling into bed, which I did and slept for what must have been a few hours. I woke up - this in its self upset me greatly - and promptly threw up again, lay in bed feeling god awful for a few more hours, started to feel more alive and pulled out the lap top to google how long liver failure takes etc and did a vlog entry.

Long story short, hubby came home and I had to confess due to my pitiful state, he was AMAZING about it ( I am SO lucky to have him) and took me to the GP. She took blood tests, organised hubby to stay with me and I managed to talk my way out of being sectioned although I could see she wasn't happy about it. I came home and started to feel better physically and mentally, went to bed and SLEPT until morning.

Tuesday I woke up manic, as you do, but physically fine, organised a week and a half off work and we went to the shops and bought some things we needed, hubby kept watch of my money spending and had lunch together and talked. It was actually a really nice day! That night I ended up in a mixed mood again and was starting to really freak out but was eventually able to contain it by running on the treadmill for half an hour with my headphones up full bore.

Wednesday I went out with a friend to the movies and was flying high but still reasonable, spent a bit too much money, ate too much and didn't care until later that evening but then as I was manic I continued to binge ALL night because I didn't go to sleep.

Thursday I went out by myself - I was manic as hell at this point and bought a STACK of things, ate too much, GAMBLED (very very naughty for me) luckily I ended up $200 richer. Went and looked at new cars I cant afford ( I am going to have care salesmen bothering me for months) Met a friend for coffee and headed to my GP appointment.

My GP has been awesomely trying to find me a new Psychiatrist and generally being very helpful. All my blood work came back ok even the liver function test - which was surprising.
So I have all these plans in place now for in case of more nervous breakdowns, my hubby has been given phone numbers and strategies for him to use on me if I happen to lose it when he is around.

Knowing myself, when I am in that state the chances of me calling anyone are pretty slim as I don't want help, I want to die. When you WANT to die, you don't tend to make phone calls to people who will stop that from happening.

Just glad to be still fairly hypomanic today (Friday) but not off my rocker and rested as I actually had a real full nights sleep last night!

I will leave it there, but that's an update on my mixed episode instant suicide attempt.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

 

Fuck the equator

Sometimes things go so hard and so fast that it feels like my head is literally going to spontaneously combust. Sometimes the lead up to that place has been good, great, awesome, in fact - and sometimes it’s been sad, awful and plain old unliveable.

There is a line somewhere between the place where the polar bears and penguins live, for arguments sake let’s call it the equator. Now you would think this imaginary line would spell some sort of balance, a nice calm warmth between two arctic storms, but instead this equator feels more like an invisible electric fence, stopping the polar bears and penguins from meeting to share their wisdom, the equator is a breaking point, a chasm filled with a feuding whirlwind of both TOO MUCH EVERYTHING and absolute nothingness. 

This is a hole I seem to fall into at the end of every up and the peak of every down and I somehow cope and claw my way back out again bruised and battered skating the outside edges for a while before suddenly being sucked back down the rabbit hole to either The Circle or better yet Santa’s place for yet another ride.

Rapid cycling is void of skating altogether, its fucking fast, fucking frequent and fucking frightening. Time in the chasm becomes simply unbearable clawing back to the top hoping this time you made it out, only to slip straight back down the bottom not knowing when or if it’s ever going to end.

The best way I think I can describe this chasm is like micro-sleeping while taking ice. Everything is hot and cold, you can’t breathe for the sensation of adrenaline in your veins, yet your heart beats so slowly you feel and hear each individual thud it makes.

The world around you seems to be revolving in dizzying flashes of matrix style slow motion, your eyes see every sight and ears hear every sound and yet you remember nothing. Each blink takes a year and when you are driving you feel you’re travelling slow as a snail but glance at the speedometer and you are actually doing 160km.

Sometimes you feel invincible and sometimes you’re just completely indifferent to death or consequence -which one of these generally depends on whether you were brought to that point by the polar bear or the penguin and either way you want to die. It’s an exhausting place to be and while you are in it you either want to stay there forever or end it at that exact moment which is funny really because while opposites in many ways those two things are exactly the same.

 

 

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.     

Bipolar Bites

So today is one of those up down around the fucking corner type days. All and nothing at the same time. Sigh. I really can’t keep doing this.

NE ways, I was sort of attempting to snooze when I had a brilliant idea. I would like to organise that when I kick that infamous bucket someone sets up a foundation charity thingy in my name called: “Bipolar bites.”

Kind of a support network for sufferers and families etc – I know there is already plenty of that stuff around but I like the name (LOL) and was thinking it could be a local / internet based thing? Perhaps involving an online forum / blog role support – I know those are the places I have found the most REAL and UNPREJUDICED support when I have really needed it.

So, details as follows:

·         The logo: apple with bite out of it – as in the whole Isaac Newton what goes up must come down theory. – Like the tattoo, the tree of life winding through the apple to remind us that what comes down eventually grows up again. ((random thought- there is computer data stuff (technical term) called bytes… apple makes computers…. coincidence??))

 

  Ahem, back to business…

 

·         Tag line along the lines of:

Bi Polar Bites.

Support for those living with Newtons curse.

·         wwwDOTbipolarbites.org.au?? 

 

I wonder if any business / foundation / general ideas I have will ever go beyond name, tag line and logo… SERIOUSLY will somebody PLEASE open a lawn turf company named

 “The other side lawn turf company”

Where the grass is always greener…

“A Load of Bull” – for all your livestock transportation needs…

Ahem, I will leave it right there – some ppl reading that would be groaning having heard those two for the millionth time and I am getting off topic yet again.

So anyways, I think it would be great to have some sort of positive thing left behind from all this and yes, I can hear my Psychologists voice in my head suggesting that I just stick around and do it myself to see the outcome but realistically we both know I am generally incapable of finishing what I start, so this is a more likely way of insuring that it actually happens.

Ok I will work on finding out what’s involved in foundation making and follow up accordingly, unless of course I lose interest, or I forget.

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…