Another Moan

I’m sat here on MSN in a conversation with a couple of friends, listening to them bitch about their other manic depressive friend. Apparently talking to her brings them down in an instant, so now I have shut up. I try not to talk about how I’m feeling anywhere other than this blog. In fact I find it almost impossible to talk about how I’m feeling, which has resulted in a lot of therapy.  All the same I’m worrying about how I come across.  This blog does not give a fair and accurate representation because all I do here is whine and moan about how bad things are at the moment.  Out in the real world, nothing comes out of my mouth regarding how I’m feeling.  A few of my more recent friends don’t even know about the diagnosis and those that do don’t talk about it.  At least not to my face, god knows what goes on behind my back.  Call me paranoid… actually don’t, I’m pretty sure most people, mental or not, have small worries about what people think of them.  It would be mental if they didn’t right?  Even so, I’m feeling particularly bugged by this.

In Prozac news, I spent this morning feeling very sick, but just about managed to keep my breakfast down.  No other side effects to report just yet, but I am hoping for loss of appetite to balance out the antipsychotic munchies.  Having said that, abilify is not nearly so bad as seroquel was, almost unnoticeable.  I think maybe I just have terrible control over my appetite with or without medication.  You live and learn.

In mood news… well, not much to report.  I’d only be repeating myself.  I’m still not sleeping, still not caring, still sort of wanting to die, still surviving.

Prozac

It has taken three months but I finally got to see the CMHT.  Today I saw Dr S, otherwise known as Dr Eight.  It’s a step back in time.  He’s exactly the same as every other psychiatrist I’ve ever met, the key difference being he has really skinny ankles and was wearing festive socks.  I only noticed this because I spent the whole time staring at the floor (and apparently Dr S’s feet) trying not to cry my eyes out.  He’s your bog standard doctor, skinnier than some, but with an aversion to antipsychotics as mood stabilisers that I rather like.  In my experience antipsychotics have never stabilised my mood, only quashed the mania.

Apparently despite my slight flat affect I managed to get out of bed and am therefore well enough to stay free in the world.  This is good.  He didn’t ask about the voice in my head, I’m not sure he knows about him.  He didn’t ask about suicidal urges, I have no idea why, possibly he already knew the answer, possibly he didn’t care. 

Dr S did, however, seem shocked that I wasn’t on an antidepressant, so know I am taking 20mg of Prozac along with the abilify, which he kept at the same dosage.  I’ve taken Prozac before, I remember being sick quite a lot and then feeling much better.  Why did I stop taking it again?  I have no idea, I honestly can’t remember.  I will have to leaf through the old blog and find out.  Probably because it had stopped working, or I was feeling young and dramatic.

And today’s random Photoshop of the Day:

Um…

Tomorrow is psychiatry day. As always, I’m not sure what I think of this. So here’s a picture instead.

Ophelia Downstream

Tonight I am drinking and considering an overdose.  Considering only,  I’m not going to do it, I’m not in that place yet, my fingers are still gripping tightly to the edge of the cliff, I’m still scrabbling to hold on and I may yet pull myself up.  Or failing that, someone might come and pull me up.  I don’t want to drop at the moment, I want to have already made the decision and let go.  Does that make sense?  I don’t want to kill myself, I want to be already dead.  I want to be Ophelia, floating downstream, further downstream, at the bottom of the river, already sinking, drowning, dying.

but long it could not be 
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay 
To muddy death.

Romantic no?  But I wouldn’t choose to drown.  Too wet.

Anyway, enough moaning and lamenting.  Good night.

Whatever Works

I am struggling at the moment.  I fear a big drop is on the horizon and I’m doing everything I know how to do to keep it far away from me.  But like I said I’m struggling.  I can’t get out of bed in the mornings and frankly I currently have no need to.  I still don’t have a job.  The suicidal urges and fantasies are back and I can’t stop thinking about slicing open my wrists.  I won’t go into to too much detail, you don’t need me to tell you what it’s like, we’ve all been there, too many of us are there.  There is also a whisper in my ear, nothing more than a hiss, but it means the Voice is coming back.  The Voice that has been oh-so-quiet and full on absent since my dose got increased last time around.

Have I talked about the voice in my head on this blog?  I forget, I’ll fill in the gaps just in case.  Sometimes, when I’m either very high or very low, I get a voice in my head.  He feels like having headphones on, he can be quiet or loud depending on how he feels, but mostly depending on how I feel.  He sounds like a middle class, middle-aged male and is not a voice I recognise from outside of my head.  This is not a PTSD Voice.  The content of his tirades depend, once again, on my mood; if I’m up he’ll spout encouragement, telling me that it might be a good idea to climb out of the window or create a giant sudoku in the garden out of string and paper for example.  If I’m down, he will tell me I’m worthless, a waste of space and that I should just kill myself.  Or sometimes that death is too good for me.  He can make life very difficult because although I know I don’t have to listen to him, it’s hard not to kill yourself when it’s the rational brain vs. the irrational brain and the Voice.  So far I’ve given in 2.5 times.

I wrote a post on the old blog about trying to kill myself, it wasn’t very interesting so I’ll be brief.  The first time, I overdosed, a very small overdose, but I was naive and the intent to kill was very definitely there.  The 0.5th time I tried to slit my wrists, but it turned into more of an excavation of my artery, hurt a lot and didn’t get very far.  The second proper attempt landed me in hospital for nigh on a week and I was very bored most of the time.  I managed to escape the psychiatric ward by saying I was glad to be alive and wasn’t going to do it again.  This was a lie, but as it turned out I’ve managed to fight off the suicidal urges ever since.  It’s been hard, don’t get me wrong, every time feels like I’m going to fail this time, but I get through.  Who’s to say I won’t get through this drop, if it ever comes.  Sorry to be so matter-of-fact but this is how I deal with things; distance myself from them, be objective and then draw my conclusions.  But hey, whatever works right?

The Magic Button

It seems like everyone is down at the moment, the blogs I read anyhow, and I am no different.  This time it’s all my fault because I missed two doses of abilify.  This is not something I’ve done before.  I’ve missed a single dose here and there and that’s been fine, no adverse effects to speak of.  It seems like two missed is one too many.  I half forgot and half wanted to see what would happen.  Now I know.  I drop into a pit of depression the likes of which I haven’t seen since I was under the crisis time, which is pretty good for me.  I’ve been cycling still, but fairly gently and slowly and I have, to some extent, been able to get on with my life.  I mean look, I applied for jobs, even had an interview.  I have carried on relationships with people, albeit on a limited basis due to a minor inability to force myself to leave the house, and I have been keeping up with my CBT.  As a result of feeling crappy I have spent most of today in bed and will therefore not be able to sleep tonight.  As we all know, this is bad for the mood.  Fortunately I still have two sleeping pills left, so if I’m not asleep two hours into an attempt I’ll be taking one.  That was supposed to be the rule but it’s like that for me every night.  If I’d followed the rule I would have run out of pills long ago.  It’s just that tonight is going to be bad.

On the plus side, I haven’t cut in almost two months.  This is not a patch on Em’s two years, but I’m still slightly proud of myself.  This is the one good thing in all the doom and gloom.  However, I am starting to overload again.  I’m not sure why this is exactly, I have no job and therefore no major stresses in my life at the moment.  I have no money, but I’m lucky and can leech off my parents.  Incidentally, I didn’t get that trainee accountancy job, they’d already filled it before my second interview.  I am marginally annoyed by this.  But anyway, cutting, I have been tempted a couple of times, but lately I’d stopped thinking about it.  That is until yesterday when I was rooting through my boxes and found the scalpel blades.  Then my head started to spin and I couldn’t think about anything else.  I know it will make me feel better but only for a very, very short time, then I’ll feel even worse.  I’ve enjoyed watching the scars heal, or at least get less angry, but enjoyed is the wrong word… appreciated perhaps.  It’s an addiction I’m still kicking.

I hate that everyone is down, I want to fix you all, make all the bad thoughts go away and hug each and every one of you so tight that you can’t help but feel good.  Too bad I’m not superhuman, my super power would be to bring happiness to the world, although perhaps not contentedness or nothing would ever get done.  Just a feeling of well being whilst the world continues to function.  Even if it happened it’d never work.  Have you ever been asked if you would turn manic depression off if you could?  Press that magic button, make it go away forever?  On days like today I’d press that button.  The upsides are not worth feeling like this.  The pure euphoria is not worth feeling so low you don’t feel like you deserve to live.  That is until I start to feel better again.  If I’m feeling fine, or feeling too good I’ll always opt to keep the illness.  Is it an illness?  Who would choose to keep cancer?

I hate Christmas.  It brings out the worst in me, I am always depressed Christmas Day and invariably very distressed by the whole processes.  I spent one Christmas Eve staring at snow falling that no one else could see, followed by a massive crash for Christmas Day.  Every year I hope it will be different, so fingers crossed again for this year.  I have now realised it’s 9pm and it is therefore not too early to go to bed.

An Update

So far from being rejected, I have a second interview with the accountancy firm.  This has shocked me to be honest, I really don’t feel I stood out or made any impact whatsoever, but clearly I did something right.   I am both nervous and excited.  I have no idea what will happen, whether there will be some kind of mathematical test or whether it’ll just be talking to some different people.  I think I’ll take a calculator just in case.

Alex took the day off work to come to graduation in the end, so I am currently feeling loved in that respect.  All in all things are pretty good today, and this has been reflected in a bout of sheer happiness and euphoria, with only a trace of excitability.  I am not hypomanic, just happy.  I’ve learnt to tell the difference now, at least retrospectively, even if I can’t trust my emotions at the time.  The graduation ceremony itself was boring beyond belief and I was so sick of clapping by the end.  They read out the name of every single person graduating, shook hands with them and then everybody had to clap.  This took about two hours.  Needless to say the last person on the list got the biggest clap, everyone was just glad it was over.  My parents took me, Alex and my sister out for post-graduation dinner, which was sweet of them and rounded off the day nicely.  Then Alex, my friends and I all went and got drunk in a quiet little pub.  Drinking is a mistake in terms of mood because it invariably brings me down, however I was a bit hyped post-boredom, so in fact it just brought me to a normal level.  Can you say self-medication?

Psychiatry Again

Today I thought about suicide again.  Well, I fantasised for a while anyway.  I had a nice little day dream in which I jumped out of the psychiatrist’s third floor window.

So I finally have a psychiatrist again.  This is Dr Eight, so a step back and a step in the right direction as he’s not keen on anti-psychotics as mood stabilisers either.  Roll on the 15th December.  As always I’m not sure what I want from this appointment.  I suppose I want my anti-depressants back.  The only reason I went off them was because I couldn’t afford the prescription after a massive spending spree.  Citalopram or Prozac, either work fine for me without making me crazy and frankly I prefer the taste of Prozac.  This means that he’ll put on citalopram if anything.  They never give me what I ask for.

Rejected

So I finally heard from the early intervention service, I don’t meet their criteria, unsurprisingly.  The EIS deal with people newly diagnosed, not people like me who have coped pretty much alone for two years.  Have I coped?  Judging on the sole criteria that I am currently alive, I would say yes.  Whether or not I end my own life at some point in the future, I cannot currently say.  Time will tell, I hope for the sake of other people, those people that care, that I keep on “coping”.  I wonder while I’m hunting for that job I still don’t have whether I’ll be able to hold it down, I wonder why I let most of my relationships fall apart, all but the most important few, I wonder when I’ll actually feel like I’m coping rather than just holding down the fort, grasping at the cliff edge with slowly tiring fingers.  “Coping is for losers,” I tell myself every time I get hypomanic and why would I want to cope when I’m doing so fantastically?  It’s the depression that gets me finally.  The meds have the full-blown mania pretty much under control.

I’m also feeling a little rejected by Alex, there’s nothing major going on, just little things that build up and build up.  I’m too often the second choice, the afterthought and I dislike it completely.  It’s not a make or break thing, it just niggles at the back of my mind.  How to deal with it though?  First I have to identify the problem.  Is it me or is it him?  It’s always possible it’s both of us.  Am I the problem?  I suspect that my negative thinking patterns are having an impact here and I’m seeing things that just aren’t there.  CBT is teaching me to challenge my thoughts, but what to do when I have evidence that backs up my thoughts?  What do I do when there is actually a problem?  I suppose I should react like a normal person and talk about my feelings, but this is something I find infinitely hard to do.  This blog is the only place I pour out my heart and soul and I can only do that because ultimately, you are strangers to me and I’ll never see your faces.  Give or take a few people.  This blog is anonymous now for a reason, it allows me to say what’s on my mind without fear of retribution from those I love.  How would Alex react if he knew I thought I was second best?  He’d ask for examples of when he’d put me second, my mind would go blank and that would be the end of that conversation.  I know if I talked to him he’d alleviate my concerns, but I can’t bring myself to do it.  Talking about things is just so hard, it goes against my entire nature.  I need to learn how to communicate.

In other news, I had an interview last Friday, for a trainee accountant position.  I’m really hoping I’ll get it, I’m really hoping I don’t get it.  Once again I’m torn.  I want the job, I need the job, but I’m questioning my ability to do it.  I don’t know what I’d do on those days I physically can’t make it out of bed, I don’t know what I’d do if I was too hypomanic to work, I don’t know what I’d do on those occasional manic episodes.  The answer is I can’t do anything, apart from take the meds, do what I learn in CBT and above all, keep trying.  I find out whether or not I got the job on Friday.  I’m expecting to be rejected from that too.

Also on Friday, I finally graduate.  There’s nothing huge to look forward to, all my friends graduated this time last year and I never really made any new ones, unusual for me, but unimportant.  I will get to see my old housemates and that set of friends so that’ll be nice.  I really should have graduated last year, I’m still beating myself up about being unable to finish the year.  I know I was unwell, but I was equally as unwell this year and I still did it.  I should have just choked it down and finished.

But all in all I don’t really feel rejected by any of the above.  Most of it has simply ceased to matter and the thing with Alex will work itself out once I open up.

Superhuman?

I’ve just been watching a programme on brain injuries.  It was mostly about comas, but there was one guy who was in a car crash and lost his moods and feelings.  They said he was missing out on what made him human.  He can’t love, he can’t care, he can’t worry.  He says he loves his wife and son but he can’t explain what love feels like, he is totally oblivious.  When he talks he sounds as if he’s saying what he thinks he should say, based on what other people say and perhaps remembered feelings.  He says he doesn’t worry about anything, he feels zero anxiety.  He likes the feeling, but that’s reasonable.  But this means he can’t care about anything, including his family, his job and so on.  Can you imagine feeling so little?  He doesn’t feel and he doesn’t have moods, therefore he can’t possibly have mood swings.  And they say he’s inhuman because of this.  Does this make me, and other people with manic depression, superhuman?  The media is full of people saying emotions are what make us human.  I can’t think of a single example right now, but we’ve all seen them haven’t we?

Superhuman?  I don’t think so, but with emotions as out of control as ours, what are we?  I wrote a post on the old perfect defect blog about being a monster and a monster is what I am.  This does not mean that other people with manic depression are monsters, it is not completely the illness that makes me what I am.  I don’t know why I am what I am, I don’t know how to explain in what way I am a monster.  Here is an exerpt from that post.

I am a monster.  Not the sort that hides under beds and in wardrobes, more the sort that hides inside human skin, teeth forever bared under it all, just waiting.  The sort of monster that has no soul, because mine is gone if I ever even had one.  I don’t live now, I just exist.  Each day blurs into the next, each week into the next.  Time has no purpose when you’re waiting, but then again that’s all there is.  So what is this monster waiting for?  With teeth bared, claws sharpened and a mind in a state of dull alertness under the influence of too much seroquel.  This monster is a rabid animal underneath the human skin, and all rabid animals are subject to the same fate.  But here the human race and I are equal.  The monster waits, the monster lurks and the monster bides its time until one day it will tear its way out and then God help anyone who gets in my way.

Think what you will.  Perhaps it’s becuase I’m selfish, egotistic, reckless and impulsive.  Perhaps it’s the voice in my head.  Perhaps it’s my control issues and obsession with not being weak.  Perhaps it’s all of me.