Aw, blerg.
— Liz Lemon
I have a few topics and corresponding drafts floating around my head and queue. I want to write about how my relationships (old, new, romantic, otherwise) are, all the way to the core, affected by my mental illness. I want to discuss what my hypomanias feel like and why I miss them so much. I really want to talk about medication, how much I really don’t want to take it, and how I am occasionally known to childishly lie about taking medication or hide pills altogether.
But depression, my old friend, came calling on me again a week and a half ago. It’s too soon for this, I don’t want this, and you’re not welcome here, I think. But it just comes in without knocking, sets up camp on my couch and asks where the takeout menus are. At least when someone from the mania family comes to visit, we have a lot of fun. There’s the shopping, the talking, the creative outpouring — it’s a lot like being drunk. Sure, eventually you might get so lit up like a Christmas tree that you break a few vases in a rage and spend the night dry heaving regret all the way down until you’re covered in barf sweat, but there’s a little bit of good times in there. Depression is no fun, right from the get-go.
It descended on me suddenly — a summer storm that turns the sky black and makes the air crackle with anxiety. I was awake at ten this morning but didn’t leave my bed until three in the afternoon because the prospect of interacting with anyone or anything beyond the confines of my thirty-six square feet bed was too daunting. I tried to read a bit, but lacked the focus. Instead, I curled into a ball and watched the people in the office building across the street go about their days, feeling as though they were looking back at me and judging me. From three to five, I did my best to put on a human face and do real people things. In the evening, I ate my one meal of the day that I managed to choke down and worked out for an hour before returning to the safety of my nest.
One of the things that frustrates me the most about this entire bipolar diagnosis and treatment process is that I feel like I don’t know me anymore. I don’t know where I end and the disease picks up. I don’t know what to attribute to the normal ebb and flow of life and natural mood shifts and what to attribute to bipolar. We just had a few weeks of unbelievable, butt-kicking stress. Travel, a wedding, interacting with estranged family members, seeing family we hadn’t seen in a long time, and news about Ryan’s job. To boot, I visited my beloved grandpa’s grave for the first time since his funeral, nearly five years ago. Did all this trigger something I just need to work through? Do I just fake it until I make it? I am trying. I’m phoning friends and writing emails and paying bills; after I get out of bed, that is. What if I make too big of a thing about this and cause yet another medication switch? I don’t want to overreact, I just want to feel better.
