Brief Observations

It took about a week on the new meds for me to feel even somewhat normal again. This is what I get for letting it get so bad, I suppose.

The "sleeping pills" don't work worth a shit. I'm going to have to call the doctor's office and ask for something else.

I'm better, but I've also been better--much better--than this. Sleep is still an iffy thing. I rarely eat more than one meal and one snack per day. Nothing sounds good. I'm at least getting my work done, though, so there's that.

I did some work on my writing blog in hopes of guilting myself into writing more often. We'll see how that goes.

I walked two miles today at the park. Hope to continue doing that, too. I don't give a shit about losing weight, not really. I just hope the exercise improves my mood. If I lose weight in the process, fine. If not, that's fine, too.

Lamest update ever, but I'm too tired to really care.

Chronicles Of The Crazy Person

This is a weird thing for me to say, but it's been a pretty bad summer.

I've been depressed since at least May. I didn't realize how bad it was, though, until I quit my job last month. (Long story short: Fucking boss went off the deep end, accused me of doing some shit I didn't do, and cussed me like I was a dog in the process. I don't know if she was off her meds or what, but I live with one crazy person--me--and the last fucking thing I needed in my life was another one to deal with, so I bounced. Which set off another round of cursing and nasty emails that I ultimately ignored because fuck her--ain't nobody got time for that.)

She said some pretty horrible shit to me, TBH. Normally, I would probably say something about "crazy, jealous bitches" and let it roll off like it wasn't a thing, but, like I said, I've not been in the best shape for months. It didn't help that all the awful shit she said to me is the same awful shit the demons that live in my head say to me, too. Intellectually, I know she said it because she knew it would get to me, but knowing something intellectually doesn't mean it won't still affect you emotionally.

On top of that, I've had a couple of "friends" do some pretty shitty things to me lately, too. I don't feel like getting into the specifics of it all because what's the point? But I'm right fucking tired of being used as a therapist/free place to stay/fallback when people have nothing better to do by nearly everybody in the goddamned world.

I realized I was getting dangerously depressed when I realized that I didn't even want to eat anymore. For a fat bitch, that's always indicative of a problem. Combine that with my complete inability to read or write more than the absolute barest minimum required for life, and I knew it was bad. Then Robin Williams killed himself, and it was kind of a "There but for the grace of...something...go I" moment, and I knew it was time to do something.

So I talked to my friend Wazoo (B. in Huntsville, who I decided needed a name for me to use here that's not just his fucking initial, and since I call him that half the time, anyway, we'll go with it) last Sunday night and came to the conclusion that I was going to swallow every last bit of pride I had and ask my mother to take me to the doctor.

Surprisingly enough, she was not a total asshole about it.

So she came and got me last Tuesday after she got off work because I was too broke to even buy gas to drive down myself. She only works half a day on Wednesday, so after she got off, she wanted to go get a pedicure and then ride dirt roads in her Jeep with the top out (because that's something she fucking does--don't ask). I tagged along because she likes company when she does it. And now I have a pedicure. Like, a professional one. It's only the third one I've ever had in my life. Thursday, I went to the doctor, where I got a refill on my Lamictal (I was out), my Wellbutrin raised to the maximum dose that they're allowed to give people, and a prescription for trazodone because my doctor's not writing prescriptions for Ambien anymore, alas. She recommended the trazodone because it's an old-school antidepressant that has the added effect of making you sleepy. So antidepressant plus sleep aid in one, basically. For those of you keeping score at home, I'm now on the max dose of Lamictal that my doctor will prescribe, the max dose of Wellbutrin that's safe for human consumption, and now another antidepressant as well. *Sigh*

Friday, I pretty much just fucked off until my mother got off work; then, we went and got haircuts. I now have a wonderful cut that, while a tiny bit shorter than I would've liked for it to have been, is still pretty much exactly what I wanted. Saturday, my mother wanted to go Jeep-riding again, and she offered to take me to Flat Rock because I'd said Wednesday that I would like to go. It's the only lake in the entire world that I'm not completely disgusted by because, as the name suggests, the entire "beach" and bottom of the lake is granite and therefore not muddy and vile to me. Barring some amazing and miraculous circumstance, that's probably as close as I'm going to get to going to the beach this year, so I took her up on it. I didn't swim or anything; we probably only stayed about 10 or 15 minutes. Long enough for me to wade out ankle-deep and most of the tension in me to ease, I guess. (Water does that for me, and the bigger the body of water, the better it works.) I also took this picture while I was there.

We rode around most of the afternoon, and then when we got back, Daddy came in. All three of us ended up going to the top of a mountain in Clay County that night in the Jeep again to look for meteors. (And that is, hands down, the best fucking place I've ever found to stargaze. I will be going back.)

Apparently, they, too, realized I was in trouble because they didn't give me any shit and actually humored me for the most part. So yeah. It must've been pretty bad.

Yesterday, Mother brought me back, and I did my work and shit. I took the trazodone for the first time last night. I only took half of one because I was afraid I wouldn't wake up until next Tuesday otherwise. But...it didn't really do anything. So tonight I'm going to take a whole one. If that doesn't work, I'll take two tomorrow night because the doctor said I could take either one or two. If that doesn't work, I'll probably call down there and sob on the phone until someone writes me a prescription for something else.

Today, I went to Walmart, bought groceries and hair dye, and worked. I dyed my hair earlier and am waiting for it to dry before I take that trazodone so I can touch it up before bed in case I missed some spots. I stepped up my game a notch and went for "Natural Blue-Black" this time instead of the usual "Natural Black" because fuck you, that's why.

Once all the dye that I smeared all over myself in the process of dyeing my hair (because I'm a fucking spaz) wears off in a few days, I'm probably going to take some new pics of myself. Not because I feel particularly pic-worthy at the moment, but because of the new haircut. Its perfection must be documented for posterity because I now have 100% bitch hair.

Unfortunately, though, the step up in my Wellbutrin dosage hasn't seemed to have any effect yet. I hope that changes soon. Usually, I can tell a difference in just a day, but...maybe it's because it hasn't been this bad in a long time, so it'll take a little longer to get better? And maybe the trazodone will help, too, after a little while? I think it takes it awhile to, like, build up in your system to be effective or something. Fuck, I don't know. I just desperately need to believe that it'll all get better soon because the alternative is...ugh.

I have to go back to my phone work tomorrow. Not thrilled about that, but I'm even less thrilled about having my lights turned off, sooooo...yeah. Back to work.

I also intend to reorganize my writing blog in the next couple of days and start using it as a dump for things other than my terrible poetry. Short fiction, my own thoughts on writing, and perhaps some discussion of other people's poems or something. Pretty much anything to guilt myself into writing again, since I haven't updated that stupid blog since March. I've done a few things that I haven't posted anywhere, but not a whole lot. FangBunny has overhauled her writing blog and is doing weekly prompts, book reviews, and such, so I'm going to try to overhaul mine, post stuff more often, and maybe even try to write something for her prompts. Maybe.

If it'll ever stop raining, I'm also going to start walking at night again. Exercise is supposed to be good for depression, right?

*Sigh* It's gotta get better. It's just fucking got to.

Brittle, Bitter, & Battle-Hardened

I have come to the conclusion (again) that whether I like it or not, I desperately need therapy.

Medication has helped. A lot, actually. But the truth is, I think it's gone about as far as it can go on its own.

I am broken in a number of ways, and I don't think that type of shit heals itself. It's like when I broke my hand falling off a horse (naturally) the summer before my freshman year in college. I shattered the bone in front of the knuckle of the little finger on my left hand. Not only did the break go all the way through, but there was also a piece of bone that splintered off from the rest and settled away from the joint. It wasn't treated properly because the doctor I had was an incompetent piece of shit--imagine that--and so even though the break healed, the hand still doesn't work the way it's supposed to. I can't straighten that finger out all the way (eleven years later), and I'm relatively sure that arthritis has set in now because it bothers me a lot more than it used to nowadays.

But, again, it's been eleven years. The only thing anyone could do now would be to do surgery to go back in, re-break the fucking thing, pin it back together, and wait for it to heal. Even if I had insurance to pay for that, it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

I think this thing inside me is the same way. The bone--so to speak--has knitted itself back together, and there's no longer an acute, oh-god-this-is-a-fucking-emergency kind of pain. But it didn't heal the way it should've, and it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. It still hurts, but it's a dull, chronic ache rather than a stabbing pain.

Or something like that.

I have long been open to the possibility that there's something else wrong with me besides the bipolar. I don't doubt for a moment that I am--or have, depending on how you wanna word it--bipolar. "Bipolar I with psychotic features" is a diagnosis that fits all too well for me to argue about it. But it's hardly unusual for mental illnesses to come in groups. In fact, it's more unusual for someone to have only one, I think. Certainly, there are things about me that can't be explained away by the bipolar.

I'm angry. I, like the Hulk, am always angry. The difference between now, when I'm decently medicated, and then, when I was at my sickest, is that it's not as intense. If anger is a fire, it was always burning when I was at my maddest. All it took was the slightest gust of wind to stir it, make it flare up, and burn everybody in shooting distance. I used to terrify people with my fury. I know, because they told me so.

Now it's more like a smoldering ember, hidden under the burnt-out ashes of the conflagrations that came before. It's there. It burns hot. But a gust of wind is no longer enough to stir it up. There are too many ashes laying atop it for wind to have much of an effect. You have to throw gas on it to get it to flare now. But it's always there, nonetheless.

It manifests itself mostly as bitterness now. Cynicism and bitterness--the last refuge of the disillusioned.

Sure, most people will never notice. I'm charming now--charismatic, even, when I want to be. (That I rarely want to be is beside the point.) Eventually, when enough shit happens to you, you lose the ability to give a fuck what people think about you and then just say and do whatever you want. If you're interesting/intelligent/quirky enough, people find it charming. Works for me.

But I know--and I suspect my closest friends know--that it's not a confidence borne of something healthy. It's fatalistic. Nothing ever changes, so what does it matter? Why throw up false pretenses anymore? It's not as though it'll change anything, not as though the end will be anything other than what it's going to be, anyhow, not as though my life will ever be anything other than a massive shitstorm. So fuck it.

I think that's the motto of my life now: Fuck it.

I'm old and weary and brittle and bitter and battle-hardened, and nothing matters anymore.

And still I push on, some inner stubbornness or spitefulness or hyper-developed sense of self-preservation spurring me on to whatever other shitty surprises life has in store for me.

I have long feared that I'm cursed with the personality disorder that strikes fear into the hearts of clinicians everywhere: borderline personality disorder. I can usually reason myself out of the belief if I try hard enough. I am exceptional at lying to myself, after all. I can create an entirely new reality in my head if I have to, if the "real" one is too much for me to face...and don't think I haven't made use of it on more than one occasion.

But I'm currently reading something online--something that's too embarrassing to admit to out loud, so we're going to skim right over that part. There's a character in it who's as mad as a hatter, who has borderline. It's absolutely fucking scary how familiar the behavior is, how perfectly the mindset matches up, how the beliefs and rationalizations are the same fucking things I tell myself--have told myself--for years and years and years.

Admittedly, I don't exhibit some of the more dramatic symptoms. I never was a cutter, for instance. (Why hurt yourself when you can find someone else to do it--and do it even better--for you, I always thought.) And a lot of the overblown bullshit is tamped down by a combination of my meds and my own fear of the monster that lives in my head. I guess I'm what happens when someone who's that sick starts burning out.

I'm not going to be that asshole who self-diagnoses and then runs around using it as an excuse to do...whatever. I suspect that's another one of the things that's wrong with me, yes. It would explain SO much. But I'm not particularly eager to claim the label, for one, and for another, I would rather let a professional diagnose it. I've never been known for my sound judgment, after all.

But still...a lot of the stuff--including the anger--fits.

So that brings us back to "Bunny needs a therapist." Which brings us back to the same thing we always come back to. In order to go to a therapist, Bunny needs money. In order to have money, Bunny needs to work. In order to be able to work without being a train wreck, Bunny needs a therapist.

So, yeah...seems like fatalism is really the only path one can take when faced with that particular set of circumstances.

Eh...fuck it. Not like it really matters, anyway, I guess. Eventually, the whole world will burn, anyway, with or without my help.

*Sigh*

Fuck it.

The Difference

I'm back on meds...again.

Wednesday is my one day off work, so I took some of the money I got paid for some blog work I did and went to my parents' house Tuesday night after I got off. I tried to go to the doctor on Wednesday because I need some new prescriptions, but that ended up being a clusterfuck, so I'm going to try again in a couple of weeks, I hope. I've been without Ambien for way too long, and my sleep just does whatever it wants.

But I had, like, nine refills on my Wellbutrin and one more on my Lamictal, so I took my ass to the pharmacy--where I used to work in the freaking soda fountain when I was 18--and got my refills.

I still struggle with my illness, even on meds, but sometimes all it takes is having to go off your meds for awhile to see how far you've come.

I'd been off for nearly a month, and I hated everyone and everything, and I desperately wanted to watch the world burn. I was angry--God, so angry. That was the depression. It came first, bringing the anger, the lack of motivation, the tears, the despair, the effed up sleep patterns, the leaden paralysis as it's called, the inability to get out of bed, the serious suicidal thoughts. (Re: suicidal thoughts: After Wednesday's failed doctor visit, I was extremely upset because I really do need to see the doctor quite badly. In order to get from my parents' house to the doctor, one has to cross a bridge over a river. I was so fucked up and desperate and hopeless on my way back that I came within a gnat's ass of stopping and jumping off the bridge. NB, I am rather afraid of bridges, so I was clearly out of my goddamned mind at that point in time. The only thing that stopped me was not an overwhelming will to live or fear of what my death would do to the people I left behind. It was only the fear that the bridge was not high enough for me to die when I hit the shallow water beneath it, and I thought a life as a quadriplegic would be worse than life as a crazy person. I'm sharing that because I can never tell anyone, couldn't stand for anyone to know how weak I am, and my secret is safe here.) But I'd run out of Wellbutrin first, so it only made sense that that was what would come first.

When I ran out of Lamictal, I didn't notice much of a change...at first. Then, my sleep got more and more erratic, and by the end, the paranoia was creeping back in.

Even my mother noticed how bad off I was, which is saying something, considering how she tries to make out like it's all in my head.

As soon as I got the bottles from the pharmacy, I ripped the bag open and popped one of each. I'd only slept about 3 hours the night before, so I can't say that I noticed a huge change because I was too tired to feel anything but exhausted. But I came back home Wednesday night and slept for about 12 hours. After another dose of medicine in the morning, I felt better. Not back to normal, not yet able to ready be productive, but no longer actively wanting to kill myself or someone else.

Finally, today, it clicked. I caught up on everything I was behind on, even after a miserable 24-hour shift (ugh). I cooked (miracle of miracles), cleaned my kitchen, did dishes, washed all my bedclothes and replaced them, and wrote ten client blogs. (Now I'm writing this and am about to go to bed and read until I fall asleep.) I'm sure tomorrow won't be even half as productive, but I don't care. I'm more than caught up now. I'm slightly ahead. :)

I can see colors again. I am no longer demanding to bathe in the blood of everyone who vaguely annoys me. And, yes, I may be mildly manic--and almost surely am--but I've gotten so behind on everything for lack of motivation that I'm just going to ride it for the handful of days that it'll last before the Lamictal catches up with it and knocks it back down.

But it does bring up an interesting question: If the difference between "not depressed" and "depressed" is so blatantly different (or the difference between "mixed state" and "no longer actively batshit," your choice), how come no one--my friends, my family, anybody--ever tried to help me during all those years that I struggled so hard?

Oh. Because it never benefited them to do so. Duh.

That's frustrating to accept because my life could've gone so much differently. If someone had had me in the doctor's office at 13 or 14, when it really started becoming noticeable, I sincerely doubt I'd be in the shitty situation I'm in now. If someone had had me in there at 18 or 25, even, it would've stopped the downhill crash, I think.

But, oh, well. What do you do? It's done now, and I'm crawling back out of the hole again. Or trying to, anyway. *Sigh*

On the other hand, it does bring up another interesting point. I wonder if, when I'm feeling really depressed in spite of taking my meds, it's worth going off of them for two or three days or so and then starting them back again. The shock to my brain, the difference between "medicated" and "unmedicated" after I restart my meds when I (involuntarily, I might add) have to go off of them, is so profound that I think it would stop a depressive episode in its tracks. Or at least make it seem better than it was before.

It's not the ideal solution, of course, but it might be something I can try until I can do better.

Next step? A new Ambien prescription and birth control. It's not that I need the birth control for its original intended purpose (broken innards FTW!), but I think something like Nuva-Ring would do wonders for getting rid of the usual premenstrual depression. I mean, if you're not having a period, it's hard to fall into a pit of despair the week before it starts.

Ok, I'm rambling. Bed now.

I Have No Idea What To Title This

My friend L. sent me a text today, wanting to know what I had planned for tomorrow.

Nothing, I replied. (I have to pull a 24-hour shift from 2 pm on Thursday to 2 pm on Friday--more on that bullshit another time--but after Princess Asshole takes the lines back on Friday, I'm free until I have to go back into work on Saturday afternoon.)

Then I asked her why.

She replied that she was hoping to come up and visit and that maybe we could go out tomorrow (Friday) night. I'm broke as shit at the moment--I literally have two cents in the bank until payday--but it's possible to go to a bar and spend zero money, so I said that'd be fine with me.

She waffled back and forth for awhile, claiming that I'd need to sleep and so forth, and I told her that I would sleep while I worked because that's what I always do. There's no way in hell I'm staying awake for 24 hours straight just because Princess wants a day off, after all. Then I told her that I'd love the company, etc., etc.

I still don't know if she's going to come or not. Part of me hopes so because she's my friend, and I miss her, and I miss being able to do shit like normal people do. But another part of me knows I need to be working my ass off tomorrow. But whatever happens, happens, I suppose. I won't be too upset either way.

Before we stopped talking, though, she said something that really fucking bothered me. I don't know if it's because I'm off my meds (not voluntarily--two cents in the bank, remember?) and possibly oversensitive or if it was actually insensitive of her. But it's been bugging me ever since she said it.

It was a couple of things, actually. I said I would DD (partly because I am broke and partly because I don't need to drink, even if I am on a heavily rationed med regimen at the moment because I'm too broke to buy more), and she was more or less lamenting that things couldn't be like the good old days, when I regularly drank grown men under the table, blew through money like the Russians were at the front gates (as my father would say), got completely hammered nearly every time we went out, and did lots of questionable things with lots of questionable strangers to make the screaming in my head stop for a little while.

I'm (almost) certain she didn't mean it the way it sounded. But that doesn't make it any less painful to me. I mean...I'm sorry that my recovery from crazy inconveniences you, but fucking deal with it. I assure you, it sucks a lot more for me than it does for you. At least the not having money to piss away part, anyway. I could live without the alcohol and the random strangers, unless they're tall, beautiful, and European. And rich. Definitely rich.

It's not that I'm opposed to going out or anything. I would love to, if for no other reason than to just get out of the fucking house. It's just the way she said it, like, "Oh, hey, you were WAY more fun when you hemorrhaged alcohol, money, and sex to anyone who'd stand still long enough to grab it."

Yeah. No kidding. Seems like everyone feels that way, given how many people bounced when they realized they weren't getting one or more of those things from me anymore.

And while I know she's not one of those fair-weather friends, not really, it still hurts because it reminds me of how many people were. All the shit I did for quite a few people, the debt I went into, the parts of me that I sacrificed--and where are those assholes now? Gone. It was all well and good to take and take and take from me, to bleed me absolutely dry, but when Bunny needs something, they're nowhere to be found.

Imagine that.

But you know what? Even if it takes me forever to recover financially, and even if I'm always a lot warier about the people I let close to me, I'd still rather it be this way than the old way. Why? Because the screaming's stopped (mostly), and I don't feel like my goddamned head is on fire anymore. Well, not usually, anyway. There are reprieves, at least, let's put it that way.

Peace is worth losing a lot of shitty, toxic "friends" for, y'all. It really is.

Spring

I find it...amusing, I suppose...how some things never change.

This is the beginning of March. Aside from the fact that it was bloody fucking cold Monday, the weather is finally starting to resemble something I can tolerate again. And Daylight Savings Time begins this weekend, too. (I actually don't care that much about the time change, since I don't keep "normal" hours. It's the total length of the daylight hours that matters when it comes to me not being crazy, not the clock.)

Pretty much everything in my life is completely different, both from how it used to be--which is to be expected--and from how I always thought it would be. But still, to this day, when this time of year rolls around, I am filled with this deep, inexplicable need...to go out and play softball.

Yes, I'm aware that it's fucking retarded. Yes, I'm aware that I haven't seriously played in about 12 years and that I haven't even picked up a glove in 4 or 5. But still, every year, without fail, I want to hit the diamond so bad that I can taste it in the back of my throat.

Alas, no matter how badly I want to, I can't. Even if I weren't in the worst shape of my life, even if I weren't too old for such things, I couldn't play. I blew up my shoulder--my fucking throwing shoulder--nearly 9 years ago, falling off a horse. The saddle was loose, the horse went around a curve, the saddle slipped, and I got too overbalanced to stop it. So down I went, and the only thing that kept me from landing on my head and cracking my own skull open was this bizarre sense of self-preservation that I apparently have that made me throw my shoulder out to take the brunt of the fall. I still wonder if that was a mistake....

I wish I had done what I wanted to do and gotten my shoulder repaired while I was still in college. There's a hole in the soft tissue big enough to drive a truck through. (I've seen the MRIs.) The humerus will slide right out of the hole with very little provocation, and suddenly, my whole shoulder is subluxed.

I have not been kind to my body over the years.

So I'll do what every washed-up old has-been does and sit back and think of my glory years when I wasn't an obese crazy person with a body that's falling apart and a mind that goes on the blink regularly.

But even so, even if I can't do what I want to do...spring will be here soon, and it'll all be all right once again, just for a little while.

How Bunny Won The Internet

Step One: Take sleeping pill.

Step Two: Doze.

Step Three: Awaken with two separate ideas for poems.

Step Four: Write them on your tablet.

Step Five: Sleep.

Step Six: Look at what you wrote the next day.

Step Seven: Cringe.

Step Eight: Post the first one on your poetry blog against your better judgment.

Step Nine: Keep the second one hidden, as it contains no capitalization, punctuation, or even coherent thought toward the end.

Step Ten: Confess your sins to your writer friend, FangBunny.

Step Eleven: Hold your breath while she reads your blog to see the bad--but at least properly punctuated--poem you posted.

Step Twelve: Cackle like a madwoman when she says, "It's not awful at all. But god...all the points to you for brooding spectacularly."

Step Thirteen: Post your friend's comment on your OTHER blog for posterity, duh.