Tag: Blogging

On a Natural High

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders

On a Natural High

Last night, I got an email that was filtered to my junk mail folder. I was about to delete it when I read the subject line “couch”. For the past three months I have been emailing the NY Times my blog post on the love/hate relationship in therapy. I checked the email address to see if it was a real NYT address and sure enough it was. Holy fucking cow, they responded! It was the very first email that I sent back in July! The editor thought the piece was “pretty amazing”. He told me that I should stay tuned with some thoughts. I didn’t think nothing of it other than maybe that was the standard reply to something when an article is in consideration. But he got back to me within an hour with some edits and I couldn’t believe it. This was going to happen. I was going to be a contributor to the New York TIMES! I just finished sending in the paperwork today and the article is set of online publication on Tuesday. I don’t know when the article will be hard print. I just emailed him and asked as my mother would love a copy of it rather than the online version. I am so excited, happy, nervous, and giddy it’s not funny. I had an email conversation with my psychiatrist about this. I sent her the edited version of the article. She said that it was excellent, like she told me before. If I could do handstands and flips, I would be doing them. The editor got back to me today and said out of the 45 articles he has edited, my post is his favorite. He Googled me and my book is going to be listed at the end of the article. I am going to have publicity on my book! I am so damn tickled. I am glad I am an author!

Yesterday was a disturbing day for me and today has been somewhat normal. The past 24 hours have been a rush! I cannot wait to see my piece printed. It might be on the front page of the Times webpage when it comes out. I just found out it will not be in print, as in the newspaper itself. I guess this series is only an online thing. If the hypos I was feeling weren’t happening, I am sure this news would have cured my depression, least for a few days. My psychiatrist wonders what the readers are going to respond to this article. Tuesday cannot come fast enough. It will be in the morning, like 0330! I just checked when other posts have been posted. I will have to set my alarm so I can send a mass emailing. I will also post it on my blog for that day.

Ankle Chronicles 10

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

I had to pick up my father’s prescription at the pharmacy today, which meant a lot of walking. It was only about four or five blocks from his apartment to the pharmacy but my ankle decided it wanted no part in it so rebelled. Then I guess the way I was walking to compensate, threw my opposite side hip out. I was not happy. I just wanted to sit and rest but I couldn’t because there was no place to really sit and I wasn’t going to sit on the ground. I get to his apartment and he isn’t there. I started panicking. He knew I was coming over. Then I saw his girlfriend coming towards his apartment. I was really starting to get worried. It’s not like him not to be home when he knows people are coming over. She went to the office while I waited in case he came home. Soon after she got on the elevator to go down, he came off the opposite elevator. I was happy but miffed. He says I should have called him, which next time I will. I see him every week at around the same time so I don’t know why he thought he could leave his apartment.

I had lunch over his place as he cooked and then I left. More walking to the train station. I was a little annoyed with the bus on the way there so decided to take the train home. The bus at the closer station to my house was late, which meant more standing on my already flared up ankle. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to walk the block and half home. But I sat on the bus and let it rest a little bit. It was a little better by the time I got to my stop but soon as I put weight on it, it flared right up again. I am not doing anything the rest of the day. I got my hair cut this morning and I had lunch thanks to daddio. I should be good for the next few hours until my stomach wants more food and then I will have to see if I really want to eat. I will have to go down the stairs to the kitchen which I know my ankle will just love (saying this sarcastically). I just hope I don’t have to go to the bathroom.

My father gave me peppers which I handed over to my mother. She loves green peppers. I do, too. She usually makes peppers and eggs which is alright. I used to love to eat them raw but lately, my stomach has been picky with raw vegetables so I have to eat them cooked. I don’t know why it bothers my stomach. I take a stomach pill that should protect my stomach and not cause any problems. But eating raw peppers causes me to get heartburn.

I started getting a little hyper this morning. I know I was really irritable when I was going to my father’s on the bus. The bus driver was being trained so was driving really slow and of course, every stop had a passenger to either pick up or drop off. Then we got to a busy square and there was a lady whose card wasn’t working. Must have been trying to make it work for more than five minutes and to me in my manic brain was forever. It drove me berserk because it held up the people behind her. I just wanted the bus to fricken go. I should have taken the fricken train but the bus stops near the pharmacy that I had to go to so I could do less walking. I was getting very annoyed that even Luke Bryan’s music wasn’t calming me down. I guess it was good that I walked as much as I did just to relieve the stress and agitation I was feeling, even though it caused me pain. I still feel annoyed and I don’t know why. I feel like I drank several cups of coffee when all I had was a cup of tea at like seven this morning. This manic stuff has got to stop eventually, right?

I took an Ativan because I am starting to feel desperate over my situation. I know that if I page my pdoc, she might suggest the hospital and I don’t want to be in the hospital. I am not homicidal or suicidal. I just feel really agitated and I don’t think they hospitalize you for that. I am not psychotic, even though I have been talking to my voices more. But they are my normal voices, not different ones. I am also not delusional or paranoid. I just am irritable and agitated. The most the ER would do is give me drugs to calm me down. I have drugs at home I can take. I don’t need to be in the ER to take their drugs or waste time there. I might take a trilafon if the Ativan doesn’t work. Least I am cooped up in my room with the AC on. I also took my pain meds for my ankle to calm it down. I am just so annoyed that I am in pain. Maybe the pain is what is causing the anxiety to shoot up. Not like that hasn’t happened before. I am just so tired of feeling like I am going out of my mind. I actually would love to be depressed right now because it is what I know best. I am not used to feeling like I am really nervous and agitated and anxious all at once.

Hypos Return, Again

by Midnight Demon, posted in bipolar, Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Hypos return, Again

I thought after last night’s episode with depression, I was DONE with being hypo but as I was talking with my therapist today, it came back. I hadn’t yet taken my morning dose of my mood stabilizer so I took half of it while we were talking. I didn’t want to be sleepy the whole day so I just took half. It worked. I am calmer than I was even though my thoughts are still kind of racy.

I was going to write a paper on no-suicide contracts but while I was reading the paper, I remember writing about it. Sure enough, I did, two years ago. I sent it to my fellow psych people on Twitter and wow did my phone blow up with retweets and replies! Someone (not a psych person) read the paper and thought it was not worth reading. She only read the first paragraph and thought it was like “plaster on an old wound”. She then says how she “wasted her life being depressed”. Issues? I think so. No one chooses to be depressed and if they think this way, someone is telling them this. I have been depressed most of my life (minus these hypomanic episode the past three weeks). I started keeping track of them because I think it’s important as I might not remember I have been “happy” or “content” when I get back to my depressive state. But getting back to this woman, who I did not respond to, I just was taken aback. Did she think that I could just will myself happy? What does that mean and how do you do it? Is it a switch? I don’t think it is. I think she is just fooling herself. I have seen people pretend they are not depressed and it just makes them more miserable when their positivity ends and they are overwhelmed with depressive thoughts. I have a friend that is like that. To me that is just hurting yourself if you are not being true to yourself. I stopped caring what other people think about my depression. Either people are going to be supportive of it or they are not because they are ignorant. In their world, they like to think that depression doesn’t exist because they don’t want to catch it. I have a cousin that is like that. Drives me crazy. I love her to death but when we were talking about my book, it was like she wanted me to pull a switch and not think about suicide.

I asked my therapist if she forgot I code word when she was being frantic when I brought up being suicidal. She did. She is a ditz. So I had to explain to her that it was “baseball on her desk”. I couldn’t just say “baseball” because I talk about baseball for a good six months during the season and off-season. I am a baseball junkie. But there is a baseball on her desk that I think I gave her. I can’t remember how it got there now. I know that she had to get a replacement because the first one the ball melted after a little while. It was sad to see. I thought that would be her centering point. We haven’t tried it out because I haven’t been too suicidal and she has been more aware of her anxiety when I talk about being suicidal.

My pdoc got back to me about taking my PRN trilafon. I prefaced it with I know you don’t want me to be taking it but I need it. She writes back she doesn’t want me to take it every day, only when I need it. UM, isn’t that the whole idea behind PRN (take as needed)?? Or am I missing something? I want to write back to her but given my current agitation levels, I will let it go. Or try to. It really pissed me off.

I got such a headache for some reason. I am not tired, though I should be. I have been on the go, so to speak, since 0800. I am glad that I didn’t have to rewrite that paper. That would have really given me a headache. I took some Tylenol. I can’t take an NSAID because I am on an extended release one. And this one is not one to mess around with because it can cause gastric bleeding. I don’t want gastric bleeding. My mind is going to fast for the keyboard. I have been typing every word twice because of typos or misspellings of words. Ok, that was redundant, LOL. See I am not in my right mind right now. I have stopped listening to “just over” by Luke Bryan. I have been playing it all day because it is a good tune and it’s lyrics are stuck in my head. Another reason I need trilafon. It will break the cycle. I know people get songs stuck in their heads all the time, but with me, right now with this hypo business, it can lead to psychosis very quickly.

“Plaster in the wound”. Seriously, this person wanted to read my paper and then insulted it. I should be offended but I am too goofy to really care. I am just shaking my head because I know I wrote a good paper and if it wasn’t up to tuff with her, then so be it. Sometimes my writings are too powerful for laypeople to read. It can be technical or to emotional, depends on what I write. My blog covers a wide range of writings. It has been the place where I can publish my thoughts about scientific papers using MY experience as a reference sometimes and I know it is different for other people. My experience with something similar might not be the same as the next. I am not writing in a general way because there are no general ways. Everyone is their own expert in their illness and I respect that despite our same diagnoses. I really wish these hypos would go away, and soon. Not that I want to be depressed again, but I don’t want to run the risk of being in the hospital. I might crash tonight, again. There is no way of knowing where this is going or if I am cycling. I am kind of scared. It would be helpful to talk to another bipolar person who has experienced this. I am getting no help from my treaters. They have never seen me this way before for so long. They are worried, too. Though I can’t tell if my pdoc is. It’s hard to discern through an email in my current condition. I am too agitated to read the words, other than this is only for as needed. Like I am an idiot or something. UGH. Shaking my head again.

No Breeze Stirs this Cauldron

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychache

“What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the grey drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion”
― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

The crash has started. I am once again thinking of quote that I hold dear to me when I am in a despair like state. I just emailed my psychiatrist telling her I am in despair but I am not quite suicidal. I can’t sleep because of pain and the pain meds have not kicked in yet. But the pain I am feeling now, is a different type of pain. It is psychache and there are no pain pills for that ache. My heart feels like it has been broken into a thousand pieces. I feel like I am being suffocated by this weight on my chest. Like Styron says, “there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is natural the victim begins to think ceaseless of oblivion”. Except, I am not there yet. I am close to thinking of my oblivion but I think if I start thinking about it, I will act.

I started vacuuming my room a little bit at a time. I bought a hand held vacuum. I thought it was cordless but it is corded. No matter, it still does its job. Too bad it hurts me in the process. I can’t stand for too long before my hip goes out. It is this pain that I am feeling that the pain meds aren’t helping at the moment. They will soon, I hope. It is past midnight. I hate staying up this late because it can only lead to Hyde coming out when I am in this despair. I got to find my “Touched With Fire” book. It, I think, has the quote by Hugo Wolf about the heart being broken into a thousand pieces. I thought it was Byron but it’s not. I would like to have this quote on my quote page. I think it will be a nice addition.

I wasn’t expecting to crash this soon. I thought I would have a few days of “normal” before I headed to psychache land. I started writing in my journal. Five pages later, I got an idea for my next blog on “no-suicide” contracts. What got me thinking about this was that if I didn’t find the “Crisis Response Plan” how different my treatment would be with my therapist. No-harm or No suicide contract are stupid and have no validity. They are not even a legal contract in the eyes of the law (to the best of my knowledge) yet are used over and over again. Meds are kicking in so I can’t quite explain more as it is complicated.

I found the quote from Wolf, it is “I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk too before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if felt too. God knows how well within my skin yet the soul maintains it deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds”. That is how I feel right now. I feel like I am faking being happy yet I so am falling apart and no one can see it. I feel utterly alone.

Earlier tonight, I was feeling fine. I don’t know what caused the downfall to occur. I was just writing in my journal and thought about writing this no contract paper and then I suddenly felt really sad. I got a notepad that has another quote on it, “people do not die by suicide, they die by sadness”. Anonymous

I think that is true. I have real sadness. Dark sadness that won’t leave me. It is like black storm clouds following me. And it came on just with the snap of your fingers. I wish I could snap my fingers again and have them leave. I am hungry. Maybe this sadness is caused by low blood sugar. I only had one thing to eat today, a half of roast beef club sandwich. I couldn’t finish the rest of the sandwich. It was too filling. I should have saved it but it was soggy and I had soggy sandwiches. Now I am hungry and want something to eat. Maybe I will have a pop tart. I don’t know. It’s getting later and later. I really just want to sleep. The hell with eating.