Tag: writing

Being Bipolar is Weird

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

Being Bipolar is Weird

I went to my father’s and did what I had to do. The bus was late, as usual, and then was speeding the way home. I hate it when bus drivers try and make up time by speeding and then having to slam on the brakes when they reach the bus stop. Drive me nuts and makes me really anxious. While at my father’s, my niece texted me. She wanted to know if I could drop off a box to the post office. I said I would. I wish she would have texted me earlier as I went by the post office on my way to the bus stop on my first leg of my journey. Oh well. I will be leaving soon. If I time it right, I will then pick up my niece rather than come back home and rest for a little bit. My house should have a revolving door for me today as I have been out and in for most of the day, which is unusual for me.

I should have asked my therapist for a session today. I just need someone to talk to as the anxiety that I am feeling is building and Tuesday feels like forever. I know she will probably just say take an Ativan, but I will be babysitting soon so I can’t. I already had to take a pain pill because my mother came home and I had to go up and down stairs to get them in the house. My ankle is not happy about it. Of course, I wasn’t expecting to stand at the bus stop either for more than twenty minutes. I guess I just missed the bus because I had to drop off something at my aunt’s. I hate that. It was hot while I was waiting so I was sweating by the time the bus came.

I don’t know why I feel anxious. I think I am just feeling bad about the whole friend situation and being blocked. I should have blocked her when I said goodbye to her and now I am kicking myself. It reminds me that I haven’t heard from another friend in about a week. We usually just shoot the shit with emails. I miss our conversations. I will try and email her later while babysitting. I also been having ups and downs. My mood has been all over the place and I have been having problems getting to sleep. Usually I am asleep by midnight or earlier, but lately it has been later than that. I just am too energized to sleep. If I am not tired and sleepy, it makes it hard to sleep. I don’t know if I am hypomanic. It’s hard to tell because it happens so infrequently. I have been feeling up but then after a few hours, I feel really down and out. It’s like the dementors have visited me and I will never know joy again. Then the upswing will hit me and I feel “high” for a few more hours. Being bipolar is so weird. There is always this spectrum of being up and down. It doesn’t fit neatly into a category or box. And I am mostly depressed so this up feeling is weird for me, which is probably why I have been writing more blog posts lately. When I am up, I feel like I can do anything because I have this energy that is incredible. Then I get down and life sucks again. The thing that worries me is that when this happens, I tend to have psychotic symptoms in between or before the downs. This usually means I have to take additional meds to treat it. I hate taking more meds than I have to. I am already on ten different meds, not all psych meds. Adding an extra pill just sucks. I realized when I was sixteen that I would need to be on medication for the rest of my life. I just wasn’t planning on gaining a ton of weight and needing more meds to counteract it (i.e., hypertension meds). And because I am inactive due to my disability, losing weight is more of a struggle. I wouldn’t mind being a pill to lose weight. That would be the most ideal for me but of course, the doc won’t prescribe it. It has to be diet control. I am not good at diet control. I like cheeseburgers, cookies, and other sweets. I eat these in moderation but sometimes I crave them and need them. It’s kind of bad that my mother will buy cookies, too. I am so bad with cookies. They are my Achilles heel.

I won’t be driving anytime soon. My sister bought a truck and I am not good with driving huge vehicles. My peripheral vision is not that great and only made worse. I know that if I practice, I will get better but I really don’t want to practice on a new vehicle. It will take me five years to get out of the driveway because I suck at backing up. It just isn’t practical for me to behind the wheel of a huge thing. I am so sad because this means I can’t visit my therapist anymore or take my father to his stupid doctor’s appointment. I will need to change him to another primary care doctor closer to where we live.

Random 322

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

Today’s plan is to go to my father’s and then leave as quickly as possible. I am hoping that he doesn’t need any refills on his medications as that will slow the leaving process. He does need to get more baby aspirin.

I texted my therapist today to remind her to check her mail as there are two letters from me. I sent them early this week and they should have arrived by now. I also sent her a pre-birthday message. I couldn’t help myself. I forgot to wish her a happy birthday yesterday while we were talking. If I did, I probably still will text her anyways. Hehehe. The stupid yapping dog is out on the porch. I hate yappy dogs.

I made coffee and had breakfast of potatoes and toast. It was all I was in the mood to make. I really wanted to make pancakes but that takes a lot of work. I might make them for lunch. I haven’t had pancakes in a long time. I make them from scratch. Maybe I will make oatmeal ones.

I haven’t heard from my friend, not that I am expecting it this early. This is the second person that blocked me on Facebook. I say good riddance. I don’t need her drama in my life anymore. I hope she stays gone. I still am upset about it because she needs help more than I do. Or I should say, that I am already seeking help and she is not. She has serious problems. I used to feel bad for her, now I could care less.

I haven’t written anything toward my book since Sunday night. I might write another bout of depression and what it feels like as I haven’t written about that in a while. I wish that stupid dog would shut the fuck up. Last night, there were airplanes going around my house so I couldn’t nap. Now there is a fucking dog that won’t shut up. He doesn’t sound happy that he is outside and is yapping to go inside. I hate the owners more than the dog. I miss living on a dead end street sometimes. It was nice and quite in my basement apartment. I didn’t hear anything. It was cool, dark, and perfectly quiet to snooze whenever. But I don’t live there anymore. Course, I was working all the time so that didn’t make time for snoozing. Since being on disability, I have had more naps during the day than at any other point in my adult life. I try not to snooze but sometimes I have to because I get up so early. I woke up a few times today before six. Going back to sleep is always the hardest.

I am hoping to take a writing class the end of the month. It all depends on my finances, and if there is still room to take a seat. There are 12 spots so I am hoping the class doesn’t get filled. It is a class on how to edit and then create more writing. It sounds perfect for me. I have an essay that I want to bring to work on. It is the blog on love/hate that I keep submitting to the New York Times. My pdoc says you have to try at least 300 times to get noticed. So I have been sending emails at least twice a week. I have the time to send it more times than that but I don’t want to end up getting blocked so I figure a few times a week is good and then I will up the anti.

“Haylor”

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

“Haylor”

I have been trying to write for most of the day but I have been coming up empty. It all started while reading my blogs a few weeks ago and came across a blog entry about a psychotic episode. It happened the beginning of November 2012. I don’t remember it at all but I wrote about it, briefly. Like a few sentences each blog entry. I even tried to see if I wrote about it in my journal and came up with the same thing, nothing. Voldemort was my “best friend” and all conversation ended there. So I have been trying to fill in the blanks but I am not a bullshit artist. I wrote a few sentences more to make the paper 300 words. That was all that this episode amounted to. I really would love to expand this but I have nothing to go on. I even tried writing to my therapist about my difficulties hoping it would spark something and I would get something on paper, but alas, nothing. I just wrote the difficulty of writing and that was all. What I did learn through looking at my old journal was what set off the psychosis, which is interesting. I apparently misplaced my 8GB thumb drive and it was causing me considerable panic. In normal people, they would have a panic attack and that would be it. Not me. I became psychotic and apparently it took the form of Voldemort’s tweets to set me off. I wasn’t taking my anti-psychotic medicine at the time so I was more vulnerable. Losing this thumb drive was my life. Every suicide research article I ever read was on this drive as well as my papers on the subject. It would have been a huge loss and I was just sick with worry. But I did find the stupid thing. It was hidden under some papers and my “life” was saved. I made a few copies of it just so in case I misplaced it again, I would have it.

I did considerable research into trying to find out what the episode was about and if I wrote more about it. I still came up empty. Apparently Voldemort wrote a thing about Taylor Swift, calling her Haylor as she was dating a Harry at the time of the tweet. I have no idea what the last name of the Harry was. I am sure a Google search will probably yield it but I really don’t care. I tried looking back to his tweets from 2012 but they just went as far back as Jan 2013 and stopped there. I was so close to getting what I needed. He was active on his account but slowly tampered off. No wonder I was becoming so paranoid and thinking he was “tweeting me personally”. He would tweet several times a day. And now it’s every few days. Reading over the tweets weren’t triggering for me because I had no recollection of the psychotic episode. The only proof that I have of its existence is my blog and what little I wrote in my journal, which was only three sentences. For the days that I was psychotic, I didn’t write or blog. I probably was too incapacitated. If the psychosis had commanding voices/tones, I probably was too paranoid to put pen to paper for fear of being persecuted. And the last thing you want to do is piss off is a dark wizard. He might have been make believe to everyone, but for a few days, he was real to me.

The reason I was interested in finding the tweet about Taylor was because he “made me” listen to her songs after the tweet. It usually doesn’t take much for me to listen to Taylor because she is my favorite artist, but the thought that someone on Twitter made me listen was curious. Apparently he had tweeted something from her video “Story of Us”. The only thing I remember was Snape telling the students to turn to page 394, like it did in the Harry Potter book. Whether that was where “Haylor” came from (Harry + Taylor=Haylor), I am at a loss. I couldn’t find the tweet and I didn’t write more about it, which further piques my curiosity about this episode. I had written that my therapist was concerned about my losing reality so this was serious. Of course, any time I become psychotic my therapist panics. I have no idea if my pdoc was concerned because I didn’t write about that. I didn’t go into the hospital so I am guessing the medication helped and I didn’t need further assistance. I think finding the drive relieved some of the anxiety to help the medication work. And once it did, the delusions, paranoia, and voices were gone. He also was “talking to me”, though it was all mumbled according to what I wrote it. Usually voices are mumbled but I can “sense” what they mean.

The reason this is all fascinating to me is because I am such a Harry Potter fan. I have read each book at least three times and am currently read each on another time. I have seen all the movies, which were a little disappointment as they cut things from the book or added things that didn’t occur in the book. I also follow the Dark Lord on Twitter as well as Snape. Snape’s account is wicked funny. But for whatever reason, didn’t have the same psychotic hold on me as the Dark Lord’s. I think because Voldemort’s tweets were really commanding tweets than funny in nature. I am sure the tweets were meant in jest, but for whatever reason, I took them seriously, at the time. There was also a tweet saying to rob houses of Twilight freaks that saw the movie when it came out back then. I had written that I wanted to steal my sister’s sweets and Halloween candy as I knew she would be at the movie. That is probably funny now but it wasn’t then. In seriousness, I was in deep turmoil of acting on a tweet because I was “commanded” to. It was troubling me. I honestly have no clue why I wasn’t in the hospital. All the previous times that I ever had commanding voices, I was inpatient. I must have seriously have had the confidence of my psychiatrist that I wasn’t a harm to myself or others. But then, it was just a few short days and like I said, medication helped tremendously that I have no recollection of these events as they played out. I usually do remember my delusions because they last so long or I am really convinced things are happening as my mind is playing them out. Maybe because I didn’t land in the hospital I don’t remember these delusions and commanding voices/tweets. I wrote that Voldemort was “personally talking to me”, which I can only mean that his tweets were personal. But that is probably because I had his tweets sent to my mobile phone so it acted as a text message to me. In my delusional mind, it was meant for me, and me only.

Sunday Blog 5

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

I woke up around 7 and my ankle/foot was still hurting me. I hate mornings when I wake up in pain because I never know how the day is going to progress. I took a couple of pain meds and tried to relax a little bit for them to work. When they didn’t knock me out, I decided to make coffee. I am hungry but I don’t know what to make. I know I want eggs, I just don’t know how I want them made. So many choices, scrambled, fried, sunny side up. I just don’t know. The coffee is ebbing away my hunger so I still have an hour or so to decide what I want to eat. That is if the pain meds don’t make me sleepy by then. I know I had coffee but that doesn’t mean I won’t go back to sleep.

I was supposed to go to my cousin’s house today as he is have a party. He has a nice house with a big yard and a pool. But I am not in the mood to be social today. I am kind of grumpy because I am in pain. And I am not sure being around my family is a good idea when I am in pain. It will be an all day affair and I don’t think I can handle it. Besides, pain meds and swimming don’t mix too well.

The game is a day game, again. It’s pretty weird that both games are day games for the weekend. I like it because my team does better during the day than night games for some reason. We have won three games in a row, so far. The final score for yesterday’s game was 11-7. A rookie hit his second homerun of the game. I am happy for him. He also scored 5 runs. The last Red Sox player to do that was in 2008 by Dustin Pedroia. Dustin is on the disabled list right now with a hamstring issue. I miss him playing. He is one of my favorite players. My not so favorite player is pitching today, Wade Miley. Like all starting pitchers this season, we don’t know how he is going to pitch until he starts. There has been no consistency among them. Clay Buccholz was the only pitcher that pitched with consistency, but he is on the DL with an elbow issue. I love Clay. He might not be the top pitchers in the league but he works hard, even when he stinks. There is just something about him that I like. I don’t know what that is.

I have started the third Harry Potter book yesterday while the game was being played. I was bored with the laptop so decided to read. The book is “Prisoner of Azkaban”. The thing that stinks about re-reading the book, is that you know what is going to happen next so there is no mystery. But I still get excited about the parts that are exciting. While I was reading “Chamber of Secrets”, I noticed that during the good parts I was skipping words to see what came next, even though I already knew. JK Rowling is just that good of a writer. Better than I will ever be.

Tomorrow, my glasses that I ordered are supposed to be delivered. The last message I got was that they were still in San Francisco, that is a long way from Boston. I hope they are close to being in Boston now. It is being sent through First Class mail so I am hoping they do arrive tomorrow. It will be great to see without having to rest my eyes because the single vision only does so much. These are my multifocal lenses and I know I will be able to read better with them. A friend of mine was telling me about an eyeglass place in Boston that sells them for $95, frames and all. I wish I heard about this place before I placed my order. I could have saved $130. I just hope these glasses fit okay. I have never bought glasses online before. I don’t know what to do if the frames need to be adjusted. Hope I can go to an eyeglass place and get them adjusted for nothing, even though I didn’t buy them at the place. It was a tough decision to buy online vs in store. But the cost of the lenses is what really made me go online.

It’s a little bit cooler today than it has been all week. I don’t know if my mother will be going to my cousin’s shindig or not. I am leaning towards not. Last night she made a huge bowl of mac and cheese. She said she would have it tomorrow so I am guessing that meant she wasn’t going to my cousin’s. So it will just be her and I at home today, again. I might go to Walgreens to get some snacks. My mother bought Chips Ahoy and Lorne Doone cookies and now I am craving them. I am a huge cookie monster. I can’t eat just one, especially the Lorne Doone cookies. Shortbread cookies are my favorite, next to chocolate chip. I was going to get the Mrs. Fields cookies but all they had was white chocolate. I am not a white chocolate fan.

I hope to do some writing today, but I am not going to force it. I have some ideas that I want to play with. I just hope it doesn’t trigger me into a psychosis while I am writing. That has been the main reason why I have been afraid to write this story that is in my head. I am afraid that if I write it, I will be persecuted for it or be watched by the FBI. I am still paranoid, a little bit and think that bad things will happen if I write it. But keeping it inside my head is hurting me. The voices have been kicking up again and I know it is a matter of time before my delusions start up again. I think if I write it out, I won’t be so delusional and might take the pressure off of me, somewhat.