Finally

Finally… for two reasons.  Number 1:  I’ve finally managed to post something more than three sentences long.  Number 2:  I’ve finally managed a change in meds.

 Well since I’ve pretty much left Canterbury for the time being, what with uni being finished and therefore not having anywhere to live at the moment, I thought it would be a good idea to squeeze in one last appointment with the psychiatrist and have one more bash at getting my meds changed.  This time around I whipped up a quick graph showing my mood swings for the last month and how they have been largely unaffected by the seroquel.  The meds made a difference, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that the benefits did not outweigh the side effects.  Not even slightly.  So anyway, I hand over this mood chart, the psychiatrist finally agrees with me and asks what I want, to which I answer that I would like something weight neutral (after my 2 stone weight gain on seroquel) and something that didn’t make me too sleepy, so now I have abilify.  She tried to convince me that I’d been on this before, but after much checking through papers and such, she realised that I was right.  Psychiatrists eh.  Having read around the internet a bit, it seems as though not everyone is finding this drug weight neutral, but I guess everyone will have different reactions.  A suspicion occurs however, if some people gain weight and others lose weight, maybe in psychiatry land this equates to weight neutral, what with -1 +1 = 0.  That would be very typical of my experience with these people at least.  I’ve been on abilify for three days now and have had the same side effects I get with every new drug, namely headaches, nausea and dizziness.  I thought that was all I was getting but then remembered that my sleep patterns have been terrible since I started.  I’ve been finally falling asleep around 3am then waking up every hour or so before finally waking up properly at around 7am, so I think I might have a touch of insomnia, but fingers crossed it’ll go away nice and quickly.  I need my sleep.  I’m also feeling a little restless and fidgety, but not so much that I can’t cope with it.

I’m back in Eastbourne now, as I said, and so far it’s ok but I want out as soon as possible.  It’s a matter of time before I feel to stifled, too nagged, so I have to find a job that’ll pay enough for me to move out but doesn’t require a good degree.  Remember I screwed up my exams?  Hopefully I still be able to get the 40% from the resits and pass the damn thing.  A fifth year at uni is just not an option financially, emotionally and practically.  I still have a couple of essays to do, but frankly I lack the concentration span.  I suppose I should tie myself to the chair, disable the internet and just write.  I’ll still find something to distract myself with though.  Wish me luck.

In the News…

Not that I ever tried to cover who I am, or needed to… what do we think of this?

Personally I feel bloggers should be allowed privacy if they’ve sought it.  One of the many joys of the internet is some level anonymity.

Ah Shit.

I just completely screwed up my exam.  I couldn’t write, I couldn’t concentrate, I could see invigilators occasionally and briefly turning into clowns.

Today went like this:

11a m:  I wake up, have a shower, see a pixie, get dressed, go to turn my speakers off and discover they were off already, wonder where the music was coming from and realise it’s in my head.

12.30 pm:  I leave the house, a car turns into a yellow submarine and back and go to uni for my exam.

1 pm – 3.30 pm:  I sit in the exam distracted by the sporadic conversion of people into clowns, suffer from disappearing paragraph syndrome and watch the Shadow People parade silently around the circumference of the hall.

3.30 pm:  I practically run home.  Down a quiet alley way I am suddenly accosted by vampires with more teeth than can feasibly fit into their mouths.  Then they disappear and I calm myself down.

4 pm:  Bought some milk.

4.15pm – Now:  I hide.

New and Interesting Forms of Self Harm

Last night I sewed a button on to my arm.  It seemed like a good idea, and perhaps in a way it was.  Every time it gets caught on something it hurts, so maximum punishment for minimum damage.  It has left me feeling a little bemused though, sometimes even I don’t know what’s going on in my head.  I’ll have to cut it off soon, before someone sees it.  Cuts are one thing, but sewing on a button…  I feel weird.

Feeds I Subscribed to Today.

Just a quickie:

XKCD
PBF Comics
Indexed

Come On Infinity

The Monster

This fucking illness.  It’s not an illness, I am not unwell.  It’s not a cold, it’s not flu, it’s not something I’ll recover from and then get on with my life.  Maybe I’ll recover enough to function, but the Me that existed before all this will be gone; changed and warped by this seemingly everlasting series of events.  I don’t even know when”before all this” was.  I’ve always had the inclination.  But as I said, this is not an illness for me.  Nothing is wrong with me, I am just wrong.  I am a fuck up.  I shouldn’t exist.  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.

There has been another voice in my head of late; a girl eternally screaming somewhere far off.  Sometimes the wind carries her voice close to me, other times she is almost indistinguishable from the sensory input in the realm of the human skin.  She doesn’t bother the monster; the monster just laughs softly, perhaps revelling in the knowledge that the monster is the cause of her anguish.  What’s left of Me ignores all the to the best of her ability, trying at least to appear normal, trying to suppress the seething monster under her skin, hoping and praying that this drug will work soon, that they’ll put the monster, the rabid animal, to sleep soon, that they’ll calm the distant screamer, that they’ll bring her soul back, whilst all the time knowing that a year of this drug has done none of these things and knowing that she is expecting far too much of her dopamine receptors.  But still she takes the drug, she sleeps, she eats, she talks.

And slowly she, the monster and I become one.

Psychiatrist Number Nine

A couple of weeks ago I finally had my first appointment since January, this time in Canterbury with a whole new psychiatrist, as is possibly suggested by the title.  This time around they seem a little more organised.  They booted me straight over to the mood clinic so now I have a CPN and a psychiatrist.  I’ve seen this CPN, we’ll call her Nicole, twice now I’m seeing psychiatrist number nine, we’ll call her Dr Nine, for the second time in a couple of weeks.  Never mind that both times I’ve gone in and told them I’m going to hang myself, I’m just impressed that I’ve seen the same person more than once.  I guess the fact that I didn’t do it the first time meant I wouldn’t do it the second.  I phoned up the out of hours number that night because I couldn’t sleep and therefore couldn’t retreat into my normal anti-suicide haven.  They told me to drink some warm milk and listen to some soothing music… which I’d already tried out of sheer desperation and hadn’t worked.  They didn’t seem to grasp the fact that I just could not sleep!!  Never mind, I got through that night and had cheered up by the afternoon.  Joys of rapid cycling.  So anyway, the second visit to Nicole the CPN and the first visit to Dr Nine was in fact one of those long interview we’re-going-to-sort-out-your-diagnosis sessions, rather than the eagerly anticipated ok-you’re-alive-see-you-in-three-months type of session, the practicalities of which meant I was ever so slightly late meeting up with people but you won’t catch me complaining about a psychiatrist actually caring for once.  This is apparently another psychiatrist who wants to slap me with the bipolar and borderline personality disorder label.  What’s the issue here you may ask?  Well…

“Are you in a relationship?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a stable one?  How long have you been together?”

“Yes, coming up for five years.”

“How about your relationships with other people, are they stable?”

“Yup.”

…  Some time later…

“Ok so on review of your diagnosis I feel that we should add emotional unstable personality disorder… blah blah blah”

Can anyone else spot the flaw here?  I’m the first to admit I have traits; I self harm from time to time, I can be impulsive and I get a little depressed from time to time.  But I specifically said that I do have stable relationships, I do not feel like I’m about to be abandoned by everyone, I only get empty occasionally when low and I only get paranoid when I’ve been manic too long.  I’ll admit I have a shaky sense of self image from time to time, but only when I’m feeling mental and I’ve got too engrossed in a film or something, then I just get a bit confused about which one I am.  It goes away though, as soon as I’ve forgotten about the film.  I realise I’m just listing symptoms here and it’s probably nothing like that at all in reality, same as bipolar is nothing like its list of symptoms.  Next appointment I’m taking the boyfriend to tell them that we’re happy and stable and such and therefore they can remove the unnecessary label.

More Mystic than Mystic Meg

“Have some more citalopram, see you next week.”

Bureaucratic Progress

Last night was a battle.  That one cut slowly turned into seven, which I realise might be nothing for some people but is a hell of a lot for me.  Normally I stick to one or two cuts.  I couldn’t sleep and I really didn’t want to be awake.  Or alive for that matter.  I have handed over all my meds to my boyfriend, but not the scalpel blade and not the rope.  Just in case.  I also phoned Laurel House six times in an attempt to get hold of the CPN I now miraculously have.  I eventually managed to find out I have an appointment for next Tuesday when I will rather inconveniently be going back to the parents for a week or so.  Obviously trying to reschedule that is a virtually impossible task that I’m still attempting to do.  I also said I wasn’t intending to be on that planet by next Tuesday.  So she booked me an appointment with a psychiatrist tomorrow.  Not one I’ve met before so we’ll just have to see what number eight is like.  Now it’s come to it, now that I’m actually asking for help for once I don’t know what I want to say.  I’ll tell them I’m feeling reckless, impulsive, stupid and crappy.  And I have what I need to kill myself several times over.  I think I’ve said before, there are six ways to kill myself in my bedroom (five now the pills have gone), a further three in the rest of the house and then three more within walking distance.  They will say do you need to be hospitalised and I, forever in the spirit of self-sabotage, will say no and wangle my way out of that office, maybe with a slight increase in the citalopram.  Eight psychiatrists.  That’s bad.

Anyway, I feel shit so I’m going to try to sleep.  Assuming I make it through tomorrow alive I’ll post an update.  If I don’t, don’t worry, I’ve probably just forgotten.