Once upon a time

Time. They say it heals all wounds and they say it flies, yet wounds will continue to heal so very slowly as life flashes past with lightning speed. Another year has passed, yet another year that I thought I would never experience but I blinked and there it went. And I am still here.

I am still here to stare meaninglessly out my study window wondering what I would have missed if I had of successfully ended my life back in 2015. What would be different now, would my family still be living in our rusty old farm house overlooking a flooded dam surrounded by gum trees and squawking sulphur crested cockatoos? Or would my death have seen them move back into the city, closer to schools and support networks surrounded by busyness and distractions to keep them from wondering what could have been.

The reality of the last 18 months is nothing eventful has happened, no major events. Nothing much has happened that I would have missed out on if I was not here. I still haven’t been able to honestly utter the words “I am glad I am alive to see that”. There have been many things that were enjoyable, fun even but nothing I feel I couldn’t have lived without. 

My biggest accomplishment over that time has been writing my memoir, which will probably remain unpublished and yet gave me an inner strength I never knew I had. My story has been told, and if it is read one day that will be a bonus. 

Rain is trickling down my window and I glance at the photos I have pegged to string running the length of my tiny study wall. Photos of happy times, of weddings and Christmas’s and babies and pets. Pictures depicting fun and laughter, hope and promise – moments captured in time that remind me there are good days too.

Photos are so often dishonest portraits of a life lived, posed for and propped. After all we seldom photograph the bad times, who wants to re live the sorrow or the fear? These darker times are left to fade in our memories, some experiences fading faster than others.

I become very photo happy when I am manic, evidenced by my hard drives full of images of trees, rocks and tiny mushrooms. I try to endlessly capture the intense beauty seeping from the sheer complexity of everything around me in hope I will revisit these images with the same enthusiasm when the world around me once more fades to shades of grey.  

My children had their last day of school for the year today, they will return in February as grade 3, 6,8 and 9 students. They have grown so fast. I look up at my photo wall and I am drawn to an image of me aged 17 holding my newborn son, I look so young – I suppose I was. I had already experienced so much ‘growing up’ at that age that becoming a ‘teenage mother’ was just another inevitable step in my path of manic consequence. 

 I remember looking at him feeling this overwhelming sense of responsibility. I was responsible for the well-being of a real live all be it tiny human, it wasn’t a goldfish – there were serious consequences if I forgot to feed it or clean it or heaven forbid accidently kill it. This was real. Judgements flew around me, many from total strangers “babies having babies!” disgusted looks and shaking heads. 

Depression followed naturally, but it was no stranger to me so I got through it again, time passed, highs flew, lows lingered, marriage, babies, illness, experiences filtered through the in betweens, all these compartments bonding together and creating a wholeness, a story, my story.

Like it or not our stories are made up of time, how much ‘life’ we fit into the time we have, the manic desire for more and the depressives desire for less. 

But the hands of the clock will continue to move with every minute long after our time has passed, we can just hope that as those hands tick forward our stories will be told by others as memories and lessons, passed on through the generations of that fleeting moment we spent here, once upon a time.    

Up, Down or Sideways?

Heya everyone! *crickets* Ah 'everyone' who am I kidding, hi to both of you. I have been ultra-terrible at blogging lately – computer issues haven’t helped matters but it is working today *scrambles to touch anything wooden* so here I am.

 

I’m kinda depressed again but it’s different this time. I can’t explain it properly, there is an edginess to it even a thrill perhaps that isn’t quite the same as past mixed mania's but along those veins. My soul aches but my body tingles, I’m suicidal but I’m cleaning the house – and contrary to past experiences I am sleeping like a normal person for the first time in fuck knows how long. Not sure if I am up, down or sideways.

Physically something isn’t right with me, it seems that the left half of my body is trying to fall apart and I am having trouble deciding if this is actually some sort of psychosomatic thing or an actual physical one. They thought I had MS about 9yrs ago but all my bizarre symptoms of stiffness, numbness, weird skin sensations, cognitive stuff and so forth magically went away when I fell pregnant with my daughter. 

About three years ago I got up from my desk at work to go to the bathroom and my foot gave out, I had foot drop and of course freaked out that after 6 years symptom free maybe I did have MS after all. This resulted in a visit to a neurologist and MRI scans. Scans came back as ‘lesions inconsistent with MS’ (thank goodness) and I was diagnosed with ‘Lumbo sacral plexopathy’ as a cause for the foot drop which resolved itself over about 5/6 months and I have had no physical issues since.

 

Recently my left breast had doubled in size over the period of about two months, there has been a slowly expanding lumpiness for around 12 months but I was putting off going to the doctor in the secret hope that it was breast cancer and it would spread fast enough to be too late for intervention. 

 

I finally went to see my doctor due to the growth spurt after some prompting from my husband, we sat down and after she enquired extensively about my mental health, I then asked her about the boob she dismissed it completely – didn’t even look at it, just suggested I put some anti-inflammatory gel on it. 

I couldn’t decide how to feel about the dismissiveness, I was partially relieved that I had gotten off the hook by being a good girl and seeing the doctor as my husband had asked me to, now if it was cancer I had plausible deniability. I was also annoyed that I have fallen into that trap of ‘once a mental health patient, always a mental health patient’ and physical issues no longer seem to matter.

On the other hand, my breast was sore, uncomfortable and noticeably a good cup size different to the other one and I really did want to know what the hell was going on with it, even if that was going to end in a me refusing to have treatment anyway situation.

So I ended up booking an appointment with a different doctor at the same clinic, she took it very seriously and scheduled me for an ultrasound straight away. The ultrasound showed an area of inflammation but no discernible masses (despite the palpable one that is about 5cm diameter) so they gave me a mammogram, this also showed an area of inflammation but no discernible mass.

 As there is nothing specific on imaging to biopsy we are playing the ‘wait and see’ card and I will go back in 4 months for another mammogram and ultrasound unless it gets worse in the meantime. 

My left leg has also been really stiff and sore again too, it’s really bad when I wake up in the morning or after long periods of sitting in the car / couch etc. Exercising eases it. I am also having issues with weakness and numbness in my arms again, hanging out washing or drying my hair, hands on the steering wheel are all becoming increasingly difficult. Although this arm stuff started on the left its now bilateral.

I have seen a physio regarding the stiffness etc and she has given me some exercises to do, they don’t seem to be helping yet (4 sessions later) and its costing me $100 a pop, so I’m not sure if I will bother to keep going or not.

The only thing I have done differently in the last three months is come off my bipolar medication completely, I spoke with my psychiatrist about this but she didn’t think this would be related. I also asked her if it’s possible all of the neurological stuff could be psychosomatic or some sort of conversion disorder. She felt it was very unlikely but since it is mainly the left side of my body it wouldn’t hurt for me to exercise the possibly responsible right side of my brain, she suggested finding some sort of creative outlet.

Sadly, my creativity usually only visits when I am manic – I woke up one day about 10 years ago and decided I LOVED scrapbooking, IT WAS MY CALLING. So I joined up ‘Kazzazz’ as a consultant, spent nearly two thousand dollars on stamps, inks and papers, fancy pens, embellishments and cut outs and built a website for myself. That phase lasted approximately one month and I have 1 scrapbooking album with 3 ½ pages completed in it and 3 storage containers full of scrapbooking paraphernalia gathering dust to show for it.

Current creativity level is limited to taking 100’s of photographs I will never look at again (I went to a rose wholesaler with my garden club recently – Oh so many pretty roses, must capture them all! ) and writing short stories and songs in my head.

Wow, this got long fast – I’m rambling. Funny, yesterday it was my second sons 13^th birthday and I spent most of the day running around baking cakes, grocery shopping and at doctor and physio appointments making small talk with strangers all the while having to remind myself constantly as I drove past large trucks that it was his birthday and I absolutely was not allowed to kill myself that day no matter how deep the urge. Simultaneously exhausted and alert. 

 I even deactivated my personal facebook profile because the shallowness and bragginess of the world was pushing me off the edge. Some sort of mild hypomanic depression or ‘functionally depressed’ perhaps?

Yesterday was also the first time in over a year that I didn’t exercise for my full hour on the treadmill, I push myself through the physical pain in my leg every day but yesterday I only made it to 55min and I was so weak and dizzy that I couldn’t pull the final five as I would have literally collapsed. 

That failure hurt my soul, I NEED to do my full 60 minutes – I know it’s stupid and I know it’s the eating disorder talking but I have gained so much weight over the last few months that I have one pair of pants that fits me and I need to go and buy new clothes – that’s a task I am putting off as it makes me suicidal at the best of times. So many tears in the change rooms, I never wear make-up when I am clothes shopping. 

I am still feeling really weak physically and I haven’t been on the treadmill yet today as I am scared it will be a repeat of yesterday.

I will stop rambling now. I hope all of you out there in the blogaverse are doing well xxoo

Manic Plans

It’s funny the things that seem plausible when you are manic.

I found an old notebook from a manic episode a few years ago in which I had detailed how I would like to set up our farm as some sort of family wonderland for the children, to be completed by the end of 2017. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that we could achieve this, I mean we have the room on our property after all and we own a bob cat so we can do most of it ourselves! Money? Bah! Minor details…

I spent hours on houzz.com and pintrest for inspiration, just some of the things on my must haves list were as follows:

• A Tennis/ Badminton/ Basketball/ netball court all rolled into one
• Soccer / Rugby field combination
• Sandy Volley Ball Court
• Swimming Pool with sun deck, cabana and sauna  
• Fire pit with nice seating and an outdoor cinema screen
• Playground with tree house fort, sandpit, giant slide, swings, climbing frame with flying fox.
• Extensive raised vegetable gardens, berry garden, nut bushes, aquaponics set up, manicured espaliered orchard.
• My favourite... Paintball skirmish “Battlefield Course” complete with a map detailing the hide outs, trenches, old cars, 44 gallon drums, spot lights, tree houses and cargo net climbing frames positioned around the allotted 3 acres.

For the horses:

Image Stolen from HERE

• 6 bay Stables
• Jumps
•  *Dressage arena
•  Round yard 
•  **Sand arena

 *There are four horses on my property, they belong to a friend, I give them carrots occasionally and try to gingerly pat them on the nose whilst being silently terrified that “Jack” the narcissistic old gelding will bite or kick me at his first opportunity.

Proof of my amateur horse riding

Note: I have ridden an actual horse 3
times in my life and fallen off one of those times. In hindsight, despite me going out and spending $100 on a riding helmet I have never used, I don’t think that a dressage arena was a realistic plan.

**A dressage arena may actually be the same thing as a sand arena… I honestly don’t know. 

A “Games pavilion”:

Could anything be better than your own games pavilion?

An ultra large, fairy-light encrusted shed that would house full sized billiards table, full sized air hockey table, assorted pin ball machines, two lane bowling alley, lounge area with giant flat screen for gaming and cinema seating. A fully stocked bar area (we don't drink) and then sweeping its way around the outside of all of this there would be my very own miniature golf course.

My darling husband is a joiner so I felt sure he could create a super slick bowling alley floor, I was just a little stuck on working out the ball retrieval mechanism, Ebay would take care of bowling balls and bowling pins – I even wrote down that I wanted purple bowling shoes!

I researched how to create unique designs, level out a surface for optimal ball rolling and find the felt green stuff for the mini golf course and had put “100 golf balls” on the e-bay watch list. 

Image Stolen From Here

I had also looked into pricing for pin-ball machines (retrospectively surprisingly expensive) discussing them in detail and in person with a collector named John, whilst giving him the distinct impression I would soon be willingly parting with around $30k to purchase around 4 of these must have toys from him. Then one day I stopped answering his e-mails. Mania is fickle that way.

While I was planning all these grand designs I was also working a 50hour week, test driving fancy cars, gambling and sleeping about 4 hours a night (if that). There are 48 hours in a manic day.

So mania will lead us up the garden path with the fairies, leave us awake for days, weeks even months on end thinking about all the amazing wonderful things in life, seizing the day and making the impossible feel truly possible, planning, dreaming, creating in a world where EVERYTHING is plausible and the path to creating our ideals is crystal clear. 

Until we are finally brought back to reality by time, or medication and are facing the fallout of blindly chasing our dreams, lost friendships, lost relationships, financial debts and losses and the ultimate depression that follows. 

I am actually very grateful that I don’t have a lot of money or a credit card as $30,000 worth of pin ball machines, new cars, paintball guns and 100 golf balls would be a poor trade for my husband and family. However, if I had of been born a millionaire you have got to agree that I would have THE coolest house on earth!

Where does mania take you?

Of Two Minds

Thank the heavens I appear to have a functioning computer again!!
The last few weeks have been pretty hard from a mood perspective, absolutely nothing bad has happened of course, it is just that wonderful chemical imbalance in my brain gifting me a mini mania and then throwing me back into a familiar dark depression with that pesky lingering suicidal ideation thrown in for good measure. I have been spending as much time as possible in bed sleeping or binge watching movies recharging my batteries so that I can fake it in the real world.

 I have had technology issue after issue and not being able to write has been slowly killing me. So now that I have my computer back I sat down on You Tube today and watched the documentary "Of Two Minds" featured here:

I give it five stars, I laughed, cried and felt felt. It even gave me the energy to get up out of bed and clean the fish tank afterward - this is progress.

Love you all xxx