The Winds Of Change

I reckon I could fit 4 kids in that!

I had been becoming quite hypomanic over the last week, I have been driving too fast without realising it and going distances over 100km away with the music up and the windows down just for coffee, had the odd psychotic symptom. I randomly started writing a novel, bought three new pairs of shoes I didn't need including one for my daughter that was two sizes too big (they were on sale, she'll grow into them!) I've been visiting car yards and really having to work hard to stop myself from gambling.

But things are changing again, I am faced with that uneasy anxiety in the pit of my stomach that hits when things are creeping to places beyond my control. I got some news yesterday that flipped my already racing mind into serious self reflection mode, I knew this news was coming eventually but it still knocked me for a six.

 

To be honest everything I have done in adulthood seems to have been a shallow repeat of everything I had already done since I first became unwell as a young teenager and I wonder sometimes if this is like some sort of subconscious regression? You know how people say that reincarnation is a way of learning life lessons and that we will repeat ‘themes’ in each of our lives until that lesson is understood?

It feels kind of like that, but all in the one physical life; divided perhaps, by babies, suicide attempts and breakdowns. It seems at times like this as if the world has gone on without me and I am just an observer, trying to grasp the meaning of the lesson from different view points. There are days when I genuinely wonder if I am even really here or will I be like Bruce Willis’s character in The Sixth Sense, finding out I have actually been dead the whole time after all and just haven’t realised it.

My health has always been cyclical, the Mania’s and Depressions, the eating disorder I thought I had beaten as a teenager came back when I was 27, that weird neurological condition with symptoms similar to MS comes and goes every so often, but even friendships with the same people cycle in and out, I’ve moved house 6 times and lived next door to three different women named Jo who breed dogs and three different hair dressers, even bizarre things like having my own three dogs one after the other (different breeds from different places) ending up with the same rare genetic disease. WTF!? 

A big part of my life that has come and gone has been my job at the pet store. I first started there in the year 2000, left periodically to have babies but always returned part time. It is the best job in the world, I loved the people I worked with, the customers and of course the animals. 

I did try other jobs in between but I would eventually end up back there as well doing weekends. The day I officially left for a proper full time “adult” job was heartbreaking but I knew I always had a place there, which was proven to me when leaving that “adult” job after my major breakdown my amazing boss (who is like a second mother) called me and asked me to come back to work as a casual.

Now the winds of change are blowing again, after 17years in my life and after more than 35 years in theirs, yesterday my bosses have announced that they are retiring and will be closing down the family run store in April. I am happy for them, this is the right step for their declining health but I am also devastated that I have to say goodbye to the Pet Shop I love so much, closing this chapter of my life forever is downright scary.

Somehow it feels like I am losing my last shred of independence, it was the one thing I had left of my very own life, the thing I found myself without help, the thing that supported me between moving out of my parent’s home and getting together with my husband. I did everything so young that every other aspect of my life has been shared or handed to me. Now I have nothing left to call my own and I am once again left wondering exactly how I define who I am.

I had been fairly well for quite a while and now this nervous hypomanic energy is threatening to turn around on me I have realised that my support network has been slowly dissolving. My best friend is moving away; her house up for auction this weekend. I no longer have a psychologist to talk to, I am annoyed with my GP and now that people around me have finally stopped being nervous around me I don't feel like I have anyone other than you guys in Internet Land to vent my frustrations at (sorry!).

Thank God for modern technology, I know I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the support I have had online over the years. I'm just worried that my mood is fluctuating - I get a lot of mixed episodes and I don't want whatever 'this' is, getting out of hand. My concentration span is shot. I have gotten up from the computer about 20 times writing this because I keep remembering things I am supposed to be doing and I don't even know if it makes any sense. I am due to see my Psychiatrist at the end of March, but right now that feels like a long way away. I really don't want to need meds again.