Hypomania: A day in the life

Only two hours of slumber and yet the light shines brighter today, the colours more vibrant, the world clear as though a fog has lifted and the windows of my soul polished clean, shiny and new. In the background the music plays, the rhythm picks up and my mind dances in time to the beat. 

I venture out of the house into the sunshine awakened with possibilities, after depositing the offspring at the school bus

I find myself flying down the road, sunroof open, music up; tied down only by my bank balance and the vague recollection of responsibilities.

Stopping at the petrol station I buy a large can of Red Bull and pop a couple of Sudafed and some codeine tablets because I am already flying high and I want to fly higher or at least not come down any time soon. Today the world is mine.

Suddenly it occurs to me that I still haven’t gotten my semi colon tattoo. Immediately pulling off to the side of the road I call the tattoo parlour but they have no appointments left today. Damn. I will have to call back. Catching my reflection in the rear view mirror as I place the call I can’t help but wonder what I would look like with black hair instead of blonde, yes jet black with royal blue tips, foils or wedges. A change is as good as a holiday.

Words spill from my mouth, laughter, joyousness as light gleams from my blue eyes. Confidence at an all-time high, the trolley collection man outside the grocery store directly passes me a shopping trolley and in a thick African accent says “You have such a lovely face”, he stumbles his words and grins sheepishly and I thank him, smiling at the compliment without even turning it around in my mind to mean the million negative stories it usually would.

My trolley is now full, over flowing in fact, full of food, of this and of that. Everything in the shop is necessary or could definitely be useful one day and those specials are too good to pass up. 

The shopping centre is next to the airport and as I pack the groceries into my car I debate flying somewhere on a whim. How fun would it be to simply catch the next flight going to anywhere? I decide that I'd better not, the ice cream would melt.

I detour past work on the way home to say hi and accidently spend an hour chatting and $100 on fish and aquarium plants while my frozen goods quietly melt in the boot of my car. I will just slip them into my fish tank, hubby will never notice! 

I drive the 100km back to my little farm house, singing “I’m an Albatraoz” and “Titanium” at the top of my lungs with the windows down getting frustrated that there are cars on the road that want to drive at the speed limit. 100km per hour feels ridiculously slow today.

Arriving home, I dance around the house unpacking the shopping, introducing my fish, scrolling through twitter, googling images of black and blue hair and emailing letters to friends I haven’t spoken to in ages telling them how special they are to me. 

Mum rings and tells me how happy and chatty I sound and how glad she is I stopped taking “that horrible medication” as it made me so dull. Secretly fearing that I probably need to start taking it again I tell her in no uncertain terms that yes, Lithium is indeed evil and then launch into a paranoid spiel about drug side effects and make her promise that if the hospital ever commits me again and tries to give me ECT that she is to hire a lawyer and prevent it at all costs or kidnap me. 

She agrees wholeheartedly. 

I make cupcakes while on the phone and nearly forget to pick up the children from the school bus. I have an in depth conversation with the bus driver about caring for the elderly before he finally says “I really should get these other kids home” and quickly drives away. 

My 7yr old then has a temper tantrum because Mr11 ‘bagsed the front seat’ and she stands there screaming for 15minutes while I piss myself laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, we finally get home and walk into a house that smells like burning cupcakes. Shit the oven!!

Hubby gets home and asks what I did today so I tell him a watered down version he and proceeds to raise an eyebrow suspiciously and check the bank balance when I tell him I went shopping and got a couple of ‘extras’.

Serving up an oh so healthy meal of hot dogs and chips for the family, I make a gluten free tomato and spinach leaf sandwich for myself jumping up from the table every five minutes to check on the new fish who appeared to be fighting thus accidently giving away to hubby that I bought new fish. 

To calm down I try to go for a run, simultaneously singing Bob Dylan songs and checking twitter but my ankle hurts and it’s too hard to sing while puffing, besides pressing buttons on an iPhone screen while running with sweaty hands is impossible so I slow down to a walk and half listen to a podcast/ half daydream for an hour instead.

I go to bed, watch a movie and have the best sex of my life. Still can’t sleep so I spend several hours on my phone engaged in a bad pun war on Facebook and writing rap song lyrics. Eventually I put dance music on in my headphones and actually fall asleep.  

How was your day?

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

Sing for Me

There are 1000 thoughts rushing through my head like a freight train, my jaw hurts from clenching it too tight, my skin is alive and fizzing like a firecracker about to go off. I can’t quite decide what to hear, what will make it slow down, stop the pins and needles on my face from driving me into oblivion. My eyes burn with unanswered tiredness, change the music, change the mood. 

None of this is real anyway so just let it go, release me into slumber...

What have I done? This blank minded sheep I am, where will I go with this heart in my hand? Nothing is real, I’m dreaming again, this world is but a figment of an imaginary land. 

Dance with me in the moonlight, dance beneath the stars. A billion lights keep shining, like fireflies in jars. Write for me a Ballard, write for me a song, sing for me in the moment, let the lyrics linger on.