On Forgetting To Remember

How do you know if you’ve forgotten something?

This is a great question posed by the wonderful podcaster Jamoalki over on the Depressed Not Dead blog  click here to read his post!

My memory is generally pretty awful, it can be handy as I am one of those people that can watch the same movie three times and still not remember that I have watched it and frustrating because I have a habit of forgetting appointments or double booking dates. “Thursday the 6th? That sounds great” No, it doesn’t sound great, it sounds familiar because I have already got three things lined up for that date but I won’t remember until the morning of when I will inevitably end up disappointing somebody!

I think I have blogged about memory issues before but I can’t remember if it was here or not (and also can’t be bothered checking right now!) In my non-professional medical opinion, depression itself is DEFINITELY a huge factor. Every single person I have ever met with depression has some sort of memory deficit as a bonus prize. Perhaps it’s to do with our pre occupation with the existing thoughts endlessly circling our brains that there is no room left for us to make any new memories  – I am certain there has been much research in this area and I think my psychiatrist explained it to me once but I don't recall what she said and if I try and research it now I will just get distracted by the internet and forget what I was doing here in the first place, so please feel free to google it!  

Medications can also cause memory problems, I find Lithium completely kills any ability I have to retain new information, even reading a fiction novel is useless because I can read through three chapters and suddenly realise I haven’t retained a single thing. I stopped using Lithium for this reason, I couldn't do my job anymore as it involved continuous learning and I just felt completely stupid all the time.

Hypomania seems to improve all aspects of my brain function, memory included – it’s like somebody has cleaned a window and everything suddenly makes perfect sense, I will even remember things long forgotten from childhood but as soon as it escalates to mania I don’t retain a thing and once back to my baseline or a depressive phase my memory becomes very fuzzy again. 

I somehow managed to write a memoir despite all this, but I think it was purely because I wrote it over a 6 week period while hypomanic and as I have kept journals and various blogs for so long I could refer to things I’d written long ago and the events and the emotions that went along with them came flooding back to me. I don't remember half of them off the top of my head right now, however  when I read back over my words its like "Oh that's right, that did happen!" 

What saddens me most is how much of my children’s lives I have forgotten, first words, birth weights, milestones in general. I came across some old video footage of when my youngest was about 1 & ½ she hadn’t been walking long, my three boys seemed so young, they were all singing and jumping around the living room like nutters having an absolute blast. It was beautiful to watch but sad at the same time because although I could hear my voice talking to them as I was recording the video, I have absolutely no recollection of that time in their lives and the footage didn’t jog my memory, it’s like it had all happened to someone else.

I know that I disassociate sometimes- all be it mildly, usually it’s as though I am watching myself from a distance but I will lose time occasionally, people tell me about phone conversations that I don’t recall. I wonder if this patchiness in my memory is also related to that feeling of being distanced from everything, time spent in mood episodes seems to be lost to the wind with just the writings from those events reminders that they ever happened at all.   

Watching my Dad being very much aware that his once infallible memory is slowly but unstoppably deteriorating saddens me deeply. I can relate to the pain of not remembering things that you know were once so important to you, words or names on the tip of your tongue but not quite within reach. The main reason I am so terrified at the thought of ever having ECT treatments that have been recommended to me in the past is the fear of losing even more of my memories, I would rather die knowing who I was than live a life I don’t remember.

So Jamoalki asked, how do you know if you’ve forgotten something?

Well I guess the answer is you don’t know, ignorance can be bliss sometimes or if its super important then someone will eventually let you know, the mechanic will call asking why you haven’t brought the car in yet (yesterday) or the school will ring you to come and pick up your children (ok, that’s only happened once…) 

Routine is essential for me, if my morning routine is thrown out my memory goes along with it, school notes don’t get signed, chickens don’t get fed, dishwashers don’t get turned on and my whole day is turned upside down! Post it notes on the steering wheel can be handy too – just watch the Aussie summer sun with those as the glue from the back will leave sticky residue all over it!

I find writing to do lists helpful, I put them on my phone so that I have them with me at all times great for stuff like ‘remember to bring in the washing before it freezes to the washing line’, ‘clean the guinea pig’ or ‘pay the electricity bill’. When I have a blog post idea I have to write it down (again on my phone) or it’s gone forever, then I can go back to them when I have time later. Sometimes I will find 4 or 5 long forgotten half started posts in my “notes”!

Do you have memory issues? If so, how do they affect you and what do you do to combat them?

HAPPY MAY!!

Happy first of May!! Today I finally have proper access to the internet again! 

After three long weeks of only a sporadic ability to tweet, I can once again feed my digital addiction. 

Life just keeps on giving me lemons, time to make Lemonade

My darling husband used up our data load limit in the first week of April (you tube has a lot to answer for!) and as we are rural and confined to satellite internet rules and regulations, we were unable to purchase anymore for the remainder of the month.

 

#CliveTheGuineaPig

Sadly, on our property we only get mobile phone service from half way up our driveway, so if I wanted to tweet or check emails I had to either trudge through the icy winds to the little mound where we seem to magically get 3 bars of reception or leave home entirely; and due to the school holidays, I didn’t get out much! 

Well, things have settled down here somewhat since I last posted nearly a month ago. My meds are working their magic and I have been brought down to a nice mildly hypomanic state rather than a rapidly losing control manic one.

Part of me is however waiting for the other shoe to drop, mania always eventually gives way to depression and for me, May is a month loaded with a history of depressive and suicidal episodes.    

I feel good right now and I really, really don’t want to fall back down that hole.

While I was away….

Easter came and went, my parents came up to visit and we had a huge fully cooked brunch and then did the annual “Easter Hunt Extravaganza” which is where I write a bunch of rhyming riddle clues and the kids go on a treasure hunt around the farm finding more clues until it leads them to the “Bounty” which is a giant Easter basket full of chocolate.

Mr 11, who is ever enterprising and not overly fond of chocolate, saved his stash and then slowly sold off parts of it to his siblings who had run out of their own by day two. Of course he saved approximately 50 mini eggs to take to school and sell on the playground at highly inflated prices, that kid is going places – hopefully jail isn’t one of them. 

My father in law was cutting something on the saw at work (he’s a joiner) and accidently cut the back part of his middle finger off! After waiting three days (!) for surgery, they stitched and skin grafted it and things looked great for about two weeks, unfortunately the skin graft didn’t take and things got infected, now he is playing the waiting game with daily dressing changes for another week to see if they can possibly operate again and save the top of the finger!

As if to compete with my father in law, my mother in law had a routine mammogram, they found an 'anomaly' and this led to urgent ultrasounds, core biopsies and fine needle lymph node biopsies and three excruciating days waiting to find out the test results. 

#CliveTheGuineaPig and I

I went with her to the results appointment and we were relieved to find out that what she had was actually a benign condition called a “radial scar” – they look like cancers on mammograms and apparently cancers can loiter around their edges. The lymph nodes were also given the all clear and were most likely just a little bit swollen due to a mild unrelated infection. 

There are five new fighting fish in my life, their names are Giovanni, De Vinci, Vivaldi, Monet and Picasso. These were rejects from the pet shop – ones that had come in with issues and were unsellable (clamped fins, fin rot or generally unhappy). They have been being treated according to their symptoms and are all doing really well. Except perhaps Monet, he has a habit of lying under his plastic plant playing dead, but when you poke him he quickly jumps up and acts lively for about 5 minutes before “resting” again.

"Picasso"

I survived the school holidays without becoming depressed or blowing our life savings on manic whims. Our life savings are looking fairly ordinary at the moment, so my money spending was confined to lists of ‘things to buy soon’ – of which there are many.

"DeVinci"

After that one little slip up during my “Crazy Week” I have not yet gambled again! Although I obviously am un able to take children into gaming lounges so the holidays and being relatively broke probably helped with that more than my will power actually has.

"Giovanni"

I caught up with one of my best friends from high school, she lives in New Zealand now and came home for the Easter break to visit. I love catching up with her, even though we only see each other every few years we can launch straight into deep and meaningful conversations within minutes and it's like we were never apart.

"Vivaldi"

Unfortunately, I also fell of the self-harm wagon, it had been a really long time too. This was before my meds had kicked in properly, I was very manic and Bel (the name I give the part of me that fuels my eating disorder) was in my ear frequently and loudly with regards to preserving my recent weight loss and harsh judgements from the fear of re gaining it. 

One night at about three in the morning I ended up eating a stack of left over Easter chocolate then overwhelmed by what I had done and overcome by Bel’s fury I turned to old habits. Self-harm for me tends to be punishment rather than release. I was doubly punished though because the chocolate I gorged wasn’t gluten free and so as well as fresh scars, I also ended up with a killer migraine and on the toilet for half the next day.

"Monet"

 I took Mr 14 into the city with five of his friends so they could see a movie and look around the shops. Luckily I was still pretty manic so we had the music pumping the whole way there, that was a LOUD car ride! While I was waiting for them I met up with my parents for lunch and then went for a walk around the lake near the shopping centre. The lighting was AMAZING and I took a stack of photos.

So that’s some of what has been happening at my place, I kept writing for sanity even though I couldn’t publish anything, I wrote a couple of half posts I need to tweak, a ton of poetry and some random rap lyrics – I will probably share these at some point in the near future (maybe not the rap song…) Oh and I was even witness to a *murder!

*Of Crows

I hope all you guys are all doing well, now that the kids are back at school and I am back online I will endeavour to find some time to catch up on blog posts and pod casts! 

Peace, Kate xoxo

The day to end the week to end the life?

Happy Wold Bipolar Day! 

I had actually decided to kill myself today (or tomorrow depending on which continent you are on). Not because it was ‘world bipolar day’, (which it isn’t anymore here in Australia but is where most of my readers are reading this from thanks to weird internet induced time travel rules) no, that was simply an ironic coincidence that I didn’t even know about that until Tuesday evening. But because back in early December when my body was giving up on me again, I was starting to feel the icy whisper of Bel’s voice in my ear once more and the withering tentacles of depression clawing at my soul, so I made a deal with the devil. 

“Let me have my trip to Melbourne with my best friend, let me have Christmas with my family, let me ring in the new year, climb up Mt Kosciusko and wish my mother a happy 70^th birthday, let me be free of this metaphorical cage and then, then you can have me.”

I picked the date, the 31^st of March 2017 as the day I would take my life. Just long enough past Mum’s birthday and just long enough before my niece’s not to be forever associated with them.

Once the date was picked my mood 180’d and happiness verging on hypomania ensued. I had a ball crossing off bucket list items in Melbourne where for the first time in 15years I ate ‘real’ food and ‘real’ cakes like it was a normal thing for me, without fear or guilt even though I didn’t run for 5 days. I was not compelled to exercise incessantly or burn myself nor was I subjected to the expected constant verbal abuse by a now seemingly silenced Bel. 

It’s funny, I haven’t seen that friend and only spoken to her on the phone twice since we got back, whereas once upon a time we spoke on the phone daily for hours. But even though it would be nice to catch up with her, if the last memories we have together were of an amazing adventure, then somehow that just feels right. 

I returned from Melbourne about $1500 poorer and fairly hypomanic, as evidenced by a folder in my computer full of poetry, rap songs and well over 1000 photographs. I had a few ‘off weeks’ here or there with many hours through the middle of the night spent deep in reflection; December seems to do that to a lot of us.

Christmas time was spent with family, his and mine. My 32^nd birthday came and went, I’m not good at birthdays I still struggle with the various parts of my mind asking why I’m not dead yet and how can I possibly be 32 when I am still living in my high school mindset and don’t recall anything since my 16^th birthday. 

A burst of “New Year New Me” hypomania followed and the world was my oyster. I photographed, wrote, drove to the beach and climbed Mt Kosciusko, I was binge eating again but my exercise plan was equalling it out in my mind. Then I hurt my ankle and freaked out momentarily about not being able to run/ shed calories. The freak out was more about the fear of the dreaded and currently subdued Bel returning to eat my head because of her obsessions and fears, than the actual fears and obsessions themselves. Strangely the feeling of impending doom passed and I coped. True to her promise Bel remained in her box.  

The kids returned to school after the summer break and my boss at the pet shop announced to me that they would spend one last ditch effort trying to sell the shop and then they would be closing down at the end of March. The end of an era, I had spent the best part of 17years as their employee. It was sad but as I remembered my pact with the devil, the timing was rather convenient.

As the weeks went by I was still hypomanic, I drove too fast and blew hundreds of dollars on expensive headphones and assorted crap. Good things were followed by bad, then good again. My daughter turned 8, Dad got diagnosed with Dementia and I spent my mother’s 70^th birthday celebrating with her. The shop didn’t sell and the closing date was official, but I ran faster and further than I had ever run before; running from my shadow.

I had intermittently wondered about my decision to kill myself. It wasn’t really practical anymore – I had blown most of the money I was planning to use to fund my suicide on manic shopping sprees, Mum was going to need me to help with Dad now, besides I was having a lot of fun generally and I didn’t particularly want to die. I started to wonder if on the 31^st of March Bel would just suddenly possess me and drive us into a truck or if perhaps I would just die from something completely random like a falling tree. 

So here I am, sitting at home on my computer on ‘D’ day letting antipsychotics flow back into my blood stream, It’s been a crazy up/down week of life lessons for each part of me which I have explained in the previous posts that I have posted before this one, separating them because it was all far too long winded for one post, like over 4000 words kind of long winded. 

If you really have nothing better to do or you are killing A LOT of time, then by all means continue starting from Monday through to Thursday. I have posted kind of backwards so they appear "how you would normally read a book" for better context.

I guess right now I don’t know what the rest of this day will bring, I am currently a little bit of each part of me, mostly Suzi I think but Bel is still nowhere to be seen. I’m supposed to have my final Pet Shop shift ever tomorrow which couldn’t possibly be worse than Wednesday’s effort and as much as I hate goodbyes and dying today could get me out of one, it’s about time that I actually finished something that I started. 

Just as I ended that sentence, the phone rang. It was the best friend I went to Melbourne with. We spoke for an hour and a half about all the important things in life. I told her how much she meant to me and that I didn’t need to talk to her all the time to know how blessed I was to have her in my life. I also told her that I looked forward to seeing her again soon. 

So Bel, if you are out there, don’t make a liar out of me, I’m ready for a fight. Bring it on, Bitch.