Trademark...

Since it is really my trademark to write about coffee in all of my posts, I'll mention it first and get that out of the way. It always makes for a good beginning and sets the tone for the rest of the post. It gets me in the right mood, sort to say. 

So let me tell you that I'm drinking my third cup of coffee and that I'm doing that instead of taking a nap which I was in danger of needing after the domestic help left. I get so bored of sitting around doing nothing but petting the dog when she is here that it makes me feel sleepy and long for my bed. 

I never feel that I can do anything important while the domestic help is here because I would only get in the way of her so I make myself as unobtrusive as possible. I sit in one spot as much as possible until I have to move out of the way when she vacuums and mops the floors.

I don't feel that I can quite relax because I do feel that I have to keep an eye on her as she moves through the apartment and cleans it. Now that she's five months pregnant she's getting a little too relaxed and isn't cleaning as well as she did before. She's done in one hour and she should work for two. She's cleaning the French way. 

She wants to keep working until she's eight months pregnant but I wonder how she'll be able to. I'm sure she doesn't want to lose her job and benefits and I'm not going to complain about her, but I do want to know what has been cleaned and what hasn't. I have to let the other domestic help know. It is a bit of a problem. 

I'm seeing my therapist on Thursday to discuss the fact that I'm unhappy with her. I let my psychiatrist know that in an email today. I feel that I have to speak up for myself, but that it's not a popular thing to do. I have to tell myself that it's normal to make demands and claim what you are rightfully entitled to, but I feel some trepidation. 

I do know what I want. I am in charge of my life and the things and events in it and I would like to be in some sort of control of them. I don't like for other people to come around and mess them up. I would like for things to run as smoothly as I can make them. I do wish for some amount of peace and quiet as I strive hard enough for that. 

Ciao,
Irene

It's the coffee...

You see, it's the coffee that's keeping me going now. I had that decaf, but it didn't do me any good. I just mentally collapse and find that I'm on the verge of the throwing in the towel. I just want to give up and more than anything throw all my medication down the toilet for all the good it does me. I know I can't do that because of the withdrawal symptoms, but I wish I was a year along and off a lot of these things I'm taking now. I've never been as depressed and anxious and stressed and unstable as when I've been on the medication.

Anyway, I make myself a cup of coffee and drink it and I'm okay again. I'm not collapsing any more, but I can't stop and think about my situation too much, because if I do, I become very disheartened and disgusted and I want to run away from it and wish myself into another life. I am most unhappy and I don't care who knows it and everybody can have their opinion about it and their suggestions about how to make it better, but I tell you, I have to get off those drugs that are screwing up my mind.

I'm always having to artificially pep myself up to make it through the day because of all the sleep inducing medication I take, and I take a lot, even though I want to take a little. I had just reduced my anti-psychotics and my tranquilizers when my psychiatrist increased them again when I started on the Welbutrin and stopped taking my other antidepressants. I'm sure that this was well intended and done as a precaution against the problems I would have with withdrawals, but I think it wasn't necessary, really, and now I have to reduce those medications again. I can't do anything on my own without his express approval, so my hands are tied.

For as well as I was doing for the first 2 weeks on Welbutrin, I am doing badly now, but I will also blame it on withdrawal of one antidepressant that I completely went off immediately without any back up. It's gone completely out of my body now and no doubt it is having its effect. If I don't feel a marked improvement on the Welbutrin in a little over 2 weeks time, I'm going to stop taking it and not use another antidepressant, but just depend on my mood stabilizer. Then I can start reducing the anti-psychotics, which is a medication I really want to stop taking, having never been psychotic.

You realize, of course, that I'm using this blog to organize my thoughts. As I write these things down, they become more clear to me and my course of action becomes more obvious. I'm not really writing this down to get answers to questions from you, though input is always welcome. I guess I'm trying to make clear to you how I live in the artificial world of pharmaceutical products and how that influences my mind and my body and how really unhealthy that is. When my second psychiatrist had to hand me over to my third psychiatrist, he worried a great deal about how he was going to explain my list of medications to him. You know something was rotten in Denmark.

So, I'm having my second cup of coffee now. If that's what it takes to keep me going, then so be it. It's really an hour earlier than it says on the clock and I will pretend I live on the Mediterranean and have a nightlife. I started out this post with a feeling of despair, but it has settled down now to a feeling of control. I see what I need to do and the road that I need to take to get there. That does not mean that I will not sit here the next time without feelings of despair again. My moods are as unpredictable as the March weather here.

For those of you who think I like changes very much because I changed my blog template, I have to tell you that it s very double. I get very excited because it is something new and I look forward to how everything will look and which template I will end up with, but at the same time I also don't like changes very much and am most at ease with the familiar, so doing this is a daring step for me. It's a challenge and I have to get used to it myself and I feel very insecure about it. I would have liked to stay the toad forever, but now I'm a watercolor. I'm trying it on for size. Maybe it will be scary and I will flee back toward toadness.

I have a feeling that I'm not going to stay up that late, in spite of the coffee. It will be good to get a decent night's sleep or as long as I manage it. I have to pick up pieces of cardboard in the morning and go to the tobacconist.

Thank you for letting me bounce my thoughts off you. It's been very helpful.

I wish you all a good night.

Ciao,
Nora