Blue Monday...

It was Blue Monday day before yesterday, but I didn't know that until after I had my own version of it. I have a tendency not to believe in those kinds of things if I know about them beforehand, but this time I didn't. 

It's supposed to be the worst day of the year for whatever reason I don't know. The logic of it escapes me. I can testify to the fact that it is true because I had my own horrible day. After having felt good for months, and especially good the last few weeks, I tumbled down into the pit of despair and wanted to be dead. 

Now luckily, this feeling didn't last longer than the Blue Monday was long and I did crawl out of that pit again and by the nighttime I was on my way back up. I didn't end up in a long lasting depression which very easily could have been the case too. Somehow my optimism came shining through and I could not stay long in that misreable place. 

I was bound to stumble and fall after having been in a elevated mood for so long. I could not keep up the pace. Throw in a couple of minor complications and I ran out of steam. Suddenly everything became too much for me and I couldn't see the forest for the trees anymore. I felt completely lost and lonely. It was all in a reaction to what had come before. 

At my lowest point, I wished myself dead, but I soon got over that and started thinking of reasons to live. I didn't reach for extra pills to make myself feel better. That notion didn't even enter my head. I did have a talk with my Higher Being and decided to not to try to force the issue but to leave it up to fate. Then I took a nap because sleep solves a lot.

The next day I was at ease with myself and peaceful again. I was ready to climb back into the saddle with a more realistic point of view. I'm not ready to go on an adventurous rde, I will just move along at a steady pace. Easy does it. I won't go battling windmills. 

Now I'm sitting here with a glass of cold milk enjoying the solitude of the night. I just let the dog out back and outside it's freezing. There's a star filled sky. 

I try to be efficient and self reliable. It's what got me here. 

Ciao,

Nora

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

Midnight...

What better time to sit down and write a post than at midnight when everybody else has gone to bed and the neighborhood is silent and the world around me seems to be at peace? That is, my own little piece of the world. I'm well aware of the fact that the world at large is not at peace at all, but I don't want to depress myself by thinking about how much of this is actually true, so I'll skip over that whole discussion and stick to my own little corner of it. I feel quite helpless at the moment to do anything about the world's larger problems and conflicts. Well, I usually do. I find recycling hard enough to do.

I napped a lot today. This was to offset yesterday when I didn't nap as much and was busy doing chores and other important things. It was also to make up for that half a night of sleep I missed. I napped in the morning, the afternoon and the evening on the sofa with the TV on for company. I'm quite good at sleeping with the TV on and incorporate the sound into my dreams. Of course, it's not normal the amount of sleeping I do during the day. I seem to exist in a constant state of sleepiness, but I blame that on the medications and you all know my decision about those.

It seems to me that sometimes I am more than frank in my posts and afterwards it bothers me to no end that I was. I think there is such a thing as sharing too much of yourself and maybe sometimes I cross the line. I seem to get into a delirium and unload whatever is on my mind, however intimate my thoughts are. I don't delete these posts afterwards, because by then I have usually already received comments on them and it seems cowardly to pretend that I haven't written them. That's the danger of blogging like you write a diary. You put your thoughts out there and hope for the best, but I have yet to receive a nasty remark and I owe that to the kindness of my readers.

My own discomfort, though, does want me to moderate my words, but I know in the end that I will share my life with you again when I feel the need to unload, because I find that writing about it here is after all the best therapy. It helps me put my thoughts in order and get my priorities straight.

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In the meantime it is morning, because I had to go to sleep after I wrote all of the above. I'm having my first cup of coffee and it tastes mighty fine. Definitely worthy of a repeat.

I seem to be filled with some amount of quiet despair and I have to try and find out where it comes from. I think it has to do with me going to quit my medications and the daunting task that is going to be, because I'm not at all naive enough to think it's going to be easy. I suppose what bothers me is that I have not had a chance to discuss this with my SPN and my psychiatrist and I won't be able to properly until March the 11th when I have an appointment with both of them together. I see my SPN before that, but only for a half hour appointment and I won't have much time to explain my point of view to her. That's always very frustrating.

I'm just thinking that I can send her an email explaining my take on things now, so that she will be prepared when she sees me on Tuesday. That may be a good idea, but even that fills me with a certain amount of dread, because how do you get such an idea across and sound sane and reasonable at the same time?

I've decided not to take the paracetamol with codeine anymore lest I get hooked on that. I was allowed to take it 4 times a day and was obediently popping those pills, but this morning I didn't take one. I will only take one if it is absolutely necessary and I don't think that it is right now. I won't take them just because I'm allowed to. I can just see me developing a problem with those pills. I did take all of my other medications and won't start reducing anything until I have properly discussed it with my psychiatrist. It's tempting to start now, but I won't do it.

I can breathe through my nose again and my throat is hardly sore. I'm really not coughing anymore, just occasionally, so I think I am much better. That antibiotic is working. As far as I'm concerned, I declare myself healed, though I will finish the antibiotic, of course.

Okay, I'm going to write that email now. I hope you all have a great day.

Ciao,
Nora