Today I stepped over a line I assumed I'd never have to cross: I started taking an antipsychotic drug. I took the first dose an hour ago.
You live with a mental illness, you draw a line in the dirt: On this side of the line, you can survive. You can fake your way through normal. On that side, you can't.
Now I'm on that side. This side has become that side.
Lately I got so cranked I practically begged my psychiatrist today for something to bring me back down. Back down. Who'd have thought? I've been manic before. Out of control. Occasionally believed I existed in a shiny and beautiful parallel universe right next door to the one I was raised in. But I always came back down after a couple days, three or four at most. This time it's gone on and on and on and on. Not the parallel universe thing, but the spinning spinning spinning in my mind. Not sleeping. Incapable of slowing down. Of being still. Traffic and desk work are a special kind of hell. I lay down and try to sleep and my head pours out beautiful, complicated art projects, more brilliant than anything I've ever conceived, and then the ideas are smashed against the rocks to make way for the next wave. The colors are loud. The shapes of sounds are crisp and fill my brainpan right up. The fan on my laptop, an endless band of gray stretching from left to right, thicker on the bottom third and thin and whitish at the top, with three solid lines running through.
Fun at first. Beautiful. Then, not. Lurid.
It's hard to think after the crashes of the past few years that I'd want to take a drug that would bring me back down. It feels like a mistake. I fought so hard and so pointlessly for so long to get out of down. I have to keep reminding myself I'm aiming for normal. It still bashes my little tweety bird against the cage bars to think that I have a disease I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. Let alone that it's gotten to the point of unsurvivability without a drug regimen.
Anyway. We'll see how it goes. My hope: this will swat my mental state like a fly, knock me out of the sky and back onto the picnic basket. I'll shake it off. Get off the drug. Get on with my life.
Until the next time.When there will, hopefully, be a quick fix, something that won't involve lengthy carnival rides on antipsychotics.
Shit. I am not psychotic.
You live with a mental illness, you draw a line in the dirt: On this side of the line, you can survive. You can fake your way through normal. On that side, you can't.
Now I'm on that side. This side has become that side.
Lately I got so cranked I practically begged my psychiatrist today for something to bring me back down. Back down. Who'd have thought? I've been manic before. Out of control. Occasionally believed I existed in a shiny and beautiful parallel universe right next door to the one I was raised in. But I always came back down after a couple days, three or four at most. This time it's gone on and on and on and on. Not the parallel universe thing, but the spinning spinning spinning in my mind. Not sleeping. Incapable of slowing down. Of being still. Traffic and desk work are a special kind of hell. I lay down and try to sleep and my head pours out beautiful, complicated art projects, more brilliant than anything I've ever conceived, and then the ideas are smashed against the rocks to make way for the next wave. The colors are loud. The shapes of sounds are crisp and fill my brainpan right up. The fan on my laptop, an endless band of gray stretching from left to right, thicker on the bottom third and thin and whitish at the top, with three solid lines running through.
Fun at first. Beautiful. Then, not. Lurid.
It's hard to think after the crashes of the past few years that I'd want to take a drug that would bring me back down. It feels like a mistake. I fought so hard and so pointlessly for so long to get out of down. I have to keep reminding myself I'm aiming for normal. It still bashes my little tweety bird against the cage bars to think that I have a disease I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. Let alone that it's gotten to the point of unsurvivability without a drug regimen.
Anyway. We'll see how it goes. My hope: this will swat my mental state like a fly, knock me out of the sky and back onto the picnic basket. I'll shake it off. Get off the drug. Get on with my life.
Until the next time.When there will, hopefully, be a quick fix, something that won't involve lengthy carnival rides on antipsychotics.
Shit. I am not psychotic.
It's possible that you are a younger version of me. I stuck you in my google reader so that I'll actually remember to read you when I am feeling um, less focused, shall we say. Which made me look at your first post, which made me remember seeing this when I was pulling the other one up for you earlier.
ReplyDeleteSound familiar?
http://www.masterofirony.blogspot.com/2007/12/whatever-works.html
I will say that accepting that was one of the hardest parts of this, but that it made my life much easier. Right now I've gained a lot of weight in the last year between meds, hormone issues, not feeling like moving, and eating crap instead of my usual healthy diet. It's hard to microwave yourself to healthy and I'm not safe to use a stove. So, tons of weight that I've worked hard to lose is back and the only other to options that I don't think will be used unless it's a last resort both cause immense weight gain. I so wish I could be one of the people who can say "no, I don't want that, I don't want to gain weight" or even better "Well, *I* exercise and I don't need medication." I might be taking walks but I hurt my foot so I'm not really able for a few days. But I bet it won't make the fat layer go away....that's going mean dieting. Bleck.