Lost

There's a Firefly quote that's coming to mind today:

Inara: (to Simon) You're lost in the woods - we all are, even the captain. The difference is he likes it that way.
Mal: No, the difference is the woods are the only place I can see a clear path.

I feel like I'm lost in the woods these days, like I can't see my clear path. I stumble around my days, the apartment, looking for things to do, but unable to focus enough to do them. Jb's on my case again about not doing anything around the apartment other than cooking, bills, and groceries. These days, that's a lot to me. It's difficult enough for me to sit down and write up a list of groceries for 13-14 days worth of meals, but now that our budget's so tight, I have to add in the math, the coupon/circular, the adjusted cost, how many meals I can stretch one pound of meat. I know useless things, like eggs cost $2, milk $3.50, butter $4.50, cheese $5, unless you find a 2 for $6 sale. Sales on meat are deceiving, and unless you get there early, they're gone. It takes me all day to create a list.

I'm also lost as to what to do with myself. I once saw a clear path: Master's in Writing, writer. Then that diverged and I threw a possible PhD in Rhetoric in there, afraid I couldn't write. Then even that branched off to library work, my job at the library downtown, thoughts about a Master's in Library Science. But every time I saw a clear path, it split on me, until I had no path, only the woods closing in around me, and the knowledge that I was scared and unhappy. Now, I've lost everything: all direction, any clear path. And shouldn't that be freeing? But now I'm pigeonholed: "unstable," "bipolar," "irrational," "emotional," "depressed," "anxious," "unemployed." It's a loss of control and power, and I'm floundering. I can't see the tress for the forest.

I re-read those first two paragraphs, and they don't even make sense to me. Everything is disjointed. I'm starting to sleep more, later. Napping. I am swinging back down into a depression. In one of McMann's web pages he talks about going into the doctor to talk about his moderate depression, or his major depression, or the minor depression on top of his major depression, as if depression were a house of blocks that could be built. It's like a Dave Carter song:

One fine morning when my ship comes in
Gonna pack my fortune, take it home again
Stack my sorrows like stones until
I've built me a mansion on a high, high hill.

Depression is so full of metaphor. And sometimes I wonder if that isn't why while depressed and even manic, I've read that so many of us turn to music, poems, lyrics, like magpies, constantly murmuring others words in our heads, over and over, as if they could speak for us when we can't even speak for ourselves. It's like the butterfly in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn:

You know better than to expect a butterfly to know your name. All they know are songs and poetry, and anything else they hear. They mean well, but they can't seem to keep things straight. And why should they? They die so soon.

And this is where it begins to get tragic for me. This whole post--useless. Rambling. Incoherent. I can't remember my point, I can't remember my metaphors, all I hear in my head are lyrics, poignant quotes, and all I feel is this upwelling need for meaning, somewhere, somehow. Sometimes I think the only thing that mattered to me was the stint I spent teaching. Peter S. Beagle again:

Only reason I've lasted this long is I had this stupid job teaching beautiful, useless stuff to idiots.

And what writer would depend on every other writer to supply her own words? But I can't use them now, and I fumble. Everything is subject-verb-object with a conjunction thrown into the mix, usually the same conjunctions. So I might as well end this with one last quote from The Little Hours by Dorothy Parker:

I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.

And that's my mind these days. That's me.

2:06 p.m. Huh

I feel . . . befuddled today. Slightly off. Not necessarily depressed, but not necessarily well. I feel confused, and a bit sharp, with some back and forth between the two. My focus still wanders, and the four walls close in when you're not working, and I haven't been terribly useful, but I did quite a bit of reading today, which means my mood is shifting. I'm starting to wonder if I didn't go into the hospital manic instead of depressed. Because I don't remember being depressed. I do, however, remember being suicidal, and my research has told me that suicide is more likely when a patient is in a manic state. I know I'd had a shuttery, jittery, can't sit still, hyperventilating sort of breakdown the morning I was hospitalized. Once I knew I was leaving my job and that it was unlikely I'd be back soon, I packed up all my things and ran. I couldn't wait for Jb to come get me. I had to get out. I had to get away. I went to wait at Starbucks to be picked up, and I could barely keep everything in. In the hospital, I was irritated, angry, antsy, often walking the halls, going from room to room, unable to sit through a whole group therapy session. But . . . I don't know. Every emotion is put into question now, and I don't know how I truly feel at any given time. Maybe that's why I feel so befuddled. Are mentally ill patients emotionally stunted? Unable to know how they're feeling because they have no sense of what a "normal" baseline feels like?

Slippery Slope

I'm heading for a depression. I can feel it coming on. I've lost interest in most everything again: reading, computer games, movies, sex, going places, doing things. I am angry at myself about this, so I'm cranky all the time and restless. Sometimes, instead, I'm listless and passive. The IBS and GERDs is acting up as well. I'm beginning to stress about things like Jb coming home at night. While other things, I don't care about at all: like whether the bills get paid, whether we have money or not, whether we have food or not. When Jb tries to ask me about these things, I get annoyed, short with him. He is constantly yelling at me for snapping at him. My temper and patience are nonexistent. I resent Jb's intrusion into my "world." More and more, he says things to me like, "You know, maybe you should try living here in reality, like everybody else."

This morning, on waking, I remember having a very vivid dream about living in a city with Hitler and being somehow close to him. Because he's a despot and mercurial of mood, everyone is always on eggshells around him, not wanting to curry his disfavor. I am someone he favors, and even I am very careful about what I do and say. It is stressful, this living on the edge, never knowing whether he'll be kind or cruel. And he can be very kind, as well as very cruel. There is a small resistance in the town. They know each other by the books they read. But those loyal to Hitler know them by the books they read as well. I try to sneak past a Hitler supporter with one of these books tucked among many. I make it, barely, out to a terraced park full of students and wildflowers, and there are two women who oversee the whole body of supporters. L-----, from the psych ward, is there in my dream. She screams out at a line of nuns who walk past the park; she was always screaming out about freedom and being closed in.

The dream is telling. I am having a hard time dealing with being home all day, then having Jb come home and disrupt my little world. It's like Jayne says in Firefly, "[He] damages my calm." It also sends me back to my childhood--when I lived in fear of my mother's moods, never knowing what they might be from minute to minute. I have to admit to myself that I've felt this way for the last year or so. Even when Jb was picking me up from work, the last hour of work, before I knew he was coming, I'd start to get sick to my stomach, I'd taste cigarettes in my mouth, and my IBS would suddenly flare up, so that I missed almost a half hour of work at the end of the day, every day. I think, perhaps, this is an inability to deal with change on a small, localized scale. And like in my dream, I used to escape into books. But since the hospitalization, I've had trouble concentrating enough to read them, except in small snippets.

Jb also gets on my ass--understandably so--about not having started to unpack. I took a week off because I needed it after the move, but I've no energy for it. It's been up near the 100s this week, so I tell myself it's because it's been so hot and I've been trying to keep the A/C off during the day. But the truth is that I simply don't have the motivation to do it. And Jb's losing patience with me. We had another fight last night. He told me that I've ruined every night so far in the new apartment, that I no longer participate in our relationship. And I'm left hurt and shamed and guilty and small--and angry at him for making me face the truth. I wish, sometimes, I could not listen. That I could wrap the bubble of my quiet day alone around me.

I cannot blame Jb, though. He is working hard, for both of us. He has every right to resent what he must see as my laziness. And it's like work all over again. How many times can you say, "I don't feel well," before they begin to look at you askance, like you're lying, or making it up. Depression isn't an excuse, but it comes across as one. Unless you've been there, deep and alone, you cannot ever truly understand what it feels like. Mild depression is not the same as major depression. Trying to follow each mood swing is exhausting. Depression is depleting. You are told, expected, to be this or that, but you can't be. Part of you no longer even cares that you can't be. Another part of you is angry and bitter, guilt-ridden and ashamed. And still, even though you want to meet someone's expectations, you can't. The will to try sputters and flags like a flame about to go out, and you're left feeling helpless, and you know it's all you're fault. You are the one who is broken. You are the one who is wrong.

9:59 a.m. How Do I Feel Today?

It's one of those "activities" they make you do in therapy and at the hospital. In the hospital, you rated yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. In therapy, I had a sheet of faces with the names of different emotions beneath them. Often, there wasn't an emotion that ever fit how I felt, or I couldn't quite name how I felt. On a 1 to 10 scale? About a 3 today. I'm feeling numb. I don't care about much. There will be no shower today. I will put my hair up in a makeshift bun with a hairband. I will not unpack--something I haven't really done since we moved in. I will not play on the computer. I will not read a book. If I do either, it will be for 10 minutes, maybe less. I may turn on the tv, but I will not watch it. If Jb comes home and asks anything of me, I will be upset and put out. I'm supposed to make a grocery list today. I will wait until the last minute to do it. When we go to the store, I will shuffle around from aisle to aisle without really seeing anything. I will not want to be there. I do not care about eating, though I will when I'm hungry later. I ate half of one of Jb's Nutty Bars because I couldn't be bothered to make anything more complicated. Jb will probably be upset that I did. I don't much care. He will take that as me not caring about him, or his feelings, but it's simply apathy. He can be mad at me if he wants to--he often is these days--and I don't care. I do not want to write. That is how I feel today.

7:15 a.m. Triggers

One of the things I've begun to worry about is the possibility of a downward trend. The more I've gone over my past in my mind, trying to find the truth of my diagnosis, the more I've seen trends. Example? I get the Runaways in spring and fall. And my triggers tend to be major life events: going to college, switching my major, leaving college, getting married, moving, new jobs, buying a house, leaving graduate school, moving out of state, separating from my ex, beginning a new life with a new boyfriend, my father's illness, death, loss of a job.

Jb and I move in one week. Moving is always stressful for me, especially now when my motivation is low, and it seems a monumental task to get all of our junk into boxes and out of here. I'm worried it'll trigger something, send me up into a hypomania, where I couldn't be more thrilled with our new place, everything is wonderful, everything is fabulous! Or it could send me down into depression, where everything is new, everything needs to be learned over. There's no nearby store I can walk to, all the bus routes are different, a less than easy commute to the metro, everything is strange, and there I'll sit, without a job, without t.v. or internet for days because Comcast screwed up, surrounded by boxes I've no idea what to do with.

I think I'll be thrilled at first, a new start, a fresh apartment: hardware floors, white light coming from three windows, a bright new world. And no one loves a fresh start like me. I feel the need for them periodically, a sudden irrepressible urge to pack it all up, throw it all in, and start over, as if I could outrun my problems, my moods, my responsibility. Build a new life, rebuild myself, find my better self, one who doesn't screw up, one who doesn't mess things up. A better relationship, a better me, a better, brighter look on life. Like Annie Gallup says, "Anything Is Possible (Reprise):"

It was a phone booth in the middle of the Midwest
It was raining like the devil. I was depressed
I watched a pickup truck slowly float by with its hazards blinking
Windshield wipers slapping, I said, "I keep thinking
If I can hold it all together just one day maybe two
It'll all make sense and I'll believe it's really true
I wish I could take comfort in steady slow improving
But I'm scared most of the time. I don't feel safe
Unless I'm moving"
Ooh, yeah, anything is possible

Too much of that rings home: "I keep thinking: if I could hold it all together, just one day, maybe two. It'll all make sense, and I'll believe it's really true. I wish I could take comfort in this steady slow improving, but I'm scared most of the time. I don't feel safe, unless I'm moving." That's the depression, the Runaways, and my frustration with the long haul of recovery and meds. It's all there in one verse. And I don't know why, suddenly, my head is full of verses and lyrics, poems and lines. I've read in a couple of blogs that bipolar patients seems caught up in music, poems, latching onto lines the way they latch onto sanity, repeating things over and over in their mind. When I began this blog, all I could think about was Dorothy Parker's poem, "The Veteran:" "Inertia rides and riddles me," repeating that one line over and over. Inertia rides and riddles me, inertia rides and riddles me, inertia rides and riddles me. There's something compulsive in that, and something delusional in the way I put so much emotional investment into lyrics and lines, as if they could speak for me when I'm too befuddled to find the words myself.

12:20 p.m. Breakfast

I dutifully make my breakfast -- a little bread, butter, and brie -- and eat it. I'm not really hungry, though. I'm also not sure what to do today. There are things to do around the house, but I don't want to do the things I should do, I want to do fun things, and maybe I should call the therapy places, and I should call my primary care physician (PCP) about that blood work. Then there's the gas and electric and cable to move over to the new place, and someone has to call that in. And there are bills to pay, so maybe I should do that, but I can't find the letter about my premium charges for my insurance. And I think I could be very productive today -- if only I could focus.

Doctor!

So, um, it was good: I took a list. Kinda scattered, very talky. She made me eat a piece of candy 'cause I hadn't really eaten all day. She says I should get blood work to make sure it's manic and not diabetes, but I told her I'd had all that blood work 3 months ago, but she said do it anyway.

Med changes. Yes. Of course, always tweaking. Twice the Lamictal I was on. Half the Remeron. She didn't believe me that Remeron made me crave sugar. She thinks I'm making that up, I can tell. That's what the blood work is for. She thinks I could be diabetic. But I was shaky, so she made me eat candy out of her drawer, which was sorta disgusting. It was all dusty with that powder they put on hard candy in tins, and I didn't want it, but she made me.

Forgot to take the Klonopin. Adderall now a definite probably no. Caffeine probably didn't help.

She said I'm supposed to eat three times a day, protein to stabilize my moods. I can't afford to eat three times a day. Jb jokes we'll get me protein bars, which is better than the other joke he could have made. Jb also called me "crazy" in the car. Very clearly manic. Or hypo, really. Up up. To-may-to tah-ma-to. We went to Subway after (Jb picked me up because I couldn't wait for the bus; it was too slow), and that was a great joke. Whitebread! Very funny. Can't explain more, but it's giggly good.

I need to write down my prescriptions, but not now, I can't focus, and I doubt I could read her writing. They use those squiggly things to signify how many and how many times a day. Feh.

12:17 p.m. Missed Appt. & List of Symptoms

Dammit, I've forgotten my psych appointment. I had to call them to find out because I couldn't find my appointment card among the trash, the bills, the folders of county info and medical info.

The receptionist sounds vaguely amused when she tells me I missed it; it was earlier today. I'm vaguely annoyed and feel as if she's patpat'd me via phone. They have a cancellation for later today, though, so I'll be going at 5:15 p.m. I call Jb to tell him this, to tell him I might not be home by the time he is, so, "Don't worry! Just at the psych's!" He suggests that maybe we should start writing down my appointments, like on a whiteboard that we post on the bathroom door, a cheap one with cheap markers -- since that's really all we can afford. I feel like a child now, who's been talked to like a child, and shamed into looking at her feet as she digs a toe into the ground.

Feeling child-like, and pissed at myself for what I see as continued incompetence, I tell myself I will look at my blog. I will write down the points I would like to discuss with my psych. Better yet, I'll write them down now! Here is what I will tell my psych:

• I'm am so forgetful I forget appointments and lock myself out of my apartment regularly.
• I would lick sugar off the floor if it spilled. I think this is a Remeron side effect.
• I sleep until 10 p.m., then again at 2 p.m., then again at 11 p.m.
• Sometimes, I cannot sleep because I talk to myself all night long.
• When I am not asleep, I run a constant dialogue with myself in my head.
• I obsess over lyrics, poems, my diagnosis.
• Everything seems dirty to me. I can't touch or eat off certain things until they're clean.
• I screen my calls and avoid people.
• I still don't shower for days. My personal hygiene is definitely lacking.
• I'm writing some, but it's all crap, and I've only begun to read very little bits.
• My dreams are especially vivid, but often forgotten, except in the morning.
• I am feeling somewhat better. The peaks and valleys are less extreme, but the rotation seems quicker, and it's exhausting trying to keep up.
• I saw something the other day that probably wasn't there.
  

This is what I would ask my psych:

• Is Lamictal really supposed to be used as a mood stabilizer?I read that a study from the APA said that it didn't work any better as a mood stabilizer than placebos did.
• Is there something we can try besides Remeron? Something weight neutral that doesn't make me feel like a junky without the benefit of a high?
• Am I really bipolar? Because I'm not sure I am. Shouldn't I be cycling less if I am? And if I'm not, what the hell is this? Because I'd feel so much better if I could label it. If I could hold it in my hands and work around a definition.
• And what about work? It's been 3 months. But I still feel too unstable, like if I tried to find another job now, it'd be a month, maybe more, before I'd be hey-ho! for the hospital again. Should I go for disability and will you support me?
  

I think that's all. I know I have forgotten something. I'm always forgetting something. I just worry it's not a big something. I'd rather it be a small something, like how I've forgotten which bus to take to the hospital to see my psych doctor, though I rode that bus everyday for nearly two weeks. And why is it that I can't get my mind to stop, and yet, I can't get it to function either?

Oh! I did forget. I will take a list of my meds! A list. Not my white bag. The white bag will stay home. I will take white paper instead. Because white paper is more normal. (Only the labels for my posts -- "dosage" -- reminded me that, yes, I'm going to the psych doctor to check the dosage of my meds. How clever. After all, that's what psych doctors are for, yes.)

11:26 a.m. There and Back Again

I'm back in bed by 8:30 a.m. -- just as Jb's getting up. I stay in bed until 10:30 a.m. My dreams are vivid, some sexual, though I don't remember any of them. I heard the phone ring at one point, but decided, as I usually do these days, to ignore it.

Once I'm up, I'm... up. I still have energy. I still feel good. I'm ready to take on the day. I hop right into the kitchen to make Pillsbury Sausage and Cheese Crescent Squares for breakfast. Another surprise for Jb. They take preparation -- love -- to make and bake.

I want to play WoW today too, which I haven't really wanted to do in ages, though I have -- for Jb's sake. But it was always a task, something I was doing as a means to an end: to make Jb happy. Now, I actually want to. The way I want to read. Knit. Write.

My focus still isn't what it might be. I want to do everything at the same time, or 2 or 3 things, at the very least, and so sometimes I alt-tab between 3 different wants, not really focusing on any one thing, but spreading my focus, and thus, my productivity, thin.

Note to self: I am still unable to reach for some words. "Productivity" eluded me.