From Up to Down in 10m Flat

Jb and I go out driving, one of the things we do almost every weekend since we've so little money. Usually, it's just what I need: time out of the house, good tunes, time with Jb away from the tv and the computer. Today, it's fine for an hour and a half. Then we end up at a lighthouse surrounded by a barbed wire fence that makes the shabby attraction look like a prison yard with the Chesapeake just beyond the fence, a concrete divide between the haves and have nots: those who can afford to be out boating on the lake and those who stand, locked away from the private beach. It's hot, depressing, and we're an hour and a half from home. I'm restless to get gone, and snappish by the time we're back in the car. The second half of the drive is full of crap music, silence, and then a song comes on and starts triggering me. I'm suddenly desperate for home, missing my family, my childhood, thoughts full of the last ten years, the knowledge that I'm already 32, almost 33, knowing the likelihood that I'll be anything come 40 enough to make me tear up, and there I am, crying behind my sunglasses, trying not to let Jb see, even when he's asking what's wrong. And what is there to say? I'm sick of always saying: I don't know. I just went from fine to depressed in 10 minutes, and I'm so pissed at myself that the disgust is thick. I'm tired of this. Jb must be tired of this. I can't ride these crests and dips. I know, there, in the car, that I need someone to talk to. I need to find myself a therapist. And soon. Because I am not dealing. I am not dealing with this up and down, this here and there, and the guilt of my mood always affecting the people around me that I love is strong. I'm so frightened that they'll suddenly see, suddenly see me, and throw their hands up in frustration, wash their hands of me. I can hardly blame them when I feel like doing the same myself sometimes. I'm even convinced, sometimes, that it'd be better for everyone involved if I lived my own life, away from everyone else's.

And Away She Rides

I'm soaring right now. It's 11:53pm and my eyes want sleep, but inside, inside I'm wired. I've been like this most of the day, neither here nor there, not able to concentrate on any one thing. Spurts of productivity followed by spurts of a scatter shot mind. Tonight's trigger is Carbon Leaf, "Under the Wire," "Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat" and "The Girl and Her Horse." When Dar Williams used to send me flying with songs like "The Ocean" and "Iowa," I used to wonder if certain chords triggered certain states. If there was a correlation between sound and mood. If songs in the key of G were the ones most likely to set me galloping, and maybe those in the key of E, maybe those were the ones that sunk me. Sure, stress, seasonal change, major life changes, these are all triggers, but I swear that my daily triggers are much smaller: music, poetry, books, writing, ideas. I'm two for two today. I'm reading the kind of good, effortless writing that kills, sets the characters off in my head, until I'm doing as much fantasizing about the book as I am reading it. Ten pages read, twenty minute intersessions, lost in make believe and a vast inner world that's all too easy to slip into. And music, if it strikes me, I listen to over, and over, and over, ad nauseum. I can't get enough of the high it sends me on, of the thought of an open road, an open window, wind whipping fresh in my face. It's the runaways, and they're worse at night. Night drives are as much a trigger as the result of a trigger. They're my great escape, my run for the border. Something has to fill me up inside, freedom, miles, lights. And I want one tonight, but Jb can't keep up with me tonight. So I'll lie in bed, good and sweet, and my mind will go 'round and 'round, setting up scenarios, letting characters come to the fore, focusing on phrases, the repetition of words, until words are only sound, and the sounds become foreign, and I keep repeating them, repetition bringing them back 'round to meaning. But there's no sleep in that, not until my body simply gives way, or my mind runs out.

About Damn Time

Finally sat down and wrote the prologue to a three-book series I've plotted out. About damn time. I'm almost somewhat happy with it.

Couple pages down. Couple hundred more to go.

Procrastination

I'm anxious. I just got up to open the door and look outside. I'm pacing around the apartment. Can't play WoW. Can't play Fable. Can't watch tv. Can't read Nora Roberts, and dammit if Blood Brothers isn't a compelling read. But none of it's sticking. Ten minutes here, ten minutes there, too much thinking. I'm feeling that itching beneath the skin, the one you can't scratch, the one that makes you jittery, like you've had too much caffeine. I feel like there's something I'm missing. I know there's something I'm not doing. I'm not writing. I should be writing. I have the first two scenes clear as day in my head, have had them since last week, and they're not down on paper yet. What's the problem? Why the fear? Who cares if they come out good or bad. What's the harm in writing them. But I'm not. And I know I should be. And so I'm caged, between want and fear.

Groggy

Forgot my meds again last night. Waking up groggy as hell. Having problems falling asleep and sleeping through the night. Up a couple times a night, sleeping until 10ish. My whole sleep schedule is screwed. Can't blame it on the Wellbutrin, as this had started before they upped my dose, and from what I understand, Wellbutrin acts as more of stimulant than a depressant.

Also, might have forgotten a psych appointment today, which, to be honest, is fine. I haven't even been on the higher dose of Wellbutrin for a week now. Can't imagine why they'd want me back so soon, except that, yes, they think I'm still unstable. Haven't heard back from the therapist I called. Should call another one. Everything is such a hassle, truly.

Back to sleeping, dreams are vivid, very vivid, but gone almost completely on waking. Struggle to focus on waking, as if I'd rather stay in the dream world.

Self-Medication

In researching bi-polar, you read some interesting things. Lithium for mood swings, though it leaves your speech slurred, your hands shaky, and causes possible rash. Lamictal, rash. Drug-resistant bi-polar. People who've been on the merry-go-round of drug after drug after drug with little to no real relief. And that's when you start reading about marijuana use and bipolar.

A study out of New Zealand swears marijuana use puts users at a 200% greater risk of developing bipolar. But what does it do for those who already suffer from it? Most message boards are filled with long-term pot users who claim marijuana is one of the few things that keep them straight. The other half of the forums are filled with people calling the marijuana users potheads. I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

A co-worked gave Jb some pot she had in her car yesterday. It was probably under a gram. Not very much at all. He brought it home, rolled it up in a cigarette paper, and we toked up in the bathroom. Three hits each. It was a little like the scene with Craig Ferguson and Brenda Blethyn in Saving Grace, in which, to quote IMDB, "a small-town English widow, facing financial troubles after her husband's suicide, turns to agriculture of an illegal kind." Fantastic little movie if you've never seen it. But there's a scene where Brenda and Craig are up at the bluffs because Brenda's character insists on smoking a joint if she's going to be growing marijuana. There's that 15-20 minute period of, "Is that it? Honestly, what's all the fuss about? I don't feel anything." Jb said he knew that's when it was going to hit me.

It all started with a bit of lightheadedness, which I get as a side effect from my medication anyway, then the giggles kicked in. It creeps up on you slowly, but once it does, it feels like you've just stepped out of the best massage, sauna and whirlpool treatment you've ever had. You are utterly, completely relaxed. So relaxed that for the first time you realize how stressed and anxious you had been. For anxiety, it's ten times better than Klonopin. I had been in a depressive funk all yesterday, asleep when Jb got home, emotionally inaccessible. But as soon as the marijuana hit, I felt like me again. I could laugh. I could feel. I could interact with Jb. For the first time in a long while, we really connected, had fun together, participated in a relationship that had gone somewhat dry with the extent of my mood swings. Three hits kicked me right out of depression, and I still feel fine today, the day after. There's no mixed mood: no depression, no anger, no racing thoughts, no irritation. There was only the feeling that, for a couple hours, I didn't have to deal with the constant mood swings. I felt relieved, relaxed, revived.

This isn't to say that I necessarily agree with self-medication. Nor that I think becoming a pothead is the way to go. I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but I genuinely understand the recreational use of pot. And, having done it, it felt a little like the first time I had sex. People try to scare you, guilt you, warn you off of it, but once you're adult enough to responsibly handle the decision to indulge in your first time, you're left wondering afterwards: "What was all the fuss?" It feels good, it hurts no one, and as long as you're responsible, why not?

I can't tell what sort of long-term effects marijuana use might have on bi-polar patients. I understand enough that it could affect the effectiveness of your medication. But then, most bipolar marijuana users seem to suggest they use it as an alternative to medication. And that I could understand. Because all too often, the side effects are worse than the disease, and they're almost never as effective as your psych would lead you to believe. I've been on a med cocktail since March, nearly four months now, and I'm still in this half-life, neither sick enough for hospital, nor well enough for the real world. But last night, I slept the best sleep I've had all week.

Afternoon Check-In

Jb's sandal's on the floor; I pulled it out of a box because it was, like me, lost. The cat's in the window. I'm in my chair in front of the computer. My stomach hurts. I'm hungry. But I can't be buggered to fix something. I am riding this ache inside me, somewhere near my heart, that yearns for my family and friends in IL. What it really yearns for is connection, and I never feel the freedom of connection and contentment except when I'm driving in the car with Jb, the windows down, the music up, chain smoking the miles away. My hand rides the air outside the car window, and something in me breaks up, breaks free, and the world fills me up--not people--the world. It's the only place I feel like myself anymore. So on the weekends we take long ass drives to wherever, to Sykesville, Columbia, almost always north, though I think Jb has plans to head east this weekend, toward the water. I'd like that. I'd like anything that meant speed and wind and words and music. It's as if you can outrun depression until the only reason to run is the running.