Insomnia

Ah, sweet insomnia. I have to be at work at 9am. It’s 5am now. I tried to sleep and I am exhausted, physically drained but mentally buzzing. I am averaging four hours a night at the moment if at all. I think I will go into work at 7am and [...]

Evidently Chickentown

The Metro /Ask.com Best of Brit Blog Award Winners have been announced! I didn’t win, and didn’t expect to, as I’m 21 and the age limit was 18. But I was “specially commended” which makes me feel rather like a knight. Congratulations to the winner!
Also, congratulations to NHS Blog Doctor [...]

More Light Relief

Hello! I am so very busy at the moment. I posted this in my regular “What I ate for breakfast” Livejournal the other day and thought it might raise a smile over here. Normal service will be resumed shortly, promise.

When you’re a person who likes putting make up on, invariably, when you’re [...]

Overkill

You will be pleased to know that I picked up the repeat prescription earlier for all my medications.
I don’t have much to say at the moment. Real Life Stuff is busy and, in true Seaneen fashion, simutaenously exciting and extremely depressing.

“She doesn’t look mental”…

I am no longer a patient of psychotherapy. My bizarre working hours coupled with my impending departure from Crouch End means that I can no longer attend.
I am not very sad about it. I like blogging and writing, it gives me distance and time to figure what out what I want to say. [...]

The Biggest Fraud in Blogland

Here is that somewhat more substantial update.
Stephen Fry are embroiled in a passionate love affair. He just doesn’t know it yet. A lot of people have e-mailed me asking if I had seen his documentary, “The Secret Life of The Manic Depressive”. Well, oddly enough, I have, hence the name of this blog. I don’t [...]

Video killed the blog star

Excuse the relative silence but my keyboard met its end in an “accident”.
Because of this, I made a little video update instead.

A proper update to follow.

Here I go

I am awake. That’s okay, though, I have been asleep since 5pm yesterday. Oh, Olanzapine, I love you.
I start new job in three hours. Just enough time for a cup of tea, a panic attack and a slew of cigarettes.
Wish me luck.

The Stuff They Don’t Tell You About In Textbooks

I have reached breaking point with insomnia.
I am actually ferrying my friend Brendan from Hampstead to Crouch End at 4.30am with a consignment of Olanzapine to help knock me unconscious since I have a job to go to on Friday.
I am paying him with Fruit and Nut and crisps. FRUIT AND NUT. [...]

Sleep

Sleep apparently has a great part to play in bipolar disorder. The ever lovely bipolar.about has an article about it here.
Here’s a quote from the article:
“For reasons we have yet to learn, people with bipolar disorder seem to have more delicate internal clock mechanisms,” said Dr. Ellen Frank, co-author of one of the studies. And [...]

12 Steps to Bipolar Recovery?

I feel a bit better, mostly due to John Hughes and a mammoth session of puking expelling the greasy food I gorged on today. Nothing worse than that lining your tummy, erk.
If you cast your eyes to my list of links, you’ll notice a new one there called The Bipolar Foundation. Please visit this. It’s [...]

Suicide, depression. And love.

This entry will be another peculiar mix of Quite Depressing and Visceral and then Strangely Optimistic. You have been warned.
Oh, the goddamn effort everything is when depression is bearing down on you like a vengeful seagull. Cheerful for a second as you watched the sunlight glitter on the 6am faces of weary [...]

The Strain and Seroquel Dreams

The Strain is a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. It’s about having a poo.
This entry is not about having a poo.
I spent all of yesterday asleep due to my 2000mg Seroquel shenanigans. I have been very depressed of late. As Saturday night wore into Saturday morning, I was hysterical [...]

Action

This morning at about 8am, I took a triple dose of Seroquel to try and sleep.
It’s half past midnight and I’ve just woken up.
Oops.

Naked and Bare, Realistic Hair

Ah, a slightly more focused rewrite of my earlier post.
I am having sleeping trouble again. Seroquel has stopped working so I’m awake, again.
My mood has completely plummeted. Earlier in the evening I was watching the taxis hammer the pavement with envy. And still I’m paranoid about every illness going. Feeling depressed is so contradictory. Terrified [...]

The Blogger’s Dilemma and Psychosurgery

I just received a comment from good old Des Moines USA saying,
you whored out your dad for a writing assignment you gave yourself.
That is definitely the harshest and most hurtful comment that has ever been posted to this blog.
The blogger’s dilemma is one of disclosure. How much is useful information and how much is [...]

Sing a happy song

Bloody Londoners. I sat on the tube today listening to They Might Be Giant and of course I had a bit of a foot tap. It’s music, you cretins. It’s supposed to play xylophone down your spine and fiddle your nerves. How is it that on the tube everyone listens to [...]

Navigating the Benefits System

Warning: Serious Post Coming Up
Now, regular readers will know that, despite suffering from a severe mental illness, I am not eligible for:
Incapacity Benefit
Disability Living Allowance.
I have been turned down twice for DLA and for Incapacity. At my medical assessment for incapacity, I was deemed as “Exempt”. That means that my illness is so severe that [...]

Big pendulous ones

Today has been quite draining. I went to see a studio flat that had no deposit in the arse end of Hornsey. It was on a fairly quiet road opposite the station and surrounded by empty crisp packets with telltale cigarette burns in them.
If I hadn’t been so discourteously ejected from my previous jobs on [...]

From the Rooftops

On one of the many and varied Mentally Interesting forums I frequent, a question was posed to me.
“If you had to shout one thing from the rooftops about mental illness, what would it be?”
I struggled with this somewhat. What to say? “It can be treated!” No, too vague. “We’re not mad!” Too self deprecating.
I settled [...]

Hurrah!

This blog has been shortlisted for Metro’s Youth Blog of the Year award!
Thank you to those who nominated me. What lovely news to wake up to!

Malaise

Not much of a day. Yesterday was much the same. Days are blurring into one. I feel very boring and dull. Creativity is sapped out by distraction but I need that distraction. Hypomania is gone completely, leaving in its place residual depression and my good self freaking out about my completely uncertain future.
Aside from rampant [...]

Aren’t you glad you did something good with your life?

I’m listening to XTC and feeling rather down. It’s dismal gloom, faint grey clouds. I think I have burst into tears about five times today.
Shock and horror, though, this is Personality Depression. My tears and sadness are from worry and…well, sadness. I’m worried about cash and raising the cash to move out, [...]

I want to paint it black

I’m moving out of me and Rob’s flat and into somewhere on my own. I need to borrow money for deposits and then I can get Housing Benefit and Income Support.
None of this is out of lack of love. I have lost myself somewhere in this traumatic past year. Illness, death, destruction has covered me [...]

How My Dad Died.

I woke up today with intense stomach cramps that brought me to my knees. I feel better now but for a while I couldn’t move. Reading up on Depakote, I have discovered that abdominal problems are a common side effect. I am slightly dreading waking up tomorrow with the same pain. Pain is a horrible [...]

Report #1

First dose of Depakote. Side effects so far? I feel really, really ill and have the Lithium shaky hand syndrome.

We only have time to fear

So, you know the outcome of the appointment yesterday. I’ll tell you in more detail how it went.
The CPN sat in on the meeting. Annoyingly, I was in a pretty stable mood yesterday which leads to raised eyebrows when trying to describe why I need different treatment.
What is happening now is that I will be [...]

Ooh

Depakote (Valproic Acid) has been added to my medications. I wish Depakote didn’t sound like a Tampon brand.

Day Of Reckoning

The meeting with the psychiatrist and the CPN is at 1.30pm today. I am dosed on Seroquel but unable to sleep.
I’m really nervous.
I have that knotted-tonsil feeling of being sent to the principal’s office. Because of the circumstances of this meeting- i.e the GP forcing them to reschedule the appointment for an earlier date- I [...]