Money, money, money

The cliché that money can’t buy happiness isn’t true. If I had money, I’d be happier. I’d be able to afford somewhere nicer to live, so wouldn’t currently be wrapped in a dressing gown and a coat in this freezing bedsit. I have also run out of medication and in order to get [...]

Mental illness vs physical illness part 2

This entry mightn’t make much sense, I am rambling a little.
Something I learned from my dad’s death is that no amount of rational thinking prepares you for the worst. For a long time before he died, years, even, I had been plagued by anxiety that he would. I had nights grieving for a [...]

Bah

Definitely not hypomanic. I feel terrible today, really depressed and miserable.
Is this normal mood fluctuation? Or is this the antidepressant aggravating rapid cycling? My moods have been all over the place again when for a long time, I was at least stabley depressed. I don’t know what to think.
There is always this [...]

Hypomania, or for the recently depressed, not wanting to kill themselves

Evening, chaps. Or, it feels like evening, as winter trickles into London. The sky is cracked and grey like parchment and half-hearted fireworks are being set off every few minutes, their diminutive pops being punctuated by the barking of startled dogs.
It’s also becoming fairly cold, so I am wrapped in an extra cardigan [...]

A brief history of medication

I feel enormous.  I thought I was losing weight because Sertraline killed my appetite, but inexplicably, I’ve gained weight.  I have no idea how my body works anymore.  I’ve been trying to make myself feel prettier,  so dyed my hair pink again last night.  I really suffered for my art: I had a bad allergic [...]

Aftermath

I feel very bizarre today. I am still shaken by last night and feel very anxious and irritable. I met a friend earlier for a cup of tea and ended up buying a computer desk that I don’t need, but it was only £5 in a charity shop so it’s okay.  Also, it’s [...]

A Panic Attack

I’m up writing at 2.43am when, by now, I am usually unconscious after taking my medication. It’s an unconsciousness I hate, not a real sleep. I have bizarre dreams. The activating antidepressant jostles with the sedating antipsychotic, leading to a jittery, frantic unrest. I always wake up feeling bruised. Today, I [...]

A month after suicide

Just over a month ago, I was suicidal. I tried to kill myself by overdosing on Lithium, which just made me violently ill.   It wasn’t an impulsive decision.
In desperation, I scanned my ceiling for something with which I could sling a rope or belt or cord over to hang myself with. When [...]

Yum?

I have totally lost my appetite.  This is good.

Euthymia

Euthymia. It sounds like a foreign country. It is, to me. Euthymia is at war with Euphoria. Euthymia has always been at war with Euphoria.
The thing I like most about clinical terms is where they are derived from. They sound exotic. Schizophrenia, for example, derives from the Greek [...]

The continuing saga of benefits

I have to kind of admire benefit cheats. They actually managed to get benefits.
I am having a nightmare getting anything. I have been turned down for Incapacity Benefit and both my Income Support and Housing Benefit claims have gone AWOL, except, I got a letter today saying I needed to show my final [...]

Mentally Ill Dominos

I am just back from the hospital. There, I witnessed a rare phenomena that I like to call Mentally Ill Dominos. It demonstrates that putting a load of mental people in the same room may not always be the best idea.
The participants. A young man, who I assumed to be schizophrenic as he [...]

Happy

Autumn has leapt upon London; the bare streets of Highbury are now densely blanketed in russet blushed leaves with burnt fragile veins, whipped into tornadoes by passing cars and settling, sodden, on the roads. The Blackstock Road, however, is naked, and where I live feels as though it is on the edge of seasons.
Today [...]

A Lonely Land on Which I Stand; Head in Clouds and Fag in Hand

 
A micro-poem from me to you there on the one year anniversary of me being in a mental hospital! Streamers! Cakes! And stuff. Or a Saturday night in with my cigarettes and the strange noise that comes from the speakers. It scares the crap out of me when speakers start [...]

Mind and Body Vs Seaneen and My Debut in Get a Life! Magazine

Medication weight gain, I hear you cry! Another one of those. A somewhat lighthearted entry today in an attempt to balance out the depressive ones of late. I don’t want to be responsible for mass suicide.
Despite losing my appetite recently, I have still somehow managed to gain five pounds. I am [...]

Memories of a Mental Hospital

I wrote this a day after I was discharged from St. Ann’s Hospital, on October 17th 2006.
Because I am super-cool, I took some photos when I was in the bin. Not many like, but here.The first two are of my room. When I was leaving, Leila and Emma were arguing over who gets [...]

Loving the Alien

Here is another entry not explicitly related to manic depression.

Ah, we all love those lying down looking thoughtful photos. That is Calvin, my teddy cat who is my Hobbes (my real cat who lives with Rob) replacement when I feel like a cuddle. The leopardprint swaddling is a dressing gown my mother bought me [...]

“Psychotic depression”

I wanted this blog to be a story, interspersed with helpful or challenging information. And as I find myself faltering, it now seems to be a chronicle of my own personal failures. It is embarrassing and I feel I am letting everyone who reads this down.
I haven’t felt like writing recently. I [...]

Wild side

I eventually panicked and left my flat last night. It didn’t feel safe, everything felt malevolent and, even with the light on, I didn’t have the courage to check under things etc to see if nothing was there. I knew something was there, and something nasty, so I rang my friend, grabbed my [...]

What exactly is a dream?

I feel absent quite often, in my own world. In the past four years I have visited the real world again. I didn’t know of it for a long time. I’d take my mother’s dresser table mirror and walk around with it in front of me, wishing that if I walked far [...]

Being aware it’s not real but it not making a difference

Last night I was paralysed by fear of an animal on my bed. This has been recurring for a few months, when I become very depressed. There is a mouse in my room but it’s not that. When this first happened I kept seeing an animal on me that disappeared into the [...]

Another one down

Right, I don’t have a job again.  The same reason as always: health problems and such.
I haven’t been super well recently and wasn’t coping at work.
I have decided not to look for more full time jobs yet because the same thing keeps happening.
So now I have to claim benefits.  I applied yesterday for Income Support [...]