Birds

All my dreaming last night was this:

Except instead of a man, it was birds.  And stretched out over hours.  Curiouser.

BBC Ouch interview with Mark Brown of One in Four

Hello! I put the, “Posts Page” as a sticky for two reasons: one is because I want to add a new page to the top and doing so would knock another off, so, that one was least commented upon, and could be deleted, another was because I’m a rampant egotistic and it was the one that was easiest cut.  Anyway!

Here is an interview I did with BBC Ouch with my employer and long-haired Geordie Friend Mark Brown.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/seaneen_meets_mark_brown.shtml

It was subbed, as articles are, and the original included references to not usually greeting people I interview with massive hugs and scaring the photography.  I have no phone credit so had to use my browser and saw the photos.  Bloody hell.  Anyway, I love Mark!

I forgot to post it because I’m rubbish like that, but I also interviewed Valerie Mason John, who’s a teacher of mindfulness.  I did some exercises and they photographed me shagging a pillow, practically.  I’d never had anything to do with mindfulness before, and it was interesting.  Do any of you have any experience of it?

Bloody Sunday and the Saville Inquiry

This is a subject close to heart, close to my home, in fact.  My granny, a strong, opinionated Republican woman from the Falls area in Belfast, was there that day in 1972.  When it all kicked off, my uncles ran into the streets to find my dad amidst some minor, recreational rioting.  They dragged him in and they watched the news unfolding with their hearts in their mouths.

Throughout the veins of the passing years, the anger at this massacre has throbbed on.  The Army, at that time, were pretty much the police.  It remained so even after the ceasefire.  I grew up with British Army soldiers stationed outside the doors down the street, resting guns on their knees, chatting to kids like me.  And I liked those young men, bewildered, mostly English, far from home, but I hated what they stood for, and I hated the police.  Few in Northern Ireland trust the police, and it’s not just Catholics and Nationalists that feel that way.  Bloody Sunday is part of the reason why my family got bricks thrown at their windows when they once made that 999 call.  They were still the RUC in those days.  Now that they’re the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and not the Royal Ulster Constabulary, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

The events of that day were a catalyst to the IRA in waging their war, and it was also seen as part of their justification.  And growing up, if anything made me felt that I was a subject in a country that hated me and others like me (Republican Catholics), it was that event.  It wasn’t the first, nor the last act of police and army brutality in my country.

The Saville inquiry has concluded what we have all known over these years: those killings were unprovoked murders.  Those people were not armed.   Nor (apart from one young man being a member of Fianna na hEireann) were they members of the IRA. And that is wonderful news for their families, who have always known this.

Here’s the outcome, now let’s see if the British government have the balls to prosecute the soldiers involved in that killing spree.

As to the effect on Northern Ireland, I don’t really fear this is going to spark a renewal in tensions or actions.  Nobody, not even the hardcore Republicans, want to see a return to the bad old days.  You might have the odd dissident group like the RIRA (IRA Original?  IRA Classic?) and the CIRA attempt to cause some trouble, but they’ve already done so in the past few years, and have been roundly condemned by everybody.  We just want peace.

And the stars are going out

Edit: never mind the other post, will put it on the contact page.  Gist is, don’t contact me for selling or guest posts or anything promoting your product or offering me money for links because I’ll tell you to piss off.

So, it’s likely I won’t need to challenge the BPD diagnosis, given that I have seemingly proved that I have manic depression.  Forgive me if I don’t crack open the fucking bubbly. It was never about my little bipolar card being taken from me.  It was about not wanting something inaccurate on my medical records.  Not having bipolar disorder was a relief.  It was a release.  I wanted that part to be true.

I am probably somewhat manic.  This is what is said.  On the phone from Robert to the social worker, from her.  The kind of words I never wanted him to hear.  There’s the crisis team.  There’s Drayton, the crisis centre.  You’re not alone, if it gets too much to cope with.  I wanted to keep him from that world. It destroyed Rob (my ex Rob, alas he and Robert share the same name so it is often confusing) and I and when I see him I still feel ashamed, because I want to be cured and better.  My social worker thinks Robert is good for me.  She says he is playful, that he comes into my little manic world, that he wears me out.  He is not worried.  I am probably manic. Less so than I was due to getting a night’s sleep on Saturday that I needed. Saturday was an awful day.  I told Robert the truth that I had been drinking in the mornings to calm myself down.  He was disappointed and angry (I am a demon on drink, I am horrible to him) so I went to get that Zopiclone prescription at the midnight pharmacy.  As I did I got lost in Piccadilly, somewhere I know well.  I was confused and couldn’t understand what people were saying to me.  Literally could not understand their words.  Could barely speak myself because my brain was crashing so spectacularly.  Distracting me from everything, getting me lost. My happy happy mood started getting irritable, I started punching things, shouting, started losing my balance, genuine falling over and screaming in frustration because I couldn’t even control my hands long enough to steady myself.

I slept on Saturday.  I woke up on Sunday, didn’t sleep that night, had an appointment where my social worker said I seemed calmer and I was.  My sister texted me to ask if I was okay, and that, coupled with Robert’s angry disappointment, gave me a flash of what I must look like, what I could lose.  So I took some Seroquel last night and slept again.  I am calmer again today but realise I cannot stop shaking, still, and when I wake up, I start to shake and shake.  My first reaction to taking Seroquel again was the need to vomit.  So I had to take another 200mg.  What to do.

What to do is the order of the day.  I don’t want to start over. Medication?  I don’t know.  I said since I’m borderline apparently then I should have DBT.  We both acknowledged it wouldn’t be helpful for me.  Because, in my mind at least, my coping mechanisms are fine.  There is fuck all wrong with me these days, except for mood swings.  She agrees that they will not help that.  I feel very angry.  I don’t want this.  I know things have been less than stable since I stopped taking medication.  I was perpetually mildly depressed on it, but off it I know I have been unstable.  I haven’t done much.  I don’t get those creative hypomanias- I have loads of ideas but I can’t focus longer than three seconds to do much about them.  I am two months behind in my book now.  More than. I feel as though I am letting everyone down.  And I don’t get help or at least try, I let them down, too.  Everyone who has stood by in the past years.  So many fucking years!

And I had Seroquel sleep, I woke up with a horrible headache, met Rob and now I am still shaky and know I’ll have to drug myself again, if I need to sleep.  I only have four pills left, I threw the rest out and I’m sure I’ll ask for a prescription.  The withdrawal was hell; I don’t know if I can go through it again, but natural sleep is hard and I don’t want to sleep because too much sleep makes me depressed.  Right now I am crawling out of my skin.

My social worker thinks as long as I make sure I sleep I will be okay and that I don’t have to take medication if I don’t want to. If I get on a level I will still be discharged in September.  She says a lot of people with bipolar disorder never come into contact with the community mental health team.  So I can be out there in the world, too.  I don’t know what the psychiatrist thinks but she said he’d be happy to write prescriptions for Seroquel so who knows.  She thinks I have manic depression and says she expected this to happen, sooner, actually, than it did.  But I don’t want it.  I DON’T WANT IT.  And if I take medication then it’s admitting it.  I don’t want it.  Somewhere, probably around the psychiatric appointment when once again I didn’t know what was wrong, didn’t think it was serious,  was told it was not serious because I wasn’t in and out of hospital, I was pitched back into denial and relief, too, have spent the past few weeks saying, “There is nothing wrong” when people around me clearly disagree, looking at my shaking hands and kicking off my shoes to say, “I am fine”, and I was fine, I was happy and I am still happy, but I can’t stop shaking and I don’t want to be ill.  Now I am back to the burning fucking rage I thought I had left behind, the horrible fucking knowledge that you can run, but you can’t hide. This isn’t fair.  This isn’t fair.  I probably sound a teenager, but it isn’t.  I don’t know what to do, whether to take Seroquel regularly again and be an exhausted zombie or carry on and try harder.

Dressing up as clowns and playing Strip Netball at 6am is no penance for this.

I could love my life.  I don’t know what to do.

My wee bit at the Warning: May Contain Nuts night at Reading

Hello everybody not out on a Friday, like me!

There’s some bits missing at the end- I didn’t bother saving what I’d written but I do think I said, “Don’t forget to thank your psychiatrist, just don’t do it a week later standing outside his house”.  OOH MATRON, MY SIDES!  Then I was carried off by burly, naked men to the rousing strains of, “We Are the Champions”.

That’s me there- and yes! I am chubby and yes! I am very short, with a whited out face for CONFIDENTIALITY purposes (or by malevolently glaring lighting, or benevolent glaring lighting, depending on your perspective) performing (or reading, as it was) a bit from my Insane Guide stuff.  I was very nervous as I’d never done anything like that before.  Most of us hadn’t, I think we were all rather good considering!  The only act I didn’t really like was the compere, as it basically revolved around antipsychiatry and telling people they were wrong for ever taking medication.  The idea that mental illness is a social construction is a valid and worthy one, but lots of people there relied on medication to keep them functioning enough to roll their eyes at him.   I was petrified though as the idea of a whole room full of people staring at me scared the shit out of me, and I wasn’t aware I was being filmed either, which would have made me throw myself onto the assembled spikes in the front row (not pictured).  I wasn’t feeling too good that day! I’ve only just managed to allow people to take photos of me and even then it’s on the proviso that I don’t have to look at them.  That also means I read my own BBC Ouch articles on my mobile browser with the images turned off.

Anyway!  I had written a sizeable proportion of it on the day and also made a lot of shit up as I stood there (y’know what, I wasn’t aware it was mostly a comedy night until I got there, which goes to show just how organised I am.  I was supposed to do two bits, but bottled out of one for that reason) so thanks to the chaps there for being kind and helpful to me, and also to the Independent for being kind to me.  And my tights for not falling down, as I’d snapped the fecking elastic and was battling to keep them on my arse.

Anyway, yes, there you go, then!  I’m proud of myself for doing it and being a part of the evening, and once I got past the fear of defecation, I really enjoyed it.  Thank you to Danny for uploading it, and here are more videos from the night, such as the Mad Hatter himself here:

I hope he uploads the John Hegley things and Amy’s Ghost, both who were amazing.

PS:  Vote for Mark Brown as Mind Champion! Or not, if you prefer to vote for someone else.  BUT VOTE FOR MARK! HE IS LOVELY!

Obligatory, “I had an appointment” update

I hid my last blog entry for the reasons I stated in the entry i.e paranoia!  And edited another for the same reason.

I had a social worker appointment yesterday and apparently the receptionist told her to come down because I seemed high.  I don’t think I did, I just didn’t notice the disabled access thing by the toilet so had a swing on it (and why not?) and walked around a bit.  I am highly amused at this, though, I can imagine a big red button they hit behind reception when someone is being mental.  The thing is, the line is so blurred these days.  I mean, is that a bluetooth headset, or is that guy schizophrenic?

Anyway, my social worker thinks I’m getting (hypo?)manic, or am, and I had to beg off crisis team involvement.  I like them as people, they’re lovely and friendly, but they eat into your day, you have to be in when they call, they don’t leave “Sorry You Were Out” cards like the Royal Mail do when they pretend to ring your doorbell.

She asked to speak to Robert instead, to see if he’s dealing okay.  He is, and he is not worried about me.  For a start, my temperament suits him and he appreciates hyperness and strangeness.  He asks me to sleep but apart from that I don’t need him to care for me in anyway.  He says his relaxed attitude is maybe wrong, but there you go.  A prescription for zopiclone was pushed through my letterbox today- it’s a week’s script signed by the psychiatrist.  (It was initially denied to me by the GP who thinks I’m “high risk” for overdosing, despite having done so only four times in my life, twice of those as a teenager)  I don’t know if I’ll get it from the chemist’s or not.  Part of me misses sleeping and the ritual of sleep and part of me likes not sleeping much, although I wake up and find more often than not that I am violently shaking.   She also told him that the crisis team and crisis centre were available, should I need them, or he need them.

I’m not worried, either.  Robert agrees with the social worker and I probably am a bit high (I have a few symptoms and it tallies with my past experience: racing thoughts, insomnia, talking a lot, impulsivity, I guess, non-stop fidgeting and have been more active and full of energy, productive in the sense of getting more than usual done and doing more, but not that creatively because I’m still having trouble concentrating, things or people going too slow piss me off and irritate me so sometimes I sound like Robert’s mum shouting, “Come on!” at him. and also really quite happy, though “grandiose” too, if my social worker is to be believed) but I feel good and I don’t want help, nor would I take any medication for it harder than zopiclone (and nor would the psychiatrist prescribe it, as he doesn’t think I have bipolar and nor do I most of the time.  My social worker does).   Although the background of white noise is annoying sometimes, and I keep getting my speech mixed up (and had a dark moment of panic last night when I suddenly realised one day my name would be on a gravestone with a number after it, as would Robert’s, but it passed quickly), I mostly feel a lot more positive than I have done in a long time.   My next appointment is on Monday and no psychiatric appointment is scheduled so nobody is too worried and hopefully I won’t be pushed into anything.  I just feel better and I’d like to carry on.  Yes, lack of sleep is troubling and physically wrecking me but it’s better than sleeping too much, wasting the day and feeling depressed.  I know I might become depressed but right now I’m not at risk to myself, I’m functioning (mostly) okay, things between Robert and me are amazing and he is not worried, so, that’ll do me!

Bloggers hiding

Are you worried your psychiatrist reads your blog?  Or social worker?  Since I found out that my psychiatrist listened to the Radio 4 play and seemingly (though she may have been joking) based some judgments on it, I find myself wanting to write less openly here, and also undercutting anything bad or vaguely mental I feel with, “But it’s fine! I’m not saying I have any problems!” in case he reads it and thinks I’m exaggerating or something, or being self pitying.  And now afraid that anything I say will be construed as, “that’s so borderline!” Jesus.  It’s so stupid of me.  I know that nobody who has ever been involved in my treatment approves of me writing this blog, so I hate the thought of any of them reading it and sitting there disapproving.

It’s very unlikely that they do, but these kind of stupid worries make me wish I’d been anonymous!  It’s hard not to be self conscious.  I oddly don’t mind strangers reading what I write but I do mind people who can make decisions about my life reading it.  I’m going to start writing on my other blog (over here, updated today with a rant) about other things more often.

This post is bought to you by the letter B

Hello!  I’m back, broke and burned.  All of two days away, but still, why not announce it with outrageous derring do? Swash!  Buckle!

The trip to Broadstairs was a failure in terms of getting sleep, despite the opulent bed and relative peace.  I managed three hours on Sunday night and was awake again by 1.30am.  I watched a bit of a video and then went wandering by the sea in the dark, smoking furiously and getting lost.  I came back, I read some, then went out again for another walk.  I was the only guest there so I inspected all the other empty rooms and used the private toilet of one of them, feeling rather smug. At least, I hope the rooms were empty and I wasn’t just plonking myself down on a cold toilet seat being stared at by a small French family.  I did some writing on the beach.  The man who ran the place was lovely and made me a ham sandwich because every single shop for buying such things closed by 8pm.  He reminded me a lot of Rob’s dad, the kind of man whose gentleness radiates from them, who would be happy to spend a morning teaching you the intricacies of sheep shearing, who’d let you run your hands across the soft wool.

Robert joined me on Monday evening, since I thought it would be nice for him to see the seaside, too.  He hates sand, but he’ll have to overcome that phobia considering one day he’ll be buried up to his neck in it by pirates mistaking his bicorne for an insult to their people.  We walked to Ramsgate, a very English place.  I slept for an extremely fitful six hours on Monday night, and now it’s Wednesday morning at 4am and I’m awake again, after trying to sleep but having too many thoughts chainsawing through my head and generally feeling twitchy.

It wasn’t a waste, though, I did have a lovely time away.  The B&B was on a residential street, a rather generic looking one, but it backed onto the sea, across to Belgium, 123 miles away, or thereabouts.  It was owned by a cat called Merlin, who’s one of those thin, slightly ragged cats whom when you stroke him gives under your hands, you can feel the bones, he hasn’t got the reassuring mantle of fluff that younger cats too.  He was a big mouth of mrow.  I feel peaceful by the sea and it did calm me down somewhat.  Today on the beach we ran from a seagull the size of an airplane.   It was probably the same one that shat in Robert’s latte from a great height while he was gearing up to say something sarcastic.

Some photos because I love my camera.

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The best one was this, though:

It should be cock.

I spoke to my social worker via email to cancel our Monday appointment and found out that the GP won’t prescribe me anything to help me sleep as I have a history of overdoses and he won’t take the risk.  This irks me slightly as I have overdosed four times.  Okay, four times more than most, but twice was in my teens before I understood what overdosing was, and twice as an adult- one in the midst of a depression that made me believe animals lived in my walls and being at home made me feel unsafe and terrified, and once after I spent most of the year depressed then took Effexor.  I’m not an impulsive overdose-ee, and not at risk to myself.  Mentally, I am fairly cheerful, if not brain-buzzed, but physically I am falling to bits because of lack of sleep.  That combined with completely losing my appetite, bloodshot eyes, legs and hands that keep going numb, cold sores and spot outbreaks means I’m not a pretty specimen right now.  I’m quite irritable, which isn’t fun for Robert.  Make up helps the face, though, and it means I can pull off bits of my flaky skin.

I shall be throwing myself into work for the next week as I feel more enthused about writing and want to make £100,000 somewhere so I can have a houseboat.  And also really rather desperately need to do something with my life.

Quick hit: diagnose yourself with a bunch of shit

MyTherapy is running a three month free trial of their online diagnosis (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) software.   This has amused me greatly.  Differently Sane has already been playing with it and got “diagnosed” with about thirteen different mental disorders.  Robert and I played with it the other day- he got (deep breath): OCD, borderline personality disorder,  avoidant personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.  He concedes he has features of three of those things (borderline, histrionic and avoidance), but then again, everybody does.  It was very amusing scrolling down…down…down and howling while we read the results.  Robert has clearly swallowed the DSM-IV.  We should just punch him and see what he burps out.  “You bastard…don’t you wish you were as wonderful as I? DON’T LEAVE ME!  I’m off to wash my hands thirty thousand times”.

Suffice to say, he has never been in psychiatric treatment and it’s unlikely he ever will be.  Robert’s diagnosis is, “a bit odd”.  I found it interesting it was all personality disorders he got hit with.  Is having a personality a disorder?

I was hoping for a gigantic list I could laugh at, but it failed me by only diagnosing me with two things I have been diagnosed with before: bipolar disorder type I (most recent episode hypomanic, which I don’t think is accurate) and avoidant personality disorder (actually, I’m not sure I have been diagnosed with this.  A suggestion is not a diagnosis, but it’s in my records somewhere, and if I had to “pick” a PD that most fit me, it would be that one.  BECAUSE THAT’S HOW IT WORKS, YEAH?)  And I was really honest with it!  I was crossing my fingers that it would tell me I was an alcoholic psychopath with schizophrenia and a giant penis.

I think the thing that might be scuppering a lot of people is the, “how much harm does this do” question, as it would have a subjective response.  “Severe harm” could be hospitalisation to one person, or to another it could be not going out for a week.  It depends, it’s what deviates from normal.  That said, Robert clicked “mild or no harm” for most of his and still got spewed on.

Anyway, have a play and we’ll all link arms and storm a mental hospital with the print out results shoved in our pockets.  For the love of god, do NOT take the results seriously- it’s an automated computer programme that has the ICD-10 on it, it’s not a substitute for an assessment, and just because it uses the clinical terminology, it doesn’t mean it’s any more worthy of being taken seriously than one of those silly little “what personality disorder are you?” tests that fly around on websites like Livejournal.

I have booked one night away in glorious Broadstairs in Kent in the hope that the fresh coastal air might calm me down and help me sleep for more than a few hours at a time.  I’m mentally okay with it, if not somewhat very snappy, but physically, my body is packing in somewhat.  C’mon one night’s sleep.

Another One Bites the Dust

Rest in peace, Moira Stewart.

How sad and limp she is, unlike the real Moira Stewart, who neither withers, nor dies.

I kind of forgot you existed until I witnessed one of your leaves snap off and dissolve into dust.  May you find joy in Spider Plant Heaven with Brian May.

Back in his carefree youth. I clearly didn't even care enough about Moira Stewart to take baby photos.

I give up on plants.  You can’t trust them not to die, especially if you don’t water them or, when you do, experiment with feeding them Diet Coke thinking the sugar might be helpful, then remembering Diet Coke doesn’t have sugar and that you’ve probably just given your plant cancer.  Which may have contributed to the death of Brian May, as this was a repeat experiment that I had forgotten I had performed once already.   I am the Mengeles of the Plant World.

Thank you for the responses to my quick-aye-right previous post.  I think I will at least ask for an explanation, partly out of sheer curiousity and partly because this is my life and I don’t feel it’s accurate.  I also think someone had a point when they said if I took something positive out of it, should I really kick it up?  In that sense, I don’t know.  I’ll give it a month and see how I feel then, if I am still curious, or if I am fine enough off medication (I won’t be discharged until September which gives me a few months to see if I flip out.  My recent depression doesn’t count, really) to maybe envisage a time where I don’t have to see a psychiatrist again.  I didn’t ask to be discharged due to this, by the by, it was something I raised a while ago, but my not being on medication or really receiving treatment meant that I thought it was kind of pointless to continue and I’ve been with them for almost four years, which is a really long time.     I don’t need that level of support anymore and they’re understaffed as it is!

So!  I’ll ask at least.

It’s 8.08am right now, and I’m awake and have not been to sleep.  I’m operating a kind of day-on-day-off policy when it comes to sleeping.  Not sleeping very much at all, but my body seems to have adapted.  First of all, I was sleeping far too much and then still feeling so exhausted I went back to bed four or five times a day, then I slept less and less and was so exhausted I couldn’t function and wanted to kill myself and could barely move, and now I’m sleeping lesser still but am not that tired at all and don’t need that much sleep.  I took some Seroquel the other day because I thought that forcing myself to sleep would be a smart idea.  I did sleep but I had some strange sort of shaking fit upon waking.  So, bollocks to Seroquel.  I am physically rather shaky, my insides feel strange, I do feel “strange” in general (and if I didn’t I’d say I did anyway just to overuse the word gratuitously in this post), a little bit…STRANGE!

I feel good, mood-wise, cheerful, bouncy, bigger breasted, which isn’t good, they’re too big as it is, distractingly large.  I’ve been productive-ish in the sense that I’ve been sorting some stuff out but now need to direct my energies to other things, the things I’ve been trying and failing to do for months due to being depressed.  My concentration is still fucked and I’m still having trouble staying on one topic for more than a second (which led to me asking Robert earlier if he’d ever wear nappies- I think we were talking about Korea or something) and am having racing thoughts (or at least, what I was told were racing thoughts in the past- voices, music, babbling incessantly in the background and sometimes a “tch tch tch” rhythm that keeps going and might have made me look like a mental on Upper Street earlier when I was vocalising it quietly),  which is a hinderence but hey-ho.  I’ve read over this a few times and removed stuff, I commented on the Facebook page earlier that I kept having trouble with words: instead of feet I wrote fleet for flippers, slippers, then of for on and off and such. I always tell Robert I want to fuck off somewhere quiet because my brain is so noisy often and I wonder if a quiet place will help, I want to go to a quiet place that’s beautiful so have been looking today for flights to the Isle of Man but I have feck all money and no overdraft, which is wise, really.

It’s difficult to tell if I’m behaving in any odd way or not because Robert is extremely strange and has a very high standard of what odd behaviour is:  this is him on my window sill at 4am:

Starkers

Absolutely naked, and it’s a busy main road in London.  And dancing!

I don’t think I am anyway, and don’t really care either!

I went out on Monday night (someone told me they missed me, it must have been a while since anyone had seen me be sociable and talkative and uninhibited) and discovered that in The Great Haze of 2003 (most of which is utterly, utterly lost on me), I walked around a country house in front of everyone without knickers.  I do not recall this, at all, and I wasn’t drunk.  I plunged my head into my arms keening somewhat.  It wasn’t that it was a particularly OH MY GOD thing to do- really, it’s on the level of most peoples’ drunken weekend antics- it’s just that I do not remember it, at all, and I was surprised balloons and streamers didn’t appear from the sky while a bell ding-dinged and lights danced around his head as a rotund, ear-drumming smashing American voice boomed, “ALEX SARLL! CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE JUST TOLD SEANEEN THE 1 MILLIONTH THING SHE HAS NO RECOLLECTION OF DOING!”  Smile, smile, clutch that rose bunch to your chest as though it were the ashes of your mother.   I had that cold, sickening fear when he said it, because it frightens and upsets me just how much of my own life I don’t remember.  I don’t even have the excuse of alcoholism or drug addiction- it’s just… gone, obliterated by my more extreme states.  It’s no wonder my flat is filled with sentimental crap and almost every birthday card I’ve ever received, I need these little slips of history to finger gratefully, to remember.

ANYWAY!

Since my little mind has now been trained to be ultra-viligant with mood changes (and coming off medication even more so), I’d wonder if I am slightly hypomanic, or maybe I’m just feeling normal.  I don’t know because I’ve forgotten what normal feels like.  I’ve been on medication for four years, and before that, I was completely mental.  Quite a lot of what I think could be hypomania etc could just me, well, me! Who knows? And I expected some instability coming off all medication because… well, you would, wouldn’t you.  I’ve been recording my progress in this blog for three years, but this is the real shit right here, the real challenge.  I decided to come off medication before the psychiatric appointment, but I think he would have withdrawn the prescription anyway as he doesn’t think I need medication.  I gave it a fair go- I gradually dropped a few medications for reasons of side effects (it’s not being OH LORD IT’S TOO MUCH, I do genuinely seem to be unusually sensitive to pills) and kept Seroquel going for years.  It all did help, but I couldn’t deal with the dead feeling anymore.  And because the psychiatrist and social worker don’t think I need medication anyway, I have no-one roaring, “TAKE YOUR MEDICATION!” in my face, which is nice.

Either way, I’m in a good enough mood so it doesn’t matter.  It’s a pleasant change considering that the past few months, bar a week or two, have been exercises in dumb depression.  HOORAY!

Once again, thank you for your advice and kind words.  I will ask, and if I disagree, then challenge it.  I don’t hold out much hope that the diagnosis would be changed, but I’d still like to know why it stands anyway.

I really do have to bugger off for a while now and try to attempt to focus a bit, so take care!

P.S:  I finally updated my blogroll, sorry it takes me forever!

x

EDIT: Apopos of nothing but I just remembered my mum the first time Rob came over a non-funeral related visit and she offered to buy him a TV.  She has mad periods and is massively generous in them and buys a lot of stupid shit which is why she’s in horrendous debt.   But I don’t know how she thought we’d get a TV over to London.