Chemical Soup

I saw Constantine the other day, and something he said reminded me of a theory I had weeks before going into the hospital.

When I was a child I saw things. Things a child shouldn't have to see

Constantine was talking about demons and the like. I am thinking about demons too, but demons that are thoughts. Thoughts that are real and true, but that are so horrifying that they are normally shielded from the average human mind. Constantine tries to cut his life short from the sheer agony of facing the truth of what he sees; maybe he, with his apocalyptic vision, was never meant to live that long.

Maybe I, with my mutated mental chemistry, was never meant to live as long as I have.

Yes, the doctors and the research says that the depressive mind thinks distortions, but what if they aren't distortions, but deep, dark demon truths? Truths no person should be revealed to for too long?

Something to think about

Busy Little Anxious Bee

I've been lumbering about, dutifully accomplishing things that should staunch the onflow of depression. I found a meet-up group that gets together walking distance from my work. I've been drawing and oil pasteling and crafting like crazy. I've gotten in touch with an advisor to get my spirituality back on track.

Yet these unexplained attacks just keep attacking. Along with the dull hazy stupid feeling and the additional weight. I cannot shake the guilt I feel when thinking of my next appointment. "You're doing something wrong!!!", I picture him shouting. And I yill have nothing to say.

Once More Into The Breach

I suck at telling anyone, even my doctor, how I feel. Mostly because, before this depression, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. Now, even though I spend more time doing just that, I still suck at describing the various moods I pass through.

I'm best with putting them in terms of colors. When I was in the hospital, minus the times I was horribly missing my husband and dog, I felt very green. Like numerous hillsides in Ireland sort of green. Once I learned of my discharge day, the green developed spiky flashes of red and orange around the edges...that only increased when I was discharged and started going to the Intensive Outpatient Program on a daily basis. The weekend before starting back at work, the colors were all over the place...a violent roiling dark, dark green with murky black undertones and sharp bits of red and orange all around.

Now? It's grey. A thick grey with occasional pulses of red like a supernova in a very dense cloud bank. Muffled. I may be way off base, but it seems to me as though I am feeling all of the same mess I did before I checked myself in, but at several thousand degrees of remove, and through an extremely thick layer of gauze and cotton batting.

Much as I hate to admit, it's time to call the doctor again. I feel guilty, as though I've done something on purpose to arrive at this state, which is something I'm just going to have to get over. Anyway, I've been doing just about everything I laid out in my discharge plan...chief among them being keeping up the art. Which I think I mentioned. I'm not sure. Which is exactly the reason why I should phone the doctor.

Sigh.

Will this ever be over?

Wondrous Strange

I am finding that, either because of or in spite of the new cocktail of meds, inexplicably striken with waves of some mysterious emotion. It bashes then goes too quickly for me to identify, but I know I don't like it.

I'll try to catch and hold it on the next go round to see if I can make sense of it

Recuperation

I have officially been cleared to go back to work. I actually could have taken another week, but I prefer to bank it in case of a future meltdown.

Seeing as I am fit to work, I called work and spoke with Greg who responded exactly the way I thought he would; he had an issue that needed solving right away. To his credit, he did say he was glad to hear my voice and he was extremely short on help...but I guess it would have comforted me more had he asked how I was and asked if I was okay enough to take care of this, seeing as I really wasn't cleared to return until Monday.

Perhaps it is a sign.

Another tiny little wrinkle in my mental landscape is the continuous revving of anxiety that happens throughout the day...usually without warning, mostly at the most insignificant occurrences. It's almost as if my adrenal system was sensitized by my meltdown...amped up so that it dumps adrenaline and cortisol and all sorts of other chemicals...into my system at the slightest provacation.

I'm not sure what to make of it. I don't know if it is due to the radical adjustment between hospital and outpatient life, or a reaction to the impending return to work. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough and, of course, will post results here

Addendum

Apparently skipping a dose of Effexor whilst on an Effexor/Lithium combination is a guarantee for strange dreams of the episodic flavor and seriously wicked headaches. I'm not sure why this is, but the headaches alone are enough to convince me to never do this again.

Thoughts

Even though I didn't slit my forearms as I so desperately wanted to do...even though I put myself in the hospital before I grew too tired to fight that overwhelming impulse...I still feel as though I have crossed some invisible line drawn in intangible sand. As if committing to hospitalization forced me to admit that I am capable of self destruction if pushed hard enough. Or as if bowing to the obvious need for inpatient treatment has finally made me see that this depression is not a phase but an illness that requires not only medication, but careful observation and behavior modification.

At first I didn't take the fifty million packets of paper that I got almost daily about depression and it's causes. And I have no idea what changed my perspective, but it did change and I still have those fifty million pieces of paper and I'm working on incorporating them into a program that I can use to track my progress and symptoms daily. Maybe that's the line....the realization that these fifty million papers are saying something that I really, really need to pay attention to.

Perchance To...Sleep

Another effect that has become painfully clear is the inability to sink into deep sleep. The result is a fitful, restless, tossing sleep that completely negates the point of remaining horizontal. I would stay awake and do something productive but I am tired enough that it would be pointless; basically not tired enough for real sleep, but too tired to accomplish anything.
Hopefully the doctor, for whom I left a message yesterday, will have some sort of solution.

Sea Change

Nothing much has changed...my mental state is still a bit tender around the edges.

I have noticed some changes, chief among them the insatiable desire to flex my artistic muscles, such as they are. This craving seems to primarily express itself through a viceral need for oil pastels; I went straight to Pearl yesterday and bought two boxes of the thick, chunky kind along with ample toothy paper.

Not sure what to make of it...for now I'll just keep at it.

Till Human Voices Wake Us...

This is my first attempt at posting since my stay in Chicago's finer mental institution and as such will be brief as I am still feeling a bit bruised and swollen about the mental edges.

I was discharged yesterday with a prescription for an ample supple of Lithium and Lamictil, my new best friends until further notice. They're to hurry the Effexor along, which they did while I was entombed in the worst of the depression, and hopefully will continue to do so.

More when the bruises have faded.