Yesterday was terribly weird. I actually felt ok. A little fragile still, but ok. I don’t know  where the depression went, I’m just glad it’s gone.  I don’t really feel as ok today. But it’s gloomy outside. Maybe I have SAD after all.  Fooey.

… hair loss is another side effect of the lamotrigine for me.  Not like I’m going bald. But I’m definitely finding a lot of hair in the drain after I shower. Eh well. I can live with that.

I’m trying to sort out what’s going on with my head so maybe I can feel a better. What a tangled web, though. It seems just impossible to deal with.  I know my bipolar stuff was out of sorts for a long while there, trying to get up to a useful dose of lamotrigine without having a ton of side effects. Up down up down.

Seemed to get that on the way to working well enough and all hell let lose in my life. Death. Serious work problems. More serious work problems. Family problems. Money problems. Rise up ole PTSD and start stomping around.

Up… down down down down down

The depression is going to kill me one of these days. When it’s around I just wish it would. I’d love to evaporate then. Seems I keep getting over it, though.

Now I’m just in the middle more or less struggling to not be cast about by everything that blows a little wind my way. I’m not doing so well with that, I sometimes think. Other times I think I’m doing great.

Nothing consistent.  I’m tired of that.

I think February was the poster child for depression and anxiety. Sheesh.  I survived it, though. I figure that’s good. And I’m finally up to enough lamotrigine (generic lamictal) that it’s axed the mania stuff.  Delightful! Oh wait, it’s also clobbered my creative drive. Dayum. This is not so hot for an artist.

Delightful Case Manager pointed out today that there’s always a trade off between good and side effects of meds. Errr. Yeah, I knew that. I mean… Trileptal worked well for me, but caused a nuclear explosion in my stomach over time. Abilify worked well… but gave me gut spasms that crippled me. Zyprexa makes me gain an average of at least 3 lbs a week… for at least 10+ weeks. Topamax made me unable to speak almost. Yadda yadda. Merely not being able to do my work well is  a peesacake, right?

I’m sure if this higher dose of wellbutrin kicks in it won’t seem so bad.  LOL

The past month has just slammed me. I’ve struggled so much with depression that I… I’m lost.  I honestly don’t know how I’ve gotten through except that breathing is a habit by now. Anxiety has been my next best friend. My buddy hypomania came to visit for a couple of days and that was a relief, but he went home quickly. But man, it’s been tough.  And that’s just what bipolar has done to me.

Last week life started throwing me curves too.  I should be used to that. But January was generally calm and I forgot how rough *things* can be.

My mother had hand surgery. It went well. Taking care of her, though, felt stressful.  Oh that was nothing it seems like now.  The next day her father, my grandfather died. Total chaos. Grief. More chaos. Relatives to visit. Funeral arrangements. Brother staying with us. And still looking after my mother who’s halfway one-handed as she heals. I was so stressed that if anyone touched me at all I jumped. I feel totally alien. Can you spell PTSD? heh And I’m still slowly creeping up on my bipolar meds dose, it ain’t there yet. A travesty.

The unreality of it all was horrible. I don’t think my grandfather liked me much. He certainly never had anything nice to say to me in the last 20 years. He had very little to say to me at all, really. Yet everyone was talking about wonderful things he said and did, how helpful he was and so on.  Hell, the man wrote up for his funeral that he wanted all his grandsons there. He didn’t mention his granddaughters.  Talk about feeling invisible and unvalued.  I don’t know who that wonderful man they buried was. Someone I never met. Damn that stranger for pushing all my buttons anyway.

And half of what’s in my spinning head I can’t get out to make sentences with anyway.

Things have to get better. I can’t take much more.

Yesterday was so bad I spent most of the day staring and the rest of it trying to read. I could barely function to even drag myself to the bathroom.  Crying jags kept attacking me. I just wished I would evaporate.

Today’s a little better. Just a couple crying jags. And today I wish I had more energy and will to get things done. An improvement, I guess.

I am thoroughly tired of depression. I’ve not been having throw-myself-off-the-building depression, just relatively mild stuff. But the mild stuff can be a real mind-messer and life-messer when it goes on and on.

I actually thought I was exaggerating when I said to myself that this depression crap just keeps going. Then I looked at my handy little mood chart graph from moodtracker.com.  Er no, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve been depressed or mixed all but 3 days this month. Ugh.

Apparently the lamotrigine has leveled out the manic stuff  — like it’s supposed to. But it hasn’t done as much for the depression. I’ll slog it out. I always do. I’m just tired of it. Come to think of it, I’m just tired.

One of the reasons people don’t like meds is they don’t feel like themselves. I can understand that. It does really sort of suck to have the highs flattened or feel dull or numb.

I felt the most “me” and the most alive when I have been manic. I do miss that feeling sometimes. I was on top of the world and nothing could stop me.  Kind of a pity, though, because I always end up making huge  messes for myself when I’m manic. When one wonderful mania ended I found myself broke, unemployed, and living 3000 miles from home with a very weird man who was having an affair with his daughter and some chick online.  It took me a lot of begging for help from my family to get home, and a couple of years to get my act back together.  Another left me broke again, psychotic, numb, and 4 years later still cleaning up the mess I made of my life. My manias are like that.  And so on. And my depressions just eat my life and soul to where I can’t function, and that wrecks my life too, though I can’t say that feels the most, or even much like being myself.

For me, that sense of feeling the most like me isn’t worth it in the long run. It never lasts, and it makes a complete wreck of my life that takes years to overcome. I am thoroughly tired of spending years of my life fixing things from the times my mood has been out of control. So I choose meds because nothing else removed enough of the highs and lows that I wasn’t tearing up my life. I choose to take as little as I can, so I’m the closest to that feeling the most alive that I can get without shredding my life. I work my tail off so that it works for me fairly well. Better that letting it go did, anyway.

Really, I think we have to each sort it for ourselves. If meds make your life better, super, go for it.  If meds make your life worse, well at least that one, and maybe any, aren’t for you. In the long run, anyway.