crash

Things have been difficult lately; it's taken its toll on me and I would assume, in turn, on Joe as well. To say we've been stressed out is definitely an understatement. Joe has been working long hours (although I think he enjoys them), I'm not particularly happy with my job, and then there's the moving. The endless moving.

I haven't been well. Not surprisingly, I severely underestimated the effect all this would have on my mental health. I was at least three weeks too late getting myself to the doctor and have had to return almost weekly since the 8th of January. I haven't cycled in a long time, but I'm still bothered that I missed the signs. I suppose I shouldn't dwell.

I don't remember my last night of sleep that wasn't assisted by medication. The only night I tried to sleep naturally since starting the meds was horrifying - I had vivid nightmares that I found hard to separate from reality and felt like I was stuck somewhere between sleep and consciousness; it was as if my body was sleeping but my brain was still awake. I think I probably only slept for about an hour the whole night.

Even with medication, I'm not sleeping through the night most of the time. I wake up around 3 or 4 every day. I used to be up for hours, thinking about the most irrelevant things until I was finally able to drift off around 6 or 7, only to be woken by my alarm a few minutes later. Now when I wake up my brain doesn't have much to say - it just tells me that I'm awake, that I should see what time it is, and tells me if I can take another ambien and still be able to function in the morning. If there's not enough time, it tells me to lay back down and wait to fall asleep again, which still takes at least an hour. The controlled release form of the med didn't help much, so we're forever increasing the amount I take. I'm still having trouble with an 8 hour work day, but at least I'm not as exhausted as I was a couple weeks ago.

Moving out of our apartment was disastrous for me, which was made worse by the fact that it happened so suddenly. I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor and crying while I tried to pack or unpack things. Joe tried very hard to keep me out of the moving process, but he finally reached the point where he accepted help. Thankfully we got some helpful hands from my family, namely Mike and Laura, but it was still very hard. I was unable to go to work for a couple days and was barely functioning when I returned. By the time we were completely moved out and had cleaned the apartment it was Thursday and we left for Florida/California the next day.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't miserable the entire time we were gone. It had nothing to do with where we were - we had wonderful hosts in Florida and it was great to see Becky, Fonsi, and Christopher in L.A. But I was not in the right state of mind to enjoy myself. It took so much energy to try...even to just relax and watch a movie (which I didn't have the attention span for). We did what we could to make the best of our trip, but the only thing I wanted to do was go home. But I didn't know where that was...home to me was our apartment in Marquette on our couch in our living room, but we'd left that. The apartment was left empty, our couch in storage, and I couldn't even picture what our new living room looked like. It was a conscious effort to not stay in our room constantly and Joe had to guide me through my tears every night.

Poor Joe. I worry about him and how he's been dealing with this. While I'm certainly better than I was two weeks ago, I know I'm still taxing. He gets the brunt of my irritability, agitation, and anger. I fear he feels he's responsible for bringing recent stressors into our lives. But it's not about the stressors, its about how my brain and I deal with them. And since no one can control whatever cocktail of neuroreceptors my brain wants to mix up, that can be a toughie. He's been absolutely amazing thus far and I have no doubts that will continue....but I can tell that sometimes he's working hard to not be angry or annoyed with me, like at 2am when I ask him to stay awake with me until my sleeping pills kick in because I'm too afraid to let myself fall asleep naturally because of the nightmares. I know that would piss me off. And yet he's my rock, always understanding and supportive, always ready to let me drench his shirt in tears. I wonder if he knew what he was getting into.

So now we play the medication game, trading side effects for serotonin; headaches are tolerable if I can muster up the concentration to read a book, sweating is fine if I can just stop shaking with anxiety at work, nausea is manageable so long as I have interest in eating. I attribute most of my improvement, which has been relatively little, to the amount of sleep I'm forcing upon myself. The med I'm on is classified as "miscellaneous" anti-depressant, so I don't know what rules it plays by...I'm guessing it takes 2-6 weeks. This is the beginning of week three.

Its odd how one day your therapist tells you you're moderately depressed and the next you're forced to accept that you have a life long mental illness. Odder still is looking back on your life and realizing that you can't argue otherwise; seeing that everything you've ever done spells manic-depressive. But what I can't get over is even after all the hell it's put me through, I've forgotten to respect the condition. I can ignore it for as long as I want, but it will not ignore me.