Friday 6 December 2013

In A Damn Weird Place


I'm not quite sure what is going on. Something is changing, and when something starts changing I've learned that I need to take notice.

Yesterday the chimney sweep came in the morning. I busied myself cleaning while I waited. Cleaning, which has seemed an impossible task for a while, is suddenly easy. The chimney sweep was late so I had to rush into town to meet K. We went to the library first. I collected a ridiculous amount of books and then I made myself be sensible and reduced my armful to five - a book about living with bipolar, a book of David Hockney's recent paintings, a couple of books about painting abstracts and a book about woodcarving, because I am going to begin learning how to carve wood on Monday.

Then we went for a coffee and we talked. Wow, we talked - art, books, politics, oh yes, lots of politics. It made me feel really fizzy and buzzy, it made me think that yes, I would like to make some friends, that I would join the reading group I saw advertised at the library, maybe I'd even go back to the dating websites. But by the time I got home I was physically shaking.

This morning I had to go into town - shopping, bank, prescription. Except there had been a screw-up with my prescription and they gave me lamotrigine, quetiapine and paroxetine which weren't due, but no depakote, which was. Turned out that because the last letter the GP's got from the hospital didn't list depakote on it they'd taken it off repeat, and they won't put it back on repeat until they have another letter from the hospital, so the doctor just wrote me a prescription for a month, and I had to go back into town to collect it this afternoon, and I'll have to phone my CPN on Monday.

Inbetween all this I carried on cleaning. My muscles were aching and my temperature control seemed to be shot, but I felt driven, I didn't want to sit still. And I didn't want to just get my house basically clean and tidy, I wanted to make it spotless, to organise all my paperwork, and to arrange my books. I have this really strong feeling that I don't want to sleep tonight. The idea of getting into bed is repugnant. My mind is trying to override my body. Which makes me suspect I should do the exact opposite of what I feel like doing. Because of this mix-up with the prescription I now have a fair amount of 'spare' quetiapine, so I think I am going to take some extra and try to get a decent night's sleep.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think you're right in taking a little extra to get that much-needed sleep. Giving in to that urge to stay up and keep going and going.. that usually results in a crash and burn cycle, for me, at least. Reading through your posts, you seem to be very lucky to have such a supportive team working with you, and to have your own wits about you, as well. You've got this.

werehorse said...

Thanks - the support I have now does seem to be working for me, and I'm trying to be more aware of what's going on with me day to day instead of getting swept up by it. I feel I've learned a lot this year about how I can manage myself better, and I feel quite hopeful about 2014.