Sunday 23 February 2014

Shifts


I've been getting a bit mixed up and confused. I think it is probably connected to the changing of the seasons, the days that are starting to feel like spring is on its way. The energy I was beginning to feel in the last post become agitated and darker. I found it hard to take my medication, I missed a few doses, I felt I was heading for another breakdown.

Today I feel much better. I am taking the depakote and quetiapine again. I feel more solid in my self, I feel like things are possible again, I no longer need to pace. I've decided that now is not the time to make changes to my medication and that I am going to ask to try procyclidine for the tremor. If it makes me too buzzy I can always stop.

I think one of the things that bothered me is the letter I read from my CPN:

Werehorse has a constantly fluctuating mental state where can be either very low or at times elated. She experiences abnormal perceptions including persecutory delusions and auditory hallucinations. Werehorse has great difficulty managing her small home and her finances. She will sometimes feel very low and become preoccupied with delusional thoughts and struggle with the motivation to self care. This includes showering, changing clothes, cleaning her house and buying food or eating meals . . . Werehorse has engaged well with mental health services over the last year and I am hopeful she will eventually develop greater stability of her mental health. However this is a long term condition and it likely she will always have some difficulties with mood instability and impaired self care/ home care.

It just made me feel all messed up and weird. I kept asking "is this really me? abnormal and delusional? suffering from a long term condition?" I am so much more. I wanted to reject these words written about me.

And yet it's true. I look around and my house is in a disgusting state and I can't exactly remember the last time I had a shower. I struggle so much with these things and it causes me great shame. Sometimes I think that I just can't cope with living independently, it's too difficult, I can't do it. And sometimes I want to die, not because I am depressed but because I feel I can't cope with my perceptions and my thoughts.

But I am going to have a community care assessment soon, so I can have regular help with my house and my daily life. Hopefully that will make a difference to how I feel. Hopefully that will make things easier.

Maybe if I tried to come off medication slowly, which is of course the right way to do it, I could manage without. Or maybe I couldn't. I don't know. I do know that even though I have still had mood shifts and other problematic episodes I have on the whole felt much bettter than before since I started taking depakote and lamotrigine. Is it so wrong to want that? To not always be aware that the earth is turning and has a molten core and space stretches above me? To not feel entirely alienated from other humans? To have some basic, simple pleasure in my life, to actually be able to do things and not be constantly bombarded by overwhelming perceptions?