I don’t spend a lot of time talking about my mental illness, which is unfortunate in that it doesn’t, I don’t know, put a face to the illness as much as I like.
But I also don’t like singing the same song all the time. It gets old. You get sick of it. I get sick of it.
I’m mentally ill.
I’m getting by.
But I will never, ever be ‘normal’.
Bipolar 1 has four possible states: mania, hypomania, depression and mixed state.
Reading the descriptions of each state you would think that it’s SO easy to tell when you’ve hit one of them.
It’s not.
Instead, they creep in, slowly, so that it seems a natural progression of your thoughts and the previous day and events and, and, and.
I have not had a full out, the-ship-has-sailed manic swing since 2009 or so.
I was not expecting to have a manic swing.
But we’re changing my meds, and one med was going up while I titrated off of another. Which sounds fine, but the antidepressants I’m on were on too high of a dose after this change.
So I went manic.
I had a few bad weeks, depressed and struggling, and then I was starting to feel better. I had more energy, I was happier, and I was having a lot of fun.
And I was getting more and more nervous about current events and food shortages and The End of the World.
So I bought some seeds. And some vertical planters. And grow lights. Because food for the end of the world, right?
It’s practical.
And some food storage containers to put food into.
And food. Wheat berries, wheat flour, gluten free flour, rice, oats, pinto beans.
With 5 gallon buckets to put them in.
And with wheat berries, you need a wheat grinder, right?
But if you have flour, you have to make bread.
But if it’s the end of the world, the power will go out.
So we need a woodstove.
And then you’d have to cook it on the woodstove, and how would we do that?
With a special stove.
Which needs a pizza stone.
And bread pans, and…..
You get the idea.
We’re talking thousands of dollars of purchases in a matter of a week and a half.
THOUSANDS.
And then I had to make space for the woodstove and the grow lights and the planters and…
I spent THREE DAYS bodily rearranging my room and closet, sorting and throwing out stuff, discarding furniture, the WORKS. Strenuous labor and work and being exhausted and not sleeping while I kept planning more.
Ya’ll, I’m physically disabled. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and it’s so easy to hurt myself even when I don’t mean to and I’m being careful.
I was actively damaging myself and DIDN’T CARE.
It was at that point that we realized I was manic, oh so very manic.
My husband worked on cutting me off from spending and deescalating my paranoia.
But we didn’t call my psych doctor, because we had it under control, right? We did not have it under control.
Yeah, I got my tail reamed at my next psych appointment.
And we’re out a LOT of money.
A humiliating amount of money.
So I have a new med adjustment, reducing my antidepressant and upping another med. I’m more stable. My mood is heading down at this point, but that’s normal.
Still.
That’s a LOT of money.
I’m super embarrassed, and I don’t even want to admit the number to anyone.
Yay, mania?
