In dealing with ultradian bipolar

or, I need to be better about refilling and remembering medication.

I just have to say that forgetting to refill the daily 200 of lamictal will have you withdrawing like an opiate addict (but it's actually worse because your mood is all over the fucking place) by day 4.

Forgetting a day's worth of lithium (1500 mg) made the mood swings come back.

it's a process.

I worry about a relapse.

Adventures I used to have

When I was 13 I had my first job. I worked a few days a week, enough to keep me in video games. I'd stay up and write all night. 2008 was my first summer without a job. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had plenty of adventures though. I longed for something more to fill up my time. This summer will be my first summer without a summer vacation, except for maybe 3 weeks of break. I'm totally done with this.

Oh no.

The lithium isn't as effective any more.

I felt myself detaching from the world today. The mania is creeping back. And today it hit me hard, hard like it used to. Supercharge of energy... but I don't want it. I want to sleep. The letters on my screens are moving around but that could just be the lithium vertigo and ambien hallucinations. Can't sit still, delusional. I can fly down the stairs because I'm invincible (conclusion: nope.)

I don't want to fall back into my old habits. Drinking all the time just to slow myself down, ambien to keep me asleep, ambien to make the world more fun.

The feeling of a full blown manic state coming back is a feeling one must truly experience. It's power. my heart is pounding and i don't like it. Everything is pushing me down a tunnel at a million miles an hour and I want to get off. now that I know how I can be, that was nothing but mediocre functionality.

OK, so that didn't explain a lot.

So now let me explain. I'm severely bipolar but even I'm deluded about it. I know people who are bipolar who are in less good shape than I am. I feel like I don't deserve to be called "severe."

I've always been like this so I don't really know anything different. I've been told that it becomes more evident as a person gets older, but I always did have this sense of inner turmoil, the mood swings, delusions in intense manic states. The violence, the outbursts, the punched-out picture frames and boxcutter thrown into the wall.

It's not normal, even if it was the only thing I knew.

I guess it's getting a little clearer that I'm severe. I take lithium now. The first day I started my dosage it made me so blank and slow. I could barely walk a straight line. I thought "If this is what normalcy is, it's way overrated."

But I kept with it. I fought the nausea. It got less and less. I could think more. More importantly, I could still create.

My mom, who once said "It is SO DIFFICULT to live with you!" remarked on how calm and even I was.

But I don't think I'm taking enough. I feel like it wears off around 5 or 6. I'll figure it out in time.

Lithi-yum-yum-YUM!

"Very severely bipolar"

Well, that explains a lot.

The success of destruction

I remembered. to work so hard on something, throw yourself into it so fully that you lose yourself. The end result is satisfying and beautiful but you have nothing left of yourself. Burned out and hating what you did for taking you over.

I don't know why it should come to me now. perhaps it's the subject matter of a final project--Beauty and the beast. Beauty undergoes a change that turns her into a beast. Maybe I made it too reminiscent of my life.

The last week

In the last week I have been able to identify what a manic phase is like. Yesterday I felt the most normal (ie stable) in a few weeks. I got an iPhone to replace my poor second generation LG chocolate whose LCD finally cracked after years of abuse.
Today I feel disconnected. I was starting to feel it last night and when I woke up it's like I'm here but not present. But now I am working in projects with no fear, no hesitation. They just happen and they're amazing. But I don't really know what's going on around me. What a tradeoff!
I had something more to say but I forgot.