Some good news and some more good news

Yes enough of all the gloom, this is a blog by a bipolar girl, shouldn't there be ups as well?
Fortunately this is not a report from the grips of hypomania but a post of relief and excitement.

Firstly, I'm not sure it has come through in my blog but for the last two months I have been tired. The sort of tired that is in your bones and doesn't go away no matter how many hours I've slept, how many naps I'd take or how many pyjama days I spent at home. It was affecting my work, my social life, my mood, everything.

But yesterday I went to see my psychiatrist (who is back from holidays- hooray for having one of my mental health support crew back!) and he told me plainly that being on 6 different medications was lunacy. He was unsurprised that I've had such a dizzying array of side effects and thought he could address the most prominent one immediately by taking me off seroquel. So last night my drug regime was sans seroquel and I woke up this morning after 8 hours sleep feeling alert and clear headed. This then lasted throughout the day to the extent that by this afternoon my overwhelming feeling was one of boredom (oh archiving, you are a tedious beast) rather than soul draining fatigue!

So that's the first bit of good news, the second is far more exciting; I've booked flights to the States!

I have been homesick for that second home and all the good friends I made there for so long now. 383 days to be precise. But in less than a month I'm going to be there!

I'm flying into LA where I'll be spending some time with family in Orange County, then on to Indiana where I get to see my most sorely missed friend, Andrea, we're then going to fly to New York together and head upstate to see her gorgeous hometown of Hudson, we'll take a trip out to New Paltz to reminisce about our good old days there and then down to NYC to drink in that big city. Oh, I can't wait!

It's feeling incredibly good to have something big in my life which isn't mental illness. With all the medication and appointments and side effects it has felt a bit like my life has been overrun by it. But now there is something outside of that which I can put my energies towards.

I will of course need to be mindful of my mental health while I'm over there; ensuring I treat my jet lagged body with kindness, stay on top of my medication, don't overexert myself and probably stick to a fairly sober schedule (though I would like maybe one or two boozy nights - ending up at Rudy's and eating their hotdogs was such a tradition of mine in New York!)

I'm also aware that I'll probably experience a slump on my return. Saying goodbye once was hard enough, saying goodbye again could break my heart all over again. Plus there's always that dull ache you experience when you return from a holiday and have to return to your boring, familiar routines. But I have my mental health plan handy and knowing I should be ready for a slump will hopefully give me good experience at activating my relapse prevention strategies (on a side note, I hate mental health jargon, I think it's bullshit and dehumanises what is a very personal and painful experience. For a human.)

But let's cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I'm looking forward to more days with the stamina of a normal person and what promises to be a brilliant trip.