Crappy New Year

See what I did there with the title of the post? How have I not won a Pulitzer?

Well had I had the time, internet connectivity and foresight to post in the few days before Christmas, you might have had some insight into my tone and writing style when I'm genuinely happy.

Reasons I was happy;

• Application to rent the most beautiful little one bedroom apartment on the Brunswick/Coburg border was approved!
• Bit the bullet and decided to go to Europe and the US for a lovely little jaunt beginning in April and ending in June. Visited a travel agent who quoted me $4800 for flights, used my mad online flight searching skills (I used Skyscanner) and got all my flights for just under $2300.
• I'd had a crappy stay in hospital for maintenance TMS but in the last two days two nurses on two separate occasions tried to give me the wrong medication. Definitely a bad thing but I felt suddenly empowered because there was something concrete I could legitimately make a formal complaint about and perhaps get some of my other concerns heard.
• The money from my four years of tax returns finally all came through. And money can buy you happiness. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise,

So what happened?

• Well, the money kind of all disappeared on flights, bond, rent, furnishings for the apartment and Christmas. All gone.
• Moving into my beautiful dream home turned out to have a few little nightmarish qualities. Please learn from my mistakes and never, ever move just before Christmas. I spent days without power, the internet has only just been connected and when you realise that your real estate agent has given you the wrong key he is not around for you to talk to. Also a number of the lights didn't work once the power was turned on and they had expensive, difficult to replace globes. And then finally, I don't know whether this stuff happens to other people but they just never talk about it, but the lock on my front door fell off. On New Years Day. When even the 24 hour 7 day a week 365 days of the year locksmith wasn't answering his phone. Seriously, how am I the only person who has things like locks falling off doors and driveways catching on fire happen? And I wouldn't have been so concerned about the lock falling off since the building itself is pretty secure but my new neighbours turn out to be sketchy as fuck! I couldn't work out who actually lived there for the first week or two because so many people were coming and going at all times of day or night. I've finally worked out it's two guys living there (probably not a couple or the counterstereotype of what a gay couple is) and they like to listen to the races all day long while competing to see how many f-bombs they can drop in a single sentence. 
• I drank a lot of champagne on Christmas day which perhaps wasn't advisable since I was kind of tired and overwrought from the stress and lack of sleep from moving so rather than sensibly going home after drinking champagne for six hours straight I went to a party and drank even more and then ended up having some rather unpleasant social encounters. I won't go into it but it kind of put me off parties, drinking, myself and people, particularly those of the opposite sex.
• So then I spent New Years Eve on a couch with a cat watching a documentary about happiness that SBS had obviously programmed so that people in my situation wouldn't top themselves. 
• The complaint I made about the nurses attempting to administer the wrong medication has had zero response which now just has me feeling insecure about ever going back into hospital.
• And I could have endured it all because I kept thinking to myself 'I'm going to Vienna! I'm going to New York! I'm going to see my dear friends!' but then my bastard government introduced some snaky new legislation which came into effect January 1st saying that recipients of certain government payments could not leave the country for more than four weeks in a twelve month period without having their payments cut off. And because I'd been an online travel scouting genius I had booked almost exclusively non-exchangeable, non-refundable flights. So I have a couple of options; 1) Go. Fuck the government. Hope they don't notice and be prepared to have my payments cut off which would definitely put me in further financial jeopardy. 2) Don't go. Forget all the money I've spent on non-refundable flights. Stay in Melbourne, be miserable. Other people keep putting forth another idea, 'Change the flights you can and just buy new ones', which is a lovely idea if the first dot point wasn't in place. I have no further money. It's gone.

So now I've kind of just given up on pretty much everything. I'm house sitting in the suburbs for my parents which means I'm trapped far from everything with dial up speed internet and too much readily available junk food. I've been wearing the same pyjamas day and night for the last three days. I'm kind of half-watching Doctor Zhivago in the same way I kind of half-watched The Crimson Pirate before this and I'm sure I'll continue to half-watch some crap on the telly until it's nothing but infomercials. I also have a UTI which I'm kind of using as a justification for the pyjamas, couch and tell lifestyle.

It's weird though, in giving up I think I've avoided going down the other path I usually go down which is caring too much and falling into a depressive pit. I'm intellectually aware that the things that have happened haven't happened to me. They're not the ammunition of the universe vs. Katie war. These things have just happened. Unfortunately all around the same time. But I kind of like holding onto the idea that something really is trying to break me. It means when a mug breaks or my Android tablet I got second-hand for Christmas breaks (both happened today - whatevs) I have a moment of ire and then I decide I don't care. It's like I'm flipping the universe the bird and telling it it can't break me because I don't care.

Of course I'm going to have to start caring again at some point. I don't think my pink babushka doll pyjamas or stringy bed hair would go down well at work. And I suppose I will eventually want to eat something other than mince pies and corn chips. Eventually. 

And then who knows what happens next. 

Fatigue

Forgive the infrequent posting.
Crap technology continues alongside busy weeks, jumbled thoughts and a lack of faith that these words mean anything anyway.

I ran out of Seroquel last Friday. There was a box I thought was full, it turned out to only be half full so my supply ran out and I didn't have a prescription. No matter, I had an appointment on Tuesday with my psychiatrist, it would just be a few missed doses. 3 in fact. 3. I took one Friday night so it was just getting through Saturday to Monday.
Predictably it was a bit harder to get off to sleep but I managed alright. I have an audiobook of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland read by a narrator named Peter Yearsley and there's a soporific quality to his voice which when combined with the dreamlike words of Lewis Carroll acts in a manner I find far more effective than Temazepam. So I got through. Although there was this big party on Saturday night so I didn't get a great night of sleep then. But no matter, I was fine and Tuesday came and I got my prescription and my drugs and all was to be righted in the world.

Tuesday night I took my normal dose of Seroquel and went off to bed. I was staying with my parents (another story) and my Mum came in to wake me around half past 9. Dragging myself out of bed felt like dragging myself out of my own skin it was so painful. I spent the morning in a stupor, my body weighed down with the weight of the most overwhelming fatigue. After lunch I couldn't take it anymore and went to lie down for a quick nap. I was woken six hours later.

Wednesday night I dutifully took my Seroquel again, shrugging off the day and thinking to myself that it must have just been a temporary readjustment to my brain chemistry but that Thursday would be better. Thursday I wrenched myself from bed around 10 and came home from my parents house and rather than doing laundry or going to the gym or attending German class I dozed in my bed, occasionally getting up to wander dumbly around the house wondering at what it was I was supposed to be doing.

Friday morning I was due in at work at 8.45am. I knew there was no chance I could risk being in a Seroquel haze so I didn't take it Thursday night. I woke up before my alarm on Friday and made it through the day clear headed. That was until the work Christmas party when my head did get a little cloudy and yes it was a bit of a later night than I had anticipated and when I got home and held the Seroquel tablet in my hand and thought about how I had to be in at work again today it just seemed like too great a risk so I tossed it into my pill box.

This morning, despite the still cloudy head and the late-ish night, I was awake by 8am. I wasn't due in at work until the afternoon so I spent the morning catching up on laundry and puzzling over why I was feeling so fractious and hungry and overwhelmed. Fatigue. Of course. Without the Seroquel and with a social life I don't sleep enough so I am fatigued. With the Seroquel I have the chemically induced paralysing fatigue.

I know eventually my body adjusts to the Seroquel and then even though I still sleep too much and spend my mornings staring into space I somehow accommodate it and muddle through. But right now I'm just so tired. And I'm so aware of how tired I am and I'm also so acutely aware of how rapidly my mental state starts to unravel just because I get tired.

I should have gone to bed already tonight.

So it's 1am now. I have things to do tomorrow so I can't risk another day of dozing or afford a six hour nap. No Seroquel it is.

My relationship with technology

For the most part these days, I'm pretty good. I mean I've got the whole getting-out-of-bed-shower-breakfast-medication routine down pat, though it does still tend to happen a few hours after most people's mornings have begun.

I've gotten past my despairing 'life is unfair and therefore not worth partaking in' phase and have even moved past wishing horrible things upon other people just so I'd have someone to relate to about how rough it is when everybody else seems to breeze through their charmed, little lives.

There's just one teensy area of my life which if you were to observe you might believe I were not past the state of needing close supervision in an inpatient environment. And that is my relationship with technology.

I try to keep the swearing to a minimum because my nephew's bedroom is next to mine and if he can hear me snore he can probably hear me cursing, 'you worthless piece of Steve Jobs' soul, I want to throw you under a truck.'

See the thing is, between study, getting sick every five minutes and working in The Arts, I haven't had a stretch where I've been receiving a decent income for over half a decade. And that means I haven't had any money to splash around on technology. Right now my laptop, my iPad and my iPhone are all second-hand and pretty old in tech years. Now I know that in the grand scheme of things, what with having just spent five months in hospital, now having to spend one in every five weeks in hospital and not knowing when I'm going to blow a gasket next, and all this is not even taking into consideration the much larger problems that exist in the world; genocide, war, famine, whatever that stuff is that's going on in Ukraine (seriously, I was sick when it all started and now it's really challenging playing effective catch-up) it should seem pretty small fry, but my old, inadequate, built-to-be-superseded technology is bumming me out because I just can't get anything done!

My laptop, which I just upgraded from running Windows 98, was slow to begin with but then on just one occasion when I decided to live outside the rules and not wait to find out who won Season 11 of So You Think You Can Dance, I downloaded about a million viruses along with the episode from Pirate Bay. And yes, of course I have antivirus software but it seems to be useless. I've looked up about a million geek pages hoping to find some way to purge my computer of these demons but they all tell me that I need to download this software and I think some of those have actually been viruses themselves and now the viruses have somehow locked down my antivirus software and really, I don't know what to do, except maybe hang around university lecture theatres for IT courses hoping to meet a nerd who'll settle for a relationship that consists entirely of cleaning up my hard drive, holding hands and watching old Firefly episodes with me (that's really all I could handle at the moment).

So I'm doing most of my web stuff at the moment on my iPad. But since it's 5 years old, which is like 90 in Apple years, it's just a temperamental little fucker that fails me more often than not. It literally just shuts down every 3 minutes. The best advice the interweb can offer me is to make sure there aren't too many apps running at once (nope, just one. Safari, you know, that one that came with the iPad) or otherwise to buy a new iPad (thanks Apple forum, you cultish home to douches).

So my most reliable gadget for the myriad of things one must do on the Internet these days to be a part of modern society is my iPhone 4. And while it doesn't automatically redirect me to sites where I can 'learn how to earn $3847 a week like this single mom' or usually drop out just after I've put in all my credit card details but before I've hit confirm, web browsing is not really optimised for the iPhone screen. It's so tiny and my eyesight's poor and I'm becoming paranoid that I must have obese finger pads. And mobile optimised sites are just the worst! They almost always abandon every practical function you might want in a web page and instead insert you into generic, unhelpful loops which results in me stamping my feet like a toddler, crying 'Nooooo!!!' and angrily throwing my phone as softly as I can on to my bed (I'm so angry, but I also don't want to break my phone. It's the most reliable technology I've got).

Anyway, I guess the point I was trying to get at is that it's harder to blog than it should be. This post took 3 devices, 2 hours and all of my patience. It's harder for me to repin witty Sherlock in jokes on Pinterest because the writing is too tiny for me to read on my iPhone. It's harder for me to win online arguments with Daily Telegraph readers about the Disability Support Pension going to "bludgers who say they got like mental probs but u can't even prove that lol" when my browser just shuts down, deleting my 7 paragraph scathing response.

So what I'm thinking is I should start a charity collecting functional technology to give to the mentally ill so that we can all commune online and give each other support, as well as buy socks without having to leave the house. If you're interested in donating please comment below. Your reward will be more rambling posts such as this. Dig deep. 

And exhale...

I'm back.

I'm sure you've all been holding your breath wondering what happened to me. Some of you may have worked out from my last cryptic 'Oh god, oh god, everything's turning to shit' post which I followed up with 7 months of radio silence that things were not going particularly well. Well, you were right. Your prize is in the mail.

I could give you the long story but it's long and my fingers are kind of tired, plus it's a total bummer! The short story is I was bad, I went to hospital, I got worse, I thought I got better, I left hospital, I got worse, I went back to hospital, we tried this drug, we tried that drug, I thought there were conspiring men hiding in my bathroom, I had my appendix out (not as a treatment for mental illness, I had appendicitis), I tried more different drugs, I started a treatment trial of TMS (Trans-cranial Magnetic Stimulation), I started a double blind trial of Mito NAC (N-acetyl cysteine), things started to improve but I was undergoing so many treatments that nobody knew why I'd improved, we didn't care, we threw our hands up in the air and danced to Kanye West.

Ok, that last bit only happened on Saturday night.

I could have blogged earlier but I was scared of the Internet and my days consisted of trying to get enough oxygen into my lungs to stay alive and not much else so it would have made for a pretty boring read.

Now, well, my life's a virtual treasure trove of interest and intrigue. I'm back at work at the MTC but keeping my number of shifts to a minimum lest my head explode and also to keep Centrelink off my back (I'm on the DSP (disability support pension) now. When I went for my interview I told the woman I'd been admitted to hospital 11 times in 2 years and she conceded that that might be a barrier to maintaining full-time work. It's great that I'm on it but the current government is gearing up to bend all DSP recipients over and collectively royally ream us so I'm not getting too comfortable).

I've been catching up with friends a lot lately and that has helped tremendously. I convinced myself in hospital that I was the loneliest, saddest, most unloved being to ever be shut away and forgotten about but it turns out my friends just didn't really know what was going on with me so they thought I needed to be left alone. Friends out there, for the record, even on my worst days seeing people who care for me lifts my heart a little. Please always feel welcome to visit me in hospital, even unannounced. But I also totally understand if you can't get past the overwhelming beigeness and lingering smell of antiseptic and stale cigarette smoke that goes with psych hospitals and just can’t force yourself through the doors. In that case just send a text. Or flowers. Or chocolates. Or money.

I need to send out a big thank you to my family (I'm sorry, this seems to have morphed into my Oscars acceptance speech) who stood by me through the worst and the weirdest of it all. I can’t ever repay them so I think the only thing I can do is try to stay well for their sake. Although thinking about it, if I can’t stay well for my own sake (like it’s a matter of will, anyway!?) then I’m sure I can’t for them. I don’t know then, maybe I’ll bake them all biscuits and give them nice socks.

So to summarise; was bad, better now, friends good, family great. I’ll delve into details of the whole saga at some later point in time if the mood so strikes me and I can find an interesting way to frame ‘despondently stared at wall for 7 hours’.

P.S. Oh, and happy Mental Health Awareness Week everyone!!!

Familiar feelings

I realised this week that I have now had 6 first days at 6 different higher education facilities in the last 14 years. No wonder the creeping sense of deja vu was resting on my shoulder for much of this week. So, what do I think of my new course? Well... Let's see, there are people in my Creative Writing class who confess to not having any fondness for reading or writing which I find alarming but my tutor just took in her stride. My Philosophy tutor is young, cool and slightly good looking and boy, doesn't he know it! He spent most of the class trash talking Deakin, the university experience and philosophy as a subject so I'll be interested to see where he takes us. My Film Studies lecturer clearly has stand-up comedy aspirations but seems to be a decent fellow and my Film Studies tutor told me it's basically impossible to fail the class, so that's reassuring.

This week has also seen my triumphant return to the MTC Box Office following an absence of nearly 4 years. It's all much as I remember it although the staff are all different and I can't work out where I fit in the pecking order just now. I feel like I had such a busy week but since work only made up a small part of that I will only be receiving a depressingly small amount in my pay cheque next week. Already the sinking feelings that accompany poverty are settling in the pit of my stomach.

It occurs to me that I have once again withdrawn from all social interactions. I haven't checked Facebook to find out if any events are happening and I haven't reached out to any of my friends to catch up. It's hard. I feel so tired at the moment and my timetable seems so intractable. Plus I'm broke! But spending all my time curled up in bed with my laptop is not a path to wellness.

I shall endeavour to venture out of my cocoon at least once next week in what will hopefully be a more settled week as I settle into my new routine. Hopefully my new routine will soon also incorporate visits to the gym at Deakin but right now the whole no time + no money = impossible life equation is making that difficult. Still, something to aspire to, one must have goals, even if they are trivially small.

I feel like all my current life goals are very modest. Stay well enough to keep out of hospital, start exercising again, pass semester 1 of a Bachelor of Arts. I wish I had at least one impossible dream or lofty ambition. Perhaps it just means I'm grounded and living in the real world for once. I'm sure I'll find a way to be happy here.

Transition times

It's laughable sometimes what I write in my blog.

Like in the last post when I was all 'rah rah, gonna sleep well, do yoga and be organised' and then proceeded to partake in the most exhausting, disorganised, yoga-free weeks I've had in a long time.

Sleep has been a real issue these past few weeks. Being particularly busy on top of feeling mildly depressed and highly anxious has left me exhausted. I got into a terrible habit of getting home from work around 6.30pm and going straight to bed, waking up around 11.30pm, starved and wired, browsing the internet for pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch for a few hours and then finally going back to sleep between 2.00-3.00am. Not good.

Because I was sleeping through all the useful hours of the evening it meant that I didn't organise myself well for moving house, I didn't make it to yoga and I'm woefully underprepared for starting uni.

But I did move house. That happened and now I'm living in a sea of unpacked boxes and bags. It does not aid with my sense of my life being disorganised. I must say it is nice to come home and be greeted by hugs from my nephew Max and dinner being made by my brother Nick, so I think it has overall been a step in a positive direction.

Uni orientation was this week although I only made it to one day as work asked me to stay on an additional week and I'm not really in a position to be refusing money right now. I have bought all of my text books and looked up all my assigned reading and quite frankly I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. The sheer volume of reading is immense. I was a few paragraphs in to Plato's Symposium when my wandering mind remembered that I urgently needed to update my blog. Tiredness doesnt help with this distractedness and I just hope that the first few weeks of classes aren't marred by this.

There is a small slice of good news and that is that I have been offered a job in the MTC Box Office. Hopefully this means I'll have enough income (along with whatever measly amount the government sees fit to proffer) to keep me in lithium and chicken nuggets for my uni days. It does mean I'm going to be busy though, already my next two weeks have jam packed schedules.

I'm not going to be so foolish as to discuss my plans for coolly breezing through these next few weeks of transition. That would just be bullshit and I do want to keep this a BS free zone. My psychiatrist summed it up for me when I saw him the other night, he said, "But hey, look at you surviving all this crap." And he's right. I am surviving. If I can make it through these transition times it shows how far along I've come.

Upheaval

This is turning out to be quite a time of upheaval and change for me. I was thinking to myself just the other day how well I was handling it all. Well, that was a nice day. I should have known it was never going to last.

I think when all the change seemed very abstract and theoretical to me I could cope with it just fine but now that I've had some concrete lumps of inevitable fact dumped in my lap I'm freaking out just a little. So, what's changed?

Well, I confirmed the date I'm moving out of my current sublet and in with my brother and my nephew. Suddenly the thought of moving across to the other side of town seems scary and I'm panicking because I haven't used up all 10 of the yoga classes I paid for. In the few moments of rationality I'm afforded I recognise that there is nothing to stop me travelling back to this side of town to take a yoga class because really it's not that far and let's face it, I'm soon likely to have more free time on my hands.

I don't think I've itirated this at all in my blog yet but I'm going to be without work as of next Friday. My department is being folded into another department for the time being and so my services will no longer be required. I'd managed to push my impending unemployment to the back of my mind but now that it's steadily approaching I'm hitting panic mode. I had a job interview today which I think I tanked (group interview - revealed my weakness for not suffering fools) and I have another one on Thursday but there is still a distinct possibility that I might have no income in less than two weeks.

What I do know I'll be doing in two weeks is attending orientation at Deakin University where I've been accepted to study a Bachelor of Arts. I've been saying I wanted to go back to study for months but now that it's really happening I'm filled with feelings of dread and inadequacy. What happens if I'm not smart enough? What if everyone there hates me? What if the poverty I'll have to endure while studying drives me back to the brink?

I'm getting stress headaches just thinking about all of this. There have even been times this week when I've been so preoccupied that I've forgotten to eat. Me! Forget to eat!

What I need to do is practice some acceptance and commitment therapy and recognise that the panicky thoughts are not helping me. Then I need to commit to taking actions and thinking thoughts that are helpful and in line with my goals and values. In practical terms this means staying organised so that I don't get overwhelmed by any of the upcoming events, taking care of myself so getting good rest, eating well and regularly and attending yoga and lastly, reaching out to those around me to let them know this is likely to be a rough time and I might need help.

So there you are, you're forewarned, rough seas ahead. But hopefully once I've gone through this transition time it will all be smooth sailing.

Busy

This is a very hurried post because it's Friday morning and I should be getting ready for work.
My life has felt quite hurried and full these last few weeks as I've tried to juggle deadlines, socialising, family commitments and care for myself.
So, what's been going on you ask?
Well, firstly I've been madly applying for jobs and university courses. Jobs because I need to leave my current job and university courses because I made a last minute decision that the best thing I could do to nourish my recovering brain is stimulate it with study. I've had to run around town tracking down copies of transcripts from all my previous educational institutions but finally everything has been found, copied, certified and submitted.
I've gone out a fair few times these past weeks but then this week I've also indulged in some theatrical immersion seeing three play readings and one full scale production. I've also this week bought tickets for some interstate productions of Macbeth so I've got at least two mini-holidays in the pipelines this year.
This week has also been a big week due to the very exciting arrival of my brand new baby niece. I was on hand to wrangle the two older children so I got to see the precious thing when she was only minutes old. Such a blessing and such a happy time for our family.
Finally I've been trying to spare a few moments here and there to make sure I'm caring for myself properly. This means going to yoga, resting, eating nourishing food and just trying to find some still moments to check in with myself to see how I'm really going. This has been particularly important since I've had to change my medication regime. I have developed a facial tic which can be an indication that the medication has caused a condition called tardive dyskinesia. This is characterised by pronounced, permanent tics or bodily movements. In the hopes that my tic will go away I'm being weaned off Saphris, the antipsychotic I have been taking. So it's just a matter of seeing how I go without it and then coming up with a strategy if everything is not ok. So far I'm feeling fine, in fact I'm feeling rather positive about the future at present.
And now I really must dash as work beckons and I must go. I'll update you soon on any advancements on the job/study front.

Giving Up

Sorry if the title of this post seems a bit grim. I'm actually feeling quite good to be honest, my head has come right again after a weekend of rest and light sedation. No, the giving up I'm referring to is the giving up of one of my vices.

I've read lots of articles about what's bad for you if you have bipolar disorder and topping that list almost always is caffeine. Problem is, I'm a bit of a caffeine addict. On any given day I'd have 2-3 coffees in the morning plus a Diet Coke in the afternoon and maybe a cup of tea thrown in there for good measure. Well I decided what with it being a new year and all that I'd try to take some better care of myself so I've given up caffeine. I weaned myself slowly down to one coffee per day then yesterday I only had a weak cup of tea and then today, nothing. I got a slight headache mid-morning and I did feel like my energy levels were fairly low but I survived, so I guess that's the important thing.

If this quitting caffeine business goes alright I might think about giving up some other things. Next on the list would of course be cigarettes. I fear that's going to be a tricky one. I've quit smoking in the past but always fallen back into the habit so I think there's some part of me that believes it's inevitable that I'll smoke. I also rely emotionally on my smoking. If I'm having a stressful day at work, I go outside for a cigarette. If I'm in a stressful social situation, I excuse myself to go have a cigarette. If I had a great incentive for giving up then I think I'd feel better equipped to give it a go. Sadly the great danger to my physical health doesn't register as a great enough incentive.

I toyed with the idea of giving up alcohol but I think it would be counter productive. Alcohol is also listed as something to avoid if you are of the bipolar way of mind. The trouble is that the vast majority of my social interactions take place around alcohol and while I've done it in the past, I've never much enjoyed being the sober one in a room full of people making merry. I also quite like the feeling of being a little bit drunk. Things are funnier, people are lovelier, the world seems like a more sympathetic place. Provided I don't get paralytic I usually don't suffer from it too terribly the next day. No, I think I should perhaps employ some more moderation when it comes to my drinking but I shouldn't do away with it altogether.

The other bandits on the list are fat, sugar and salt (so basically, the 3 things that give food flavour) but I think my diet, while not ideal, is pretty balanced these days. Having said that I just realised I ate some frozen yoghurt and a peach for dinner. Oh dear! Can I blame the heat? (For those of you outside of Melbourne we're currently in the midst of a heatwave - 2nd of 4 days of 40+ degree heat). Anyway, if I'm going to tackle my diet that will come later. Like much later. Like maybe when I'm in a nursing home.

But for now I'm feeling victorious for having banished caffeine from my day. And with all the money I'm saving on flat whites I intend to buy new workout gear to wear to my yoga classes. Win win.

Insomniac posting

Insomniac posting. Cannot decide yet if it's a matter of can't sleep or won't sleep. I'll pay for this tomorrow but that sounds like future Katie's problem.

So, welcome to 2014! How's it treating you so far?

I did so hope that the new year would bring with it, like a bolt from the blue, an end to all my woes and worries. Alas, not to be. This current hiccup I'm experiencing feels a little different. My thoughts are racing, I'm irritable as all get up and I can't sleep. Sounds like hypomania, right? But where's my fucking high man?! No this is some mixed states bullshit and worst of all is I'm so fucking aware of it happening that my thoughts about it and how wretched it is are just amplified.

(Sorry, just realised I've been cussing like a sailor. I'll clean it up for the next bit.)

Ok, apart from this, things have actually been going pretty well. I've been socialising and enjoying time alone and work has been improving plus there are new job prospects on the horizon. I've read a few good books already this year and signed up to take yoga classes at my local gym. So some things are looking positive. Now to just get the whole racing-head-not-sleeping thing under control. I suppose step 1 would be turn off the computer.

Ok.

Goodnight.

Rounding out 2013

2013 has been a shitty year. No doubt about it. And to round out this shitty year I'm feeling pretty much like shit. I'm exhausted and anxious and tearful and not at all looking forward to the future which is what everyone's supposed to be doing at this time of year, right?

I tried to be positive and think of a bright future, I even went so far as to consider what I might make as my new year's resolution. All that led to was an hour long reflection on all my vices and shortcomings and how insurmountable it would be to ever overcome them.

I tried to be kind to myself. I woke up feeling rubbish yesterday so decided to treat myself to a movie. When I got into the city there was an hour until the movie began so I thought, I know, I'll go and get these tired shoulders of mine a massage. Well I did, only it was the worst massage of my life. Painful and abrasive, not at all relaxing and I think the masseuse has actually done some serious damage to my neck as I can only turn my head about forty-five degrees now. I should have said something at the time. I should have, but I didn't because I'm terrible at speaking up, even when it comes to my own body.

Tonight I'm packing. Well, packing and eating pizza and blogging. I'm packing for my New Year's Eve in Tallarook. I'm going to a festival with a whole bunch of friends but I'm not really feeling the festive vibe right now. I'm sure it'll be fine, it might even be better than fine, but right now I'm stressing about what to pack and if I'll be warm enough. And I guess I'm just wishing that I wasn't kicking off 2014 feeling like this.

See despite everything that has gone on, I still have hope for the future. Just a sliver, just a glimmer. It's the only reason I'm alive today. I do deep down believe that my life will some day be ok. And I mean just ok, not brilliant, not mind-blowingly awesome, just decent. I'll have some stability and a vague sense of purpose. That's all I'm hoping for. I just don't know when that's going to come. I want it to be 2014 but the way I'm feeling now suggests I still have many struggles ahead of me.

But who knows, 2014 might be great. Hell, the rest of 2013 might be unexpectedly fantastic. Either way, I'll keep you posted.

Out of the blue

Life was traveling along just swimmingly then out of the blue I got hit with a nice, healthy dose of crippling anxiety. Totally out of nowhere! I was at work, drinking my morning coffee when suddenly the room started to shrink, a ball of lead appeared in my stomach and my chest started aching like I was having a heart attack.
I tried my usual trick of ignoring it but it's like ignoring a room full of crying babies with megaphones. Not easy. Eventually I gave in to it and excused myself from work, went over to my parents house, took too many Valium and went to bed.
I hate that it happened and it sucks that my coping skills are still so unrefined. If I was a blogger of any substance who you could turn to for words of wisdom and inspiration I would have no doubt written about how I employed my mindfulness techniques and visualised a soothing waterfall but I'm not that advanced, I'm honestly just getting by most of the time and when things turn to shit I still need to duck for cover (and call my Mum!)
Anyway, today was better but the whole episode has me a bit shaken because frankly, I'm tired of this all and just want to get on with my life in a really normal way. That's all I want for Christmas this year. A big box of moving on tied up in a bow.
I suppose I can only wait to see what Santa leaves under the tree.

Happy Birthday To Me

I got older.

After a day at work the evening of my birthday was very nearly spent on my own in the IKEA restaurant but considering last year's birthday was spent in a psychiatric hospital it would still have been a step up. As it was when my parents found out they couldn't bear the thought of me spending my birthday alone so they took me out for dinner.

The reason I was in IKEA in the first place was that I needed to make that inevitable trip one always needs to make after moving house. That's right, I'm relocated. Everything is going swimmingly at the new place even though I've found out I'm living with vegans. They're friendly vegans and not the judgmental kind. It's remarkable how much better I feel for having gotten out of my old house. All up I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Still, there is that thing that happens with birthdays, that thing where your thoughts wander to the grand scheme of things and make you take stock. I'm a fairly unaccomplished 32 year old. I still haven't completed a degree, I still don't know how to drive, I've only read about 3/4 of the novels by Dickens. I think it's time for some of those things to change. My problem has never been that I've been incapable of these accomplishments, it's just always been a matter of poor timing. I've made sudden changes in my life or gotten sick at all the wrong moments and things that should have happened years ago have passed me by.

But now could be the time to accomplish some things. I'm about 96.5% committed to returning to study next year. I keep having dreams that I'm driving which I feel is surely some precursor to actually learning to drive and I just read the first four pages of Barnaby Rudge. 32, yes this could be the age of getting things done. It would of course help if the heavens smiled upon me and I refrained from getting unwell this year. Could make for very dull blogging but that could be worth it.

Anyway, I should take my birthday body off to bed and see if I can get through a few more pages of Barnaby Rudge. Goodnight!

Time to move on

Well sometimes it gets to that time.

Right? Sometimes you just have to move on.

The anniversary of my disappearance passed with little fanfare and part of me was like 'what? World, how can you move on without paying notice' and then another part of me chimed in to point out that if the world is no longer preoccupied with how sick I am or have been then this is a good thing.

The other moving on I'll be doing is out of my current house. I've secured a 4 month sublet in an absolutely stunning house in North Fitzroy which will give me enough time to enjoy the summer before I move in with my brother and his son early next year.

In all I'm feeling very positive about life right now. I even had a moment when I questioned whether I'd tipped into hypermania because I didn't want to go to my psychiatrist's appointment but wanted to go out drinking instead. I think it was just a case of bundled up happy feelings getting confused in with the usual feelings I have of not wanting to be sick and therefore having to attend appointments.

But the positive feelings continue and I appreciate them while they exist. I'm even feeling so good that I can contemplate hosting a BBQ for my upcoming 32nd birthday. I know it's not a significant birthday but I'd like to celebrate it as it marks the passing of what can unequivocally be deemed the worst year of my life to date.

So I have a function to plan and bags to pack so please forgive me if I go a bit silent for a while. There are only good things in the pipeworks as far as I can see.

Milestones

Cropping up in my life are a number of milestones which if I'm not celebrating I'm at least pondering over the most appropriate way to mark their passing. This week saw the 10,000 page view of my blog, this is also the week of the one year anniversary of my disappearance and fast approaching is my 32nd birthday.

I'm humbled and slightly bewildered to think there have been so many hits on this here blog. Of course I fastly believe that some of them are strange misdirects from porn sites, but I do also know I have a core of readers who I'm ever so glad keep tuning in.
I never would have started this blog if I hadn't gotten so sick and had such a public misfortune to which I felt I needed a public right of reply. As much as I like this blog, and I do, a lot, in the world of checks and balances having this blog doesn't even out against having gotten so terribly sick.

The one year anniversary of my very public demise. There's hardly an etiquette book on how to mark such an event. There is some eerie part of me that half expects I'll again go off the rails at this exact same time of year. Undoubtedly I'll just turn up to work same as usual and the day will pass as normal while my internal voice will be screaming 'Don't you know what happened to me just one year ago! How can you go on with your day?!' I've entertained the idea of taking myself out for dinner to celebrate having survived this last year because lord knows it's been an uphill battle most of the time.

I feel a bit the same about my birthday. 32 should really be one I celebrate since 31 has been such a bust and I genuinely felt at times I really wouldn't make it. I think I might have a quiet picnic or BBQ in a park since the weather will be getting warmer. I can invite just a select few friends and be surrounded by people who also understand how miraculous it is that I made it,

\With milestones comes reflection. I think when I look back on these last 12 months more than anything I reflect on how lonely they've been. Illness is hard. You experience it on your own regardless of how many people you have surrounding you. I think for the next 12 months I'm going to really focus on rebuilding my connections with other people and hopefully that loneliness will start to seep away. Despite ominous feelings of the past repeating itself I am feeling quite good and quite strong at the moment. I'm hoping this is the feeling I will take with me into the next 12 months and it will hopefully blossom into that state we call wellness. In the meantime I'm still taking things day by day and just marking the days worth mention.

Hesitations

First she doesn't blog for a month then she blogs twice in two days! What's with this chick?!

I'm having hesitations about moving out of my share house. While there are definitely negative features to living here, namely the anti-socialness of my housemates which has led to a feeling of isolation, there are also some advantages to living here. The location is ideal for me. An easy tram ride to work and a shared taxi ride home with so many of my compatriot drinking buddies. Plus I'm super close to Cinema Nova so if I'm ever in a film going mood it's a short journey. There is also the fact that I'm living independently and as a soon to be 32 year old this seems like the state in which I should be living.

The advantages of moving back in with my parents would be that I'd save a tonne of money, I'd have people to talk to when I'm at home, I wouldn't have to cook for myself and I'd get to watch whatever I want on the telly since my parents have 2 TVs.

I just don't know. I'm so conflicted. Decision making is hard. I feel like I've made enough questionable decisions in recent memory that trying to trust my own judgment is a really hard task. I think perhaps I shouldn't rush this decision and by that I mean I should perhaps let one more rent cycle pass by. It's only another $850 (ok, actually, that's a lot of money) and it means I don't have to go through the hassle of moving just yet (is that worth $850?).

Like I said, I just don't know. Life's hard. Don't you feel that sometimes?

Ups and downs

Well the ups is my Effexor has been upped after a stressful shaky week. It has had the desired effect and I've been once again lifted from that dangerous precipice.

The downs is I got dangerously close to that dangerous precipice again.

A couple of factors were surely at play. Work stresses (ho-hum), a wedding (long story - it was a lovely affair but my issues surrounding how I look all came bubbling to a head and I was also fearful I was going to have a confrontation with another of the guests) and the last thing, my living arrangements.

I feel in some ways I've been unfair to my current household. I was hesitant about moving in here and rather than letting go I've let those hesitations fester into a deep seated dissatisfaction with everything about the place and it's inhabitants. I've been escaping to my parents house on a weekly basis which has further fuelled my anxieties about my actual home as my absence makes me feel disconnected and like I must appear odd to my housemates.

I've had many long thinks, a couple of good cries and one particularly insightful session with my psychiatrist in which I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't be paying good money to live so unhappily.

So where to next? Well steel yourselves folks, it looks like I'm about to take the ultimate plunge into Loserville and move back in with my parents. And just in time for summer too!

Honestly though, it shouldn't be that bad. I get along well with Mum and Dad and the money I save on rent can all be funnelled towards travel plans I have for next year (The States. Again.)  I've got a very good potential living arrangement due to come to fruition in about February next year so it should only be a fairly temporary arrangement. And if I'm finding it too much to bear I can always go through the gruelling process of finding another share house, hopefully one where I can feel more at ease.

So, that wraps up another exciting instalment of my life. Send me good wishes for the next one.

Worst. Blogger. Ever.

I'm totally shit. There's no real excuse. Yes, I have been incredibly busy but neglecting my blog like this is still inexcusable. I totally understand if you've all stopped reading.

A lot has happened. So much that I'm going to explain it all in dot points to get through it all.

• I was staying with my parents because I wasn't coping too well with life
• I was asked to move in to a share house in Princes Hill
• I ummed and aahed about whether I was emotionally prepared for such a change
• I decided I was and moved
• Work got incredibly busy and stressful
• My mood went up, down, backwards and sideways
• I'm tired all the time but feeling fairly stable now
• I'm still surrounded by a sea of unpacked boxes
• I was so tired when I get home last night that I got into bed and ordered a pizza
• I ate an entire pizza in bed last night

There, now that wasn't too hard to do now, was it?

I'm about to go and house sit for my sister for a week so the fun isn't stopping yet. I'm hopeful that my body will soon start adjusting to the pace of work and I'll have more energy to blog in the coming weeks.

Once again, I am sorry for the inconsistent blogging. I'll try to do better for next time.

Gimme shelter

Storm clouds gather, the horizon blackens, in the distance thunder rolls and here I stand without any shelter.
Shelter has been my predominant thought these past few weeks. My days have been spent house hunting, responding to house ads and attending housemate interviews. As each day has offered forth its share of frustrations and rejection my mood has blackened. I cracked in therapy this afternoon and a wave of pent up emotions came flooding out. I've been internalising the rejection, both experienced and imagined, and it has been making me despise myself. The vicious cycle, for these things are always cyclical and ferocious, is that the darker I feel about myself the more hopeless I see my prospects and this shows through in my searching and interviewing. I rule myself out of houses where the advertisers sound too perky and I show up to interviews defeated and depressed.
I'm taking a break from it all and seeking refuge at my parents house. They don't have the Internet so I won't even be tempted to continue my search.
I'm also hoping that this break will serve as some sort of breaker to my circuit. If things worsen I face the prospect of hospital again and that's an unwelcome thought.
I so desperately want this part of my life; the search for housing, the uncertain hours at work and the fluctuating moods, to be over that sometimes I wish the whole game over. I know these are bad thoughts to have and I chastise myself severely for thinking them. I pay for them too. With dark thoughts comes time out of work which funnels into my financial woes. Another cycle. It's all cyclical.
And so too is this illness apparently, though we've seen little sign of it lately. I'm back on the lookout for signs of mania though as in response to my mood shift my psychiatrist has increased my Effexor. Is it terrible that I'm craving a little hypomania right now? Just a little. Just a taste of what up feels like, maybe enough to see me coast through some house interviews as a bubbly person with a sunny outlook, just a little shot of boundless energy and then I promise I'd come straight back down.
Oh dear. Some days I'm glad my psychiatrist doesn't read my blog.

My shitty week

I'm having kind of a shitty week. Let's see, where to start? How about my shoulder? Yeah, my shoulder is in pain for some unknown reason, possibly the result of too much filing which I've been doing at my job, which is another thing that has been kind of shitty. Usually I like my job a lot but this week has just been a whole load of meh with some blah piled on top. I'm working reduced hours, some days only 3 hours, and when the work itself is shitty then getting the energy up to go in for those 3 hours is pretty challenging.

Since I started with a body part perhaps I'll continue and tell you about my jaw, which is also in pain. I was so proud and boastful running around being like, 'look at me, I'm side effect free' and then I've gone and developed a side effect. It's not specifically just my jaw, but all my muscles are tensing up as a side effect to the Saphris. It's most noticeable in my jaw though because it's currently permanently clenched and so it aches and my teeth ache and chewing my food has become an ordeal. Now if only this would noticeably put me off my food I might lose some weight and start feeling better about my body, which is another thing that has made me feel shitty this week. No big changes here, still just lugging around all the lithium weight and feeling like a blimp.

I wonder if I'd lose the weight if I went off my medication? I've been wondering about being off my medication ever since my psychologist asked me what I thought I'd be like off my medication. I've been having a few issues with this psychologist and I don't think this has been helped by such portent questions as this. I think I'm going to stop seeing this psychologist but then I have to go through the hassle of finding a new one or try going it alone for a while, I don't know, it's all just a weight on my mind right now. What I do know is that I don't need to wonder what I'd be like off medication right now because the agreed upon course of action decided upon by myself in consultation with some very well trained health professionals is that I'm going to take my damned medication.

And that is medication that from tomorrow is going to start costing me a pretty penny more as Centrelink have decided since I'm working all of about 15 hours a week now I no longer qualify for Sickness Allowance and they've cut off my health care card. And what really irks me is that I'm really not earning very much money. Certainly not enough to have saved anywhere near enough money to move out on my own despite leading an austere existence at present. And what I'd really like more than anything right now is to have a place of my own. I miss having that haven and I am losing hope that it will ever be mine once again.

So that's a brief summation of the things going on in my shitty life this shitty week. However, I'm not feeling depressed, despite there being numerous things I could feel depressed about. I'm not suicidal, not even a jot, so even if my life is shitty at present I still fully intend to keep living it. And finally, this week will pass. It may be replaced with one much worse but it may be replaced with one much better. (Please be one much better.)