Mania

Mania,

I wrote in my last blog a little bit about mental illness, I thought it might be useful for me to update a little, even though I’m not actually sure I’m going to be able to write anything that will be useful to anyone else reading.

I’m still not feeling myself but the good thing is that I am getting treatment and this time I really am going to stick to it no matter what because I know that my being like this is making everyone around me stressed , including Rick and I feel like this is just so unfair on him.

I’ve been treated in the past in regards to my mental health but that has always been mainly for anxiety, depression and sorting out issues from the past. (Lets be honest we all have something to mess with our heads and some are better at dealing with that kind of shit than others) – I didn’t used to be so good, but I thought lately I had got better and any problems I did have where under control and I was happy. I am happy; my problem at the moment is that I’m too happy.

I’ve been like this several times before, and the one time that I did get treatment for what they call Mania was soon after starting Prozac and so my doctor presumed that the mania was likely to be a reaction to the Prozac and took me off it pronto, I got put on another med and was given follow ups with the hospital to make sure the Mania didn’t come back and all was good. The problem was the hospital didn’t seem so helpful, (cancelled appointments, changed times and shitty receptionists) and some doctor and nurse making me feel like the biggest waste of space to walk the earth. .. so I never did follow up with that fully (after a few months I said fuck it and stopped going) I did carry on seeing my GP and things seemed ok in my head mostly so I felt that it was ok, I’d take the meds I was given and hope for the best. Any other issues were all under control.

A number of weeks ago I had a familiar feeling building up. It was a nice feeling, an excited feeling, an indestructible feeling. I knew I’d felt it before, it was mixed with anxiety and all of a sudden I couldn’t sleep anymore. My mind started to race, and race, and race, until all these connections started to happen between what was going on around me, books I was reading, adverts on the TV etc... I have moments of believing Rick is the next religious saviour (I know it sounds crazy but in my head it makes sense) feeling like people are spying on us, or that he is the reincarnation of something important like Jesus or the Buddha.

Ideas started to crop up in my head, things that I could rationalise and yet things I knew where odd. The idea that something big was about to happen to us religiously, spiritually, I felt people where watching us (I still do) I felt excited and wanted to share this with everyone, I can’t calm down. I still have the ability to rationalise things when I talk to people or Rick but at the same time what I believe is making sense (to me if not anyone else) and there are moments when I’m not even sure what’s real anymore. I hear people whispering my name when I know that can’t be possible. I see things out the corner of my eye and I feel elated most of the day and if I’m not elated I’m terrified or anxious.

I’m lucky that I have people around who encouraged me to talk to my doctor and she confirmed what I already knew deep down that I was manic again. This week I have been assessed by a lovely psychiatrist who confirmed that this 2^nd (official) appearance of mania in my life means that I most defiantly have Bipolar. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that it’s treatable and many of the issues I thought where just personality traits or hang-ups for things long past are possibly treatable now.

Currently I feel confused as hell. I trust Rick, I trust my doctor, and yet everything I feel and believe at the moment feels so real to me that it’s hard for me to accept its all just mania. Currently it makes perfect sense to me that Rick might be about to channel a cosmic universal power into the world and save everyone and yet Boy do I know how crazy that makes me sound.

I have hang-ups about being Bipolar, I feel like a disappointment and a failure and then I hate myself for feeling like that because it seems so unfair that I should hold myself to that stigma when really it makes me no more of a bad person than any physical illness. Part of the reason that I am writing this update despite that feeling of” OMG what will people think” is because no matter how manic I may be my intellect is still very much in-tact and I am very aware how vital it is that the sort of stigma attached to mental illness is crushed.

At the moment for me there is a constant adrenaline rush, and a feeling of urgency. My heart is racing and is now (according to the doctor today) tachycardic which can be a symptom of mania itself and can be made worse by the various medications given to treat mania. It means he is worried about putting me on a higher dose of medication but at the same time he wants to get the mania under control and so it’s a catch 22. I need to calm down but I can’t. Someone asked me today if I could just try grounding myself in the present and calm my mind down. If I could calm down I would, I want to relax!

The good thing is that I know I could be worse; I could lose my ability to rationalise with myself at least some of the time and thus lose my entire grip on reality. At present although there are periods where I have no rational there are still periods where I can talk myself down from a crazy idea by talking to Rick, my doctor and others. Going over what my head is thinking with some people I trust seems to help me ground myself back in reality. I have medication now and I just have to find the right tablets and the right dose. So this will pass, (eventually) and normal life will resume. In the mean time I am lucky enough that I don’t even have to stay in hospital I have a choice between that and being visited at home. Staying at home is really good for me, I have been in hospital before and it was an exceptionally stressful time although I’m sure much good work is done there, I am terrified of going back and being locked in, kept away from Rick and my home.

In the mean time, really sorry to anyone who has spoken to me in my less than rational moments and hopefully I will be back to normal soon.