I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell.

Three months in, and I appear to have reached the ’emotionless blob’ stage of antidepressants. The world around me is still wobbling and rippling, and someone’s turned the contrast way up. I feel weak. I feel faint – like I’m slowly vanishing, the way people do in films when they travel back in time and mess with their past and accidentally erase themselves. I have strong desires to do bad things and absolutely no desires in any other capacity at all.

Taking that little white drop of torture this morning was painful. But I could barely even stand up without it.

Where am I? I can’t find me anywhere.

Such tired.

Today the ceiling started falling in whenever I looked up. Today people had skulls instead of faces. Today furniture and its shadows were moving independently, and in different rhythms. Today my skin changed colour and the world tilted slightly to the right and buildings kept changing size and people were enormous. Today was pretty scary, and there was a lot of shaking and a lot of crying involved.

I don’t know what’s up with my head this week, and I’m very much hoping it calms down again soon.. In other news, I am so incredibly thankful for my bed right now!

Nothing quite like the countryside…

I live in the middle of nowhere. There is a lot of wildlife of various types, most of which are lovely and fluffy and keep themselves to themselves, but then there are the ones that brutally murder things in the middle of the night right outside the window and inflict sleep deprivation on people who can barely function on a good day.

I have an enormous dislike for foxes – more specifically the noise they make – so when they decide to teach their young how to scream and torture things in close proximity to my bed, I don’t tend to get much sleep. It has been a few days screeching lessons now and my brain is exhausted. Night time is supposed to be my recovery time when I am not busy being a bundle of adrenaline, but the foxes have taken away my place of refuge and as a result I have spent a significant amount of the past few days shaking, crying and asking people to repeat what they just said several times with a glazed look in my eye.

I need some sleep now, please. I was in a dangerous mood riding home from work today and I do not wish to make a habit of that. I quite fancy surviving the week.

Upbeat titles are difficult.

The real world is treating me surprisingly well, I am pleased to say! I’m now working in a small office – there’s only four of us – on six hour days, correcting every spreadsheet they’ve ever made. Little steps. They’re lovely people and they like me lots!

I have told them that I have a history of silly-brain-itis (not actual inflammation of the silly brain, just a nice sounding phrase) but I have told them nothing more. I haven’t told them that I cannot ‘phones’, I have not asked them not to discuss illness, I have not told them I don’t like people. So for a little while I am actually playing the part of ‘well-adjusted, functional human’ quite well, even though I am a walking purple.

I am really, really enjoying dressing office-y. And startling people with the transition from mass of Kevlar and boots to dainty thing in a skirt and heels every morning. I did try taking the bus, but that turned out to be the most traumatic part of the day, so motorbike it is…while the weather stays co-operative anyway.

So yeah.
The real world is being nice.
Apart from last night’s spontaneous panic attack at three in the morning. Very odd sensation to wake up to, and not one I hope to repeat any time soon.

The room of requirement

As soon as I mentioned Trevor the Life Coach, he was hastily released from my service, never to be seen again.

Life’s weird like that; it throws you just exactly what you need at that precise moment in time, and then it’s served its purpose and you’re on your own again. But it’s okay. He helped a lot. He gave me a bit of confidence and that is precisely what I needed.

The next proverbial bone that the universe has thrown for/at me is a work experience placement. I start tomorrow, I get to dress all posh and office-y, and hopefully it will send me on the right path to find the next surprise in this ever-expanding treasure hunt that is life.

Denial

I am on a mission of re-integration. Desperate to work again, I have been liaising with someone henceforth to be known as ‘Trevor the life coach’, who has been psyching me up and is helping me adjust back into the real world a little bit at a time. For some reason I’ve avoided working with agencies set up specifically to help people with the problems that I have until now; completely daft idea born of stubbornness and generally being a daft individual.

Denial is my go-to state of mind in times of adversity, and thus having a complicated brain is definitely worthy of denial. I do talk about it, I do tell people I have limitations, but the “it’s all in my head” mind set is somehow still lingering, trying to convince me that I can just stop this silliness whenever I like. It is this little voice somewhere inside the tangle of thoughts whizzing about my head that results in me taking completely inappropriate jobs and trying to run before I can even stand up.

It’s not even just the brain things that I try to deny until they go away; there is an extensive list of foods that my body cannot digest and that make me ill, and yet I still use them regularly and just suffer through the consequences. This is more understandable though; please imagine that one day you were told that you could never eat milk products, onions, tomatoes, garlic, fruit, and so, so many other things ever again. Now think for a moment: what on Earth can you eat?

I think it is a similar story with the anxiety problems, though; I have difficulties going outside, being inside, eating, being with people, being alone….what on Earth can I do? I can deny it. I can tell myself that it is all just a bit of attention-seeking, I defy my limitations, and I do daft things that set me back further. It makes it easier to live with.

But right now I’m not after easy. So I am not eating things I can’t eat, and I am working with people who teach people how to live with uncooperative brains.

Silence.

The medication has taken my emotions, and it is a greater relief than I could ever describe. The hostility in me has fallen silent, the anger turned to calm, and the depression has become peace and the anxiety has turned to….well, stress, but can’t win them all. The fact it appears to have taken some emotions I quite liked is already showing me that this will not always feel so advantageous, but it is the reprieve I have begged and prayed for every day for almost two years.

I don’t write a lot here at the moment largely because I don’t feel like I am the same person who started this blog; though perpetually tired I have infinitely more energy than I did back in October, I have my motivation back, and I actually have some sort of plan for my life now. At five weeks it is still early days, but to have these effects already is magnificent and I am full of hope as to what the next few weeks will bring. Hopefully it’s still messing about and the favourable emotions will come back when my brain settles down again, the continued presence of vertigo and really vivid dreams implies that it’s all still a bit clumsy up there.

I would say I have returned to my pre-breakdown self, but I haven’t really. I am very different to her, and that is a good thing. Despite the hellish experience, I think I kinda needed it.

It’s not all doom and gloom, apparently.

I have started to change things. My god did I need to change things.

I am breaking rules a little at a time. I am proving that I can talk to people and they won’t hate me for disappearing for ages, I am proving that I can survive a short bus ride, and I am proving that I have some sort of value as a human being. I have started to look for actual grown up jobs that don’t revolve around a till (and some that actually put some use to that very expensive bit of paper I received from Uni) and yesterday I actually made a plan for this time next year. The fact that this time next year even exists in my wildest dreams is a magnificent prospect and I plan to take full advantage of it.

…not that my dreams have been particularly wild. Mainly socks and rain. They are getting more interesting again now though thankfully; dreams of making a cup of tea or changing a light bulb are things of the past it would seem. My vision is pretty much back to normal, too which came as a great relief – climbing a moving staircase at a train station was not fun, the road in front of me curling up (very similar to a scene in Inception) was not fun, and seeing different colours out of each eye was unlikely to ever prove helpful in any way.

And now I have an overwhelming desire to closely investigate the cocktail cabinet in celebration of having a really, really productive week!

And here’s my three happy things for today:
1. Socks.
2. Watching my mother and the dog napping in odd positions
3. Ordering vast quantities of books

Balance restored…for now.

Good grief last night was odd.. A few disturbing hallucinations later, normality appears to have resumed. Unless you count my Tumblr blog which spawned a load of cat pictures in the middle of the night. I’m now hoping that my brain doesn’t decide to repeat last night as I have to be out in public this evening, but if it does happen than it will just make life a lot more interesting for everyone else in the restaurant – who wouldn’t want their dinner to be interrupted by some girl lying on the floor holding onto her head so it doesn’t fly off and muttering about cats?

I can tell you now, prescription medication has officially put me off ever taking recreational hallucinogens. If this is the legal stuff that doctors encourage then I am in no rush to find out what the stuff on the streets does.

Right. Enough of my mumbling, Happy Friday all!

This is my brain on drugs.

Day two on the increased dose has not been fun.

My head is empty. I feel ill and I am exhausted and distracted and irritable and don’t really feel like a person, the room keeps moving around me, my vision is blurry, and…and I forgot what my next point was going to be in the course of typing out the word “and”.

After some research I’ve concluded that this is something I should probably get used to. Have a feeling this might be a difficult few weeks.

I’m going to sleep. The world might stop tilting sideways by morning.