Sunrise.

I know the exact moment the depression lifted. My mum came in to say good morning one day and sat on the end of my bed, and the light hit her face in just the most beautiful way and for the first time I saw the lines on her skin and the colour of her eyes. It was the weirdest feeling; it was as though someone had finally given me glasses I never knew I needed.

Every few days after that I’d just suddenly see something in such remarkable detail I’d never noticed before. The world had texture all of a sudden, and light seemed to be reacting with every surface to create a world more beautiful than I’d ever known. I looked in the mirror one day and my face had changed shape. My skin had pores and my eyes were lighter and for the first time in my life I realised I have really great cheekbones.

That was a over a month ago now, and since then whenever I look in the mirror I see something else I hadn’t noticed before. I have the most delightful little lines forming around my eyes when I smile now, and I pull faces in mirrors just to watch them and remember that I smile enough that it has imprinted on my skin.

I’ve shown signs of depression since I was seven years old. And one day seventeen years later, it vanished. Just like that.

Training wheels.

I have a letter from a psychiatrist stating that I am mentally stable. I laughed when I opened it, then hurtled down the stairs, waved it at my mum, and burst into tears in the kitchen.

I also have a letter for the same psychiatrist confirming a formal diagnosis of OCD. I’d been chasing one of those for years. I really wanted to be firmly stamped with that label, with the notion that maybe if I knew for sure what it was then I could stop it. Turns out it’s just three words on a sheet of paper, folded haphazardly by an assistant, and promptly lost upon receipt. The diagnosis just meant they recommended a medication that left me so nauseated I didn’t sleep for three days.

So. I have an anticlimactic diagnosis (and a few bonus ones), but I am mentally stable, and I have been completely unmedicated for three months. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still an anxious mess, but I’m a functional anxious mess who goes to work every day, answers messages occasionally, and finds joy in little things.

I’m writing this today following a few days of shaking and nausea and the odd bit of crying. Someone at work was ill and a friend was ill and I accidentally read an entire book in the garden today and my brain’s trying to convince me that I have sun stroke. I still have a long way to go. But six months ago even, this would have broken me.

 

All I eat is pudding, but I didn’t cry today!

I have emotions again!!!1!

They came back in a messy way; the bad ones first, then the intolerable ones, then the dangerous ones, and now the friendly ones, too. Bit of a rubbish time for it to happen, but I am pleased to say that I can feel this particular shitty situation like a normal human being and that what I’ve been experiencing the past week or so is grief and sadness but NOT depression. And this is good. This is healthy.

The meds are finally right, the new therapist is lovely, the major problem is isolated, my friends are incredible, and there is once more hope on the horizon. Today I even made plans for when I’m 25. 

Onwards and upwards!

Peace.

I’m in a war of swords and guns and all I have to fight back with is a wooden spoon.

My brain wants me dead. My brain tells me to close my eyes and  jump off bridges and play in traffic and let knives slip. It tells me these things in the same way it tells me to remove my hand from a hot oven tray; it seems like a sensible course of action. The dog is currently whining away at the bottom of the stairs thinking I hate her for skipping two walks now, but I don’t really trust myself to be that close to a road today.

Medication has increased to the maximum level and if I ever remember to call during daylight hours I am being referred to therapy again. I’m lonely and I’m scared and I’m dreading the winter.

But if Robin Williams could make it to sixty-three years old then I can hold on too. Bloody proud of that man.

Summer never looked so dark.

There’s a weird sort of restlessness that accompanies despair. It’s always at my lowest that I feel I have the most energy, and I refer to those times as my dangerous moods because complete, inconsolable misery in conjunction with a sudden burst of energy lands me in a very dangerous frame of mind where just about anything is possible.

I have spent the past few weeks drifting in and out of despair. Little Miss Relapse is still in full force and I’m genuinely worried this time. I have surrendered the keys to my mechanical steed, I have not been offended when my mum locks the car doors when I’m inside, and I have an appointment with my doctor next week.

 

Really struggling at the moment.

Not broken, just bent.

I am little miss relapse. I am a flurry of bad decisions and strange dreams and unfriendly internal organs. I took a full time job, just for a month, and tomorrow I have to ask if I can leave early because it is making me ill to the extent that I am once more not allowed to operate machinery.

I feel naff. I feel sad. I feel heavy. When the courage arises I shall call my doctor and ask for more help, but that is for some reason proving a pretty difficult thing to do.

Any words/.gifs of encouragement would be greatly appreciated at the moment!

Right. Update time!

I am still alive – we’re off to a good start – and barely hallucinating, I have acquired a job that actually pays me (I have no idea what I’m doing but it’s fiiiiiine…), I’ve gone out and done things and met people, and I have bought a pretty dress for no reason. I still have virtually no attention span but I’m coping with that well.

That’s life in a nutshell.

I’m doing well. I’ve been doing okay for a while, but I am finally doing well. I am good. I’m pretty great, actually! …says the person who is having to re-type most words due to shaking like a leaf on a windy day. But today’s shaky is caffeine related and not medication related OR brain related so it’s hardly even relevant!

So yeah.

I am doing really well, and it only took four months! 😀

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.