The last two days I've been completely out of control. Better now. Today anyway. Declared day before yesterday that I was quitting my meds because they don't work. I didn't quit them, but I did cut the doses all in half and almost immediately I was right back to normal. I don't know why my doc insisted on increasing my Lamictal and Wellbutrin when I was doing really well at the doses I was at. My body responds to all things chemical in strange ways. So, instead of 150 mg Lamictal I'm now taking 75 mg, and instead of 150 mg Wellbutrin morn and evening, I'm just taking 150 mg in the morning. I'm in for psych services FINALLY on Aug 10th and I'm pretty sure all my meds will be changed anyway and I could not be more glad. So yeah, I'm tapering down and yeah, I haven't told my doctor, and yeah, I'm not gonna. Don't try this at home. There. That's my disclaimer.

Anyway, before I cut my doses down and came back to earth I spent the last few days crying, in a rage, driving my car all over the place like a lunatic, staying out until 3 am hiding from my partner just to do it, etc. At one point, when I was home, I got some bad news in the mail. It was one of those government mistakes that really screws you over. They decided I have no son???? Therefore they dropped his health insurance and I have to go to a hearing in SEPT in order to fix it....1600 miles away....um, what? Long story, but anyway--my son will be here with me in just a couple weeks (he's with his dad and finished the school year before moving up here with me) and he'll have state insurance and so it will work out fine as long as nothing bad happens between now and then. That little bit of news made me ballistic. I just lost it. I called the number for the "case worker" and left her irate, screaming, nasty messages, berating them for their inadequacy and ineptness, etc etc. I kept calling back and leaving more messages and each one was more rage-filled than the last. Then my partner comes home. I break down in tears and start throwing everything I can find. My cell phone slammed into the wall across the room (now I have to replace it, I think...it's not right somehow...rickety), threw books (which are SACRED to me), papers, folders, mugs.... and just screamed and cried. All it took to trigger me was that one piece of mail.

To boot, disability had me scheduled for 3 med evals (in one month!) and then they sprung a FOURTH on me with one day's notice. And it happened to be that day. I was so out of sorts I got the time wrong and had to call, in tears, to see if they could still get me in. They did. But I showed up red-faced and puffy-eyed, having obviously been crying. Then I had to sit and answer all those ridiculous questions that I never know how to answer because I'm different from moment to moment. Sometimes like a completely different person. My partner had to drive me and sit in the room with me otherwise I'd have melted down more. But that one piece of mail. That was the trigger. And for the next day or two I was hostile, despondent, angry, trying to sabotage my relationship (the poor man...and he just stands by my side with so much love no matter what...I'm very very lucky), running away, refusing to answer texts at some times and sending hundreds of insane weird texts the next.

One of the nights I was so out of my head, I ran onto a pitch black beach with huge waves roaring and rain coming down and lightning everywhere and it was the middle of the night and empty. I just ran and screamed. I wanted to walk into the ocean with open arms and not ever come out. I kept thinking that despite water filling the lungs being both graceless and terror-filled, that I wanted it, that it wanted me, that the cold and dark was the terror I deserved and the comfort I needed. It was cold and I was exhausted and I went back to my car and sat there, with my feet out the window, cold drops of water falling on them....drop, drop, drop. And it felt so fresh and alive and good. Something good. To feel something good. But that underlying need to cry, to scream, to be held (and yet I shove anyone who comes near me away).

I was depressed, so angry, so full of rage directed at nothing, nobody, and everything and everybody. But I felt beauty and sadness all enmeshed. I wandered in the woods and found wild rosemary growing abundantly and I spun around like I found gold. At one point, I went to sit by a light house where I knew my partner would not think to look for me (and I was right--he never expected me to go there...and he always looks for me) and I saw a sea gull walking across some rocks with a wing hanging in a way that was just so wrong. It was held both close to the body as if it hurt and hanging low as if he could not hold it up. And it killed me inside. I cried for that sea gull. It hurt me so badly, like grief. I cannot stand seeing others in pain. I don't even know if it was hurt or not, but it looked hurt. I watched as he walked until he was out of sight (I just noticed that I have referred to the sea gull as both he and it--how odd). But he never flew. The sea gull never flew.

In my solitude I had moments of clarity, rushes of love, deep and clear understanding. And I had anger too. And desperate sadness. Sadness for myself, for what this does to my partner, for the love he has for me that I don't deserve, for the way I lash out and make him worry on purpose.

I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote--more productively than in so long and for me, words are my world. But I also felt trapped and lost and confused. Colors were both crisply vibrant and all mixed up into a sort of mud.

And then I was back to normal. And so embarrassed. So embarrassed. I'm always so embarrassed afterwards. I mean, what was that? WHO was that? Clearly a mixed state. Or was it? It was an episode of something. I really don't know. And I just don't know what those episodes are. They are my most common. It's depression or that. Mixed state? Or just ultra ultra rapid cycling? I don't think it was that because it went on in this strange way for so long and it's always like that--it's like someone takes hold of me and I run. I run away. I become paranoid, draw conclusions that are absurd but make sense to me at the time, I become convinced no one loves me, that everyone despises me, that I am sick because I should have already died, that my time was already up and so I have to live this nightmare, and that no one could ever truly love me, being broken like I am so often. And the dramatics that come with it. I fear. I fear loss. I fear loss of love. I fear that any more loss in my life will make me crack and I will be a vessel of nothing because I can't hold water, because I leak out and onto everything. I become filled to terror with guilt for what this illness does to the people around me. Self-loathing because I was once capable and now I'm a thing. Just a thing. I breathe, I walk, I move, I feel, but I'm a thing. I contribute nothing. I know these are lies. I know this is not true. But during these episodes I am full of hate for myself and so I run. I run and run and I run more. I hide in my car, in the woods, by the ocean, at the edge of rocky cliffs waiting for a strong wind.

And all the while the ME who is ME, the real me, the rational, level-headed ME watches in sadness and horror at the way I abuse myself with these thoughts and is aghast at the way I ruin everything I touch (even though I know that is a lie, too...some of the sickness seeps into the rational me, too), and is contrite and remorseful for ruining days on end with my partner who is never anything but loving and caring and who treats me like I'm the Empress of every world and has done so for a decade. It's so terrible. And yet, once it starts, I crave it, I need it, I hate it, all of it, all so contradictory, and I can't let it go and it can't let go of me. It's a waiting game. Today I woke up and I was fine.

I know my meds have either petered out or just plain aren't working. I'm in for a med eval/psych eval on Aug 10, so I'm remaining hopeful. Hope, hope, hope.

I just needed to get that out. (And if you read all of this, you are amazing.)