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I am now being given a new diagnosis. Well, others have suggested it in the past. I have been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. Now I am being told that I am on the Bipolar Spectrum. As evidence for this my pdoc says that there is a very cyclical nature to my difficulties. Well he sure has got that right. I just thought it was due to depression coming and going.
Well, whatever it is due to is sort of academic, as far as I am concerned. I mainly want to come up with better strategies to manage it. There has got to be others besides me who deal with this. Somehow I don't think this problem is totally unique to me. I just don't know anyone else who is like this.
So here is the problem: When I am "UP," I have one of the neatest apartments you could ever be likely to set foot in. I've always been a renter. Landlords and landladies who have stopped by when I was in my "UP" mode, have told me I was the most perfect tenant they had ever rented to. I am not making this up. Even when I was a child, my siblings would ask me if they could show their friends what my bedroom looked like. That's how pretty it was.
The trouble is that I only maintain this for limited intervals of time. When I become depressed, everything goes to blazes very rapidly. I turn into a complete and total slob. Even my gums are bleeding for failure to attend to my oral hygiene. (When I'm "UP," I'm fastidious about hygiene . . . practically obsessive.)
I have hoarding tendencies and they get out of hand too when I am in the "down" mode. Paper work is strewn everywhere. Right now I don't have a clean glass to drink from. I don't have a clean fork to eat with. I haven't done laundry in well over a month. The apartment is just strewn with stuff dropped wherever I happened to be when I finished with an item. Weeks of unopened mail has formed a mountain on the kitchen table. I keep the blinds and drapes drawn so neighbors can't see what a disgrace the place has become.
Now I'm starting to come out of the "down" phase, and I want to get this chaos under control. I want my cozy home back again. And I'll probably accomplish that, or get a good start on it today. I can sort of feel the "hypo mania" kicking in. I don't know if I am really hypomanic, but I can feel a "drive" welling up in me, and when I get it, I sure can get fascinated with cleaning. I just love when I get this way. Soon I will be singing to myself as I work - just like Snow White. I will dart from room to room, working on several cleaning projects at once. I will possibly even become ebullient. And what's more, I will be busting with confidence and telling myself that I'm never going to get depressed and disorganized and sloppy again.
But the cycle just repeats and repeats and repeats.
Does anyone experience anything like this. I would love to know that I am not alone trapped in this bizarre cycle. Is it something that Bipolars go through? Is it the tension between my obsessive need for order alternating with my hoarding tendencies? I was suicidally depressed last week. Two days ago I went swimming, and since coming out of the pool, I'm so delighted with all the opportunities that life offers that I just about can't keep from busting with exuberant hopefulness.
Can anyone relate to even a little bit of this? If so, do you have any strategy for leveling out the extreme cycling? I got put on Seroquel. So far, all that does is make my sleepy, prone to stumbling and very hungry. I stopped the Seroquel and went back on the Restoril (Temazepam) with pdocs permission, and I sure feel better. I should edit this down. Sorry it is so long. Maybe I'll come up with a more concise version later.
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