(Everything does not always suck. Trying to remember all that stupid cognitive behavioral therapy stuff about staying in the present and not looking at things in black and white. Basically whatever comes naturally to me... I need to do the opposite. I continue to walk about 1 hour each day. Here are the amusing things about my walk: I used to never be able to just "go for a walk." I had to go SOMEWHERE. Now I can meander. But I MUST be listening to BTS on my headphones. Without this, I cannot move my legs. It's my battery. I exaggerate. But while I am listening I could go on and on and on. I am inside the music and not in whatever crap I'm overthinking. I even have a method of knowing when I need to turn to go back home. On the one album (You Never Walk Alone) it's when they sing MAMA it's time to turn around. On the other album (Map Of The Soul: 7) it's when they sing Zero o'Clock. Have I mentioned that I do better with rigid structure? This makes no sense to people who know how chaotic I am. But there must be an underlying rigidity to support all that chaos. I am reluctant to put a number on things or say that I've lost weight... but my clothes fit better now than they have in a long time. I'm tracking the time that I walk daily. I'm tracking my weight weekly. Eventually I will track my food and make sure I'm getting enough vegetables. There is only so much self-care I'm willing to put in at once. I sleep. I take my meds. I go for walks. I eat regular meals. I get enough water and don't have too much caffeine I scare the crap out of friends and family by posting scary things. You know. But here's the thing: if I'm with it enough to post, I am probably not in the middle of a mental health crisis. Pro tip. It's like the light that you're seeing from a star. By the time it reaches you... the light is old news. I'm still worried about my students. But not in a cripplingly horrible way at the moment. There are only 5 weeks left in the school year, I think. And then (I say this every year) I will make a plan for some structure in my summer. Ha. I'm learning Korean in my spare time. I really like the writing system. My student asked me how to say "hello" in Korean. I haven't gotten that far yet... But I do know how to say, "Let's go to the karaoke room." Because (for those of you who know me) that is a SUPER useful phrase in my personal life even when there isn't any stay-at-home order. Soooo... I have been engaging in some retail-from-home therapy. Mostly just stuff that we need. But I did splurge (kinda?) and got myself a four-pack of (quite reasonably priced) plain, black cotton masks... from South Korea. Don't tell me this was unnecessary and there are masks available here. I KNOW this. But if I have to wear a mask, I feel better at this joke I have with myself. That my mask is connected with my musical obsession of the moment. It makes it feel more like weirdly-obsessive fandom and less like frightening pandemic-dom. And really, it's just a plain, black mask. Not with any kind of logo. Just a regular one like regular people have worn in Korea for years to protect their voices from dust and smog and pollen. And to keep other people from getting sick. I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS. But I can pretend that I like wearing my black mask from South Korea. Because it is a secret joke. And it is comfortable-- as masks go. Psych NP has changed my meds. 3 pills lamotrigine at night. 2 pills fluoxetine in the morning. So far, so good. I mean, it's not magic. But I'm not in the clutches of despair.
Everything sucks.
End of transmission. Fine, just kidding. I am having a VERY hard time working from home. I cry about my students all the damn time. I miss them like hell. My co teacher and I don't have the same dynamic when we aren't working in the same physical space. I don't get to have lunch with my teacher friends. Whine whine whine. And I shouldn't feel any of these things because I am hardly in a unique situation. So I have no right to talk about feeling bad. I have no right to feel bad. Only other people do. Makes sense. Ugh. My Depression wasn't great before All This Happened. I have had to add on latuda (my emergency "holy crap I'm way more depressed than I thought medicine that I keep in handy). I have been mildly suicidal. Don't Panic. Remember I talked about this before. MILD. No plans. Not gonna do anything. But idly thinking that it might be nice not to have to deal with all the things that make me overwhelmed and anxious and SAD. This was also what prompted the add-on of latuda. I will call Psych NP tomorrow. No, Monday. Teaching has royally sucked. I teach from my bedroom on a tiny desk. My students don't turn their webcams on, which is fine, but makes it eerie as I'm teaching to a list of names on the left side of my computer. I thought my asthma was twice as bad as it's ever been. Turns out I had bronchitis and probably had it for months. I can finally take a breath after just 2 days on antibiotics. I don't go anywhere but on a walk every day. EVERY DAMN DAY doesn't matter if I want to or not. It is my #mandatorycovidwalk. Sometimes I walk away from my house until I can stop crying and then I come back home. I live in a small house. Crying when my children are here seems like a Bad Plan. Also, I'm not sure if I cry here that I will be able to stop. Just because SAD. I still have a job. I am not sick. No one I know or love is sick. We are All Fine. And still, this sucks. It is tanking my mental health, and I sometimes am barely hanging on. I am so glad I am not doing this alone. My kids are doing pretty well, all things considered. I think it is hardest on my oldest. Next year he'll be starting his senior year. My school admin is awesome. I told her I needed to meet with her and she set aside a good chunk of time for us to talk. I didn't even have an agenda really. I just wanted her to know how anxious I was feeling about everything. It's what I would have done if we were in the building. And it was good to see her face. I am the only one who has an awesome haircut. And a dye job. I did both for myself the first week of isolation. I'll show you later. Unless I already did. Anyway. I am continuing to write. I'm working on a 4th book (2 are finished, 2 are in progress) on Wattpad. I have disconnected entirely from Facebook because no matter how my friends and family are reacting to this crisis, I don't think I can watch. But I have made some very good and supportive imaginary friends from all over the world. One of my bestest buddies is a Sami person from Lapland in the far north part of Finland beyond the arctic circle. They got me interested in K-Pop because of the books they are writing that I really love. I'm gonna be the beta reader for the final book. Super excited. Anyway, on February 22 I asked them what I should listen to if I wanted to be a fan of BTS. Now that's what I am. As you may know, I do nothing by halves. I am now full-on ARMY. BTS broke in as a hip-hop boyband. But their style has broadened and it's exactly what I need to listen to. The one at the end here is my anthem for covid. I'm learning it so I can sing it to my class when Things Go Back. (not to normal, but to something else) About 80% of my students are also fans. The other 20% pretend that they have never heard of BTS but are secretly fans anyway. I'm too tired to tell you the dosages of my meds. There are too many.
Oh-- I did/do have ulnar neuropathy from typing frantically seven hours a day for 10 days straight at a desk that was too tall. As a result I've been doing hand therapy (well, on my elbow, so I guess elbow therapy?) once a week AND taking
Wow. I knew it had been a while, but had no idea how long. I have been writing up a storm on my fiction projects. So that's good. The world is in a global crisis right now, which is less good.
I was discussing with a friend of mine who has anxiety and we decided that in some ways we are uniquely equipped to deal with scary situations. (Mostly this is a joke, but kind of not.) Because we have dealt with our own panic before. And we have some skills. Anyway, not gonna write much. I don't want this to be a covid journal. However, I will say that tomorrow I am starting an indefinite period of time socially isolating with my family... Spouse and I working from home and children learning from home through internet. Alternately bored out of my mind and terrified because of the uncertainty. (How long will this last, will people be okay, when will things go back to normal.) Today I cleaned out a place in my room to make a "home office." I have until April 6 to get ready to deliver content to students. Well, that's about it. I'm not on Facebook right now because it isn't good for my mental health. So if you are FB friends with me and want to reach me, your best bet is text. Stay healthy, stay sane, read a lot. Wow... I feel like I have nothing to say. That could be fine. I mean nothing is terrible. Things seem fine. That's good, right? I haven't seen my friends for a while (other than my school friends--I'm lucky to have those).
Now I'm trying to write while the daughter is singing a song about Chinese Zodiac. It is surprisingly difficult to focus on what I'm typing in English even though I can't understand the Chinese. Okay, now I'm not even gonna try. Still writing. Have found a nice community of writerly folks. They are supportive and awesome. Which is nice. Daughter wants to be an editor when she grows up. That's cool. Elderboy thinks physics is cool. Youngerboy is all about math right now, but that's becuase he's doing some crazy program at the University. I am not making any predictions about future studies or occupations based on current interests. Not even for Elderboy. I'm just making myself write this so I don't wonder what the heck happened to me in late January. Nothing. I was just fine. I do have to call the pharmacy to see about a possible recall of one of my meds. They called me. Now I need to follow up. Which I have not done. Right. Brain being eaten by Chinese New Year songs. Must go now. Meds: 300mg lamotrigine (possibly contaminated) 10mg fluoxetine I haven't been writing here a lot, but I have been writing regularly on my fiction WIP (work in progress). I would like to use the sewing/knitting term and call it a UFO (Unfinished Object). It's both. Completely outside my regular realm of writing. It's superhero stuff.
And it's fun to write. I mean, I love superhero stuff. I have read A LOT of X-men comics. And I love me the superhero movies. I read a lot of everything, I guess. I've been READING. Which is cool, because for a while, I wasn't really. I can hardly keep track of my serial obsessions sometimes. Right now, it's READING works on Wattpad written by people that I interact with on the writers' forums. They are all amazingly talented and really cool people. So that's fun. And also making myself write at least one chapter per week on my WIP. That isn't so much fun. It isn't writing itself the way my slice-of-life teenfiction novels did. Largely because while I was a teen, I have never been a superhero. Yet. Growth mindset. I struggle while participating in the online bookclubs because when we are randomly paired... sometimes the other persons work is... crappy. Unfocused. Ungrammatical. And they think that my work needs more explosions and incest (okay, maybe not... but that it needs more EXCITEMENT right away. And it's just not that kind of book). So I'll get comments from them like: Good Grammar. Nice Spacing. Easy-to-read font. Because that's all the good they can see in mine. And then I have to struggle to find what to say to them... because they don't have good grammar, nice spacing... and the font is pre-chosen by Wattpad! I have gotten great feedback from people who read my book by choice... people who are reading in their chosen genre. I may just not enjoy the online bookclubs. Now that I've found the forums, that might be my preferred method of interacting with other authors. I'll hang out in my current bookclub for a while. In February I plan to participate in the Open Novella Competition, which should be fun. I will never do Nanowrimo--which is when you have to write a full-length novel in November. That would kill me. Not literally. But November is not a good time for me to be devoted fully to writing. The nice thing about ONC is that it lasts for 3 months and the work cannot be any longer than 40,000 words. Regular life seems fine. I think. Meds: 300mg lamotrigine 10 mg fluoxetine I've been panicking a little bit (mostly just a normal-person-amount of panic) about some changes at work. Because change is always bad. Ha.
And I met with my admin. who essentially just allayed all my manufactured fears and now I mostly feel better. EXCEPT she said "You're so lucky that I understand." Meaning that because she has experience with mental health crap--particularly anxiety and depression--she has no trouble understanding my reactions. And because she understands, I am very candid with her. I guess another staff member dealing with Depression came to her and was afraid of losing their job due to Depression-related issues. She told them she understood and asked how she could help. Because she is awesome that way. Then I started overthinking things... what did she mean by "you're so lucky." Did she mean that if I didn't have such an understanding admin I'd lose my job? Or that people would think I was a bad teacher? Do other people think I'm a bad teacher? Or a defective person? Because of my mental health crap? Do the mentor-teachers talk about me in some bad way? Are they the ones who don't understand? Most of the time I just want to be a mental-health crusader and make them understand that bipolar people can have regular lives and be kick-ass at their jobs. Because let me tell you... I hold it together in class. I don't have anxiety issues in front of students (with the single exception of a classroom-observation involved incident, but my co-teacher gave me a graceful exit and I don't think it was noticeable to the students. Really.) And I don't cry during class. I'm a kick-ass teacher. And my admin knows this. And so do I. Mostly. Okay. Done overthinking. Right now I am meant to be writing my fiction novel. Which elder boy has started reading. And it's a work in progress... so he is anxious for me to continue! That's pretty cool. Meds: 10 mg fluoxetine 300 mg lamotrigine Yup. Survived 2019. And it wasn't so bad, really. A few bouts of pretty bad Depression. I'm still in kind of a funk, honestly.
Just realized that I haven't written here since November, so it's probably About Damn Time. I STILL have not called my psych NP after
All of these are things that would have been given her blessing--but she likes to be informed. And I did not inform her. Now I'm back to what her charts say I'm taking. Had REALLY BAD HEADACHES throughout winter break and did some poking around and came to the conclusion that my headaches were Depression related. This is not well-researched. I just picked around and found articles like this: Morning Headaches Linked to Depression I also spotted one (that I now can't find) that suggested these Depression headaches were often a problem during holidays and on weekends due to the different stressors that these unscheduled times can have. I got the chance to see most of my family members--all the ones who are in town plus some awesome ones from Indiana. That was nice. I meant to spend some time with friends. Meant to write more. Meant to clean the house. Instead? I didn't bathe, ate one meal a day and binge-read poorly-written teen fiction on Wattpad. Why? No one can say. I have obviously MAJORLY slacked off on my blogging here. I have been writing regularly, though. I've written 2 YA LGBT novels on Wattpad (you can find them under KGBuchanan should you be so inclined). I've been involved (and still am) in some online writing groups. Connecting with other writers is frightening and good and irritating and helpful and no good whatsoever. And now I'm working on a super-hero novel (link below). With another idea in the works for YA slice of life. I'm trying to learn how to use Twitter as an author. Which means I need to think of myself as an author. In between this I'm trying to be a good teacher and good parent and good Quaker. Ha. Mostly I just feel like I'm a little bit drowning and a lot numb. Emotions still not really going anywhere beneath the surface level. I'm gonna stop checking in now. Meds: 300mg lamotrigine 10 mg fluoxetine This is probably part of what people with bipolar are afraid of. That when we are medicated against mood swings, medicated to try and control the ups and the downs, we will lose the euphoria of emotion. Because there are times of euphoria. And they are awesome.
I have described this before though as feeling like I am just a raw open nerve and everything feels too much and too strong. And my emotional reaction to everything is TOO MUCH. Real, but not realistic from an outsider's point of view. I am used to this feeling. Lately, I have not had this feeling. I still feel the ups and downs. And the overall layer of anxiety regardless. I feel like a semi-worthless human. But there is also a layer of numb. The emotions are not able to touch my... soul? My actual self? I don't know. I have less of a physiological response to emotion than I am used to feeling. I don't like it. This is not anhedonia. Not really. It's not that I don't get pleasure from anything. It's just that when I am sad or when I am happy, it feels only skin deep. Not bone deep. Not deep into the depths of my being. That's how I'm used to feeling things. Which I guess is a hard way to be. When left to my own devices I take things too seriously on the emotional front. But I miss that. I miss really FEELING things. Here are some good things about this not being the case at the moment... I am experiencing workplace stress. And while this did send me crying to my admin's office one day, those tears--shed and unshed--didn't remain like a toxic kernel within me. I cried and then I was empty. The tears poured out and then I was hollow. Now I am routinely filled with toxic stress when exposed to the root of the problem (which happens alternating weekdays). But I don't retain that stress as crushing sadness or crippling anxiety. It turns to anger. Or confusion. Irritation. Sometimes minor despair. Sincerely, Me. I feel like I need to reassure people. Or not whine. I feel like I am missing the up parts of my ups and downs. But I'm afraid to reflect on this and I don't want to tell people that. Why do I write? Because I want this. I want to remember what this felt like and why.
Because somewhere I have faith that I will feel Better in the future and then I can look back on what this felt like and remember that this too was truth. In fact there are times now that I feel better. Just not right before I write. Or not for long enough that there is much to write about? I am fueled with tea and candy. I exercise by sleeping with all my muscles tensed. Is it any wonder I'm not doing well? I am self-indulgent and whiny. I am not doing the things that I wrote this blog to do. I am not holding myself accountable. I am not doing anything but popping pills in an attempt to control my mental illness. I AM TIRED OF HAVING A MENTAL ILLNESS. But here's the thing. Even if I didn't have a mental illness, I would still need to take care of myself. So I should just stop being whiny. I should make an appointment to talk to Glinda the possibly-good witch. She seemed nice enough. I should call my Psych NP. She doesn't know what meds I'm taking now. I marked my arm with my fingernails yesterday. Truth in advertising. Not advocating for self harm. And it's not like this is very harmful. Just a little painful. Thought I should put that here. Maybe. I don't know. I don't even want to write about what this does for me--this habit of scraping my skin absentmindedly--because it is not something I do as an adult. Only three times. Once this year. Once last year. Once just before my bipolar diagnosis. I'm trying to write this more often. The thing I am doing ALL THE TIME now is reading books on Wattpad. It's like fishing. You have to be prepared to catch nothing worth keeping. There are so many REALLY REALLY BAD books on Wattpad and I am always reading and reading and trying to find the good ones. A process I find really enjoyable for whatever reason. I am made of tea and candy. It's a good thing I don't do drugs. Or I would do all of them. 200 mg lamotrigine 20 mg lurasidone 10 mg fluoxetine When I get sad--the kind of sad where I'm crying and I can't stop--it's not usually about whatever it is that started the crying in the first place. So when people ask me what I'm sad about it seems stupid.
I'm not sad about that. This is the fire. That was the spark. And the fire sucks. It sucks all the light from me and eats all the oxygen in the room. I'm sad now. Or I'm angry. I can't tell. There was workplace crap in which someone said things to me that were not appropriate. What i would like to happen is to never have to see this person again. Instead what needs to happen is I have to have a polite confrontation with this person. I don't do polite confrontation. I do polite. So I'm mad that the situation has forced me into this position that I'm not comfortable with. I'm sad. And I'm angry. And I can't stop crying. But I'm not this sad about the the inappropriate statements. I'm just upset. And now it is the upset that is the problem. A stupid turtle that is on its back and can't right itself. A sailboat that has capsized. And now it is turtled. Just sitting there. Rocking back and forth in the waves. What are you sad about? How did you get here? Why are you not right? The world turned upside down. Now it doesn't matter. Now the matter is you need to figure out a way to right yourself. I'm glad I have Workplace Accomodation. She is not the one who made inappropriate comments. If she did, I would just stick out my tongue and threaten not to catch any Pokemon for her on the way to work. Because I know her. And she is in my court. I have a light schedule for the rest of the day. I am on my prep--no more classes to really teach today either. Which is good. I look like hell. My eyes are red and my face is blotchy. I don't want to fall apart in front of students. I'd rather not fall apart at all. So I'm writing this. And it helps. But I don't know how I can possibly be productive today. My brain is wasted. And I have a good brain. It is such a pity to waste it. My brain is one of my favorite things when it is functioning. Tonight I need to be social and engage in the neighborhood and go Trick or Treating. All I want to do is nothing. Nothing and nothing and nothing. 200 mg lamotrigine 20 mg lurasidone 10 mg fluoxetine |
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |