I Was Going to Fold Laundry...

...but then this giant cat came and sat in my lap. And so I'm stuck at my computer. Nothing is really going on at any of my usual haunts so I thought I'd write a blog. The problem being, that I don;t really have anything to say, which is why I didn't write one earlier.

Things that have been on my mind:

Is this med increase working for me? The last time I saw my Psychiatrist he increased one of my antidepressants from 25mg a day to 30mg a day (the maximum dose). It's been about two weeks now and I think I'm seeing some improvement in my mood. Not a lot, but some. The positive: I am interacting with people and look forward to getting out of bed every day. The negative: The people I am interacting with are all on the 'net, not in my everyday life. Virtual people, virtual life. It's not like I can actually go out and get a cup of coffee with any of them, as the closest lives in Denver (and I haven't heard from her in about a month, maybe more). So while this interaction is making me look forward to getting out of bed int he mornings, I wonder if it's really what my pdoc had in mind. Sometimes I wonder if it's what I had in mind. I'd like to have a real life, not just a virtual one. I'd like there to be non-computer things that I enjoy doing. but out of the security of my office, everything still causes me extreme anxiety. I have to get M. to help me cook. I can't leave the house without him, even. In fact, the other day was so bad that I couldn't leave the house even to go grocery shopping, which I usually manage every week. I had to send M. out for the week's supplies, which I felt really bad about. So no, I don't think this med change is really working. Not the way I had hoped it would.

I wonder what would bring my life back? I wonder when I will be able to read a book again, much less play my flute or dance or do any of the things I could do before I was on so much medication. The days when I thought I was a "normal" person and the times that I now know were periods of hypomania--those times of intense action and creativity that fell between my increasingly terrible and frequent times of depression--were just the way a "normal" person felt. I know now why a classic...symptom? Reaction? anyway, why Bipolar people so often go off their meds. The mood stabilizers work, of yes they do. But are they worth this flatness? This incapacity to function in even the most basic ways?

Well, when I was extremely depressed there at the end (before my diagnosis) I wasn't functional either. So it's not much of a change. Except, at least I could read. I miss that quite a lot. Now I can't even concentrate on a graphic novel.

And that's why so many of these blogs do not so much finish as end, like a dangling phrase. I lose my concentration. I forget what I was going to say. I am forgetting now. And the cat has left so I have no excuse not to go fold the laundry anymore, except that I really don't feel much like doing it.

But I don't feel like doing much of anything in my life.

I wonder if I ever will again.