this is what happens

When depression hits as hard as it has in the past month, things stop getting done. Important things like laundry and scooping the litter boxes. There have been a couple days where I've realized late in the afternoon (sometimes the evening) that I've forgotten to feed the cats.

For the past two weeks The Monkey has had to scrounge for work clothes. I did wash and dry all of the clothes last weekend but I didn't really fold them. And I certainly didn't put anything away (who could be bothered??). So my poor Monkey has had to deal with ironing this week. (Normally he can toss his khakis and a polo into the dryer for a few minutes to "dewrinkle" them.) And searching through heaps of clothes for two matching socks and clean underwear.

Guilt, guilt, guilt.

And so today, the guilt has overtaken the depression momentarily. I've decided that today, I will finish the laundry if it kills me. I will scoop the litter boxes. I will vaccuum and take out the trash. I draw the line at making the bed, though. Pshaw. (And I did remember to feed and water the cats this morning; just so we're clear that I'm not starving my furbabies to death.)

In the mean time, I am babysitting my niece. It's kind of incredible that she is already turning TWO this month. She's a good girl (albeit very spoiled and sometimes rotten). I have to bribe her to get kisses and sometimes she is flat out mean to me for no reason at all. But I guess that's just a toddler for you. My oldest niece was the same way at this age. My nephews, on the other hand, were always loveable to me. So it must be a girl thing.

My whacked out hormones combined with my depression-fueled over eating has caused me to pack on a good 10 pounds. My new jeans are snug. My muffin top is harder to conceal. My face is a LOT fuller. I really and truly need to get back on track with losing weight. I still have two months to meet my resolution/weight loss goal for 2009. I'm toying with the idea of signing us up for Weight Watchers while we still have Cigna insurance. (Cigna offers a discount on Weight Watchers but on January 1st our insurance changes to Blue Cross Blue Shield.) The Monkey is on board for it as long as we don't, you know, fork out the money and then diet for a week or two and quit. Perhaps I'll do some research today in between loads of laundry.

I haven't cooked supper in weeks. So yesterday I went and picked up all of the ingredients to make Philly Cheese Steaks and Tater Tots. We'll see if my Yankee blood shines through.

it was only a matter of time

My entire life has been punctuated by mood swings. Sometimes the swings were gradual and I'd slip slowly into a deepening depression. Other times the mood swings were quite violent. Jerking me (and anyone around me) back and forth between my whirlwind of manic mayhem and tarpits of despair.

And then there are the in between times. When I'm not depressed nor am I manic but I'm certainly not euthymic (that is, normal). Mixed states full of pent up, uncontrollable anger and relentless irritability. Those are the worst times. Because no one, not even I, ever knows what to expect.

I find it a bit ironic that Autumn and Winter are my favorite seasons. I love the changing weather. I'd much rather be bundled up under sweaters and long sleeved thermal tees than wearing tank tops and flip flops. (Some of this preference may, in fact, be due to my being overweight and uncomfortable with my appearance, though.) I have an affinity for knee-high socks and boots. Jeans and hooded sweatshirts. And here in Alabama we don't get long enough for me to indulge myself in thick, bundling layers of clothes. Halloween is, and always has been, my favorite holiday. And despite all that I love about this time of year, I can never seem to stave off the inevitable spiral into depression. Which is why I say it's ironic. Because I certainly don't enjoy being depressed.

For weeks I've wanted to do nothing more than crawl under a rock (or, more fittingly, my blanket) and hide. I try to tell myself that there are things to do. I need to do the laundry. I need to pay the bills. I need to go grocery shopping. I need to cook dinner. So I try to get up when The Monkey leaves for work (only to lie back down because I'm just too tired to stay awake at 6:00 AM). Then I try to get up at 8:00 because 8:00 seems like a reasonable enough time to start my day. Eventually 8:00 slips into 10:00 and 10:00 into 11:00 and 11:00 into noon and before I know it it's already 3:00 and almost time for The Monkey to be home from work. And so what's the use in trying to start my day now when it's already over anyway.

But there is still so much to do.

The pdoc I've been seeing since this time last year is not covered under my insurance. The program I've been using is a program for the uninsured. They called me in to update all of my information and paperwork the other day which means they'll soon be asking for proof of income (or lack thereof) and I'll have to show that I am now insured and blah blah blah. It was good while it lasted. (I was getting my very expensive Lamictal for $5.00 a bottle.) In a way, I'm relieved. The pdoc I've been seeing has always been very unreceptive to my opinions on meds. She insisted that I take Zyprexa (nevermind that I had much better results with Abilify). It took me months of being on Lithium and insisting that it wasn't working for her to FINALLY try me out on Lamictal. And she refused to give me a sleep aid and insisted that I take the Zyprexa to help me sleep instead. (Nevermind that I'd rather NOT sleep than take Zyprexa.) So I made an appointment with a new pdoc. A friend of ours uses this doc (her husband and son both see him). I'm not sure what I'm expecting. I know there's no "magical cure" for bipolar disorder. I know that, despite being medicated, I'll always have mood swings. But right now this depression is really relentless and I don't know how much more I can stand. So maybe it's time to supplement the Lamictal with another med. (Surely I didn't expect Lamictal to be my end all, cure all drug anyhow.)

[sigh] What's another horsey on the med-go-round anyway?

out of sorts

Ever since we got home from Pennsylvania I've felt off. The kind of depressed that doesn't have me hiding under my covers and/or crying uncontrollably but kind of going through the motions of what every day life entails. Oh, and I've been spending too much money; perhaps as an attempt to console myself.

It's really strange. The Lamictal has been really phenomenal. I've been pretty functional for months now. I get out of bed and I get a shower and I do my makeup. I run errands that need running. I do chores that need doing.

But ever since our trip, things have just kind of went to hell. I don't really see the point in doing anything so I sit around and do nothing.

It certainly didn't help matters when I sat around all weekend waiting for AF to show. I took my last active pill on Friday. On Monday, I started spotting. No big deal. By Monday night it was a full on period, but nothing too horrific. Thank the heavens for birth control. But then on Tuesday, all hell broke loose. I cannot adequately describe the pain I have been in since Tuesday morning. It started off pretty mild; a little worse-than-normal cramping. But by Tuesday night I was in agony. It felt like something needed to come OUT. The Monkey kept throwing me worried looks and asking if I needed to go to the ER. But our ER doctors here are so incompetent that I refused. I took a Motrin and a Lortab and after another hour of excruciating pain things seemed to die down. I was able to sleep for a couple of hours before needing another Lortab.

The pain woke me up early on Wednesday morning. I sat on the toilet clutching my stomach completely unsure of what to do. My sister took one look and me and said point blank that I was acting like I was in labor. She was afraid that I'd gotten pregnant somehow and was miscarrying. I knew it wasn't possible. Still, the pain was so intense that I had her drag me to the ER crying and trembling.

We spent the entire day there. They gave me several doses of Dilaudid which really didn't do much of anything for the pain. (It wasn't a constant pain, see. It was coming in "waves" which made my sister more concerned that it was like mock labor pains...hmm.) They did an ultrasound and I saw lots of "gunk" on the screen. I was sure that I was seeing clots and that my uterus was contracting trying desperately to pass the tissue. At one point, while in the shower, in a desperate moment of my own, I felt my cervix and found that I could easily fit my fingertip into my cervix. Which I have never been able to do. Ever. The ER doc sent me home with scrips for antibiotics since my white count was up. I'm going to see my RE on Monday for bloodwork and ultrasound. The ER gave me paperword about PID and now I'm terrified that I may have it. Though I don't see how.

Most likely this is the result of polyp regrowth. Possibly endo as well. I guess we'll see on Monday. I will be happy to start my new pack of birth control tomorrow, that is for sure.

Now I must lie down because Lortab makes me feel ill. But it's either be almost completely immobile and pain free or completely immobile and writhing in agony. :-/

proof positive

No matter how you slice it, treating and loving someone else's kids like they are your own is never the same. The bond isn't the same. The love isn't the same.

Lately my niece has been acting super bratty towards me. Whenever I so much as talk to her she starts crying or acts plain ugly to me. I can't really fault her for it, she's only 18 months old after all, but it still hurts my heart. It hurts my heart because no matter how much I want to pretend that my nieces and nephews are enough for me it simply isn't. I want a child of my own. I want that bond that doesn't compare to any other bond. I want the smile that lights up a room when I walk in.

I guess I'm just selfish. And maybe hypersensitive today.

I let myself run out of meds like a dumbass and now I'm paying for it. Hopefully I'll be back to normal in a few days. In the meantime I am going to drown myself in too much Guitar Hero Metallica. I'm currently downloading the entire Death Magnetic album. Maybe my husband will spend some time playing it with me instead of spending much of his off time on the computer playing Diablo. I shudder to think how little time he's going to spend with me when he gets a new card for WoW. Some days I'm just more needy than others.

Completely random and off topic: The Monkey won tickets to Bama Jam today. It's just too bad I'm NOT a country music fan. Not even a little bit. The only band that's playing that even remotely interests me is the Black Crowes. And maybe Kid Rock. Though Kid Rock is favoring towards country lately and, again, I am NOT a country music fan. And, honestly, have never been that big on Kid Rock, either. We discussed selling the tickets. They're going for $180 a piece right now. We could always knock off some of that and have a better chance at getting rid of them. However, we don't know if we could get into trouble for selling tickets that he won. Our second option would be to just say screw it and use the tickets. The third, and probably best option, would be to give the tickets to my sister and BIL. Since they both LOVE country music and they have friends that are going. WWYD?

how I know

I know this is depression because I have plenty of things that I need to write about, plenty of things I want to say, but I just can't find the words (or the energy) to type them all out.

who. are. you?

but I think I must have been changed several times since then...

All the raw, semi-foreign feelings of a fresh depressive cycle. I never really know how to act. I'm staring off into space a lot. I can't articulate what I want to say. Do I even want to say it? And yet...

I'm maintaining this outward appearance of being functional. Smiling at appropriate intervals. Talking. Laughing. Eating. Acting human despite feeling very much inhuman. Alien. Foreign. Strange.

Internally I am screaming. Writhing in agonizing emotional turmoil.

More and more often I think about - dream about - an out. Someway, somehow... just try to be different. If I could only have a fresh start; a mulligan; a do-over. CTRL-Z.

Who am I? What am I??

WHY can't I answer these questions rationally?

I am Alice and I am falling down the rabbit hole once again.

bored by the chore (what's the use anymore?)

Empty.

There is nothing left inside of me.

No hope. No determination. No resolve.

Nothing, nothing, nothing...

Nothing on the inside of me for the outside of me to bring back to life.

Empty.

I've done all I can do,

It's just not enough.

(Never enough.)

I am the diet cola of insanity

Sometimes I wish I were just completely off my rocker. Like eating fruit off the wall paper talking to the people in the floor off my rocker. Because, quite frankly, it would be a lot easier for people to deal with me.

Oh she's just crazy, that's all. They would say. And people would nod understandingly or shake their heads at the terrible tragedy that had befallen me and my loved ones. She's just crazy.

But, no. I have to walk around for days, sometimes weeks at a time where I am painstakingly normal. I have normal conversations and do normal people things like school work and taxes and laundry.

Then I have those days where, to the average onlooker, I am just reeeeeeeeally happy. Or excited. Maybe my husband got a raise? Or we're getting a big tax refund. Or maybe I'm just a happy person. Either way, happiness isn't a bad thing, right? (Nevermind the new wardrobe that just went on the credit card or the new line of makeup I bought to try out. Blah blah blah...)

But then I have days like today. Days where I make people scream at me and make my poor husband cry. Days where I think about death and dying and hurting myself. Days where I feel worthless and pointless and helpless and stupid and fat and ugly. Days where I want to just run away to somewhere where I can't hurt the people that love me for who knows what reason because I'm worthless, stupid, pointless, helpless, fat, and ugly.

I would rather be a non-functioning member of society than deal with this bullshit that I deal with. I'm tired of people thinking I'm okay until I crash into a depression and start sobbing all over the damn place. Don't they know by now that it's inevitable?? This is JUST WHO I AM people. Bipolar disorder doesn't just "go away" over night. You don't wake up one day and not have it anymore. It can't be cured by exercise and sunshine.

I have a massive headache now. And I think I might vomit.

Lissa and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

My day started off with my usual three mile walk. As per the norm, I clipped my [brand new] cell phone to the inside of my hoodie pocket. Somehow, someway, I managed to knock it out and it went clattering onto the asphalt. While the new faceplate did take the brunt of the fall, my poor [brand new] Voyager is already scratched.

Damnit.

I got over that fairly quickly only to have the dumb ass working the Arby's drive-thru hand me a bag that was too small for the food I ordered out the drive-thru window, ripping the bag in the process. I would have asked nicely for a new bag but I was already late picking up The Monkey for lunch so I said screw it. Long story short, all but a third of The Monkey's curly fries wound up on the floor board. Then, when I was attempting to clean up the mess my Diet Dr. Pepper sprung open covering my console and my entire right side in the thankfully un-sticky mess. Come to find out the lid that the dumb ass working the drive-thru gave me was cracked and popped loose when I leaned over to clean up the fries.

Mother f*ckers!

I was grouchy all through lunch. Poor Monkey. I managed to get my anger in check with a nice, long, scalding hot shower. Nothing like near-burning your skin to bring about a nice 'warm fuzziness'. (Now I remmeber why I always used to self injure the worst when I was angry -- there's just something about physical pain that dissolves all the emotional GUNK away.) So, in a slightly better mood, I started on my makeup. I was almost finished and went to sit on the bed to put my socks on when I noticed Jasmine lounging peacefully. I pet her on the head and she looked up at me lazily and started purring. Then she got up and stretched then plopped precariously onto her back revealing a nice hole in her tummy. It wasn't bleeding so I contemplated going to Walgreens and picking up some butterfly stitches to hold the skin together and wrapping her in an ACE bandage. In the mean time, I decided the best course of action would be to put her in the kennel and call the vet that did her surgery. Which I did and I tried futilely for a half hour. As it was already dangerously close to 5:00 PM I went ahead and called a local vet instead. They said to bring her in.

Half an hour later (after the poor kitty was poked and prodded and weighed and violated with the butt thermometer) they determined that she needed to be resutured and to do so they had to anesthize her again. I walked out with a semi-healthy cat, $160 poorer. Needless to say, I was not happy. This time around they put a lampshade collar on her to keep her from chewing out these sutures. She has to wear it for a week. I am so pissed that the vet didn't do this initially but the girl said it's really not a standard practice for cats. I didn't have this problem with Olivia or William when they got fixed and declawed so this was really unexpected. Thank heavens the vet accepts Care Credit although now we went from having $0 balances on all but one of our credit cards to only having a $0 balance on one. I'm waiting for something to happen to one of my or The Monkey's tires. Then we'll have a $0 balance on none.



She looks pretty pissed, huh?



Poor kitty!

I am very irritated with this whole situation and having to pay $160 that we really do not have. My sister has been talking about the electric and water bills a lot more lately and I feel like she's hinting around wanting us to chip in. I feel like shit that we really don't have the extra cash to chip in. I thought about giving her some money when we get our tax return but The Monkey STILL hasn't gotten his W2 yet. ARRRGH! Depending on how much we get back, I'd like to throw at least $300 my sister's way. I know it's really not much but there's not much else we can do. We're going to need that money to fall back on for other things. Like groceries. I do not like living like this. I do not want to live like this. I do not want to be sitting at my computer wearing gloves with a blanket draped over me just to keep from freezing. I do not like feeling USELESS and WORTHLESS and POINTLESS all. the. freaking. time. I am tired of the mood swings. I am already sick and tired of the meds and how the Lithium makes my stomach feel like it is in a perpetual knot and I hate that even the micro-dose of Zyprexa has me sleeping 12 hours against my will. (I won't even go in on the food cravings and how my weight is not BUDGING even though I am doing my best to eat less, drink more water, and exercise daily.)

On my to-do list this week:

1. Start looking into getting paid to blog. Since I do it almost daily anyway, why not try to make some extra cash?? Even an extra $100 a month would be a huge help at this point.


2. Find out whether or not we qualify for any other assistance while we're waiting for my SSD appeal.


3. Call my school and see about getting them to credit back the finance charges they tacked onto my bill. (I owe them around $200, they charged me finance charges for for the $6,000+ that was on my account for two months because my student loans too almost the entire semester to post to my account. I am NOT paying interest on $6,000+ dollars!!)


4. See what I can do about registering for next semester -- hopefully my FINAL semester.


5. Try to think of good reasons to keep on living.

On top of everything else, I caught my niece's cold. So now I'm stuffy, sneezy, achey, blah blah blah...

Now I am going to get off of this thing so The Monkey can play WarCrack for a little while and I'm going to attempt to give myself carpel tunnel from playing Guitar Hero on Hyperspeed.

another year gone by...

Today I'm 28. So close to 30 now it's getting scary. :-P I contemplated getting drunk tonight but I'm really not in the mood. Something about melancholy that makes getting inebriated less appealing. Le sigh.

I wish I had something insightful or interesting to say about the year past. I absolutely don't. It was another year. It was a rough year. I'm sure there will be years that will top this one in the 'rough' category, though. Still no children. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever be parents. I'm beginning to wonder if I even care anymore. Last year I was getting a shot in my ass for yet another failed attempt to get pregnant. The year before I was just starting my long run of visits to Birmingham and Montgomery for a chance to get pregnant. This year, we've stopped trying all together. Funny how things can change so drastically.

I just finished a small slice of red velvety goodness. I can feel myself getting fatter. Literally. Ugh. (This feeling is drastically exacerbated by the string of photos my sister took in which I look incredibly large.) Time to really buckle down and lose weight. Seriously. I really MUST get on the ball. [eyeroll]

So I had cake and icecream and forced a smile (and it actually didn't look fake) and I have new socks and all is just so with the world. Time to wash my face and curl up on the couch under two thick blankets with a warm, fuzzy kitty at my feet. Tomorrow I will be one day closer to 29. I will try not to think about my life ending one nano-second at a time.

Pictures to follow... eventually. My hair looked kinda neat today with the whole wavey look. I think I like it.

The third month that ends in 'ber'

So, Halloween was completely yawn-worthy this year. My parents decided against the traditional Halloween party which really bummed me out. So no nifty costumes or jell-o shots or cute Halloween-themed cupcakes this year. Nope. Just a night hanging out with Tony's brother and niece for a little while and lots of crying and general moodiness during the day. Now Christmas is on the way and I'm just sure to crash into severe depression. I do every year and I just know this year is going to be worse because we don't have money to spend on gifts which usually helps alleviate some of the holiday blues. But oh well. I did get to carve a pumpkin and I did show my Halloween spirit by wearing black and orange. (Plus I found a wicked-cool eyeshadow tutorial for smokey orange eyes and I must say that I think it turned out pretty kick-ass.) The kids went trick-or-treating and their costumes looked really good.


































I'm 28 in a month and two days. So close to 30 that I am really starting to feel it. (Not that being 30 is a bad thing or anything. I just feel very under accomplished for someone reaching the "big" three-oh.) Some days I feel okay with not being pregnant (or having a child) yet. Then there are days where I remember that this would've been our baby's first Halloween (and first Thanksgiving, and first Christmas... etc, etc). And the fact that we won't be embarking back on our TTC journey for a long time just doesn't help. But whatever.

I have an appointment with our county's Mental Health service on Thursday. This appointment is strictly eval and therapy. I'm not sure when I'll actually get to see their pdoc and talk about meds. They do not offer free services (contrary to what the SSA told me) but they do offer a sliding scale payment method based on income. So we'll find out how much it's going to cost on Thursday. Hopefully I'll like the therapist and the pdoc because they only have a few of the former and ONE of the latter. I guess it can't be any worse than my usual pdoc in Dothan.

My moods are everywhere. I sleep a lot and then I can't sleep sometimes at all. Here lately I've been drugging myself with Xanax when I look at the clock and see that it's 3:00 AM and all the TV channels are going to "Paid Programming" and I notice that I'm desperately awake. Trying not to throw/break things or hurt myself. Trying to supress the urge to verbally wish myself dead. Wishing my life meant something significant or served some greater purpose. And again... whatever.

my day in bullets

- Wake up feeling good.
- Watch TV until 11:00. Feeling less good, but still okay.
- Try to get motivated to go run errands.
- Fail to get motivated to go run errands.
- Talk to sister about tentative PCS in December.
- Start to Panic about tentative PCS in December.
- Force conversation on unwilling husband about what we're going to do.
- Start feeling more panic.
- Get angry at husband for not being more motivated to get a job RIGHT NOW this very INSTANT.
- Feel doomed that husband is not going to find a job.
- Feel doomed that I'm not going to find a job either.
- Feel panic about having to find a job.
- Depression setting in.
- Start to feel hopeless about everything.
- Start to seriously think that killing myself is a viable (and better) option.
- Try to sleep it off.
- Wake up feeling worse.
- Contemplate filling my scrip for Xanax and taking the entire bottle.
- Fill scrip for Xanax.
- Bawl while talking to my husband about why it's better for all if I just kill myself.
- Sob and intermittently scream "I'm sorry!" to my distraught husband for nearly an hour and a half.
- Complain that I desperately need medication.
- Promise to call the County Health Department and inquire.
- Promise to look into filing for disability.
- Feel less depressed, or, at least, not as suicidal.
- Eat pizza for dinner.
- Purge pizza.
- Play Quizzy's Word Challenge on Webkinz until I've racked up 300 Kinzcash.
- Listen to Pink Floyd.
- Get showered and watch Season 2 of Buffy until I crash.

My days are becoming more and more like this one. My moods are ridiculously unstable and I'm the unfortunate soul that experiences short spurts of hypomania interspersed amongst much longer bouts of depression. Some of the depressions are more melancholic while others, like today, are severe and down right terrifying. Some hypomanic days are characterized by my desperate need to run "errands" (read: spend money) and scouring the Internet for information on random subjects as they zoom through my mind while others are filled with uncontrollable rage and sudden outbursts for no good reason.

I feel like a fucking ping pong ball on crack.

how goes it, sunshine?

So I haven't updated in a month. I haven't updated properly in longer than a month. I guess I really don't have much to say lately.

Living with my sister is going remarkably well. Sure, it's not the ideal living situation, but it's working. Right now The Monkey and I aren't really actively looking for work. I know, shame on us, but we've been enjoying each other's company and The Monkey is drawing unemployment and it's enough to pay our bills so we've both had the "why bother" attitude towards work. It's like being on summer vacation! A vacation that will soon be ending because we do need to work and find our own place to live and get back to being responsible adults again.

One of my primary concerns right now is getting some kind of medical insurance for the two of us. I've never gone this long without medical insurance. I've pretty much stopped all my meds which isn't going as well as I'd hoped. I'd hoped that being minus the stress and anxiety from my job that meds wouldn't be such an issue. I was wrong. I have spent the last week or so pretty much down and out. I sleep a lot. (Which I always feel incredibly guilty for afterwards.) I don't miss being on Lithium. I doubt I'll go back on it when I do have medical coverage again. I'm having more mood swings lately. I guess that's all to be expected being off meds.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want out of life. I can't say that I'm completely satisfied with not having kids because that's not true. I still want children or, at least, one child. But I'm content enough waiting until I'm 30, I guess. No point in worrying over something I have no control over. I want a house. I want furniture to put in that house. I want a good job related to my field of study. I want my husband to get a good job that he's not miserable at. I want to pay off our cars and get rid of that little bit of debt. (For the most part, we are debt free. We only have one credit card that we're paying on and our cars. Other than that, we have student loans but that's it.) I want all of these seemingly achievable goals but it seems like it's going to take forever to get there.

I'm back in school also. At first, I'll admit, that I didn't want to keep going. After my biology course I felt drained. We had a two week break afterwards and it was heavenly not having to worry about classes and assignments and grades for that two weeks. But now that I'm back at it, it's kind of nice. At least I don't feel like a complete layabout. I'm taking Principles of Small Systems. It's a computer course and it's basically repeat of a course I took this time last year so it has been remarkably easy. My standing grade is a 100%. Of course, we are only in week three. I calculated my cumulative GPA recently and found that I have a 3.79 average. I have to have at least a 3.90 to graduate Summa Cum Laude so I'm hell bent on getting straight A's from now until graduation. If I do, I should walk with highest honors. I find myself daydreaming about graduation day. I didn't graduate high school so this will be my first time wearing a cap and gown. I'm looking forward to it. 20 more credit hours to go and I'm FINISHED! It seems like so much yet so little.

so long pit of despair

I'm slowly but surely finding my way out of this deep, dark pit of despair. I'm clawing my way out of this hole and can actually see light at the end of the tunnel.

Let's see how long this lasts.

@#!%^&

I just can't seem to shake this feeling of just wanting to lay down and die.

This is not healthy.

life sucks

And I'm completely out of Ambien.

Tomorrow is my fourth anniversary. Which is now "overshadowed" by the anniversary of my miscarriage 10 days later. I hate this. I hate being back on Lithium. I want to try again. But I can't and we won't and it's over. I wish I could erase it all from my memory and not want a baby anymore.

I really wish I had some Ambien.

curse the restless

I am out of Ambien. It was a 30 day prescription that I had filled barely 10 days ago. Ouch. Reality sucks.

I'm coming down off months of being on an SSRI (Prozac, then Zoloft). Let me tell you what SSRI withdrawl syndrome is like. Dizziness, nausea, foggy-headedness - all plentiful. Sweating - check. Miserable - check. I'm sure I should've titrated downwards but my pdoc felt otherwise. Prozac has a really long half life so he figured I'd be fine. No can do. I get these waves of disorientation every fifteen minutes or so. Thankfully the nausea has been bearable.

I think the Lithium is starting to kick in. I'm not really 100% sure. I'm not as depressed as I was a week ago, that's for sure. I've actually put eye makeup on two days running. *gasp!* So maybe things are looking up. I'm also pretty sure I ovulated this cycle which means AF should show her face in about a week. I am probably going to lose it when she does because I should've been starting my IUI cycle. [sigh]

Well, I guess I'm going to go sit by a fan and try to cool off. I'm sweating perfusely and basically miserable. But I'm making brownies and brownies are good.

Sanity vs. TTC

After 5 years of this bullshit I don't even really know 100% for sure that I want kids anymore. If it was meant to be, surely it would've happened by now. Ugh. I hate this indifference.

My biggest issue right now is my mental health/instability. I'm going crazy on a daily basis. I'm headed to my pdoc in about 15 minutes where we'll probably decide to put me back on Lithium because I need some sort of mood stabilization and I need it now. Lithium is completely contraindicated in pregnancy so the question remains... sanity or TTC?

I think I'm going with sanity for now. Like I said, I can't even say for sure that I want a baby/kids anymore. The big problem here is that Tony does know 100% for sure that he wants kids.

I'm afraid my marriage is falling apart and it's all because my body doesn't work the way it's supposed to. I don't know what I'll do if I lose the love of my life because I'm infertile and/or crazy.

Life sucks, understand?

home too soon

I couldn't handle being in the hospital so I signed myself out against everyones' better judgment. I'm still sickly depressed. I don't want to go back to work which is completely idiotic. I know I have to work. We can't survive on Tony's salary alone. I'm looking for a new job but I don't know how that's going to pan out. Not to mention that I need insurance so being without a job is not really an option. But I'm so unhappy that I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know what to do with myself.

I promised my husband that I wouldn't hurt myself and I have to keep that promise. It's the hardest promise I've ever had to keep.

Going away for a while.

Just need some time to get the shit sorted in my head