It's been almost two years since I've posted something on this blog and I'm pretty sure no one cares, but if anyone was wondering where I went, they probably just assumed I'd finally killed myself or something. Close...but no cigar. I'm updating this for my own personal benefit so that several years from now when I re-discover this blog, I can look back on my life and hopefully have something more/better to show for it.
Yes, there was an actual suicide attempt back in June of this year, but I really don't like to think about that anymore. It involved such things as immense amounts of vomiting, my therapist (this is a different one than I've written about previously) calling my mom and then later having the cops show up at my door. Let's move on...I'm no longer living in Wisconsin and have moved back in with my parents due to having no job and no money. The only thing on my calendar these days is chiropractor appointments for chronic neck/shoulder/back pain and headaches that I've had for over a year. Well, the chronic headache problem, I've had that as long as I can remember. I have no friends here and nothing to do, therefore I'm going out of my mind from boredom and lack of intellectual/mental stimulation.
Actually, my mind has been rather stable for the last few months since I've gotten the diagnosis of Bipolar II. And now that I FINALLY have that damn label, that I've been searching for and trying to figure out for forever, I don't want it. I'm not taking any medication anymore though. Mainly because all medication ever did for me was give me horrible side effects, but not help any of the symptoms I had in the first place. My body reacted horribly to Lamictal which made one of my lymph nodes swollen and gave me the worst insomnia I've ever had in my life. I was so desperate for sleep, I could have killed someone! I'm now on a regimen of a high dose of St. John's Wort and many vitamins and supplements. It's been working so far to keep my mood on an even keel, with zero side effects. I like to do things the natural way and thankfully, my psychiatrist understands that. I can't say I'm happy, but at least I'm not severely depressed. But is it really due to the herbal supplements? One can never know for sure. My anxiety has also gone waaaay down. This is probably a combination of things, but a large part having to due with my change of residence (though, living at age 28 with your parents who should have gotten divorced many years ago is full of all kinds of stress and mammoth arguments).
I'm trying to write more, but it's like pulling teeth to get each word out. On my last hypomanic episode, I spent nearly all my time writing ideas for a book that my little brain hoped would be the next Great American Novel. Yeah right...I'd come up with (what I thought was) brilliant ideas on my bike ride to work and have to dash into the building and scribble them down on the first thing I could find. I couldn't go to sleep because I kept jumping out of bed to write things down. I spent entire conversations with my mom on the phone trying to work out key sub plots. But of course that didn't last, and now I'm feeling entirely mediocre and unable to even write decent poetry. So mostly I'm reading and watching movies. I've become re-obsessed with the Lord of the Rings all over again and have been reading through the books (I've gone back and now I'm reading The Hobbit). I've seen the movies so many times it's ridiculous and now I'm going through and watching each commentary for each movie. That's four for each which makes a total of 12 different commentaries to watch.
I really wish someone would come up with The Sims version of LOTR, where you can choose those characters (as well as make up your own) and they can live in places like Hobbiton or Minas Tirith or Rivendell for the neighborhoods, and ride horses like the pets expansion pack and have lives like the base game. I know there's The Sims Medieval, but it makes you follow a storyline instead of free play. This might sound crazy (especially for a technology-hating individual like myself), but since my old computer died back in June (that was a nightmare), I've horribly missed all my Sims families (Sims 2) that I can never get back again. I had five neighborhoods and about a hundred families. Yes, that's a lot of wasted time I spent creating them and playing with them, but it was a very welcome escape I needed. One that turned the thought of four hours with nothing to do into an opportunity for creativity which flew by because I was so intensely involved in my Sims world. I sort of have my own version of a Sims world in my head that I use as my major coping mechanism for dealing with my own existence, but sometimes having something tangible and visual in front of you is more enjoyable. And you can actually turn it off. I still have not figured out how to turn off my head.
And here I shall leave you with this J.R.R. Tolkien quote from The Two Towers that I really love:
"For a while they stood there, like men on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks, holding it off, though they know that they can only come to morning through the shadows."
What a fucking metaphor for my life. I love it.
