Trigger warning: Self harm and Suicide
It’s been quite a ride since getting out of hospital. At first I wasn’t so bad, not as bad as I was before going in anyway, but now I think I might be much worse. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
I was put on Lexapro not long after hospital (which I mentioned in my last post), and I expected to have the dose put up not long after. The problem is that the next time I saw my psychiatrist I’d been manic for 10 days straight. Which was a new development. Previously my moods had been all over the shop.
But now my mood pattern was becoming, well, a pattern. Which I guess kind of indicates that the Efexor was messing me around quite a bit. Which means no more SNRI’s for me. So here I am on Lexapro (SSRI), despite the fact that it did nothing for me before.
Now Lexapro being the new medication here, naturally my psychiatrist thought it may have been the cause of my 10 day mania streak. That was however quickly thrown out after my mood dropped severely. So to bring me down from such extremes, I’ve been climbing the slow ladder that is Seroquel. For about 2/3 weeks I was sitting on 75mg of it and I was still just getting worse.
I spent those weeks ridiculously manic, full of an energy that I felt was tearing me apart. I could physically feel it, tearing, scraping, it was painful. It is painful. The energy/anger/something that was trapped inside me hurt. Every night I was a mess and I started self harming every day. I won’t get into it, but I was becoming a real mess.
I couldn’t/can’t stop thinking about dying. Sometimes because it just seems easier than going through all of this day after day. Sometimes in a different more violent way, more angry at myself for being in this mess. Sometimes in a much more disturbing way that didn’t seem to have a reason, just that I should do it.
I couldn’t do games work at all. Most days I just sat in my chair and stared at my screen, or the wall. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly hard about it, in fact I kind of knew exactly what I had to do. But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t make myself focus on it. I couldn’t even fiddle with the program. Some days my head was so cloudy, that despite me knowing what it was that had to be done, I couldn’t work out how to type it, how to break it down, how to actually do it. It became such an effort, that I just sat there instead. Which, actually lead my company to lose the project.
Luckily for me, there was a lot of understanding about my being unwell, and it was almost better to just be done with what had been a long dragging project. Still we lost quite a bit of money, though no one blames me for it. Except for me, I blame myself quite a bit actually, I should have known better than to overwork myself. I don’t ever really think about whether I can handle/manage/do something, I just assume I can. Not even assume I can. More like, I will manage it - end of story. Except this time I didn’t. Which I’m finding hard to grasp. One of the most difficult things, about having this - is trying to accept that I have limits. I guess I am a bit of a workaholic, and I expect a lot of myself. An indefinite amount. It’s ingrained in me that I can do anything, and any amount of anything. I have never remotely considered limits. Until I ended up in hospital. The way things are going, I may just end up back there.
I gave my psychiatrist a list of these things, a very direct list, so he finally knows exactly where I am with it all. At any rate, I’m up to 100mg Seroquel and now I’m meant to take 25mg up to 3 times a day to take the edge off, if need be. I don’t feel great, potentially relying on medication to get me through each day. Okay, so I’m already doing that, but it’s one thing having prescribed daily medication (which I already hate) and then having take as you need.
The problem with me is, I’ll convince myself out of ever needing it. That’s what I do, or my head does. I can take my daily medication each day because I need to and I trust my doctor over my mind. But when it comes to me deciding when I need to take something, that doesn’t work. I just can’t tell, my head is too good at talking me out of needing it. I can’t trust myself for these things. I get really bad at night, and a lot of times I could just take my night dose of Seroquel and I’ll go to sleep and be safe. But my mind, it keeps pushing it back, making me think I don’t really need to be taking it yet. I’ll miss out on something, what a waste of time just sleeping. That’s life lost, if you need to do that, may as well just stop living.
My mind is my own worst enemy. But without it, what would I do anyway. When I say I feel like I’m losing my mind, I’m not losing it, I’m losing control of it. I am absolutely, losing my mind.