So there’s this thing that happens sometimes when my body chemistry changes and the medications I had been taking no longer work the way they should. I get tired. I get excited. I get antsy. I get lethargic. I get all of these and then some all at the same time, and it’s just a big mess.
In a lot of ways I feel like this is something I need to talk about, because not talking about it has become just one more thing that I have to keep inside, and sometimes there is so much stuff in there it’s a relief just to let something–like this thing–out. And in a lot of ways I feel like this is something that I should never talk about, because it scares people–friends, family, significant others, prospective employers, the FAA. I’ve been fired for being bipolar. I’ve been asked to leave churches and schools because they were uncomfortable with how I might react to things.
Even now, as I type this, I’m wondering if it’s career suicide. If now or in the future an agent or editor will see this and think, “I cannot work with someone who’s unstable, someone who’s crazy.”
Because that’s what I’ve heard all my life: that I’m unstable, that I’m crazy.
When in fact this particular disorder has little to do with being crazy and everything to do with how my brain receives things like melatonin and seratonin and adrenaline and norepinephrine.
You know that feeling you get when you’re nervous or scared or excited? That “fight or flight” feeling that rises in your gut and makes your heart beat a little bit faster?
That’s what I’m talking about.
Because when things go pear-shaped, what happens is I stop sleeping. And the longer I go without sleeping, or without sleeping well, the more my body rebels. I get nervous all the time. Little things become big, insurmountable, life-ending things. My immune system goes to shit and I get physically ill. And I feel like nothing ever stops. Like I’m thinking, moving, doing all the time.
Not stabbing someone or hearing voices or driving a car full of puppies off a bridge.
Just…jitters.
I feel jittery all the time.
The medications–like Abilify, a mood stabilizer, and Topamax, an anti-convulsant–dull this enough to where it’s not an all-consuming, coming-apart-at-the seams kind of thing. Like tapping a light when it’s buzzing.
But sometimes things change, and tapping the light doesn’t work like it used to. And when that happens, you have to find other ways to get the buzzing to stop.
Recently I read a book in which a teenage girl goes off her meds and feels numb. And I’m not saying that can never happen. I’ve been on enough medications over the years to know that there’s telling what might happen in that situation. You could come up to me and say, “I stopped taking Prozac cold turkey and saw through a blue haze for three weeks after!”
And I’d believe you. Because that’s what happened to me.
But numb? Numb is the least of it. Numb is a blessing compared to what it feels like to titrate off one medication and onto another, only to have that medication not work, and have to titrate off it and onto something else.
The last time I went through the this, the transition took nine months and six medications. I had earaches and vertigo and tinnitus (a ringing in my ears) for the majority of that time. I lost chunks of hair, my skin dried out, I gained a lot of weight, lost a lot of weight. I forgot what it felt like to not have a headache.
I remember going to my doctor and crying for over an hour, not saying anything, just crying, because I would rather go back to what I had been taking and be sad–just sad–than feel like crap all over.
Eventually, though, we did get everything worked out. I started sleeping again. I started feeling normal again. And all the other stuff faded away.
I know this is going to turn out like that. That somewhere down the line I will look back at these past five or so months and say, “I went through that and it was hard but everything turned out OK and I am fine now.”
But being in the moment, feeling raw like this…it is hard. And I’m so tired of being tired. I wish the world would just stop moving sometimes so I could catch my breath.
But it doesn’t. That’s not how it works.
So in the meantime, I have to stop. Not, like, literally, in the death sense or anything, but in the forcing myself to stop and get well, to let some things go (for now) and trust they’ll be waiting on me when I’m strong again.
And these aren’t necessarily writing-related things. Some of these things are people whom I’ve been taking care of, who maybe need to take care of themselves for a while. Some of these things are relationships that have grown toxic or abusive that need to end, period.
Some of these things are dreams that need to remain dreams for the time being.
I’m sorry if I’m letting you down. I’m letting me down, kind of, too. But I know I’m no good to anyone like this, afraid of my own shadow, freaking out over the tiniest things, things that aren’t even worth a second glance, let alone an all-night worrython.
But things will sooner or later go back to normal.
They always do.
Eventually.
