First off: Bad Ambien Day. It’s not working tonight. Why does it work some nights and then not others?
Second: So get this. I decide tonight that I should probably take my bi-polar meds for the first time in a few days. I don’t always take them, because they make me really lethargic and drowsy all day. I go through my suitcase to find them, then realize that they’re not here because I didn’t pack them.
This was not exactly an oversight.
I’d completely forgotten about this until now, but I didn’t pack them because I was mad at them. For making me so drowsy all the time. I picked up the pill bottle, looked it square in the eye and said, “You can’t come on vacation with me.”
So now I don’t have the meds I need. This is an issue we will certainly be addressing tomorrow morning. And by “we” I of course mean “my parents.”
Meanwhile, today was relatively good. I’m getting a tiny bit better, but, more importantly, I’m not getting worse. It’s a touch-and-go thing, so I could be worse by tomorrow, but at least I wasn’t worse today. Even with the Ambien, I didn’t manage to get much sleep, because it’s a short-release drug and I’m wide awake a few hours after I take it — unless I take the bi-polar meds, which help me to get a full night’s sleep and then are happy to offer a complimentary full day’s sleep, too, unless I fight tooth and nail to stay awake. There have been times with this stuff where I’ve slept 15 or 16 hours. And I refuse to believe that it’s healthy for anyone with mental illness to be waking up as the sun is setting. It’s like the worst feeling ever. The point is: I woke up after very little (and restless and weird-dreamy) sleep, and I was sure this was going to be an awful, awful day.
But I’d done something the night before, something I’d learned to do the last time I went through this. I made a schedule. I made a schedule because while I was meditating, God reminded me how well it worked last time. So before I went to bed I made a full schedule for the day. Not too rigorous, but just so that there were planned activities at planned times for me. And it really helped. In addition to my work on Evil Beet, I did lunch with friends and went to a yoga class tonight.
The yoga class was one of several actionable suggestions you guys left in the comments, and it seemed like something I could manage. But, man, yoga is hard. And I am bad at it. The buff male instructor kept running over to me to touch me and shape me and caress the back of my head. This was probably because of the enormous capacity for yoga suckitude I was displaying, but I prefer to think that he couldn’t keep his hands off me because I was so sexy in my sweaty yoga pants.
But the experience did quiet my head to some extent, and kept it quiet for another 15 or 20 minutes later, and I think it’s possible it’s still showing effects. What is the half-life of a yoga workout, I wonder? I definitely want to go back, although probably not tomorrow, because I don’t think my muscles will be prepared for it again just yet. The yoga people all seem so smiley and happy and relaxed and perfect. “Can all those people really be that happy?” I asked my dad. “Eh,” he said, with his trademark side-nod that I’ve realized I incorporate into my own expressive repertoire. “Mostly they’re just trying to look the part.” Hm.
What I’ve noticed is that every time one of these monsters (probably the same monster each time) descends into my brain and body, I’m a little better equipped for the fight. My skill set in these matters has grown exponentially since I was a teenager, and it makes the battle more, say, structured. Maybe more elegant. Certainly less terrifying, at least for my family. But it’s still a difficult and exhausting fight, and, every time it’s happened, the drive in me to live and to thrive has eventually overpowered the monster. I can feel, almost physically, the kicking and the lunging and the knive fights these two spirits are having inside of me. It’s brutal, but I always win.
But there’s that fear in the back of my mind that next time I won’t want to fight as hard, ya know? You look at someone like David Foster Wallace, who battled depression with such intensity and brilliance for so many years, and then, last September, he lost. He hung himself at the age of 46. A friend in Arizona told me today that his buddy was found by his girlfriend, dead in his armchair, last night. After nine years of sobriety, he popped a few Percosets and took a few drinks, and then his heart stopped. It’s, like, these are people in battles against an exceedingly disloyal brain who have tried and tried hard and done what was asked of them and in the end they just couldn’t fight hard enough anymore. I think that’s what scares me the most. I know I can get out of this particular battle, but there’s still a war waiting out there for me. I just need to focus on the present, I know, and not have my head out worrying about the future, but I’m not much of a focuser these days.
So, ya know, God. That’s where I’m going right now. God. Because it’s the only way I know to find acceptance of the path I’m on.
