This is Why There are Warnings on Meds, Kids

Today, tonight, rather, is Friday - and on Saturday past, I had a seizure.
The first seizure that I know of having. I say that because, as an ex-addict, it's more than likely that I've had at least one seizure before. Especially given which drug I was addicted to.
This was the first time I was at all aware of having had the seizure, though. I went to bed last Friday night feeling very... off. I don't know how else to put it. I woke up feeling just as strange, if not worse.I woke up Saturday and as the day wore on, quickly might I add, I started feeling notably not good. I was having a hard time staying awake sat on my couch, I felt nauseous, my head felt unbelievably cloudly... I just wasn't right. Eventually, I completely blacked out - which my boyfriend tells me was the seizure. Apparently, my eyes rolled back into my head, I was foaming at the mouth, I was convulsing, and I started off incredibly warm and by the end was shivering. When I came out of it, I couldn't find words and was speaking gibberish, and was incredibly nauseous. I actually puked twice, the last time being late Saturday night, closer to Sunday morning.
The next day, my boyfriend had me call my therapist, and when I ran into her on Tuesday, she told me to see my family doctor. So I did that, which resulted in another repeat of what happened followed by my being taken off of the Wellbutrin I'd come to love, having blood taken, and having to pee in a cup.
Yesterday - Thursday - I saw my psychiatrist, and he offered me two options: A) Stay off the Wellbutrin and just... see how things go, or B) get on something new right away.
Well, I wasn't happy about being off the only antidepressant to ever do much of anything for me, so I chose the latter option. My psychiatrist put me on Prozac, promising the possibility of weight gain was slim. I picked it up today, and I start it tomorrow morning.
I know there are going to be side effects, probably nausea. I just hope I'm able to go to temple - class and ritual - tomorrow, I missed last week because of the seizure, and it's something I look forward to every week.
I still don't know why I had a seizure. I haven't been purging - I think the last time would've been January at the earliest; and June marked my sixth year clean.
I'm still feeling residually tired and worn out.
Hopefully Prozac works out well for me.

I Hate to Bring This Up

I really do hate to bring up the awful combination of mental illness - illnesses, in my case - and a serious romantic relationship.
For the most part, my partner is understanding, supportive, helpful, just wonderful.
... But then, days like today happen.
Days where we end up in a fight because I can't do my share of things like household chores; my schoolwork suffers; my social life goes down the drain; my financial contributions are at an all time low... and that's just scratching the surface. Days where threats are thrown verbally because I can't function like a regular person. I can't function like a normal girlfriend. I can't be that.
I'm a little caught up with suicidal thoughts that bombard me, making it a feat to get out of bed, brush my teeth, take my meds, and look presentable. Let alone think about the groceries, or what needs to be cleaned, or the fact that the laundry is starting to pile up - again.
Usually my lovely partner can understand the 'whys' of all these things, but lately things haven't been easy on him, either. He has an injury that makes it very painful for him to walk, so going to work has become that much more stressful for him.. and more stress equals less patience. Which makes absolute sense... it just makes my life a little messier, because his tolerance for my limitations and affectations goes way down.
This is something I'm sure we (those of us 'blessed' with mental illness) all have to face at times, that is, if we're able to find a partner and hold down a relationship long enough to have those 'living together' disputes. I don't envy those of you going it alone - having someone to lean on is by far the superior option in my opinion, if possible -  but I feel like.. it must be nice, sometimes.. to not have to worry about what that other person expects of you.
I wouldn't trade my partner for anything, but I know how hard it is to try to be a Good and Normal Girlfriend when you're also Mentally Ill.

Mini Update of Sorts?

I think I'm doing a little better. Coping a little better, maybe, is the best way to describe it.
I've been waking up early - for me - which is anywhere between 7:30 and 9:30, and just automatically getting dressed, putting on some makeup... doing what I would do to get myself ready for something. This is good. I'm getting ready every morning.. for the day. So I wake up, get ready, and either make a coffee or a smoothie. Then I read (leisure) for about a half hour, until I decide I should at least attempt to be productive in my coursework.
Today, I got one more lesson in my book done. There are five lessons in four books, and I've just started this course - which I'm told is a "really heavy course"... but the book I have to read and barely analyse is Stephen King's The Body. It's not even technically a book. It's a novella. It's in a compilation of his other short stories. And it's written for twelve-year-olds.
That's enough of my griping. I got the end of lesson assignment done today, which made me feel accomplished. Like I'd done something productive and was therefore allowed to do as I please.
My best friend* is getting home from Hollywood on Saturday, and we made plans for Monday. I'm actually really excited to - leave the house - and see her. We're meeting at this local hipster coffeehouse down the street from my apartment, and then coming back to my apartment to watch bad horror movies. .... And she's said she has presents for me... which I feel guilty for getting excited about.
DBT group is going well... I made a friend.. I think. She's older and LGBTQIA and a Buddhist, former Wiccan... a few weeks ago we ended up talking about crystals. Long story short, this Tuesday we've planned to go to this crystal shop together. I'm nervous and excited.
Another thing with DBT group.. every week before homework we do a mindfulness exercise. I 'volunteered' to lead it this coming Tuesday, and I'm anxious about it. However, I came up with what I think is a decent idea. I found a container we never use, and went to the dollar store and bought a pack of decorative seashells. When I get to the CPC - Community Psychiatry Centre - before group, I'm just going to duck into a bathroom and fill the container with some water. The shells will be immersed in the water. The logic is that water as an element represents emotions, feeling, healing, cleansing.. all good things for folks in a DBT group. I'm going to explain the significance of this, and ask that everyone take a shell from the 'pond'. It'll be an 'observe and describe' mindfulness, because the shells are all the same type of shell, but there are always tiny abnormalities and differences. So, I'm going to give everyone about five minutes or so, to feel the moist shell, touch it, feel it, and think about how it's just that little bit different. ...... I really hope this isn't a terrible idea.
On top of all that positivity, I get to start violin lessons on Wednesday. My boyfriend and his boss are in charge of scheduling, so my time slot isn't absolute yet. He did tell me it will probably be in the evening, though, which is nice; what I wanted. I'm so excited to get back into actively learning and playing an instrument. It's therapeutic in the way that horseback riding is. Plus, my individual therapist is loving the music idea.
Overall, I'm just trying to enjoy what rays of sunshine the Gods are sending me for the time that they are sent. I know the dark will fall again, and that's a looming fear, but it's summer, and I'm just trying to be a 'normal' girl as much as I can.


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* This best friend is the 'new' one.

Forgive Me

... I forgot I ran this blog. So, please, my dears, forgive me. I'll do my best to re-cap.
The last post I made was in May... early May, so I'll start there. May was hard for me, really, brutally, teeth-grittingly hard for me. Flashbacks, all the lot of what you can get with PTSD. It sucked. I was a mess. .... Even more so than usual. However, my (awesome) individual therapist has been helping me with that, and she had me go to a CPT for PTSD information session near the end of the month. Trauma treatment is not a thing I'm excited about, but I know I just can't live like this forever. I can't. With that in mind, my therapist is trying to get me ready to start trauma treatment in (I think) late September. She thinks that if I do this treatment while I'm still in DBT for BPD, it'll be easier, because I'll be able to use and keep learning skills that can help me tolerate what this trauma treatment demands. I'm mostly just going along with whatever she thinks is best, or what she thinks I'm ready for. If I let myself completely be in charge of those decisions, I never would have gotten help to begin with. So that was May. Teary, tumultuous, just ... bad. Dark.
That's not to say I'm a ray of sunshine today, though.
June was better, I'll say that. I finished my philosophy course - which felt like a big achievement given all the 'vulnerability factors' - and started a new course, studies in literature. I can carry it into the summer, and even though the school is only open on Wednesday afternoons in the summer, I get to get - hopefully - another credit. My guidance counselor is hopeful that they'll be able to grant me about five or six 'freebie' credits based on life experience/etc. ... Which would mean that I only have to take between one and three courses in order to graduate. Which would allow me to graduate around January. Which would have me registering for college. I'm really happy about that.
Another development is my quickly-expanding friendship with a girl I've been 'kind of good-ish' friends with since late 2013. She and I have been spending a lot of time together - we have similar mental health issues; we both kind of.. have no one else*; we have a lot in common, we just get along. We just 'get' each other. I don't feel like I have to wear my daedric armor around her.. she's safe.
The anniversary of my being recovered from drug addiction was.. well, it was hard. I had intense cravings the night before and the day of. I resolved to celebrate only the 'big' anniversaries. This was six years.
Church/temple's been going really well, too. I'm getting to know a lot of people and I'm feeling really accepted. I've never had a community like this before, and it's just blowing me away at how positive it feels.
And now, to the now. Summer's out, so the boyfriend is working less. I'd really like it if we could go to the zoo or to a conservation area and go swimming. I'm - hopefully - starting violin lessons soon, I just need my boyfriend to get it all squared away - he's in charge of sign-ups. I'm trying to write more. I'm trying to enter into participation more. I'm trying to be more social. I'm trying to start doing nice things for myself.
Also, on a 'meds' tangent, I'm two weeks into taking Abilify and haven't noticed too much. Any experience or advice is welcomed.

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*Story time: My 'best friend', the one I've known since kindergarten, has in the past year or so begun to prove herself as not the kind of friend I want in my life as an adult, increasingly so. I haven't trusted her in well over six years, and I'm afraid a falling out would mean a spilling of my secrets. She's a very narcissistic person but also plays the martyr.

Wear Purple

Tomorrow is May 1.
I didn't know it until today, but May is sexual assault awareness month, and there's this campaign. 'No One Asks For It!' encourages people to wear purple in a show of support, and it's all across Canada, which is pretty neat. It's a simple idea, and it'd be really cool if it caught on and the hashtag trended. It's listed as an event on Facebook, and I'm sure would be easy to find - I decided to keep the link out of the post.
I love that this is a thing, and I'll absolutely be wearing what little purple clothing I own. Though I do worry a little about how much I publicly involve myself, especially on social media. I don't think I can take any prying questions about my experiences. I think, though, that it's important to try.
I find it hard, sometimes, being in the positions of both activist and affected. I feel like it's important to be vocal about these issues, but it can get really uncomfortable when you, as a victim, inevitably feel some sensitivity. It makes it hard to lead a rally.
Tomorrow is May 1. Sexual assault awareness month begins. #NoOneAsksForIt.
I am an 'affected'. I am a victim. I am a survivor.
It's been years, and it's still harder than I would've imagined. I don't like to talk about my experience or really give any details, but I feel very connected to this campaign. I wish I could be stronger. I wish I didn't equate strength to being able to 'get over' a trauma. What I mean is that I wish I had my PTSD under control, and knew how to cope, and was able to advocate the campaign and talk about myself, rather than uncomfortably always speaking in the third person and making everything objective. .....But that isn't where I'm at yet, and that's okay. I'll get there. This is the year that I decided to eventually go into PTSD/trauma treatment. When I'm ready. When my therapist thinks I'm ready. For now, this is the best I can do. But it's real, and it's important.
Tomorrow is important. It's important that people are participating and paying attention. It's amazing, and the support is beautiful.

Illuminated by Forty-Nine Candles

It's been two days, going on three, so I feel like I can safely say - without 'jinxing' anything - that I'm feeling better than usual. I'm feeling better than I have in months. I'm feeling better than I have since 2014, probably earlier.

I haven't cried since Monday. I haven't felt so anxious or depressed that it was overwhelming since Monday. 

I feel productive. I feel good about school - I feel like I'm doing well and that there actually is some 'light at the end of the tunnel' that is my 'high school' career. I want to get up in the morning. I don't feel sleep-deprived. I have energy. I'm enjoying things. 

I feel like, at least for now, I'm out of 'crazy mode'. I feel like I can switch to 'girlfriend mode' and do all the things I want to do with my boyfriend. Or to 'student mode' and work harder at school. It's nice. I know that this spell of feeling better can't last - it never does -, but I feel so good. I don't even feel that good. I don't even feel happy.. but I'm actually experiencing positive emotions and I can't remember the last time I've felt.. normal. Above my baseline, at least.. low as it is. I don't know how to feel what I'm feeling, though. I feel like this, feeling good, doesn't belong to me. Like I don't deserve it. I feel guilty for feeling good. I feel bad for feeling good, because I just don't know how to handle that.

It doesn't matter, though. I'll take it. I know this won't last, so I'm just.. trying not to think about it. I'm trying to just live it, this period of feeling good, and allow myself a break from the stress of literally always being in a low mood, almost completely unable to feel anything positive for more than thirty seconds. It's nice. It feels.. smooth. Like ice, but comfortable. Warm. Like a water slide at a public pool, all warm and cleansing and bright and easy and happy.

I know I'm going to have to face up in May, but I'm trying my best to ignore that inevitability.*

I'm trying my best to feel the sun. I'm feeling good about so many things, without even trying. School. I've been making progress, and I'm finally almost at the end of the booklets for my philosophy course. Therapy. I feel like I'm learning about myself and accepting so much, and I feel really good about my individual therapist. My boyfriend. He's been just as stressed as I have - in completely different ways. I'm just feeling good about things, like I'm accepting things. I've been reading and playing video games, and I've been eating. I've been able to eat more normally than I think I have in a long time. I feel good about being awake. I want to be awake. Clearly, I'm still in a state of surprise about this.

With this Saturday being Beltane, I'm feeling like the way I'm feeling isn't coincidence. Well, it probably is... but with this being an auspicious time, religiously, I feel like the Goddess - and maybe the God, too - has something to do with it. Like somehow maybe this is a reward of sorts for beginning my foray into Wicca.

I'm just feeling good, and I'm trying just live it, not dissect it. I'm treading uncharted waters.

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*My diagnosis of PTSD is related to a trauma that happened in May.

Hellmann's

I feel like Bilbo. Thin. Butter, stretched over too much bread.
Only now, I'm not butter. I'm.. Mayonnaise. Someone else's condiment, borrowed, because all I've got is gone, but all I hear is people urging me on. I feel like I've spread out all I have in the time that I have, and everyone is telling me that there is so much... but there's not. I feel like I've lived to capacity - had enough experiences, enough loves and losses and failures and trials and errors and mistakes and rejections and... enough. Just enough. I've lived as much as my mind can take.
But my therapist and my boyfriend and my best friends and my family and the people who aren't much more than Facebook friends, they all think there's still room on my slice of bread. They don't see it completely covered in the paper-thin layer of butter that just can't reach any more. So I borrow energy, drive, light, power, from another, and I'm going over that thin layer of butter with a glossy layer of mayonnaise.
It feels contrived. I know that I could make that mayonnaise my own, but I don't even want it in the first place. What I want is to be gone. Gone, burnt up and mentally somewhere in oblivion or a void or a beautiful shiny white empty place where nothing external exists. I go to that place sometimes, when I'm dissociating. It's beautiful. It's calm. It's quiet. It's safe, and nothing exists but my mind..... and my mind is, for once, silenced.
The mayonnaise fills the holes and gaps in the butter with therapy sessions, nights spent close to my boyfriend, embarrassing attempts at finishing school, waking up in the morning, doing anything. Everything I do now is mayonnaise. My butter ran out, and somebody shoved this jar of mayonnaise at me and said, "Keep going."
It doesn't feel authentic. It feels empty. My current existence... empty.
I reach for the knife, the pills, the keys to lead me astray.. and I have this jar of mayonnaise. Like I should be done, I should be gone, but something, someone wants me here and I have no say in the matter.
I'm just tired. I'm so incredibly tired, and I'm done. I don't know how I go on. It's not like it's because I want to. I feel fleeting positive emotions, but even in the moment they feel foreign to me, like they don't belong, like I don't deserve them, like they've gone the wrong way and are lost here.
I just want that beautiful mental silence. The wonderful shiny white endless nothing where I have no thoughts, no body, nothing. I just want to quiet my head.