amw

I don't know if it's really come out in my writing the last couple weeks but things have been extremely fucked in my head. Last week my new shrink didn't want to send me home because i accidentally let slip part of my plan for killing myself. I was feeling kinda divorced from reality when it spilled. "Derealization", he said. Meanwhile in the evenings when the pills wore off i was acting impulsive and obnoxious, the dark imagery and voices continuing to rage in my mind. He switched me to extended release and ramped me up to 300mg per day. That proceeded to suck all the fun out of my depression and turn it gray as all fuck. On Saturday night i abandoned my manic tragic/romantic plan and just started turning the chef knife in my hands... It was as if i could see into the future and see what i was about to do; i caught myself and threw the knife somewhere... I knew i had to call someone but that's kind of a big call to receive... I couldn't... I struggled before calling J, who - yet again - was away for the night. She'd been trying to give me space because i'd been treating her like shit so much, but this is the mood i tell everyone to fuck off when really i still need someone, you know? I think that only really clicked for her that night. Good thing too because yesterday i had a breakdown over my cellphone dying, and then everything else crashed in on top of it. She just turned up at the mall where i was busy smashing my phone into the ground, bought me lunch, took me to get a new phone then sent me off to meet M for a run. It's what i needed. I guess that's a good thing. Something that had been feeding the depression was thinking about how everyone who cares about me now doesn't understand but those who might understand don't care. Still working on that one.

Anyway, because the Seroquel has taken all the manic-y bits away from this mood i'm left with a desperately numbing depression - the very worst kind. I don't feel strongly about anything, nothing excites me, i can't get motivated. I can't get out of bed. I've been struggling with work. Even though i am able to start my contract full-time now, even though it's something i thought i would enjoy, i just can't focus. And i don't care. The one thing i am still committing to is making it to training. It's helping to give me goals and to create structure in my life. Both my teammate M and my coach S are really going out of their way to provide positive support for me right now, so it's kind of taking the place of a day treatment program. Each day what gets me through the haze, the sheer fucking beige-ness of my life, it's knowing in the evening i am going to work my body to its limit and for a few hours i am going to feel good.

So now, for the first time in my life, i feel like an athlete. Yesterday i met up with M at her place and we ran over 4 miles to the gym, kicked straight into the regular warm-up (skipping/push-ups) and followed it with a marathon 30 minute core strength session. Yeah i can hold plank like a fucking marine. And then did over an hour of bags and technique, punishing the balls of my feet with some serious footwork. I've pretty much had permanent blisters since last year sometime. But each day i push a little further and find a little more strength, more endurance, better balance and no matter how tired i get, when i leave i am dancing. I bounce and bob and weave all over town these days, i'm never out-of-breath and it feels so good.

Today my doc upped my Depakote to 1000mg. It would be funny if i ended up on 1000mg with an anti-psychotic permanently on the side, since that's what the doctors steered me toward 9 years ago until i whined about how it made me too lethargic. Sounds familiar. I gotta say i am hating this unrelentingly listless mood more than the blackly psychotic one that got me hospitalized, though then again... well, i'm not freakin hospitalized, so this has gotta be better, right? Har. After our session today (another 2 hours!) the doc said to me "well, you know the gray depression is better than the black because it's leading you closer to the light". Or something. He has this funky Arab accent so i get the gist more than the details sometimes. Either way it was oddly reassuring coming from a psychiatrist.

In other news i apparently have two weeks to learn a choreography. <- (not a sentence i ever expected to type)