The First
I've been trying my hand in fits and spurts at writing. I've dabbled, if you can consider a couple long-winded (long-keyed?) diatribes on Facebook and Twitter dabbling.
But I'm taking it seriously now because it might very well save my life. Or at least my sanity.
I tell people that I live personally with Mental Illness. It gets it out in the open, some people still feel nervous or uncomfortable with it and so I'd rather they know that about me rather than find out by surprised.
And yes, I know there is nothing to be ashamed of when you live with mental illness and we still lead functional, meaningful, and yes, happy lives. The problem is one that Wil Wheaton, a fellow victim of this mysterious illness described very well. He said, "Depression is a liar" and truer word have never been spoken.
That's what depression does, it lies to you, constantly. It tells you you're useless, a loser, not deserving of happiness or even mere contentment. It also tells you something's going wrong and there's nothing you can do to stop it because it's not going to tell you what it is that's so very wrong.
It sometimes even tells you lies you like. It tells you everyone on the planet is a simpering idiot and deserving of no greater fate than the grave and you're better than every one of them. And then turns around and says, "Haha, jk. You're so useless a dog would bury you instead of a bone. Even that moron you saw the other day who was guffawing because his dog bit the tire of the other guy, he's smarter than you.
I know because I heard those things and more throughout my teen years, sometimes someone else said them but the one I kept believing was the voice in my head that sounded like me.
However, I was eventually lucky enough to find an effective treatment, or at least I thought it was. For years I convinced myself that the meds were working properly because the dark times were fewer and far between and when they came, I knew I could ride them out and come out whole, if a little shaken, the other side. Genuine happiness wasn't a real thing but there were times I could simulate it convincingly enough for myself. And so I considered the treatment effective. I could handle stressful situations with a measure of aplomb and without losing my temper.
I thought that was as good as it gets for someone like me so I convinced myself to be content with what I could achieve and maybe not wallow over what I couldn't. So instead of being a lonely old man who hasn't had so much as a date since the late eighties. Outside of the priesthood, I may very well be the only adult male who hasn't had sex in the 21st Century. Instead of that I just convinced myself that I was perfectly fine being perpetually alone; after all I'm an introvert with 51 years of habits, who would want that? I'm not a sad, basket case of a man who is so deathly afraid of learning even one person doesn't like him if he likes them, nah I'm a loner who's tuff and gruff and don't want to live with anyone but his kitty cat.
It's been long enough that there has been a time I've questioned my own sexuality. Even priests seem to go crazy and molest children after a career of celibacy, not that that is even remotely possible for me. But instead I wonder if maybe I'm some sort of asexual. Wouldn't turn it down if offered, might in fact act like a man dying of thirst at the first water hole. But if it were to never happen, I can live with that too. It's just not worth facing one of my deepest fears for, even if the reward is actually never to be afraid again. And I know it's the depression lying again. It whispers in my ear even if I just so happen to see a pretty face. "She's outta your league chum, maybe try something more your speed, that old lady in the mobility chair might... nah she's too good for you too." Sometimes it's the new one, "She's too young for you/tall for you/something for you" I can hear their voices when I ask them in my mind for something as simple as the time, "Eww, buzz off dweeb."
Today... well actually it was about a month ago when it started, but today is when new the new wrinkle kind of introduced itself to me fully.
I've always had bouts of anxiety but they've generally been sudden and full power, maybe just enough of an onset warning so you get the joy of anticipating the attack. I haven't enjoyed a single one of them, but I've made it through the other side feeling like the experience made be a little better for it
But over the past month or so the anxiety has been quietly, stealthily, and steadily climbing until it was at a constant din just in the back of my mind; distracting me, making me forget things, making me forget to eat meals even. But there are peaks too. Anxiety attacks that bring full on panic, terror, dread, despair, despondency... any negative, devastating emotion you can think of, plus the constant terror. Something so horrible your fight or flight response simply freezes and leaves you trying to do both while incapable of either.
The first sent me into such a state that I went to my GP to see if there might have been something wrong with my meds. Of course, by the time I went to the GP, the attack was over and I couldn't really remember the details and I admitted that an Ativan borrowed from my mother seemed to calm me down. I didn't mention that I still felt agitated, the Ativan just kind of distracted me and made me drowsy. And to an insomniac, drowsiness is the next best thing to relaxation.
But I accepted a trial prescription for Ativan. It would be there in case the next attack came and maybe just having it with me would be like a safety blanket that might ward off an attack. I wanted to believe it so I went along and it did feel like I was able to stop a couple burgeoning attacks, so long as I had enough warning it was coming and I had the presence of mind to take the pill in time.
The last two attacks - the worst I've ever experienced - came over the course of two days with a "normal" day in between them as a sort of aperitif or palate cleanser. The first one was in a pleasant conversation with my mother over the phone, talking about the week before. I was just telling the story of an anxiety attack I thought I'd successfully head off at the pass. Turned out that one just took the long route and caught up to me Saturday when I described the incident.
But somehow in the telling it became much much worse, it included the woman I work for and one of a handful I truly respect with my whole being accused in my mind of mocking my legitimate complaints. I accepted the suggestion then that the complaints weren't that big a deal anyway, and maybe they weren't. I still don't think I'm capable of judging them rationally any more. But in my story she was openly mocking me, diminishing me, and ignoring me. It spun into a terrifying event that left me in tears and questioning my sanity, and considering the final solution to emotional pain. Kill the patient and he's no longer suffering.
With my mother's care and help, I got to the Emergency Ward of our local hospital and after a long wait where I flitted between bouts of manic humour to a terrified desire to run away and go home, I spoke first with a psychiatric nurse and later one of the ER docs and I managed to fool them that I'd gotten myself back under control but did need some extra help.
When I was 17 I spent the night as a guest of 3NE, the psychiatric ward of what was once PGRH and is now University Hospital of Northern British Columbia. I'd learned that week that a friend I'd known back in junior high had committed suicide, just like Curt Kobain but long before him.
He had been one of the ones I looked up to as a "strong one", always joking, always seemed to be in a good mood, played a mean co-blind side back in Rugby. And then one day, gone. I don't think we ever did find out why but I think I know now. Back then we figured you only killed yourself if you lost something, livelihood, love, etc. If someone told us there was an illness that can make even a seemingly happy person feel so much pain that death is the only release, well we'd have probably all joined that friend.
And I kind of tried to. I was either 18 or very nearly there and I'd already developed a fondness for ethyl alcohol. And there was a part of me that recognized exactly what it was that made that friend pull the trigger with his toe, because that guy had tried a time or two to get me to do the same thing. Fortunately he has not succeeded in any attempt to convince me then or since and I'd be lying if I said it didn't happen much. But I was kind of trying that night, I started just wanting to drink myself numb and maybe get silly and have a wake for that friend. But I didn't stop at silly, I kept drinking until I ran out and then tried to get some more from friends and when that wasn't giving me the oblivion I craved, I got in my car, not sure what to do exactly but probably just drive to the nearby river and sploosh.
My friends stopped me and because I was ranting, raving and biting the dashboard they drove me to the Emergency Room where my mother who was Supervisor at the time watched her son try to fight two security guards half again as tall as he as they tried to get him strapped in to a gurny.
Whatever it was they gave me rang my bell until I woke up the next morning in a strange bed in a strange place, with some very strange people walking around. When I realized where I was, I panicked. I thought I'd been committed, that I was now stuck in the laughing factory with all the psychopaths and public masturbators. It was a very scary day made no better by the lack of contact from friends, family, or anyone I knew. And they wouldn't even let me have my cigarettes.
My parents did pick me up and take me home by around 2:00pm and we went home, me in utter shame.
I told that story to try to explain why I was so terrified to be in that ER and why I was desperate to accept anything that would let me sleep in my own bed that night. And the next day I did feel a little better, if somewhat asocial and a little nervous about Monday. I knew no one at work would know about that little episode Saturday, but Monday morning I already started to feel like eyes were watching me and I hadn't even left for for work yet. So, thinking I was being proactive I took half an Ativan. I didn't feel panicky, just edgy.
By the time I got to my desk I was starting to feel a little calmer, still not really wanting to be there but I felt like I could make it through a regular Monday morning. That morning started with a meeting to discuss a plan moving forward in one of the changes we need to make before the big changes comes. And as tends to happen when a group of high functioning introverts gets to trying to get their points across the meeting felt like it started going off the rails the moment it started, if not before. Key players were talking over each other and not listening to one another, people started grasping at straws rather than give the one person who spoke with the designer a chance to speak his peace. I said and caught my breath at every possible pause in the arguing to get his piece out and when it came, he blurted it out as if the only thing that could save the meeting was to make that point. And then because my own tone, infected by the ratcheting egos before, upset one of my team mates that person accused me directly of attacking them, which could not have been further for the truth because I wanted nothing more at that moment to speak my peace and be free of what felt like whirling maelstrom of emotion. The accusation of attack pushed me right off the edge, I was instantly angry and insulted, and worst of all, IGNORED. And then all the other demons followed in on the anger's wake. I was under attack and the voices were telling me I deserved it and I could no longer hear any compassion in any voice. Not even when I stomped to my manager's office, tried to interrupt the meeting I just walked out of and say I needed to leave and when she agreed with me I heard it as an order to leave. I am as certain as I can be that her words were entirely compassionate and only just trying to juggle my outburst with what was still going on in the meeting.
I went back to my desk, already fighting tears and began packing up my bag to go home. But I still felt I had to speak by peace even if I didn't think she was listening and wrote a note trying to explain myself and apologize. I was in a paradoxical state of knowing I was perfectly right in my actions and absolutely wrong at the same time. Paradoxes like that are easy when you think you're going insane.
I tried my hardest to sneak out of the building without making eye contact with anyone and made my way to my car, dumped my bag in the bag and then tried to call my GP to see if I could make an emergency appointment because I felt at that moment like my entire existence was shattering and if I could just make it to a doctor's office or something, they might be able to save the pieces and maybe reassemble a better me.
Unfortunately, everyone in healthcare is very busy. The reason we have long waiting lists is because we are needing to treat more and more people every day and we don't intentionally shorten waiting lists by making the care too expensive for the people "who don't really deserve it". I understand the need to wait and the why of it, but I was in a full crisis of myself. Something the ER doc had mentioned Saturday was that there is a primary care service for mental health at the Interior Health Unit and they operated on drop-in as needed service, and they have a team who can coordinate your mental health care with your GP.
I unloaded every terror flying around in my skull, including a couple I was only just then starting to admit to myself and I tried desperately to convince her that I was afraid for my life, because I was. I was feeling like I was constantly laying under a softly ringing but insistent bell and every so often the bell turned into an air raid siren, fire alarm, shrieking voice, cacophony.
And she told me my fears were real, but the things I was fearing were not. And she gave me time to ramble it all out of me, even if I repeated a few things and went off tangent a couple times. When it happens, I literally cannot think straight, it's one of those scary aspects of the attack and the constant anxiety. You can lose short term memory and long, you can lose a train of thought as the thought just begins to cross your mind and there are a thousand voices shouting, interrupting, and they all sound like you.
Time, and a gram and a half of Ativan brought me off that edge and allowed the counselor to give me a plan moving forward. I would go home, cuddle my cat, try to relax and then do something very similar to what I'm doing now. Write it all down, every painful thought, every fear, everything. Pour it all out of your chest today while it's still fresh so you don't feel you're struggling to remember (or struggling to forget) when you speak to the doctor. You can let the written word advocate for you.
And it's OK to accept help, it's even ok to take some medical leave and get better. When someone's coughing up a lung or barfing out their intestines, no one thinks twice of sending them home with the orders to not return until they are feeling well again. It's also OK to take some time when it feels like your brains are turning against you.
I'm going to take you on a journey with me as I pursue wellness in my mind. I'm a little selfish, it's more for me than for you. But I'm making it public because we don't know well enough what it's like to suffer with an illness that defies pigeon holes and categorization. We tell ourselves that everybody's different and then at the same time tell ourselves that Depression is depression and everyone knows what that's like so we don't really need to discuss it.
And sometimes that's because it's difficult to hear for people who don't suffer, and because it's difficult to discuss for those who do, so we assume the silence is consent that the clinical description suffices to describe the illness for everyone.
It's not, it's not even the same for two family members apparently with the same genetic predisposition to MI. Sometimes the differences are biological, corticoid over production, or serotonin poor production, or is it an absorption issue? Lots of serotonin but the neuroreceptors aren't picking up. Or is it something else altogether like Bipolar disorder? Where the person seems to literally swing from manic elation to the darkest depression in the space of seconds.
At this point, I'm not entirely sure what I have. I was once diagnosed as Clinical Depression with Anxiety Disorder. That's kind of the garden variety Depression. But if that's still the case, the medicines I'm receiving to treat it are no longer working sufficiently. Or maybe it's evolved to something else that the med I'm on doesn't even work one.
I'd like to find out what it is, if it can be treated, and if I can live out the remainder of my life meaningfully.
I'll see you tomorrow, maybe.
But I'm taking it seriously now because it might very well save my life. Or at least my sanity.
I tell people that I live personally with Mental Illness. It gets it out in the open, some people still feel nervous or uncomfortable with it and so I'd rather they know that about me rather than find out by surprised.
And yes, I know there is nothing to be ashamed of when you live with mental illness and we still lead functional, meaningful, and yes, happy lives. The problem is one that Wil Wheaton, a fellow victim of this mysterious illness described very well. He said, "Depression is a liar" and truer word have never been spoken.
That's what depression does, it lies to you, constantly. It tells you you're useless, a loser, not deserving of happiness or even mere contentment. It also tells you something's going wrong and there's nothing you can do to stop it because it's not going to tell you what it is that's so very wrong.
It sometimes even tells you lies you like. It tells you everyone on the planet is a simpering idiot and deserving of no greater fate than the grave and you're better than every one of them. And then turns around and says, "Haha, jk. You're so useless a dog would bury you instead of a bone. Even that moron you saw the other day who was guffawing because his dog bit the tire of the other guy, he's smarter than you.
I know because I heard those things and more throughout my teen years, sometimes someone else said them but the one I kept believing was the voice in my head that sounded like me.
However, I was eventually lucky enough to find an effective treatment, or at least I thought it was. For years I convinced myself that the meds were working properly because the dark times were fewer and far between and when they came, I knew I could ride them out and come out whole, if a little shaken, the other side. Genuine happiness wasn't a real thing but there were times I could simulate it convincingly enough for myself. And so I considered the treatment effective. I could handle stressful situations with a measure of aplomb and without losing my temper.
I thought that was as good as it gets for someone like me so I convinced myself to be content with what I could achieve and maybe not wallow over what I couldn't. So instead of being a lonely old man who hasn't had so much as a date since the late eighties. Outside of the priesthood, I may very well be the only adult male who hasn't had sex in the 21st Century. Instead of that I just convinced myself that I was perfectly fine being perpetually alone; after all I'm an introvert with 51 years of habits, who would want that? I'm not a sad, basket case of a man who is so deathly afraid of learning even one person doesn't like him if he likes them, nah I'm a loner who's tuff and gruff and don't want to live with anyone but his kitty cat.
It's been long enough that there has been a time I've questioned my own sexuality. Even priests seem to go crazy and molest children after a career of celibacy, not that that is even remotely possible for me. But instead I wonder if maybe I'm some sort of asexual. Wouldn't turn it down if offered, might in fact act like a man dying of thirst at the first water hole. But if it were to never happen, I can live with that too. It's just not worth facing one of my deepest fears for, even if the reward is actually never to be afraid again. And I know it's the depression lying again. It whispers in my ear even if I just so happen to see a pretty face. "She's outta your league chum, maybe try something more your speed, that old lady in the mobility chair might... nah she's too good for you too." Sometimes it's the new one, "She's too young for you/tall for you/something for you" I can hear their voices when I ask them in my mind for something as simple as the time, "Eww, buzz off dweeb."
Today... well actually it was about a month ago when it started, but today is when new the new wrinkle kind of introduced itself to me fully.
I've always had bouts of anxiety but they've generally been sudden and full power, maybe just enough of an onset warning so you get the joy of anticipating the attack. I haven't enjoyed a single one of them, but I've made it through the other side feeling like the experience made be a little better for it
But over the past month or so the anxiety has been quietly, stealthily, and steadily climbing until it was at a constant din just in the back of my mind; distracting me, making me forget things, making me forget to eat meals even. But there are peaks too. Anxiety attacks that bring full on panic, terror, dread, despair, despondency... any negative, devastating emotion you can think of, plus the constant terror. Something so horrible your fight or flight response simply freezes and leaves you trying to do both while incapable of either.
The first sent me into such a state that I went to my GP to see if there might have been something wrong with my meds. Of course, by the time I went to the GP, the attack was over and I couldn't really remember the details and I admitted that an Ativan borrowed from my mother seemed to calm me down. I didn't mention that I still felt agitated, the Ativan just kind of distracted me and made me drowsy. And to an insomniac, drowsiness is the next best thing to relaxation.
But I accepted a trial prescription for Ativan. It would be there in case the next attack came and maybe just having it with me would be like a safety blanket that might ward off an attack. I wanted to believe it so I went along and it did feel like I was able to stop a couple burgeoning attacks, so long as I had enough warning it was coming and I had the presence of mind to take the pill in time.
The last two attacks - the worst I've ever experienced - came over the course of two days with a "normal" day in between them as a sort of aperitif or palate cleanser. The first one was in a pleasant conversation with my mother over the phone, talking about the week before. I was just telling the story of an anxiety attack I thought I'd successfully head off at the pass. Turned out that one just took the long route and caught up to me Saturday when I described the incident.
But somehow in the telling it became much much worse, it included the woman I work for and one of a handful I truly respect with my whole being accused in my mind of mocking my legitimate complaints. I accepted the suggestion then that the complaints weren't that big a deal anyway, and maybe they weren't. I still don't think I'm capable of judging them rationally any more. But in my story she was openly mocking me, diminishing me, and ignoring me. It spun into a terrifying event that left me in tears and questioning my sanity, and considering the final solution to emotional pain. Kill the patient and he's no longer suffering.
With my mother's care and help, I got to the Emergency Ward of our local hospital and after a long wait where I flitted between bouts of manic humour to a terrified desire to run away and go home, I spoke first with a psychiatric nurse and later one of the ER docs and I managed to fool them that I'd gotten myself back under control but did need some extra help.
When I was 17 I spent the night as a guest of 3NE, the psychiatric ward of what was once PGRH and is now University Hospital of Northern British Columbia. I'd learned that week that a friend I'd known back in junior high had committed suicide, just like Curt Kobain but long before him.
He had been one of the ones I looked up to as a "strong one", always joking, always seemed to be in a good mood, played a mean co-blind side back in Rugby. And then one day, gone. I don't think we ever did find out why but I think I know now. Back then we figured you only killed yourself if you lost something, livelihood, love, etc. If someone told us there was an illness that can make even a seemingly happy person feel so much pain that death is the only release, well we'd have probably all joined that friend.
And I kind of tried to. I was either 18 or very nearly there and I'd already developed a fondness for ethyl alcohol. And there was a part of me that recognized exactly what it was that made that friend pull the trigger with his toe, because that guy had tried a time or two to get me to do the same thing. Fortunately he has not succeeded in any attempt to convince me then or since and I'd be lying if I said it didn't happen much. But I was kind of trying that night, I started just wanting to drink myself numb and maybe get silly and have a wake for that friend. But I didn't stop at silly, I kept drinking until I ran out and then tried to get some more from friends and when that wasn't giving me the oblivion I craved, I got in my car, not sure what to do exactly but probably just drive to the nearby river and sploosh.
My friends stopped me and because I was ranting, raving and biting the dashboard they drove me to the Emergency Room where my mother who was Supervisor at the time watched her son try to fight two security guards half again as tall as he as they tried to get him strapped in to a gurny.
Whatever it was they gave me rang my bell until I woke up the next morning in a strange bed in a strange place, with some very strange people walking around. When I realized where I was, I panicked. I thought I'd been committed, that I was now stuck in the laughing factory with all the psychopaths and public masturbators. It was a very scary day made no better by the lack of contact from friends, family, or anyone I knew. And they wouldn't even let me have my cigarettes.
My parents did pick me up and take me home by around 2:00pm and we went home, me in utter shame.
I told that story to try to explain why I was so terrified to be in that ER and why I was desperate to accept anything that would let me sleep in my own bed that night. And the next day I did feel a little better, if somewhat asocial and a little nervous about Monday. I knew no one at work would know about that little episode Saturday, but Monday morning I already started to feel like eyes were watching me and I hadn't even left for for work yet. So, thinking I was being proactive I took half an Ativan. I didn't feel panicky, just edgy.
By the time I got to my desk I was starting to feel a little calmer, still not really wanting to be there but I felt like I could make it through a regular Monday morning. That morning started with a meeting to discuss a plan moving forward in one of the changes we need to make before the big changes comes. And as tends to happen when a group of high functioning introverts gets to trying to get their points across the meeting felt like it started going off the rails the moment it started, if not before. Key players were talking over each other and not listening to one another, people started grasping at straws rather than give the one person who spoke with the designer a chance to speak his peace. I said and caught my breath at every possible pause in the arguing to get his piece out and when it came, he blurted it out as if the only thing that could save the meeting was to make that point. And then because my own tone, infected by the ratcheting egos before, upset one of my team mates that person accused me directly of attacking them, which could not have been further for the truth because I wanted nothing more at that moment to speak my peace and be free of what felt like whirling maelstrom of emotion. The accusation of attack pushed me right off the edge, I was instantly angry and insulted, and worst of all, IGNORED. And then all the other demons followed in on the anger's wake. I was under attack and the voices were telling me I deserved it and I could no longer hear any compassion in any voice. Not even when I stomped to my manager's office, tried to interrupt the meeting I just walked out of and say I needed to leave and when she agreed with me I heard it as an order to leave. I am as certain as I can be that her words were entirely compassionate and only just trying to juggle my outburst with what was still going on in the meeting.
I went back to my desk, already fighting tears and began packing up my bag to go home. But I still felt I had to speak by peace even if I didn't think she was listening and wrote a note trying to explain myself and apologize. I was in a paradoxical state of knowing I was perfectly right in my actions and absolutely wrong at the same time. Paradoxes like that are easy when you think you're going insane.
I tried my hardest to sneak out of the building without making eye contact with anyone and made my way to my car, dumped my bag in the bag and then tried to call my GP to see if I could make an emergency appointment because I felt at that moment like my entire existence was shattering and if I could just make it to a doctor's office or something, they might be able to save the pieces and maybe reassemble a better me.
Unfortunately, everyone in healthcare is very busy. The reason we have long waiting lists is because we are needing to treat more and more people every day and we don't intentionally shorten waiting lists by making the care too expensive for the people "who don't really deserve it". I understand the need to wait and the why of it, but I was in a full crisis of myself. Something the ER doc had mentioned Saturday was that there is a primary care service for mental health at the Interior Health Unit and they operated on drop-in as needed service, and they have a team who can coordinate your mental health care with your GP.
I unloaded every terror flying around in my skull, including a couple I was only just then starting to admit to myself and I tried desperately to convince her that I was afraid for my life, because I was. I was feeling like I was constantly laying under a softly ringing but insistent bell and every so often the bell turned into an air raid siren, fire alarm, shrieking voice, cacophony.
And she told me my fears were real, but the things I was fearing were not. And she gave me time to ramble it all out of me, even if I repeated a few things and went off tangent a couple times. When it happens, I literally cannot think straight, it's one of those scary aspects of the attack and the constant anxiety. You can lose short term memory and long, you can lose a train of thought as the thought just begins to cross your mind and there are a thousand voices shouting, interrupting, and they all sound like you.
Time, and a gram and a half of Ativan brought me off that edge and allowed the counselor to give me a plan moving forward. I would go home, cuddle my cat, try to relax and then do something very similar to what I'm doing now. Write it all down, every painful thought, every fear, everything. Pour it all out of your chest today while it's still fresh so you don't feel you're struggling to remember (or struggling to forget) when you speak to the doctor. You can let the written word advocate for you.
And it's OK to accept help, it's even ok to take some medical leave and get better. When someone's coughing up a lung or barfing out their intestines, no one thinks twice of sending them home with the orders to not return until they are feeling well again. It's also OK to take some time when it feels like your brains are turning against you.
I'm going to take you on a journey with me as I pursue wellness in my mind. I'm a little selfish, it's more for me than for you. But I'm making it public because we don't know well enough what it's like to suffer with an illness that defies pigeon holes and categorization. We tell ourselves that everybody's different and then at the same time tell ourselves that Depression is depression and everyone knows what that's like so we don't really need to discuss it.
And sometimes that's because it's difficult to hear for people who don't suffer, and because it's difficult to discuss for those who do, so we assume the silence is consent that the clinical description suffices to describe the illness for everyone.
It's not, it's not even the same for two family members apparently with the same genetic predisposition to MI. Sometimes the differences are biological, corticoid over production, or serotonin poor production, or is it an absorption issue? Lots of serotonin but the neuroreceptors aren't picking up. Or is it something else altogether like Bipolar disorder? Where the person seems to literally swing from manic elation to the darkest depression in the space of seconds.
At this point, I'm not entirely sure what I have. I was once diagnosed as Clinical Depression with Anxiety Disorder. That's kind of the garden variety Depression. But if that's still the case, the medicines I'm receiving to treat it are no longer working sufficiently. Or maybe it's evolved to something else that the med I'm on doesn't even work one.
I'd like to find out what it is, if it can be treated, and if I can live out the remainder of my life meaningfully.
I'll see you tomorrow, maybe.
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