depression – Enchilada Sunrise

Accidental week off.

Or nearly a week, anyway. Six days. I completely forgot to blog at the weekend… and managed to carry on forgetting all week until today. Whoops! So I’ll extend my blogging an extra week, I think. Or maybe I’ll keep going until the end of July. I’ll aim for that. And beyond, of course, but hopefully every day until then.

So, what have I been up to this week? Not a lot, really. Much the same as I have for the last few months. That’s mostly involved not going out a lot. I don’t actually remember the last time when I managed to leave the house by myself, either. Not counting letting the cat in and out, and putting the rubbish out – somehow that doesn’t seem to count as Going Out in my wonky brain, even though if I want to go somewhere further than the end of the garden path I haven’t made it past the flat door. Make sense of that!

I had to go out today, and will again tomorrow, as I have an appointment with my psychiatrist in the morning. Mum has been brilliant about coming over and helping me get out / taking me places. Today was an appointment at the Jobcentre to talk to them about work and things now that I’ve been moved onto the new ESA benefit. In my case, that was pretty much going over the fact that, what with not being so well, I can’t do full time work, but I can continue with the (part time) Permitted Work scheme. So that’s OK. What was less OK was the panic attack part of the proceedings, but it wasn’t a major one and I think I’ve remembered everything alright. If not, I can ask Adam-the-support-worker who was there with me. Mum had just dropped me off there, as Adam knows the ropes for this kind of appointment. But she will be coming in to the appointment tomorrow, as per usual. Her perspective is useful, but she can also remind me of anything I forget to mention as well. Two heads are better than one, and all that stuff.

And on that note, I’d better go and make my list of things I have to remember for tomorrow. Oh, and wipe my phone ready for taking it back to the shop for repairs. Poor wee thing. (No phone? How will I cope?! Noooooo! etc) Good night!

On: Manic Depression « squeegee182

An excellent post on what not to say to people with manic depression / bipolar:

On: Manic Depression « squeegee182.

I think I can count myself pretty lucky that it’s been a long time since I’ve had any of these things said to me. It makes me realise how awesome my friends and family are, and how much their (your!) efforts to understand really help me. Thank you all! ♥♥♥

Typing + tiredness = not working

Since I’m extremely tired today (I have new medication which is making me drowsy, hopefully just for the adjustment period, and every time I sit down somewhere relaxing I drop off!), I’m not going to say much again. I haven’t managed to finish the shawl yet, but just have the cast off edge to go. I’ve been setting the twist of some of my handspun:

(excuse the rubbish photo), and also marvelling over how the Xandermog can go from FULL ON PESTER mode to fast asleep, you-can’t-wake-me in under five minutes flat. Still when the result is this little face:

how can you complain?

C is for (The) Crazy

Or to be a little more politically correct, (my) mental health. I don’t have all that much to say about it, really, but I suppose it has been the reason for my sporadic posting over the ten months or so. I started the long slow slide into a depressive phase probably in last August, but because it was gradual (and not constant), I didn’t notice for a while. It wasn’t much fun towards the end of last year, but this year I’ve been gradually picking up again, and I’ve been feeling properly myself again – it’s funny how you don’t notice that you weren’t until you suddenly are again – since some time in April. Hoorah! I have a really nice new psychiatrist (the previous one moved on to a neighbouring area) too, and I’ve been getting other support from the community mental health team which has been an enormous help in getting back on my metaphorical feet. In summary, I feel better, and I’m looking forward to the Bipolar Group course that’s starting next week, which is a self-management and education … thing. It’s going to be useful.

Today’s NaBloPoMo prompt is: Define “freedom”.

Hmmm. Freedom is… standing near the sea on a stormy day, salt on your lips from the wind whipping off it strongly enough to almost blow you off you feet; just jumping in the car (or on the bus, or on a plane) and going; living how you want to live; most importantly, freedom is being able to make your own choices – whether by yourself or in conjunction with others, as long as you choose the method – voice them, act on them, without persecution or oppression.

So yeah. I guess C is also for Choice.

48: Q&A – Experiences with diagnosis

lunamorgan asked “What was diagnosis like? How did you get it all sorted, because from what I’ve heard, it’s really hard to get a proper diagnosis of bipolar, what with most people not seeing doctors during manic phases.”

There were stages to my diagnosis, and it probably didn’t help that I moved from Beverley into Hull a couple of months after I first saw a my GP because I was disconnected and depressed. Well, it did and didn’t help: part of what kicked the depression off was that I wasn’t happy in Beverley, so moving to my new place kind of helped that… but I digress already!

In October 2001, I went to see my GP, ostensibly because I’d strained something in my hand, I think, but also because I was bursting randomly into tears on the train home, feeling completely disconnected from everything, apathetic… all the classic symptoms of depression. My GP was absolutely lovely, very sympathetic, talked me through it all, and prescribed me Prozac. I don’t think he asked any further questions which would have indicated symptoms of mania as well… but if he did, I didn’t answer them correctly because I was depressed at the time, not really clear in the head – and at any rate, I’d never realised that the symptoms of mania I had were a problem. Even the serious hallucinations and paranoia, for some reason. I conveniently forgot about all that once I wasn’t going through it any more.

Anyway, although I felt weird about being diagnosed with clinical depression – unsettled, worried, unsure what it all really meant – I think it helped me just knowing that there was something “real” wrong with me. The Prozac was also somewhat helpful, though it did make me pretty groggy and slow (mentally) a lot of the time. I decided to move out of where I was living and get a place in Hull, nearer my work. Everything was going to be rosy.

Of course, it didn’t quite work out like that. Within a couple of months, I was manic, and not in a good way. I now know that being on the anti-depressants was only helpful while I was depressed. With nothing else to counteract them and keep my mood from going to high, it shot straight past the on-top-of-the-world mania I’d had when I moved, and into hallucination territory again. Really, I guess I was in a mixed state, because I was also freaked out about leaving the house, and I also now now that I tend towards anxiety and agoraphobia when I’m down. Fun times! It all came to a head when I was due for a doctor’s appointment at the GP I’d transferred to, and I was having hallucinations that the buildings around me were moving and changing (rather like in Dark City, only in the daytime and with a tragic lack of Rufus Sewell). This was, I’m sure you understand, frightening and creepy as all hell. I was late to my appointment. The receptionist told me I’d have to go away and make a new one for another day. I went outside… and had an enormous freak out of truely epic proportions. Let’s just say I was a bit hysterical. I got to see the doctor that day after all. I was scaring the other patients. And myself, because I couldn’t stop. I don’t do public displays of extreme emotion, in general. Well, not ones that include hysterical crying and injuring myself. Thankfully, this has been a one off in my life so far!

Anyway, the point is, I saw the doctor, and he referred me to the mental health services and gave me a sick note. It took a couple of months for me to get my first appointment, during which time I was off work and mostly living on my sofa from what I remember. The very first appointmetn I has with the psychiatrist, she diagnosed me with bipolar. I didn’t believe her. I thought she’d just picked it out of a hat because I was creative / musical. I was actually probably displaying clear symptoms of being in a mixed state in that appointment, with hindsight. I was prescribed some anti-psychotics (to help with the mania and anxiety) to take alongside my anti-depressants (which had been changed to Venlafaxine by that time), but they violently disagreed with me breathing, so I only ever took the one dose. Next appointment, she put me on Depakote instead, which I’m on to this day. It took nearly a year, but finally I came to terms with the diagnosis when I started recognising manic episodes. It was knowing what to look for, and also having friends on LJ who were bipolar talking about their experiences which made me see it. One day I went to my appointment and said “I think I’m manic today”. My psychiatrist smiled and agreed.

46: A bit more on “normality”

Following on from my last post, I thought I’d just write a quick one (I hope!) covering what’s “normal” and not when you have bipolar. In my experience, that is.

As I said before, “normal” is when you can function. But in a way, that’s a reasonably wide definition of normal, and you could be in a manic or depressive phase while still meeting the criteria for being normal in that case. If you’re want to define “normal” as “not manic or depressed”, how would you do that? (I would actually call that “stable”, rather than “normal”, probably because normal is such a fuzzy label, but anyway.)

I think perhaps being manic or depressed means that you’re not in control of your moods or emotions any more. You can’t “just snap out of it” or “cheer up” or “calm down”. Your brain chemicals are out of whack, and you’re stuck on that rollercoaster until something happens to stop it. That could be outside intervention (from medication, to therapy, to just someone letting you know that you’re not well – because sometimes you can’t tell yourself ), it could be a sharp mood swing in the other direction, or it could be that you are able to put coping mechanisms in place yourself and start to haul yourself out by your bootstraps. So yes, it is possible to take control back if you catch the mood swing early enough, or at the right point when you’re going back in the other direction. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy helps you do that. The meditation that I spoke about earlier is one of my coping strategies. Getting it out of my head and into paper or screen is another. Knitting and spinning are another. And getting out of the flat and socialising is a very very important one.

Perhaps one of the problems with bipolar is that when you’re manic, it’s very easy to “fake normal”. Everything’s brilliant, you can do anything and everything right now if you’re at the “right” stage of mania. And it feels good. It’s actually harder to admit to mania when everythings awesome like the awesomest thing ever, than it is to admit to depression (which can be pretty hard if you can cope with talking to anyone!).

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Listening to: KT Tunstall – Miniature Disasters
via FoxyTunes

45: Q&A – How do we know what’s “normal” and what’s not?

Ptyx asked me: How do we know what’s “normal” and what’s not?

Before I got started answering that, I thought I’d better make sure I understood what she was asking, since there were a couple of different ways I can see to come at it (How do I know when I’m “normal” instead of in the grip of a manic or depressive phase; or how do we define normal as opposed to not?). When I asked her, she replied: “The question was mostly general, that is, the second option: how can someone tell who is normal, or what behaviour is normal? I think the first option is part of the problem, too. But I guess that, before deciding if someone is behaving normally, we have to decide what is normal and what’s not.”

I think my answer to that will have to run very much along the lines of something my psychiatrist once said to me. To give some background to that conversation, I’d been having what I like to call mild “reality issues” – and yes, I have degrees of reality issues, but when I’ve had the most severe ones, it’s been when I’ve been the most ill – so Mum was concerned that I might be heading in that direction. Which is very bad no good stuff. Anyhow, I’d been having some very vivid, lifelike, repetitive dreams. Repetitive in the sense that I went to the same place every time: what happened wasn’t the same. My sleep was a bit all over the place, so it all seemed a bit dreamlike when I was awake too, so it was making sense to me that both places were equally real. YMMV. However, in general, I was doing OK. I was sleeping every day at some point, I was eating and going out, I was getting other things done. There was just the risk that I might end up going too high. So, I went to see the doctor, and after going through it all with me, he asked if it was distressing me? No, it wasn’t, because the other place was perfectly nice and interesting, just different to here. Was it stopping me from functioning when I was awake – taking care of myself, eating, socialising? Nope.

In that case, he said, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it, just carry on as you were. Make sure you keep taking your meds, keep track of your moods, and if it gets worse: becomes distressing, stops you functioning, makes you do things that are risky to yourself or others; that’s when there needs to be further intervention.

So I think that’s become my definition of “normal”. Able to take care of oneself and function safely and well in society. Does that make sense? I can be manic, I can be depressed, Person X can be a bit eccentric, Person Y can be schizophrenic, and so on, but if we’re all doing well enough that we’re not doing ourselves or anyone else any damage physically or mentally… then that’s “normal” enough for me.

“Normal”, of course, is just as much a label as anything else. And it’s a subjective thing – different people will have different definitions. Often, that definition will be “like me”. That’s too restrictive for me.

Once again, I’ll point you to Cia’s post on the subject – it’s a good one!

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Listening to: Florence And The Machine – Dog Days Are Over
via FoxyTunes

36: Meditation

I’ve just been thinking that maybe I should go and do some meditation to relax my back muscles and refresh my brain a little… and it’s occurred to me that I could also make a quick post about the subject as well!

Until about a year ago, I was very sceptical about both meditation and hypnosis – I particularly didn’t like the idea of giving up control, which is how it felt to me it would be. I suppose I associate that with the horrible out of control feeling I get when mania goes past the getting everything done productive creativity stage, and into the point where I obsess and over-spend and can’t concentrate or control my behaviour. (Mind you, when I’m in the creative manic state I can’t really control my behaviour either, it’s just not destructive: I’m still functional.) Anyhow, the point here is, last year I was having some trouble getting any rest because I was manic, or possibly rapid-cycling (going up up up then crashing, then back up a day later for a few days, slightly higher this time, then crashing… and so on). I had rapid thoughts, I couldn’t stop thinking long enough to sleep or even stay still to rest my body. The guy who was my ‘link person’ at the Hastings Wellbeing Centre suggested meditation. I was doubtful at first, but I was really at the end of my tether. So in the end I dug out a meditation tape that Mum had given me a few years previously. I dug around further and found my walkman(!) and I gave it a try. It took me a couple of goes to stop giggling at some of the imagery used (‘imagine the warm sun is moving nearer, compressing into small ball of light’ made me either imagine I’d been immolated, or that the compression of the sun caused the creation of a black hole into which all life was painfully sucked! I may have been too literal) and get accustomed to letting the words take me along. To calm down enough to make best use of the meditation practice, I guess.

Once I did, it became an enormous help. I got hold of some other meditations, on CD this time, some guided and some just music. I also came across some hypnotherapy recordings, and I gave those a try as well. They’ve been invaluable tools to me ever since, when I need to relax and let go. Sometimes I need them to get to sleep, sometimes I use them if I get tense or jittery in the middle of the day. Sometimes I am still too jittery to be able to concentrate on them, but mostly, they’re a big help. I generally do need the guided ones if I’m a bit manic, as I can’t stop thinking a mile a minute with just music.

I doubt I’m going to need one to get to sleep after the blogathon today, but the one I am planning to use in just a minute is a ‘wake up’ one. Let’s see if it helps!

ETA – I also have a couple for when I’m down: those are hypnotherapy recordings. I’ve found those really useful too.

19: Friends and Family: It’s Not Just All About Me

Finally, my first ‘proper’ post on a bipolar related topic! I’ve taken way too long over writing this… I need to speed up for the others! I’ve chosen this one to start with because it got the highest number of votes in my poll – so really I didn’t choose it at all. I’m not actually all that certain where to start with this subject, but let’s have a crack anyway!

Being Bipolar is something that, like any long-term illness, doesn’t just affect the person with the illness. Pretty much whatever your situation, it has an effect on your family and your friends. Of course, I can only really speak for myself, but in general terms, it can make a difference in how people relate to you, and how you relate and act towards others.

Does having bipolar, a mental illness – one which is gradually becoming more generally known – change the was that people look at you, once they know? Probably. Not always in a negative way, but often enough. I’ve been lucky enough to only have had one really bad experience with a now ex-friend who “couldn’t deal” with the way I was when I was manic. Unfortunately, I didn’t know I was manic, because I was in that stage where everything is brilliant … and annoying as hell to anyone on the receiving end of it, I’m sure. Yet, if this friend had said to me that I was being kind of insane (you know, in a tactful way), I would have realised what was going on – I wasn’t so high that I wouldn’t have recognised it with a little outside help. And in fact that’s what happened a short while after the ex-friend told me where to go, with a nudge from someone else.

Other than that, I’ve been lucky – my friends have been wonderful and very understanding of my illness and the resulting failings as a friend that it brings. I can be somewhat unreliable, for example, if I drop into depression and can’t drag myself out of bed, let alone the house. I can seclude myself for long periods if I’m down, and not talk to anyone for weeks or longer. Or conversely, I can talk a mile a minute and not be able to shut the hell up – that can be amusing, but it can get really annoying. I get annoyed with me! I need friends who aren’t afraid to tell me when I’ve started talking really fast. Luckily, I have people like that, because that stops me getting worse and therefore making things worse for all of us.

As for family, once again I’m really lucky. From conversations with my Mum, I know it was difficult for her and Dad to accept that I had the illness (it was difficult for me, too, but in a different way). She’s told me that she’s felt as if she somehow failed me, maybe by passing on a gene that predisposed me, or by doing something “wrong” in my upbringing. Dad was in a bit of denial for a while, I think (clearly where I get it from!) – neither of them wanted their little girl to have a life long condition like this. Mum of course knows logically that it’s not her fault… but she and Dad wanted to be able to make it magically better, as I guess you do for your children. Mum has come to terms with it now. I think Dad did, but he’s not with us any more so I can’t ask him.

Mum now generally comes with me to my psychiatrist appointments, and she’s done a course for carers and family members that was run locally. Most of the others on the course had family members who were schizophrenic rather than bipolar, but there are plenty of common areas, and she found it very useful. She’s not there at my appointments because I’m not capable of going on my own (well, unless I’m down and freaking out about leaving the flat!) or talking to the psychiatrist. She’s mainly there so that I have a back-up brain in the room – I forget things that happen when I’m in one state or another, sometimes. Or she can let him know how I’ve been when talking to her on the phone, which I do most days even if I’m badly down. In fact, she’s the main person who will point out to me when I’m sounding manic or depressed, and will prod me until I call the CMHT¹ if I don’t get better in a day or so.

The main thing that she’s done is take over supervising my finances. One of my worst problems when I’m manic is over-spending. Obsessively buying every book on the one thing I’ve fixated on, for example (Ooo, cable knitting! Ooo, Stargate! Ooo, shiny things!!). Or spending £800 on sock yarn in 3 months when I didn’t have anything remotely approaching that coming in. This is a pattern that’s been repeating for years, and Mum and Dad had to help me out on more than one occasion. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with bipolar that I knew why it was happening… but I still couldnt’ stop! So in the end (after the yarn incident), Mum stepped in. She doesn’t manage my money, but it’s a kind of joint effort. I gave her my debit and credit card, and cheque book, and we worked out a strict budget. I only spent cash, or occasionally on the credit card with pre-agreement. Within a year, my enormous overdraft was paid off. There’s no way I could have possibly done that without Mum. Not a chance! These days, my budget is a lot less constrained, and I have my credit card back in my purse. I still speak to Mum first if I’m going to spend on it, but it’s mainly a sort of double-check system, to make sure that I’m not trying to spend out on something silly. It does mean she has extra work to do, keeping an eye on me, and I feel bad about that… but I’m not sure I’d feel confident in having complete control again. Which is weird, because I generally like to be independant. I spose the thing is, when I spend while manic, I feel so horribly out of control. This is stopping that, it’s stopping that stress for me, and it’s stopping eventual stress for Mum.

The other main person affected is my brother. Me being bipolar means that he is the sole executor of Mum’s estate should anything happen to her – not because Mum doesn’t trust me, but because she doesn’t want to put the extra pressure on me in that situation. It means that he has to come and pick me up when we go to Mum’s for dinner every week, because not only can I not afford a car any more, but my driving licence has been medically revoked. (This is also another partial reason why Mum takes me to my psych appointments) He has also become aware that he has to ‘look after’ me a bit sometimes, which is really sweet! For example, we went to see the new Harry Potter film last week, and when we got there it looked like the cinema was going to be pretty full, despite it being 11 in the morning on a Thursday! (We were trying to dodge hordes of kids and foreign exchange students by going to an out of town showing in the morning before the schools broke up!) As it happened, I was absolutely fine in myself, but he thought to ask if I was going to be alright in a crowd. Sometimes I can’t be doing with too many people, you see. He was quite willing to turn around and go home if it would be too much.

So, um, I think that’s about it. If you’ve got any questions or thoughts about this, please leave a comment!

¹ Community Mental Health Team

2: A short history of me

Before I start talking about the various bipolar related topics, I just wanted to give a summary of my “qualifications”. An outline of my experience with the illness. Something like that.

I was diagnosed with bipolar in June 2002, but I didn’t really accept the diagnosis until some time in 2003 – I didn’t want to be bipolar. Depression I was reasonably OK with the idea of, since that could be circumstantial and therefore go away once whatever the circumstances were had been fixed or dealt with in therapy. But bipolar was a bit more permenant, so it took me some time to come to terms with that. I’ll talk more about this when I write the post about experiences with diagnosis. So, that’s 7 years now that I’ve been diagnosed and on various medication, some of which has worked better than others. Again, I’ll go into more detail on that later.

Previous to that, I can now recognise manic and depressed episodes from my late teens onwards – which once again I’ll talk about more later. I’ve had therapy of various kinds, I’m currently being treated by the local Community Mental Health team – I see a psychiatrist every three months or so, depending on how I’m doing. Right now I’m doing pretty well, but I’m not technically “stable” because I still go up and down a few times a year. I occasionally go to a local drop-in centre and take part in some of the things they run, or just have lunch and a natter with some of the other members.

Any questions you’d like to ask? Just leave a comment.

Progress…

I’ve made some definite inroads into my list – see:

Write christmas card list (e-cards and tangible ones)
Buy cards and stamps (tomorrow).
Write and send out cards of both types.
Work out budget for presents (tomorrow when Mum comes over).
Go present shopping – both online (asap) and IRL (w/ Mum tomorrow, prob also later this week).
Put up tree and decorate.
Knit like there’s no tomorrow (I’m not doing many knitted presents this year, but there are a couple I want to get done).

And since I plan to write my cards tonight, that’ll be another thing crossed off. Yay!

I spose I should add another couple of items onto the bottom though if I’m going to be thorough. Presents have to be wrapped, after all. And, um…. is there anything else? Well, if there is, I shall just have to hope it comes to me! My sieve-brain, let me show you it!

In more everyday type news, I also went to the psychiatrist today…

Continue reading “Progress…”

Alive, alive-oh

D’oh, I zoned out for a while there. I wish that would stop happening. My next psych appt isn’t until July, either. It was s’posed to be April or early May, but it got put back. :-/ Still, I can phone them if need be, so it’s not that bad.

Anyway, I haven’t been completely unproductive (read: asleep) over the last few weeks. I’ve been reading (I keep meaning to write reviews… I really will do that. Eventually), and knitting, which I shall talk about a bit more in a moment, and doing a bit of work on a fannish website project with Sann. And over the last couple of days I’ve been gradually putting some knitting / crochet books and some more yarn up for sale on eBay. I might even get the non-knitting things I have to clear out up there, if I can get around to taking photos and working out postage. I need a better pair of scales!

Actually, talking of scales, I may or may not have lost weight recently, but I have been eating more healthily. And without having to think about it too hard, either – it’s becoming more of a habit, which is really good. As well as that, I’m going to start doing more exercise again. I had meant to before, but I as part of the whole zoning out thing I was mainly stuck indoors. However, this morning I’m planning to either go for a walk in the park if I can get hold of Ally in time, or go to aquafit and then either the gym or just stay in the pool for a swim. I’ve got to get back into a routine where I’ve got something to get going for in the morning, and having something that I need to leave the house for is better. Otherwise I’m likely to faff around at the computer in my pyjamas until lunchtime! Quite possibly doing something productive, but still – I need that routine of being really “up and about”, and being actually dressed is part of that.

Back to the knitting, anyhow. Let’s see… looking back at those goals I set myself at the beginning of May, I’m afraid I still haven’t finished Mum’s present (I’m going to go and do some work on that in just a mo!). But as I said, I did finish the baby bootees, and I’ve also finished my second pair of socks – the Berlin Muster pattern – for the Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon. I hit my personal targets as well: I wanted to finish in the first 100, and to improve my sock knitting time. Which I did: I finished as number 68, on 23rd May, so it took me exactly 3 weeks to knit them, doing an average of an hour or two a day. :-) Since then, as well as Mum’s pressie I’ve been working on my Fireworks socks, and I’ve now finished the first one after a bit of a hiccup with the garter stitch toe the first go around (it ended up about twice as long as it should have been!). The second one of those is cast on and I’ll now be slowly making my way down the leg whenever I want to work on a project that requires very little concentration for the most part. I don’t have any pictures of that just yet, anyway, but I do have some of the finished objects. Want to see?….

Continue reading “Alive, alive-oh”

Catching up

Whoops, I’ve been absent for a bit, haven’t I? I’ve been down with an attack of the April’s, you see.

I don’t know why exactly (although I’ve got a theory: it could be bunnies*) it happens every year, but starting in April, I always go through a depressive period. The joys of spring tend to be less than joyous. Not every day, for every thing, because there are lots of things that objectively I love about this time of the year. But mentally, it’s not one of my best times. Some years it’s lasted for months, getting worse and worse until I’ve been in a right state. Others, it’s been better, and it’s only really since I’ve been diagnosed with the bipolar that I’ve been keeping proper track anyway. But since then it’s depended on my medication, my own and others’ awareness of my mental state, and how soon it’s picked up on and started to be dealt with.

*or seriously, something to do with stuff that happened when I was around 18 which I won’t bore you with now, but was at this time of year. And btw, name that fannish reference!

This time, I only had about a week (or maybe 10 days… it blurs) of not being able to move out of bed / eat / etc. After that, there was a thankfully quite short period of getting myself back into a more normal routine again, and now I’m feeling a lot better. Hoorah! Interestingly (to me anyway *g*) getting back to normal once I’d been able to recognise and start coping with the depression as depression just took about three or four days. Before I got really low, I’d been struggling with a wonky sleep routine and lack of motivation for a good couple of weeks, and I was frustrated and annoyed with myself for not being able to sort it out. Now, I can “forgive” myself for all that because now I realise it was the start of the low mood swing. I’m not quite sure if I could have done anything at that time to head the low off… perhaps that’s something to talk to someone (doctor? CPN? counsellor?) about.

However, like I said above, there are things I do love about this time of year, so it certainly hasn’t all been doom and gloom. I haven’t got out and about as much as I’d like of course, but I did get to enjoy the snow at my Mum’s house, the sun in my flat (I have huge windows and my bedroom is a sun-trap), and the sea-air down on the seafront once or twice as well. And of course, being inside so much, I have got some knitting done, and a lot of reading. I did sleep most of the time when I was down (and I do mean most of the time: generally 16-20 hours a day!) but when I was awake, I was at least able to do those things.

What did I knit? Well, I’ll talk about that more in another post, but I finished my Pentathlon socks (yay!), I’m making two pairs of baby bootees for Ally’s little ‘un (who is due next week – the 23rd), and I’m working on Mum’s birthday present (also 23rd). Things are going much faster now I’m feeling more myself again, of course. Which is nice :-)

I’m behind on Project 365 of course – there are only so many photos I could take of the inside of my flat anyway *g*. What are you sposed to do when you miss some days, I wonder? Just skip them, or fudge it and fill the gaps with spare shots from other days? Is there a school of thought on that?

Where was I?

Both figuratively / mentally and literally…. um…. yes. My train of everything is well and truly lost! Let’s try and get back on track, shall we? This is probably going to be a massively long post, I warn you now! There’s also going to be a fair bit about mental health stuff, so feel free to skim :-)

So, starting from when I vanished back in December… well, for the three weeks leading up to Christmas I was pretty much knitting constantly. So much so that I cramped up my shoulder and ended up with an ouch-y left index finger joint! But eek, I had to get the Christmas knitting done!!! Well, as I already mentioned, I didn’t quite succeed, but I did get Mum’s Fetchings done, and I had a scarf finished that I gave her as well. Also within that time, I went to visit C for the weekend, and having been manic not too long beforehand, I think I ‘overworked’ myself, because once I got home again, I when I wasn’t knitting, I was sleeping. Zzzz!

Then, this site was down from 17th – 26th-ish December because of a server crash. It took the hosting company a while to be able to recreate the accounts and then restore the files. The flat files were about 6 weeks old but the databases were all up to date, so I’ve been able to easily restore the things that were still missing (photos, mainly). So that’s all good. Of course, during that time I had a million posts I wanted to make, and now I don’t remember what they were about ;-)

After Christmas, I crashed like a …. crashed out thing for a good ten days. Everyone tends to, I think, but annoyingly I can’t do anything by halves, so I hit a depressive slump with it: didn’t get up or eat or anything really. I slept, or I read – I got through about 15 books, actually. But mostly I slept. Luckily, I’d arranged with Clara, Ally & co. for them to come over for New Year’s. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have done anything for that… and if I’d been up to phoning them to cancel, I probably would have. But as it happened, Clara rang me and just asked me what time they should turn up. I don’t think she knew I was down, but that really is the best way to deal with me when I’m like that. Don’t leave me room to get out of things! So I pulled myself together, tidied up, and sorted out some nibbles and the like. We had a good time – just a chilled out evening, chatting and playing with little M. :-) After that, I was still down for a few more days, but I started to pull up again at the weekend after C helped me with a plan to get me firing on all cylinders again. Hooray!

Since then, I’ve posted my resolutions, which I’m doing OK with in general, and I’ve started Project 365. Mentally, I’ve cycled into a more manic phase, but overall I’ve been mostly within ‘normal’ parameters. I’ve also done something that I’d been sort of putting off for some time – I’ve gone and registered with the drop-in centre down the road. I think I was resisting it because part of me felt that only people with a “real disability” needed to go to somewhere like that. Or perhaps with a more severe disability than I like to perceive myself having, I don’t know. Ah, denial! I thought I was over you, but no! Anyway, it’s a really nice place, and I can go there as often as I want or need, to use whatever facilities I want to. Mainly, I think it’ll be useful for me to have somewhere to pop in when I know that I’m starting to slide one way or another and need to just be around other people to ground myself, and also it’s good to know that the support and advice services are there if I need them. And I have to admit that it’s a huge plus that it’s literally a minute’s walk (or less) from my front door. They do food too, very reasonably, so if I can’t cook, I can eat there. And I got to chat with three other people with bipolar while I was there, and it’s just kind of nice to have that face to face contact with others in the same boat. So yes. I’m going to keep that up.

Hmm, I think that kind of covers it. I’ve been working away on my WIPs, but I’ll talk more about that in a different post (with progress pics, whee). Oh, and I seem to have my sleeping pattern back to normal, so it’s back to the gym and everything this week as well. I missed Knit & Natter the Saturday before last, but my friend M is coming over tomorrow, and I’m planning to go this coming weekend. Now all I have to do is stick to the plan, but also not overdo it!

Autumnal Spring Cleaning

I’ve been having a really good clear-out over the last few weeks, and I’m starting to feel less mentally cluttered as well already. I’ve even eBayed more of my yarn. I know! Can I really be breaking my hoarding mentality? Well, no, not if you look at my bookshelves (MY books *clings*) and, uh, the remainder of my yarn stash. Not to mention the contents of my wardrobe and drawers… and a couple of suitcases… However, I am going to eBay some more stuff. Not yarn this time (although I might be able to persuade myself to part with a couple more skeins), but things like my spare Palm cradle (never used) and serial cable (not used since approx 3 computer upgrades ago)… oh, and I’m sure there are some other things. I have also sorted out more clothes and knick-knacks etc to go off to the charity shop. I think I still have more to do there, though!

Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit stalled on the whole thing because I’m still ill. Bleuch. I left the flat yesterday for the first time in about 2 weeks (alright, maybe my mental health hasn’t been ideal: being stuck indoors ill was threatening to push me into a ‘down’, but I think I’ve caught it in time) because I had to go to the Post Office, and stopped in to speak to the pharmacist on the way. She reckons I have bronchitis or a chest infection, and what with being asthmatic already, I’ve been told to go to the doctor tout de suite. I know, I know, I should have gone a week ago. I am Procrastination Woman. In this case, that’s particularly stupid of me since it means I’ve been propped at a weird angle in bed for several days since I can neither sit/stand up or lay down normally and breathe comfortably. V annoying. Oh well. I have an appointment this afternoon. I’ll be fixed soon. On the plus side, this whole thing seems to have sorted out my insomnia / wonky body-clock thing that I had going on: I’m now tired / sleeping during the actual night again, instead of being awake all night and tired or asleep all day. Hoorah!

In knitting news, I have got some work done on my WIPs. I really must remember to make a couple of posts about my current WIPs and recently completed FOs to spring-clean that off my mental to-do list. Mainly I’ve been working on “Mmm, Refreshers”, which is a Christmas gift. Can’t say anything else about it in case the recipient trundles over here. You never know with my friends and family *peers around suspiciously*. I’ve also done a bit of “WFS” (likewise, Christmas), and some of my Fireworks socks… which are for me me me, so there. Obviously I finished my Tête à Fetching (wore it when I went out yesterday), and I’m really chuffed with the response – some people have said they like it and want to make it, it’s in a few queues (and one in-progress!) on Ravelry, and I even got a really lovely comment from Cheryl Niamath who designed the Fetching gloves. :-) I’ll get the scarf pattern written up soon-ish as well, but I want to make a wider version of it for Mum first. Once I’ve finished something else, that is.

I actually think my WIP tolerance has been reached. If I cast on one more project, my head would explode. I can cope, just about, with the number I have going at once right now (8 plus 3 in hibernation) because I have a definite Christmas deadline for, um, three of them. Although I have at least two more things I wanted to cast on for gift knitting as well. Oh dear. But I’m not going to think about that now! The thing is, those gift knits are the ones which are taking priority, and the rest are pushed to the back-burner. Some more than others – I’m still working on my various pairs of socks (for me) every now and again, to give myself a break. It seems to be working. But anyway, like I said, I’ll make a proper all-about-my-WIPs post a bit later.

I didn’t find my gloves, by the way. So far I’ve been wearing my Fetchings or my Hurry Up Spring fingerless ones, but I’ve wound a skein of Yarn Yard Merino sock into a ball to make some new ones – I think I’m going to make cabled ones with that. And I did crumble and get ones of the glove kits, so I’m going to make a pair with that too.

Photo of Yarn Yard Merino Sock yarn 'Damson'

Photo of Yarn Yard Glove kit yarn 'Olive-ish'

Yay, gloves! I’m not allowing myself to cast on for them until I’ve finished a couple of my current WIPs, though. Preferably the Christmas gift ones, since those have a deadline!

Hmm, was there anything else I was going to say? I can’t think… oh! I remember. I found a (the) Holiday Gift KAL-CAL. Just what I wanted! I have duly signed myself up. Um. Oh yes, and I’ve been working on my next (final? I’m not sure if I’ll be sending one more package or if I’ll split it into two – Katie, do you have any preferences?) SP11 package. Mwahaha. Etc. ;-)

Right, that’s enough being upright for me for the time being. I’m going back to bed for a bit to listen to the radio / podcasts while knitting, then I shall get up again, have foooood, and get myself off to the doctor’s. TTFN!