Documenting my journey through the mental health system

They say you can control your mind, your emotions, your thoughts and how we respond to the things that happen to us. What a crock of shit.

I have always felt like a prisoner of my own mind. During a manic phase, I am certain of my superiority and special knowledge known only to me. That knowledge varies depending on what I’m dealing with in life. I’m also far more suspicious and paranoid when I get manic and strung out.

During a depressive phase, my energy is gone, complex thinking is gone, and all motivation and desire for forward movement leaves. My mind is consumed with thoughts of worthlessness, hopelessness, and abject despair. There is no control over this. My mind feels like a prisoner of itself.

Sometimes, like fire, the tendrils of despair lick at the outer corners of my mind. And sometimes, like a kid before Christmas, I can’t sleep or eat for all the energy and excitement flooding my mind. Excitement for what? Where is all this energy coming from?

Right now, I am pretty stable. I think. I haven’t been taking my lamictal twice a day like I’m supposed to, it is so hard to get it down at night when it’s my only pill to take. I don’t get a lot of sleep, but I get what I can get with my sleep meds and even more if I take additional sleep meds like my PRNs for voices and EPS (extrapyramidal symptoms). EPS – symptoms associated with certain psychiatric medications like twitching, tremors, restlessness, and involuntary movements. Currently I’m dealing with a twitch on my right eyelid and simply blinking gets it revved up. I’m not developing any tardive dyskinesia that I know of, but the restlessness is real and sometimes intense. This makes it so hard to relax when I need to relax or fall asleep when my meds are trying to push me under. I’m pretty stable but struggle with getting sleep, or enough of it, because I don’t need as much as others. At least that’s what I tell myself.

I keep busy, trying to appease the restlessness. I plan my house and moving, plan my spending and saving, all to an obsessive degree. I clean constantly, trying to “build mastery” – an IOP concept that encourages doing things over which we have control. I write a lot, especially in a handwritten journal. I have not been cooking as much, but it’s not like I ever really did. I work about 60 hours a week and tend to eat out most of the time. Not fast food though – it’s often very disappointing and leaves me hungry again two hours later.

This month marks the first month of payments toward Vets Guardian, the consultants I hired who helped me with my service increase. After ten months I have paid them off in full. That’s assuming there is still a federal government making payments to us vets by then. The way things are going, I am not so sure.

I still send that email to Elon every week. The same one, pointing out my five “accomplishments.” I don’t even think he’s remembered this demand he made. No one is paying us any mind right now, as much as they are paying attention to social security. My mother just became eligible for it but the likelihood of actually getting it is looking more and more slim.