Marsh Mallow

My son turned 16 yesterday, and I bought him a bag of Marshmallows and a big bar of chocolate, and a bottle of Coke. He was very happy.
He didn't want drugs and alcohol like some teenagers would -- just sweets and pop.
He's a good boy.

***

In other news, I am feeling very low.

So low, I may have to phone my psychiatrist for an emergency appointment.

My thoughts of suicide are getting more frequent and more detailed, and I'm finding them harder and harder to cope with.

It hasn't been helped by someone's blog post about he who left me -- a mundane post about his emails -- but never the less a post that shows his life happily goes on as normal, with friends and emails and blah. When my life seems to be completely taken over with trying to sort my head out.

I said to him one time, when he first suggested that I get help, that I had been down that road before and it would end badly. Leave it alone, I said; I'm better off left alone.

I should have listened to myself; way back when I still had a life, I should have listened.
Now I can't go out, have no friends, and live with a constant, debilitating fear of everything. It's horrible. That's not to mention the handfuls of pills I have to take each day.

Life is not fun.

I'm not sure where the fear comes from -- I think it's a fear of all the things I should have learned to deal with since childhood, that I actually dealt with in a hypomanic haze rather than really mastered, and now I have to cope with them all at once, with my hypomanic defences stripped away.
I'm somewhat like a child living the life of a forty-something.

So life, for me, is not fun.

I don't know the answer, at the moment.
I just know that without someone to hold my hand, the world seems very bleak.

Weighty Issue

Since I started on the thyroid pills, my weight has slowly but surely been creeping back on again.

It's not surprising -- I'm hungry all the time, and forever running to the kitchen for a snack.

So far I've put on over 20 pounds, and it has to stop.

At the moment I'm trying to drink a cup of green tea every time I feel hungry.

Lets see how crazy scheme number 3472 pans out.

It's snow joke

I'm currently writing this from one of the only places in the UK that doesn't have snow, and consequently one of the only places that hasn't fallen apart.

I feel left out.

***

I spoke to my psychiatrist today and we discussed my lack of CPN support. He has said that he will write to the local day centre and confirm that he will provide back up if required, so I might give that a go.

He has also increased my anti-psychotics in a hope of decreasing my anxiety and improving my low mood. He suggested some Valium but I told him that they don't help much (at all) and he agreed that the anti-psychotics I have are much more powerful weapons.

He then suggested that if this doesn't work I might want to think about some new anti-depressants -- MAOIs.

Which kind of brings me back to my last post -- can pills help when the problem is in the real world? Stress and money worries and agoraphobia and crippling loneliness -- can pills help with those?
My psychiatrist seems to think they would.
I said I would see how I get on with the increased dose and think about it.

I am worried about the dietary restrictions -- I don't trust myself when I am feeling low, not to deliberately eat or drink something prohibited.

But the thought of feeling better is, as always, enticing.

Low Down

I'm feeling very low at the moment, and I'm not sure if that is because number one daughter goes home tomorrow or because my system is missing the anti-depressants I hate so much. Or a combination of the two, plus all the other stress.

Every morning I do a kind of straw poll, to judge how suicidal I am that day. It ranges from 'not very' to 'pretty bad'.

I find it hard to imagine that suicide doesn't figure on the list of possible daily options for some people, but I am told that for some people it is categorically not a consideration for them.

I think that must be a nice feeling.

I can't imagine that a pill can produce that feeling though -- at least, not the kind of stuff that they give out legally on the NHS.

So I'm not about to hurry back to the anti-depressants. I'll just have to hope that my poll keeps me on the good side of 'emergency'.