As I have stated online before, I suffer from bipolar disorder. For those unfamiliar with this disorder, for me personally, it means I fluctuate from anxiety to depression quite often. Therefore, I take one medication for bipolar disorder, an additional medication for depression, and two additional medications for anxiety. It’s called a cocktail.
When I told my therapist that they appeared to be helping, she exclaimed, ‘This may be your cocktail, Ms. Fran!’
On one end, yes, I have. My moods don’t switch as severely as they used to, causing me to be cranky and basically a b*tch and I don’t wonder if I should be here or not. Which are good things, but on the flip side, I’m restless as shit. I don’t know how else to put it for you to understand the feelings that are going on inside of me. It’s frustrating.
Oftentimes, I hear of people saying that when they are on antidepressants or medication for anxiety, they do not feel anything. I still feel things but not as deeply. It feels like there is a shield or something between my emotions and me. I hate it.
As I type right now, I recall how I used to be the type to cry over everything, good things included, but now I just feel like “hmmm”. That’s it. I used to get excited about the sunny days and the little things, but now I just feel the memory of the feeling and not the feeling itself.
I long to feel something deeply, to be moved by something, but nothing interests me as it once did.
My days are all the same, mundane. All I feel is time going by but it doesn’t go by fast enough to keep my mind from wandering for hours on end.
I’ve been trying to find more things to do to fill up my day as I now find myself watching the clock all day. Time seems to slowly go nowhere and yet it flies by as I wake each day and think about how I both survived and wasted the day before.
I wait anxiously for nothing.
Whereas I used to dread taking my kids to their jobs, I now jump at the chance to have something to fill up my day a little more. Boring…. I know…
I shop online.I listen to audiobooks. Sometimes I watch Netflix. I’ve began drawing and painting again. I try to understand the stock market. I workout and I have also began walking again. Walking helps to tire me out and working out sometimes gives me energy when I feel low, but nothing takes away the feeling or the lack there of.
I often find myself trying to remember things that I once liked doing before, but to be honest, my life used to be so unstable, I never had much time for other activities outside of working, school, and taking care of my kids.
I’ve chosen between my disorder and being even more of a wandering soul. This feels like a mini purgatory but I don’t feel.
And yet, in order to be a better person for the people I love and care about, I know that I must continue on my cocktail.
The other day, I wondered what it would be like aloud to a friend and they reminded that I already know what life is like without my medication. The person I am without it is not someone I like, so I do what I have to do.
For once I am settled in life and can do and be like other women. I don’t need to worry everyday about how we will make it the next day and while that is a good feeling, I can’t bring myself to celebrate it.
A part of me wonders if I feel this way because I am suppressing a part of myself. I feel like I live a modest life in comparison to who I would like to be. People think I am a homebody because my anxiety is so bad I don’t usually go anywhere but in reality, I want a life where I am hopping on jets going from adventure to adventure.
That’s the part of me that always feels so stifled, so maybe this cocktail is pushing me out of my comfort zone in a different way and allowing me to tap into my other half. Whatever the case, I aim to see this through.
