It's 12:30 am. I am lying wide awake in my bed; despite taking two doses of valium, one dose of lamictal and one dose of risperal over an hour ago, I am lying (well, now sitting and typing) but nonetheless wide awake in my bed with a pervasive urge to clean out my hall closet.
Bradley is sick, so I forced him to take some NyQuil, else he would be snatching the computer away from me and forcing me to sleep. Or, rather ordering me to lay down and stare at the ceiling in the dark for several hours before eventually lulling into a likely fitful sleep. Sleep is never restful when you are experiencing mania. But, alas, he is snoring away, and not likely to budge even if a tornado came through the house.
I am completely aware that the urge to clean my closet in the middle of the night is a sign of mania settling in, but that doesn't lessen the temptation. It is taking every ounce of self control I have not to go clean and organize it. I don't know why I've decided to write about it instead of doing it, but here we are. I suppose this option seemed more productive. How good of a job can one do with cleaning a closet in the middle of the night, anyway? This seems a more appropriate and acceptable outlet of manic energy. At least it seems so to me.
We just returned from Christmas vacation at my parents' home 2 days ago. The weeks leading up to said vacation were absolutely horrible. I was lower than I'd been in months, suicidal several times over the course of 2 weeks, and so depressed I couldn't muster the energy to get off the couch without bursting into tears of premature exhaustion. But then we left for my mother's house, and what I'd expected to be a very stressful 10 days, turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. 10 days of absolute relaxation with the people I enjoy most, doing the things I love most. We were a little more booked and over-scheduled than I'd hoped, but I, surprisingly, given my previous state, took it in stride and thoroughly enjoyed my vacation. (With the exception of one breakdown on Christmas Eve. I always have an episode on Christmas Eve, I can't say why, but there you are. Positive stress wears me out just as much as negative stress, I suppose.) I wasn't ready to leave, and was prepared for a complete and absolute breakdown upon our return. 2 weeks of joy often means 2 subsequent weeks of misery for people with my condition. We pay an enormous price for each of our good days.
When we arrived home Thursday night, we put the baby to bed, then went to bed ourselves and I burst into tears. I couldn't face the next day knowing it would be as bad as the days before we left. I wasn't ready for another depressive episode, not so soon. Not after I'd been doing so well for 10 (9) straight days.
Surprisingly though, I awoke the next morning with copious amounts of energy. I threw all of it into shoveling a foot of snow from around our car to make way for an extensively complicated couponing trip (which involved going to 3 separate stores), a trip to the bank, a lunch outing, a thorough house cleaning, several lightbulb changes, and another quick outing for some storage supplies. Before I knew it, it was time for bed.
Chalking up my energy burst and complete disinterest in turning in for the night to the time zone change, I decided to do the smart thing and take a sleeping pill instead of valium for the night, to get myself back on a proper schedule.
I slept in til 11 am.
Luckily today is Saturday, so Bradley was around to take care of the baby until I awoke. It is an unspoken rule in our house that I am not to be awoken whilst asleep unless it is 100% necessary. I suppose the attitude is that sleep is part of my medical treatment, and to deny me it in any way would be an offense equivalent to withholding me my medications.
I had almost the same amount of energy today as I did yesterday. I funneled today's mania into overcleaning our bathroom. I cleaned the tub twice and the floors twice. Since Bradley was sick I insisted we stay inside the whole day rather than brave the snow and 10 degree weather in pursuit of errands and a computer repair that still needs to be attended to. (Bradley talks in his sleep more when he takes NyQuil, by the way. My typing keeps being interjected with mid-sentence nonsense from the other side of the bed.) While we may have stayed home and, technically, done nothing today, it was a manic day, nonetheless. Aside from the obsessive bathroom incident, our day was spent indulging other obsessive behaviors. We watched an entire season and a half of Downton Abbey while I constantly fidgeted, wandered the apartment, perused craigslist for new desk setups that will more properly accommodate my coupon printing, and obsessively searched for coupons on my laptop.
I get it. Obsessive behavior=the beginnings of a manic episode.
But I still hate it when my mother and Bradley tell me my new couponing habit/hobby/what-have-you is obsessive behavior. I almost always have it under control (with the exception of today) and I only shop for the things I need. I feel like it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and it is benefitting our family greatly. I save 35-50% on groceries every week from couponing. It's incredibly irritating to have every new interest of mine immediately questioned and chalked up to the "obsessive behavior" of the mentally ill. It almost makes me not want to ever try anything new, in order to avoid scrutiny and speculation on its influence from my illness. It also makes me worry that, if in fact it is an obsessive interest developed from my illness, that, once my mood changes, I will lose interest in it almost immediately and it won't be of use to me anymore. Which is especially relevant in this case because this particular interest is of such use to our family.
But of course, they're right. The whole reason I want to clean out my closet at 1 am in the first place is because I want to make room for a proper stockpile. It's already accumulating and I'm running out of space to store things, and so much of that closet as it is currently is wasted space. I figured if I wrote about it long enough, the urge would subside and my medicine would kick in and I'd finally be able to sleep. It's working. The valium is finally kicking in, I can feel it. It feels like warm, relaxing syrup slowly drizzling in a viscous drizzle from the top of my head and sliding down to my toes. That's when I know I will finally stop thinking of things to do instead of sleep, and think of how nice it will feel to sleep.
So here's to hoping that all of this manic energy will last, and that, with the help of my medications, I can harness it into something useful. And pray that I don't pay for it so dearly as I payed for my last burst. I know it's a long shot. The incredible ups are almost always followed by their equal opposite. Bipolar lives are mirrored by physics. Each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Or rather, each mood is followed by its equal and opposite mood. I will ride this wave until it subsides, and after that the darkness will envelop me again and I'll suffer immensely, as I did last time. It sounds defeatist, and earlier on in my illness, I would have scolded myself for such cynical thinking, but I've learned that I simply can't deny the inevitable. I can only take it one day at a time and hope to God that I don't give up when the going gets tough, as I know it will. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that I have to try my very best to live in the moment. It's become imperative to embrace the days that I feel are worth living even though I know the opposite days are on their way. Because if I don't, it will become so that none of my days will seem worth living. And that's no way to live.
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