Klonopin and Melodrama

I’m sitting here at 8:40pm listening to First Aid Kit’s latest EP. I took my anxiety medicine. I just finished a book on Christianity and a Christian devotional. Today, I went to the gym and I’ve been having balanced meals for the first time in months. Yet here I am. With a tears staining my pillow and snot dripping down my nose. When the anxiety is lifted for a brief moment, only depression lies beneath. I’m doing it all right, yet I still feel like I’m being tortured from the inside out. I feel like im suffocating. “What would make it better?” my sweet boyfriend asks. I have no idea. I’ve tried it all. Save for ECT and TMS. Tomorrow I go to my psychiatrist. Please pray to the god above that he doesn’t hospitalize me. I just want to try this new-fangled Transcranial Magnetic Stimulaiton. With bipolar patients, the only fear is that I would enter into a manic episode. Who knows what will happen. Do I chose to trust Christ? I don’t know.

......

Next day: I had the long-awaited, fated appointment and you know what I got out of it? More Klonopin. Yup. That’s it. I’m not questioning my psychiatrist; I trust him, and deeply respect him, and, although he’s from UVA, he’s even grown on me a little ;) Today, I walked in, sat down, and promptly told him I’d like to try TMS. “Sure…but it doesn’t work.” He went on to explain his reasoning which I won’t delve into here, but I was a bit disheartened. One hopeful option shut down completely. I refuse to partake in ECT so the only option left is more intense psychotherapy. Which is fine, I just thought it’d be cool to have a “real” treatment for an illness that is so very real.

As you can tell, I was very melodramatic and emotional last night. That’s not from the bipolar, that’s just my natural temperament. Always the drama queen. I trust God with this but man it’s hard.

Fittingly, the lyrics to the first song on the newest First Aid Kit EP called “I’ve Wanted You” fit my emotions into lyric quite well:

Life doesn't give you hoops to jump through
It gives you tireless roads to cross
This sadness came over me
So in love, so at a loss
…

I've been feelin' so in-between things
Sad and stuck and alone
Even when I'm as high as I can get
I can't forget I'm on my own

Keep thinkin' I can escape it
But there are no red shoes to tap
Just endless haulin' through a desert
And babe, there never was a map

But today is just a normal day. I cried a little over an old friend’s death, I read a little. Listened to some music. And now I’m waiting patiently for my new book to arrive via the Great Empire of Amazon.

There really isn’t a great, big point or lesson to this post. Just a glimpse into the life of a normal girl who happens to have bipolar.

I think I’ll go check the mailbox now…

Side note: My psychiatrist made a poorly executed attempt at encouraging me via relating my life to John Nash’s in A Beautiful Mind, to which I say three things: 1) great movie, but a little cliché, bud. 2) young Russell Crowe was hawt. 3) one of the best movie lines of all times = “I cannot waste time memorizing the weak assumptions of lesser mortals!” shouted from the rooftop of a prestigious Princeton building.

Side note to the side note: yesterday I looked at my outgoing calls and there were SEVEN to my mom alone… in one day. So, middle school girls with attitudes, love your mommas cause you’re gonna realize how much you need them one day.