Often with the change of season comes change in state of mind and mood. I’m not saying that people without bipolar disorder can’t relate to highs and lows, ebbs and flows, but come on, just.., you can’t compare. (guess I said it) To the same extent at least.
Since starting taking my medicine two years ago I’m always left confused at these times when I would’ve been feeling down. It always takes me a lot of time and some heavy days doubting everything before it even occurs to me that I must be having a depressed period underneath this veil of chemical influence. My husband always know way before me but says he wants me to kind of recognize the feeling myself. Which I can understand. It’s a sort of numbness anyone on antidepressants can relate to. Or even someone mildly depressed even I can imagine. To me this is unbearable (because we tend to forget the pain of actually being depressed real quick, don’t we) and I feel like what I can only imagine resembles feeling half dead. During this shit of times. To be honest it sometimes makes me wanna act like the ass it would take me to be to stop taking my medicine all together. Just to cry three days straight followed by some fucked up weeks and get that painful thing inside of me out. Because it’s there, I feel it. Trapped without ever reaching the surface. Not a good feeling. I’m emotionally constipated and I just wanna crumble. But am left only with crumble apple pie.
How dramatic.
But it is dramatic! Slightly traumatic, as it happens.
Stayed with mum last week for a couple of days. So there’s that.
And woke up to this this morning
So there’s also that.
I’m just wallowing in my own feelings (or lack thereof) and safety blanket alone in my apartment, other one’s off working this week.
I need to get out more, seriously. But not fucking today. Or yesterday. Or the day before that! Haha, so sad.. But I have an appointment on Wednesday. So I am leaving the premises for that.
So glad I’m working from home. And the fact that I have vegetables, noodles, potetkake, coffee and chocolate to keep me going for the next couple of days.
Do take the medicine, get out and hang out with friends/family and don’t feed the *thing*!
The worst part about falling into one of those mental holes is how easily you can end up in a physical one.
Go for a run!
See you on the other side. x
There’s nothing to feed, it is what it is. And I am running? I’m saying that it’s fucking weird not being able to feel down.
Oh yeah I’ve been in that place before. It’s impossible to say what will break that dam, but it will happen.
I’d suffered from emotional repression for many years, there was a point when I would almost panic when I felt I wasn’t feeling any particular emotion, I thought I was going to close up again (I was very deeply sad at the time and it was beautiful). I still have the reflex, to put the feelings in a box, but I’m getting better at taking them back out.
I know that the numbness is frightening and frustrating (which seems sort of ironic because you feel like you can’t feel but you must feel something or it wouldn’t bother you) but you have you mind to fall back on, use the time to explore the why’s and how’s. Your breakdown will come, the tears will come, the relief will come.
I don’t fully understand your condition of course, so please don’t take what I’m saying too literally. I’m just trying to engage in some conversation. I would like to be able to offer something other than platitudes, hugs and kisses. I got the impression you weren’t really looking for that kind of thing.
I admit that I sometimes I miss the point of what you’re saying, but I honestly just mean to offer something positive.
I’m assuming you have a comments section for a reason, so what can I do for you Viktoria? Tell me how do we communicate, do you even want to? I hope so.
Of course, I appreciate comments. And written stuff is often hard to interpret. It’s just sometimes easier to swallow that another person’s listening rather than making an effort to cheer you up, you know?
What a very informative and powerful description of how you feel Viktoria.
I did not have the bi-polar condition but I can just about remember being on various substances that had emotionally deadening side effects (and actual physical ones which I would rather not recall).
Sitting ‘dead-pan’ whilst others thought a comedy hilarious I seem to remember and not having much enthusiasm for anything.
Do we know how bi-polar pans out longer term? I know there are no hard and fast rules.
With my experiences of life and those of many of my emotionally honest elderly relatives, I have found that with life experience and the greater emotional needs of ones peers with their ‘life events’, a sort of inner calmness gains a hold. That is a generalisation though. ( I shall not elaborate as possible discovery is part of the fun).
Thanks for the Bergen sky view. Cloud Castles. I looked out my old Passport the other day stamped with ‘BERGEN September 1983’ (thought it was 1980)! and a picture of a simplistic building (Civic Hall perhaps) and found an envelope with some Krone coins and some tiny little Ore coins, some with dear little bees or wasps on. What a long, long time ago…..
Funny how we all seem strangers in this world and yet I walked some of the Bergen streets before they were known to you and how many of your relatives possibly had those coins pass through their purses and pockets and were the reward for some hard work?
Let us know how you get on.
Peter <3 <3
P.S. Jodie Whittaker is doing a great job as Dr. Who if you get it in Norway…..
That’s amazing! We don’t even use Øre any more <3 Inflation's sad that way. We have an ice-cream called Krone-is, which means exactly what it sounds like, Krone-ice cream, and comes from the time when it cost only a krone! It's probably around 20 kroner today.. I love that idea of my 7 year old parents running to the local little shop to buy an ice cream for one krone!
I welcome getting older and I'm excited to get wrinkles. Calmness also seems nice 🙂
Thank you for your lovely reply Viktoria, you have really ‘brightened my day’ and none of us can do more than that (brighten someone’s day I mean).
Lovely insight into the ‘Krone’ issue and wonderful ice cream story/image.
Yes, a change of coinage always leads to inflation. 1 Krone is roughly 10 (New) Pence in the UK which was 2 Shillings in our old money. 12 Penny’s to one Shilling, 20 Shillings to 1 Pound or 21 Shillings to 1 Guinea (sad thing is I just about remember all about that). Amazing how many sweets you could buy for 2 Shillings!
The other advantage about getting older is that you can get up to more mischief with your friends and family and then blame it on ‘your age’ (but I didn’t tell you that did I)?
Have a good weekend!
Peter <3 <3 (I think I am going to do a bit of research on Youtube into Ivor Cutler, a 1960's English eccentric (used to mix with the pop stars of the day), I might learn some more mischief)!
I like this blog because you are able to put into words how I feel. I also appreciate how you are able to fill your life with beauty in the midst of your struggles.
<3 <3 <3
Have just been thinking more about your blog Viktoria.
Very appropriate photographs really, perhaps without you realizing it.
I am by no means the one to invent this theory but isn’t it strange how for example, the wood burning stove at your parent’s house has a small fire which burns hotter and brighter when it gets more draft which makes the fire hotter which causes more draft and so on and so on.
Certainly panic attacks seem to follow this same rule….feel uncomfortable which triggers responses that make us more uncomfortable and so on and so on. Depression may well be very similar but is an ‘over thinking’ sort of problem I guess.
With the analogy of the wood burning stove, the nice neat solution we have found is to limit the ‘draft’ or air going through the process. The ‘medical’ remedy seems to be to use wet wood!
Well, the convection currents that make and move the clouds are a cyclic ‘feedback’ system and planets form by the ever greater presence of gravity, stars form in the same way and and black holes and as I found out at a lecture last Friday, what controls the heat of a star is a feedback loop as well.
Feedback seems to be everywhere, in all of the Earth sciences and economics and computer programming.
Line 10. goto line 20
Line 20. goto line 10
At one time that really used to make electronics smoke! (Sorry if I have written it wrong, we only had Charles Babbage’s Calculating Engine when I went to school).
Interestingly, above electronics designers and engineers and physicists the cleverest magicians are those who deal with audio feedback because they can banish it when it is not required and make it conform to their harmonies when it is. Maybe there are some clues there (they don’t put pillows over their microphones or speakers).
I just wish there was a performing musician or recording engineer you knew who you could discuss it with………..
(Oh, and this sentence I just wrote is a lie ! (Thank you ‘Star Trek’ for that one)).
Peter <3 <3
An infinite loop of energy getting picked up by objects in it’s path..
I haven’t seen Star Trek!
<3
your emotions, bodily sensations and the way you describe them ring a bell with me. have you considered that you and your sister might be #actuallyAutistic?
the symptoms in girls and women are very different to the common stereotype (and she displays many of them).
it just really is a different way of (being) human, and with a right diagnosis comes right self-care…
hehe, I appreciate what you’re saying! But we’re not autistic 🙂