I am on a run of almost a week of being awake for the majority of the day. It was not easy because the dosage of my new medication went up right after my last post and I was drop kicked back into the land of Nod. It was exceedingly frustrating because chores piled up, appointments were missed, and projects lay idle. I was grumpy and unhappy. I am feeling more alert and much better today.
I am really hoping that holds. The magnitude of the shift in my brain from this time two months ago is pretty huge. I was on the verge of suicidal depression in March when I talked to my psychiatrist who initiated this medication change. The last two months have been exhausting. Which is pretty ironic considering that I was sleeping most of the time. But, it was exhausting and uncomfortable. I was sleeping so much that my body was getting sore which ever position I slept in. I needed to be upright and moving to feel better but I simply couldn't do it.
I am trying not to be resentful of all the stuff that didn't get done, appointments missed, and such. I am attempting to focus on gratitude and moving forward. I was having a really hard time summoning up the will to write a damn thing when I was awake. As such, blogs and journals were not updated. It is not a thing most people feel much about but I feel pretty bad about that. I feel like I let down my readership and I was failing to keep record of what going on in life around here.
At one point I had a therapist ask me why I keep a journal and a daily log of activities in my planner. I joked that I worked for the redundancy department of redundancy. Namely, I am terrified of losing my memory. The fact that my brain is an unreliable narrator is horrific enough. The idea that I would lose my memories and forget who my family are is bone chilling. I watched dementia consume my great-grandmother Hazel. I will never forget the day that I came to visit her at the nursing home and she didn't recognize me. My heart broke. I promised myself that I wouldn't let that happen to me.
Thus, I kept a scrapbook through middle school, high school, and part of college. And when it was safe to keep a journal, I wrote in it religiously about almost everything. Trauma in my life and my psychiatric illnesses have robbed me of memories that many people take for granted. I have spotty memories of my children's early childhood. If I were asked when they said their first word, I wouldn't be able to answer the question or necessarily tell you what it is on a given day. I rely on my journal to be my memory keeper.
That said, I have spent most of the last two months sleeping and I'm hopeful that I will be only sleeping at night now. We'll see.
