Fighting, Vainly, the Old Ennui

Eeek. I’m really not doing great these past few days. I keep making exception after exception, and it will add up really quickly if I’m not careful. I’m becoming my same old self again, and I can’t be that anymore. That self is honestly horrible and I hate being around her. That self can’t stay awake. That self never gets anything done. That self cries too much and is too angry. That self needs to be put down, six feet down, so that the new self I’m working on can grow.

Some history. I was diagnosed as bipolar around 5th grade, mostly because my sister was clearly and undeniably bipolar and my mother was scared for me. I was put on meds before puberty. To this day, I can’t figure out if I was rightly diagnosed. It’s possible that the symptoms I displayed were actually just childish/pubescent follies. But I think even if I was correctly diagnosed, it would have been better not to tell me until I was more mature. Because I used it as an excuse to really wallow in every passing mood. I felt that my feelings must be more intense than other people’s and that I needed to be more dramatic, so that everyone would understand just how artistically damaged I was, and how I suffered. I also felt I had to prove to myself that the diagnosis was correct. I became quite melodramatic. And lazy. All I ever had to do if I wanted something done for me was tell my mother I was too depressed to do it myself. I indulged my every stupid, lazy whim. I always excused myself because of my disorder.

New therapist/psychiatrist now. He thinks I may just be dysthymic. Laziness and self indulgence are habits I still struggle with, having never learned any other way to be. I got a lot of the “everyone is special” message, and not enough of the “even special people need to work hard” side of the story. I never noticed that this was a problem until I met my husband. His upbringing was different. For example, one of his math teachers in childhood used to administer corporal punishment to the lowest performing students. My husband says he really improved his math skills during that teacher’s reign. Flopping around complaining about emotions would not have been an effective strategy. If you look at us now, he is able to focus on anything that he needs to focus on, and stay focused for a very long time, while I have roughly the attention (and memory) span of a goldfish.

Back to the present. I’m having feelings, not related to anything, and it’s making it hard to keep on track. My sudden interest in getting healthy followed close on the heels of being given Abilify to improve the effects of my antidepressants. I’m not saying that’s why I was able to start so strong, but it does make me wonder. So now I’m wondering if I’ve been forgetting to take my meds, or the I’ve gotten used to the abilify and it no longer works, or whether none of it has anything to do with the pills. It’s a weird feeling to not be able to separate your own personality, drive and emotions from a handful of pills.

So I need to focus on staying positive, and act as though I have no emotional instability. If I dwell on being bipolar or dysthymic, I just get more and more severely depressive. I’m absolutely not saying that that is true of anyone else, just me.

So I’ve had a few iffy days, and not really exercised the hardest I’ve ever tried. I will do better tomorrow. I need to work on pre-planning my 21 day fix meals, because I haven’t been successful at making myself measure everything out in the moments before I eat it. Also, I need to log things on lose it before I eat, not after.

I need to listen to more music that makes me happy  and keep my spirits up. Most of all, I think I need to blog more regularly, to make sure I do all the things I say I’ll do!