300 mgs: Have to Be Careful Anyway

A few weeks ago I wrote about how bad I've been feeling lately.  Then, the next day, I did something to make it worse.  I went to Brian Copeland's show The Waiting Period.  It's a darkly comic one-man show about the ten-day waiting period that California requires when purchasing a handgun.  Copeland was purchasing that handgun in order to commit suicide.  The waiting period probably saved his life.


The show was great, both funny and poignantly sad.  But I shouldn't have gone to see it.

It wound up being really triggering.  Copeland's character moved between today, in real time, and the person he was when he was suicidal.  The suicidal character described so many things I felt, and am feeling.  What particularly resonated was the repetition of the phrase, "everything hurts".  In his case, the pain was felt physically: "Even my hair hurts!".  In my case, the recurring thought is "my life hurts".

Watching the show, I remembered all the times I've been at a stop sign or a crosswalk and thought, I could just step into traffic.  I remembered by recurring thoughts of cutting myself, thoughts that started when I was a teenager.  The recurring, frustrated thought, I should just shoot myself in the head.  Copeland wanted to shoot himself in the heart, because that's where his pain was.  I guess I think of shooting myself in the head because it's just been so useless to me -- the learning disabilities, the ADHD, the consequent underemployment, and of course, the crazy.

Lest you be worried, I don't have a suicide plan, and I don't even own a gun.  The point of this post is that, when you have a mood disorder, no matter how medicated you are, you still need to be really careful about what you allow yourself to listen to and see.  I thought I was doing well enough that I could enjoy the show without adverse consequences to myself.  I wasn't.

The only upside is that seeing the show made me realize how much I was in denial about how bad I was doing, and now I'm seeking help.  And that, as it happens, was Copeland's message:  if you're feeling really bad, tell someone.  Get help.  Don't suffer in silence, alone.

Merry Christmas, Lamictal Community!

You may wonder why a Unitarian Universalist Pagan celebrates Christmas.  There are actually a lot of reasons. 

The first is that I see it as a continuation of Solstice festivities.  Many Christmas traditions derive from earlier Pagan traditions.  Like the tree.  And the gift-giving.  The all night vigil that has become midnight services.  Christmas, like Hanukkah, is at its core about light in darkness.  Hope and miracles.  Lamp oil that lasts for eight days instead of one.  A child born in a barn, but born healthy (and mom comes through herself with flying colors).

The second is that it was always an important holiday in my family.  In spite of our severe dysfunction, my mother managed to impose a truce on the household, and my father didn't yell at us for nearly a whole week.  My mother was really into the decorations, the music, the presents; in her own dysfunctional family, her father dressed up as Santa every Christmas to hand out the gifts he himself had wrapped with great care.

The third is the music.  Oh, the music.  Whether the music is a grand oratorio like the Messiah or the Weihnachts-Oratorium, or folk songs like The Coventry Carol,  it's some of the most beautiful music out there.  The metaphors are often fascinating as well.  Mary, wandering through a barren wood and causing flowers to spring up where nothing has grown for seven years.  The cherry tree bowing down to her.  Mary as a "rose of virtue".  These metaphors refer to her powers as a goddess-like being, her power as a pregnant woman.  

This is a tough time of year for people with mood disorders.  May all of you find the light in this time of darkness.  Have yourselves a merry little Christmas, y'all.

Happy Solstice, Seasonal Depressives! We made it.

Today I wanted to wish all of you a happy shortest day and longest night.  The sun us is as far as it's going to get from the Northern Hemisphere.  It's all uphill from here.

Of course, for many people there are blizzards and snowstorms to come, and cabin fever, and the grey-brown misery that is February.  You know, I think the only thing I like about California's non-seasons is that February, though often gray at least part of the time, is always green.

We'll still need our sunlamps.  We'll still need to be gentle with ourselves and vigilant about self-care.  But the sun is returning, and bringing with it mood and sanity.

I wish you all the happiest of Solstices.  Remember -- axial tilt is the reason for the season!

Lamictal 300mgs: Nearing My Psychoversary

It was last year at this time that things started to get really bad.  I felt OK during the sunny days, had low energy during the cloudy days.  Once it hit 4 pm though ... then The Thoughts started coming.  They went something like this:

There's not enough light in the house.  There's not enough light in the universe! But if I turn on all the lights in the house, I can keep it from tipping into the darkness.  

So ... darkness somehow "weighs more" than light?  That doesn't make any sense; how can darkness "weigh" anything?  It doesn't; it just doesn't.  

On the other hand ... I the dark, cavernous maw in the other room is sort of bugging me. All right, I'll humor myself, I'll turn on every damn light in the house.

And then, as the weeks wore on: