I did a bad thing…

I did a bad thing.

I got sick, and then I started getting better, then I stopped. I didn’t get better. I just stopped.

I’m in illness limbo. I’m much better than I was when I was severely unwell, but much worse than I was “before”, before I ever got sick. Well okay, maybe not much worse, but worse. I’m not going forwards, I’m not going back. I’m not bad enough to complain to my doctors, but I’m not where I thought I’d be, back to “normal”.

It’s been a long time now since I got sick, and I’m definitely well over the acute phase of crippling anxiety, black depression and the odd weirdly happy and effective days of mania.

I was just commenting yesterday that I never have dysfunctional anxiety anymore; just regular, everyday person anxieties that are reasonable and well founded and manageable. But I was wrong. At that very moment it was sneaking up on me again and bam! it got me!! But only a bit dysfunctional. I don’t have the darkness and hopelessness of depression, just the sluggishness and lack of motivation and tiredness…but even that waxes and wanes giving me better days and worse days due to no particular reason. Mania continues to be a little brightness on the horizon that breaks through any residual depressive effects and gives me a little happy and useful and wish-I-was-like-this-all-the-time day or so, here or there!

I’m medicated like you wouldn’t believe, and a recent experiment my psychiatrist and I tried of reducing my meds has shown me very clearly that without these meds, I’d be right back in the thick of my acutely unwell stage!! It’s not like they aren’t working; they are, they really are! My moods have been a very difficult case to crack and it has taken 4 medications for mood and months to years of appointments to get on top of the main symptoms. And they work. I can, somewhat distantly now cos it’s been a while for some, remember how I was before and after starting each one, which may just be my saving grace down the track when I, like every bipolar patient, get to the stage where I think I might just be better off not taking my meds. One request of you, friend: don’t be the person who suggests I should go off my meds. The consequences of taking on that responsibility may well be more than you can bear. You take my life in your hands if you suggest any such thing. For all I complain about where I am, I always know very clearly that I would be so much worse off without my meds. No question. Ever. Life isn’t perfect but taking away the crutch holding me up isn’t going to help. So save it, keep it, sit on it, hold it in, swallow it; you are not helping anyone, almost ever, by making any such suggestion. You are warned.

But here we are. I’m not sick, but I’m not as well as I thought I’d be. As I hoped I’d be, planned I’d be, “knew” I’d be. Isn’t this the dilemma of every patient with a chronic illness? I go to the doctor with my illness, the doctor says okay I’ll treat your illness, I hear “I’ll get you back to normal”, and go on my way happily ever after. I think I’m presenting the doctor with a chest infection that he can fix, and then return me to my previous health. But this is not a curable disease. The treatment works, the doctor says I’ve treated your illness, I look forward to getting back to being me, my old self, and then, as the Goons would say…suddenly, nothing happened!! Yes the treatment worked. Yes the doctor has done his job. But this illness doesn’t go away. Because that’s not how it works. The illness stays. The treatment stays. The illness has just been put back to bed for a while. But there are some residual effects that haven’t been buried and they remain and irritate me. Because that’s how it works. I don’t know what it would take to get every last little bit of it under the surface…I don’t think I want to know because it either isn’t possible, or the trade off would be too severe.

I’m starting to think “normal” isn’t a reality that I’ll ever reach again. I’m starting to think that my life has been permanently changed. I’m starting to think I’m stuck here.

I don’t know.

All I know is I’m here, and everyone seems to want me to get fitter, healthier, stronger, slimmer or shall we shall less large (keeping it to reachable goals), more energetic, more involved in my own life, more something or other. And don’t mistake me, I want that too. I want it all. It’s just that I can’t see how. I can’t see how to get there. Some people say, well you made it this far through, I’m sure you can do it. But my little/big secret is, all I did so far was hang on. Through all of it, I didn’t really do anything that active; I just hung on. Now the goals require something more active and I don’t know if I can do it. I’m not sure that I can do what’s required. I guess that’s why I’ve stalled here. The next step possibly requires more than I can give.

Aaaaahhhh. Sigh. I did something bad. I stopped getting better. Can I start again?