Well the coffee and lithium cocktail landed me with mild-to-concerning adrenal fatigue. Cockiness, as it turns out, gets you nowhere. I am now on a diet of magnesium and water and abstaining from caffeine.
Well it was fun while it lasted.
Having anxiety/PTSD on lithium is like being kept awake during brain surgery: my fight/flight impulses just carry on causing havoc yet I can’t do a damned thing about it. The body knows though. It always knows.
On the upside – new meds. On the downside, long-release lithium has to be weaned. I should be in the safe hands of Lamictal by the time my final trimester begins. I’m told it will lift the fog. I just pray it can carry me.
It’s ironic, I have always abhorred stoicism. January however (physical responses notwithstanding), has brought with it the kind of quietude I have always resisted and railed against. My impulses are bridled, my moves deliberate. I tend to my brain like a garden. As if my life depends on it. Because it does.
It’s the hardest and most frustrating part to explain – and what I, myself would never have accepted even a year ago – I thought that if you went off your brain, went off your meds, you only had yourself to blame. My retort to that now (other than don’t be so fucking stupid) is – if you wouldn’t blame a diabetic for their levels, then don’t blame a manic-depressive for theirs. End of story.
On the upside, this newfound euthymia has sailed me through my Summer internship. Editing, as it turns out, is second nature to me. I enjoy taking apart people’s words, like a mechanic. Fixing syntax, checking facts. Tightening sentences so that they purr and hum. My creative project has recently evolved and it’s feeling attainable. I just need to run it past my supervisor and come March, I’ll be in hibernation mode, in preparation for my last academic winter.
I am stashing hope in tins and labelling them carefully.
I won’t leave myself short again.
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