Erica Wheadon

Tag: depression

Rattle and Hum

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 never want to leave myself short again.

—

Reading: O Fallen Angel (Kate Zambreno)
Watching: Sex Education (Season 2)
Listening to: Jenny Lewis

Pattern interrupt.

I woke up, feeling like I was sinking. I had been dreaming about broken rope bridges that led to watery graves all night and when I finally opened my eyes, I knew I was on that old familiar downswing. Since my diagnosis, I have been learning to identify how to to stop spinning my wheels and implement a pattern interrupt, so I picked up the Pam Grout book : Art & Soul, Reloaded. There aren’t too many new ideas in here, particularly as I am already a devotee of Julia Cameron and Steven Pressfield (whom she references frequently), but I also know that creative nonfiction involves remixing ideas and making them your own, and so I put my protestations aside and read the first few chapters over coffee.

I won’t call it eye-opening, or life-changing – but then, when did those descriptors become the gold standard? The whole point of the book is to create, no matter what, no excuses, even though it’s probably been done before. I was just about to close it down for the day when I stumbled across her chapter on blog writing. I smirked because already I’d had fantasies of shutting down what I’d started.

“Writing a blog is free, priceless, and, according to Seth Godin, one the best things you could ever do for yourself. He recommends writing a blog post a day… Don’t panic, a blog can be a paragraph or two.”

Don’t panic. Ha.

The trouble with blogging every day is that when you are a perfectionist, even the smallest ongoing practice that lands in front of others becomes a behemoth task.

Ironically – figuring out what to write is not my problem – I am an avid diariser. I could write for hours. It’s not the writing. But…the editor in me wants to cut and shape every word to perfection. Do I have time to publish a blog every day and deal with the potential emotional fallout?

Maybe that’s the point.

And yet – I’m competitive enough to rise to a challenge…perhaps even to prioritise it over fear. I’m not sure I want to do it alone though – so as soon as I can rope someone else into it, I will. How’s that for an excuse?

One or two paragraphs. That’s all. Sigh. We’ll see.