Day Four: Backsliding a Bit

Saturday May 31, 2008

It's 9:30 pm and I'm sitting here crying. I was editing yesterday's post - writing it, actually, since I jsut started this blog today - and the remembrance of the last months' insanity was so heavy that I started to weep. I need to stay away from that time period until I'm better. I hope I get better.

Today started out fine. I slept well if disjointedly. Grandson Aiden is spending some time with us, and we played "find the binky" all night: he'd lose his pacifier, let me know about it, and I'd go to his crib and try to find it. Pop it back in and we're set for the next round. Mary took pity on me and let me sleep in after everyone was up and fed.

Last night Mary and I snuggled (which feels really good these days) and I opened up about how I was feeling and what my life had been really like. She has seen some of it over the years, and could hardly have not, but didn't realize that I had definite peak periods of irritability, grandiose plans, and all the other little signs of the manic cycling I'd subjected my family to all these years. She knew but never connected my behavior to the concept of "manic-depressive".

We were actually lucky: we had almost 30 years together when my condition was smoother, more controllable than in my youth, and before the depression became the controlling reality of my life. I'll write on that some other time.

To summarize (most) of the day, I'm feeling, but the feeling are not controlling me. I told Mary, that I feel emotions, but not with any of the intensity I did just a few days ago. If I'd tried to tell her "I love you" on Tuesday, I wouldn't have been able to. I think it was the pure intensity that brought on the pain.

Side effects had been less intrusive today, up to the daily dose of Lexipro at 4 PM. This time, however, I am feeling dizzier, flushed, drowsey. Part of my skin seem to be, to me, hot and dry. My left face, for instance, along with my left forearm, feels like I was out in the sun too long. At the same time I am feeling less flat, more down. The machine-gun thoughts are trying to intrude again. It doesn't help that it was nearly 100° today.