Mad Hatter

I mentioned in my previous entry that I took off work for mental health reasons for a couple of months. I had another episode where I was hearing voices, thinking that people were talking about me and laughing at me at the grocery store and restaurants. My voices were starting up again, specifically one of them calling me stupid every minute for past situations that I’d ‘screwed up on’ according to them.

I want to preface this by saying that yes, I was on medication during the time, but apparently it wasn’t working or wasn’t a high enough dose. So the doctor changed my antidepressant from Sertraline to Lexapro, max recommended dose, and upped my Abilify from 10 mg to 15 mg.

It’s been five years now, and I still don’t have a diagnosis that makes sense. I’ve been told I have depression with psychotic tendencies, bipolar type 2, that I have a dissociative disorder, specifically DID (which I have discovered the voices do belong to specific ‘entities’ you might say), C-PTSD. Who knows? Maybe I have all of them at the same time, and they belong to my different identities…

Anyway, I slept 15 hours yesterday. Still getting used to the Lexapro and increased Abilify, I suppose. It’s already been a week. I’m dizzy this morning. Also, my appetite is not ferocious like it was on the Sertraline the past five years (I used to weigh 125. Now I weigh 208.) So, I’ve gained a considerable amount of weight. Now, my appetite is like it was before everything happened five years ago (getting pregnant, postpartum, getting on medication). I really hope my appetite stays this way so I’m not constantly fighting against it while trying to lose weight. I’ve been counting calories and walking on the treadmill the past four days. Trying to resist eating under 1200 calories due to my reduced appetite (not complaining, but I’m having to force myself to eat food now). I ate around 780 calories yesterday, but I also slept almost the entire day, so there’s that.

My desire to write novels has returned, and my imagination along with it. Hurray! I’m so excited about that. I missed writing, but I haven’t really been a ‘writer’ the past five years. I only finished my book so I could say I did it, but that writer-personality was shut down. Couldn’t bring myself to write another one, or write anymore. Maybe instead of thinking about food, I can think about my stories now.

The birds are chirping outside. It sounds so nice. Maybe I’ll take a walk if the weather stays nice.