Cycles

One of the most often words in bipolar is "cycling". Are you cycling? How fast are you cycling? How high/low are you cycling? Personally I hate it, because it's a one dimensional word that is supposed to describe such a huge chunk of my life. I hate the linearity of it so much that I keep playdoh at my psychologist's office to make 3 dimensional models of those feelings.

Yet there are truths to the word far beyond the ups and downs. Each time I become ill I see the same things happen. I get tired and things don't get done and I get more frustrated because I'm more overwhelmed every day. Tonight, as has happened more than once before, I realized that I was so tired and so ready to get home tonight I forget I needed to go to the pharmacy for antidepressants and mood stabilizers. I had enough mood stabilizer to be ok, but I've missed the majority (90%) of my antidepressant dose of the last 2 days. Fabulous. Yet what can I expect, I'm barely managing to do anything?

Another cycle is within my reaction to other people. As this goes on I'm getting more and more irritated with anyone who wants to suggest that they know what I'm talking about when they don't. I mention taking sedatives to someone who doesn't know me at all and she's immediately telling me about her antidepressants. I start choking back the "who cares?", because that's not really what I feel, it's just that my 2250 mg of depakote, along with two other sedatives, pretty much make antidepressants look like candy. Or another day when someone at work was all upset about totally manageable things, just daily life things anyone might be upset about, but not life or death. It becomes so very hard to not want to scream when I'm in the midst of fighting to make it hour to hour.

So I suppose tomorrow I try to break at least the no meds cycle. Then we move on from there. Where that happens to be I'm just not sure....