Today is not 2007. Today is not 2007.

That last post had some parts that didn't make sense.  The problem was that I building up to my eventual understanding that I am in a mixed state, which is always true for me when bipolar stuff starts.  The simple definition of that (if you can say simple to something that is dreadful beyond words) is that I am both depressed and manic.  At this level it is just unpleasant and I would say I feel generally miserable but not horrible.  At it's worst, which won't happen now, I feel all the sadness and fatigue of depression along with the tears, wanting to die, hopelessness, and desire to hide from the world combined with extreme amounts of energy, the need to do, do, do and they must be big things to help burn that energy, racing thoughts and speech (both of which can become hard for even me to follow), insomnia that in the past (again when out of control which won't happen now because of Seroquel and much greater ability to control my moods with meds that didn't exist a few years ago) would mean days of no sleep and enormous doses of sedatives and sleeping medications to attempt to get any rest at all. Mixed episodes can be dangerous and I'll need to be careful to monitor my thinking and get help if needed (may be see Dr. Mind tomorrow or Tuesday if possible) because when very severely depressed like I was when admitted last year you can feel suicidal but often don't have the energy (in my case I wanted to die but was too sick to care enough to figure out how) to attempt it, whereas the mixed part makes you dangerous.   For now I just feel depressed and exhausted (which isn't from my moods but from sickness for so long) and agitated and I know my thinking is rushed and not extremely logical at times.  If things worsen obviously I'll be sure to get help immediately.  This used to be how I lived all the time, minus the asthma.  I was in a mixed episode pretty much for 6 years (longer than that but that was officially diagnosed years) continuously with variations in which end of the spectrum dominated (or they were equal as they are now) and how severe it was. Every time one happens now I fight fear even though I know that we have tools that just weren't available then.  This particular thing is feeling more mixed that I typically get now (usually now I can say one part is clearly worse) but I think that's because the meds are making me manic and normal human reactions to that are making me depressed which is the accelerated by bipolar.

So anyway, not handling all this so well.  It's hard to believe that it can be ok when I have intense memories of mixed episodes from the past.  During one I had actually managed to outlast extremely high doses of multiple sleeping pills plus huge doses of other sedatives and was sleeping a couple hours a day, maybe.  I got one wonderful night of sleep when Dr. Mind talked me through a relaxation exercise that helped so much he said he was considering if he could just let me keep sleeping at the end and work elsewhere if I fell completely asleep.  I slept that afternoon and night and then fought for 2 months more for sleep.  I would be desperately tired and unable to sleep.  Dr. Mind actually broke the cycle by coming up with some (now I see) riduculous reason to move all the furniture in my bedroom around.  It was, of course, extremely hard work that took days and nights and at the end I climbed into the bed and slept.  That's about when i got my first weighted blanket and the combination of total physical exhaustion and the blanket helped.  I didn't fully forgive Dr. Mind for about 6 months until I could admit that it was funny that he tricked me that way, but it worked.

And so is the valium i took a bit ago.  So goodnight.  I hope.