I live, honest!

I’m a bit grumpy at myself for letting my post a week minimum fall by the wayside, but you guys understand — writing a novel takes up a lot of resources, mentally and physically. And in that, I can happily report that I won NaNoWriMo on the 19th, and wrote those magic words ‘The End’ on the 21st. So it’s done and done until whenever editing happens, and I’m well pleased. I managed it without being too huge a stressy nuisance, which was very pleasing to both myself and my husband. Part of me is already thinking sequel and he’s not running for the hills, while the rest of me is like ‘Gah woman, you’ve already won twice quit while you’re ahead, it’s off the damned bucket list!‘

So yeah, quite happy with that. Will be putting it out as a pdf for free if anyone wants to read it, but that requires getting the husband to hold my hand through it ’cause he’s fancier at making PDFs look nice than me!

Mind you, I have been stressing enough this month that I’ve had a few spots of mood wibbliness, almost enough to make me regret not being more forceful about getting my meds upped. On the whole, i still agree that it wasn’t needed and I’m fine, but I sort of scared myself the other night. I was really frustrated on Thursday for a myriad of reasons. For one, I’d gone out the night before, which was absolutely wonderful and a great celebration of finishing NaNo. But on the dark side, it meant that I took my Seroquel late, which meant that I had to deal with more fog the following morning. And unfortunately, Thursday I had to go into the office for the first time in ever for training. It wasn’t that bad, but being around people was more stressful than I realised it would be.

It also left me worried that had completely lost the steam on my novel when I was so close to finishing it, so that and kids and frazzle meant I was short-tempered… and I caught myself throwing something. When I hit that point, it’s usually very septic and dangerous. I’ll throw one little thing, then I’ll want to throw more things and then I will want to break things and start screaming and crying and that pushes into ‘whelp, let’s kill ourselves’ territory before I can blink.

Or has in the past.

So yeah, I was annoyed and chucked a shoe a few feet… and then caught myself before the ritual could bind me to a dark path. I caught my breath, I passed off the baby to my husband and explained that I was feeling really stressed out and needed people not talking to me for a bit. And you know what? Telling him that took a huge chunk of the weight off. I was still really worn and frazzled, but I was relieved enough to cheerfully converse with him and to thank him for giving me the space I needed.

It’s amazing how even a few minutes now make such a big difference in my ability to recentre. Mind you, the spikes still come out of almost nowhere… at least, it feels like that. You cope and you cope and then suddenly whups, can’t cope everything is terrible and bad and unsafe. It’s really encouraging, you know? I’m figuring stuff out, I’m breaking things. I’m able to take all that work I’ve done on myself over the years and apply it better now that I’ve carved out a wider me space. Yanno, ’cause actually feel like I have borders now after cutting out people who disrespected them.

Now, the real question that reminds — will this month of novelling trigger a depressive episode? It did in 2012 because I ignored my mental health and applied ‘discipline’. But also, then, I was only on the Seroquel; we didn’t add the Zoloft until half a year later when it became apparent that I was still having depressive episodes. We’ll see. I’m better at listening to my health now (though as prone to error as the next person), and I am doing my best right now to ease back into non-writing things. 😀

Hope everyone out there is well.

<3