Hear

Yesterday, I was sitting here downstairs, basking in having the floor to myself. The girls were upstairs playing, when suddenly, I heard my husband’s voice. I could have sworn that he was upstairs chuckling at the girl’s play instead of being at work. I just sort of cocked my head slowly; the last time I had an aural hallucination was in the 90s, and that was caused by copious LSD consumption. I’m not sure if it is because of where I am with the bipolar, or if my brain just sort of filled in because I’m used to him being upstairs when they’re upstairs, but man. Weird. I messaged him as soon as it happened so that we had a mutual record of the event, and I guess (sigh? sigh) I should probably make sure to tell Dr. K or Dr. Z (whichever one I end up with) about that. Having said that, if it’s a once-off, I’m not wanting to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Feel

I am being murdered by headaches. Normally, I’d take some paracetamol (Tylenol) and call it done, but it’s my understanding that it’s better to limit pain medication. These are codeine-level headaches and seem to be happening… well. With the same frequency that I usually suffer headaches — always. I’ve always tried to limit myself to a single dose of pain meds a day, but like most of my veteran friends, I’m used to a fairly high dose as standard. I just took 500mg of paracetamol and I’m hoping it at least takes the edge off so I quit feeling like I’m pre-migraine (not that I’ve had any migraines since starting Depakote, but still). I felt wretched all day yesterday because I kept my dose for the evening, because I was going out and I was the one driving. Hopefully it will get better?

Touch

My OCD stuff seems to be both better and worse right now. My lips aren’t getting picked quite as much, but I’ve apparently hit a hand-washing phase. I’m bemused by this, but whatever. It also means that I’m lotioning up enough to appease Buffalo Bill, because my skin feels super-dry and I have to fix that immediately. As for my fingernails, my brain has gotten so much worse about that that I am now cutting them several times a week. Sigh? Sigh. But like, I know that I am lucky that the thoughts that come with any of this is just general panic rather than specific panic about family dying or whatever.

Zzz…

Past that, just limping along tiredly until the summer vacation is over. The kiddos are getting a lot better at entertaining themselves and not needing me to witness everything this week, which is a blessing. I love my kids, but I have a rather large personal bubble of necessity, and there’s not a useful gradual build-up to being unable to deal with crap. It’s binary for me — I’m holding on, holding on, then holy crap everything is terrible forever. Having said that, I’m sure that there’s probably some sort of build-up but that I don’t know how to notice it? Eh. No idea. I’d love to hear how that sort of thing goes for y’all.

And as the kids are in full steam ‘Mom pay attention to us or else the world will end!’, I should probably do that and hope they give me a few seconds to gulp air here and there. I’m doing my best to stay cheerful and sane, but man. *laughs* They’re not helping -that- much.

Hope this finds all of y’all well out there.

<3