bury the lede

Dear Internet,
It’s a clear night here on the east coast and I was outside having a smoke (or three), watching planes fly to and fro across the Sound. People winging their ways across the pond or coming back, minutes or hours from seeing their loved ones, taking a risk, starting a journey, or fleeing from a thing that is chasing them. This is an exercise I’m most intimate with, this thinking what this world around me is doing as it continually moves even if I’m standing still. In that frame, I felt insignificant and yet godlike. I have been all of those people, even if I am none of them now.
These are the times I feel most alone and most connected to others, for I feel the weight of their expectations, their glories, their regrets, and all other human emotion on my being. I was none of them and yet all of them. Here in this now, I am constantly running even in my brain and my energy packs are growing thin. I am gasping for breath and my head is on fire, even though I feel like I’m watching everything happening from an outside body. I watch my body move, smile, laugh, and fuck while my brain is somewhere else.
Brendan tipped me off to a service called ZocDoc, a service that allows you to search for doctors in your area and also allow you to narrow by insurance. You know, something your insurance provider should allow you to do without having to jump 15 hoops. I found a prescribing psychiatrist who had appointments open that day and by that evening, I had scripts for Lamictal, Abilify, and my trusty favorite, Klonopin.
Thus, I’m back on the drugs again.
Dr. P. recommended I not go down this road again until I was feeling more sure and stable in my current locale, but neither of us could have predicted that I would spin this far out of control. While he’s been keeping in touch with me, thank Nigel for that, I’m swinging too fast that by the time I talk to him, I’m stable for the moment again. But the moods are shifting too fast and too furious.
I need help.
Every day is as unpredictable as it possibly can be. Some days I’m up at and at ’em at a reasonable hour and days like Tuesday, I’m in bed all day crying or having some sort of massive panic attack. Others are a combination of the two. No one day is like its predecessor.
My smoking habit comes and goes, though if my need for control wears its hat properly, that is something I can fix so I’m quitting again. Tomorrow I plan on working on a daily schedule for myself to get in the grove to create a infrastructure and wait for job prospects to pan out.
During all of this, I’ve interviewed for two positions, of which one I was told to expect a follow up for a second interview while I was passed on the other. A third job prospect with an Ivy has weeded me from the pile of potentials to passing on to the selection committee for the position. This means nothing, no interview has been forthcoming as of yet, but it also means everything because of the potential interview. So while I’m emotionally falling apart, I am in some small ways, keeping my shit together.
That bit is important. I marvel at myself for having been able to not spiral so far out towards the sun.
The inability to articulate, when my verbal word retrieval fails me, has also been a huge part of the problem. I should be writing, even privately, but I haven’t been. Perhaps this is part of the problem I’m having in finding my footing. Not being able to communicate even to myself what’s in my head (even if scattered), which makes it even more difficult to communicate to those around me.
Right now, I do not know where I will end up or what I’ll be doing. But I keep reminding myself this is all very temporary, this shifting, while I wait for my moods to stabilize. Patience.
There are things I am certain of, of things I must do. But I must learn, above all else, patience. That will be my greatest struggle and fight, to remain patient as all of this works itself out.
While there is life, there is hope.
xoxo,
Lisa