holding up a corner of the sky

Dear Internet,
The other day I was on the toilet, reading National Geographic as you do, when I had a panic attack.
Let me repeat this:
I’m on the toilet.
Taking a dump.
Reading National Geographic.
Having a panic attack.
I was more surprised rather than panicked about what was happening, and thankfully the attack came and went fairly quickly. This little episode seems to sum up what’s been going on with my brain as of late, which is to say, an even more chaotic mess.
A few weeks ago I was scheduled to see my medicating doctor for my monthly visit and a few days before the appointment, I had irrational fight with a friend online. The fight was not serious by any context, but I was able to step back and see what is going on before it DID get serious. But the fact the fight happened at all was a huge wake-up call.  A few days before that, TheHusband made an off hand comment I had been acting “weird,” but he didn’t really qualify it other than he didn’t think things were going well with me and he was concerned.
During the session with my medicating therapist, when I relayed all of this to him, it sounded like the lithium was not working as well as he had hoped. I agreed. He upped me another 300mg, for a total of 1500mg to be split over the course of the day (morning, afternoon, night).
A week and half later, I find myself sitting in the shadows of a room steaming over god knows what.
I got some relief on the first few days after the dosage was upped, but since then I’ve been super lethargic and now overly anxious. The lethargy is destroying much of my productivity because I have zero motivation and will and it’s a struggle to stay awake. I’m bordering on always being on panic mode. That feeling gets  intensified when all of these fixes for ffor my brain chaos stop working and the cycle seemingly always repeats itself.
I can’t get any relief and I feel like I am going crazy on fixing my crazy.
Tomorrow I am calling my medicating doctor to get off of Lithium. I’m not sure what has changed with my body chemistry in the last month but I thought the lithium was at least a cure-all for my bipolar and instead, it’s now destroying me. He’s made suggestions of putting me on Depakote to work with the lithium but so far I’ve read or heard nothing but terrible reviews.  I’m at the point right now, six months after starting it, that I have not seen enough evidence to continue taking it.

The quasi-fight TheHusband and I are having is about space. Some couples fight about money, some couples fight about temperature control, TheHusband and I fight about space. The fact we have too much of it, it seems.
Throbbing Manor, including the finished bits of the basement, is 3200 sqft. According to my European friends, I live in a goddamned mansion. According to the American contingent, we live in a nice place. We know it is too big, and we also know how we use space doesn’t mesh with the flow of the house. Yes, the house is nice.Yes, we live in a desirable neighborhood. But this house isn’t us. We don’t use the space that is here, instead we hang out in only a few of the many rooms. Because we’re not hanging out in many of  the rooms, wer’re not buying any furniture, household goods, or wall art to finish the rooms off. We’ve lived here for 2.5 years and people have asked me for updated pictures and I’m embarrassed to say there aren’t any.
The sunroom (or solarium) has been one of those rooms where we go back and forth on what to do with it. First it was indoor/outdoor furniture to turn it into a cozy reading/hang out area, then it was double it up with plants, then it was get a drafting desk so TheHusband could draw and paint, and I could calligraphy.
In the nearly two years we’ve been having this discussion, we’ve bought three large plants, of which one is nearly dead and we’ve commissioned the handcrafted table that goes over the absurdly long radiator. In the winter, during the holiday times, if we’re feeling like putting a tree up, it goes in here. But any of the aforementioned items I’ve mentioned we were considering on purchasing – we haven’t purchased. The indoor/outdoor furniture is never right for his taste, we can’t find  a drafting desk to meet his needs, and so forth and so on. Finally, I decided to take a stand and turn the space into a writing area.
And this is where the argument starts.
TheHusband states I’m taking over space by putting my stamp everywhere (duh, I live here. I should be able to do that anyway!) and I now have essentially two offices. Then he’s pissed because we had to move one of his plants (a lime tree) to another space in the room, but the damn tree is dying anyway. A 6′ lateral move is not going to hasten its death!
Secondly, getting to know myself as intimately as I have in the last six months, in order to cope with my ADHD drug free, I need solitude space of no interruption. This means TheHusband. He says I should just close the door to my office on the second floor, but it isn’t the same. Sitting here in solarium has a different vibe then siting upstairs. The view is better. I’m away from external noise that comes from the other side of the house. The chair is not as comfy so the likelihood of me fucking off while doing work is less likely. And most importantly, I’m close to my books.
The final big reason is we decided to turn the bedroom into a gadget free zone once we get to the point where we move the bedroom TV up to the cabin, forcing us to watch TV in the Rumpus Room. I’m started that process early by moving my laptop out of the room and into the solarium. At least here I can work with minimal interruption.
I told TheHusband if he buys a drafting desk, we buy the indoor/outdoor furniture, or any of the other things we talked about doing to this room, I’ll gladly move this desk back upstairs and live will continue on as normal. My desktop, TheHusband’s old laptop that is wire bound now, is slowly dying so the move may be sooner than I think.
Pro tip: Marriage is overrated.
x0x0x,
Lisa

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