happy

i have been taking new meds for 5 days now. i'm feeling really good at the moment and haven't had any thoughts of suicide for the past few days. I can't remember the last time that those thoughts haven't been present. i don't think i'm entering a manic episode as i have no thoughts of grandure or of spending money i don't have. i am hoping that my emotions at the moment are a result of the meds and that i am stable.

I feel happy to be alive and am excited about resuming work and begin living again. i have a lot of things to sort out at the moment but i am not daunted about this.

i plan on looking at new premises for the agency and also looking for somewhere new to live.

life feels good at the moment.

new meds

saw my psychiatrist today and started new meds. has to be monitored for a while with blood tests to get the dosage right. i am hoping this will at long last stabilise everything so i can get back to work and living my life again.

i am quite content at the moment and am excited about the future, i miss working in the agency and shooting and am looking forward to slowly getting back into it.

i guess now with knowing the signs of manic episodes and also depression, it should be easier, plus i also have psychiatric support now.

it's time to start living again

back to life

at 1.30am on tuesday morning i drove to a dirt road around goodna,
stopped the car at the end of the road and got out and had a cigarette.

i then cut the hose i had bought earlier and put one end in the exhaust and the other end in the rear window. i then taped up the window to prevent fumes from escaping.

started the car and sat there for an hour and 15min inhaling carbon monoxide from the car exhaust. i can't  really say why i turned the engine off, i have tried to remember but am unable to.

i took the hose out of the exhaust and drove to the emergency department at the pa hospital.
i was treated for carbon monoxide poisoning which basically means receiveing oxygen and monitoring of blood and oxygen levels in the blood.

my emotions were all over the place, from thinking next time i will do something quicker to maybe now i will get help.

around 7am i was taken to mental health to be interviewed. it was interesting to see the other people waiting.
there was a lady in a private room who had overdosed on heroin in a bid to commit suicide. she was on the phone to someone and yelling at them because they had told a friend of the heroin overdose and not that it was a suicide attempt.

there were two young guys in there, one was twenty, not sure about the other.  it was sad to see such young kids in a mental facility. also a young chinese woman that swore she didn't have bipolar and that it was her friends and family that didn't understand her and she was normal. i hope she confronts her illness rather than denying it.

around lunch time i was interviewed initially, i think for the first time someone understood my symptoms and actions. not only that but they were prepared to help.
i was then interviewed by a psychiatrist and she confirmed type 1 bipolar and a plan to treat it.

to start with cutting down on my dose of anti depressants which quite frankly have been useless and starting me on meds to stabilise my moods.

i have an appointment with the accute care team on friday morning to start the treatment and a promise to monitor it until the right dose is achieved.

they agreed to allow me to leave after my promise not to harm myself. i thanked the nurses and doctor, trying to stop myself from crying as someone had at last agreed to help.

it does sadden me to think that i needed to take such drastic action to get help, if carbon monoxide poisoning did not take so long then i wouldn't be writing this now. during that time in the car it gave me time to think and i now remember why i turned the engine off, my vow to help others that suffer from mental illnesses.

i fell asleep around 12 last night and slept until 5.30 pm. i am feeling okay at the moment and relieved i think that maybe with the right treatment i can decrease the suicidal thoughts and manic episodes.

i realise that i have a long way to go and that it wont be easy but at the moment i am okay with that.

time to die - my last post

it's been 19 days since my last post. i think i have slept a majority of that time, easier than being awake. i've had a few legal issues with not enough funds to cover cheques back in december and early january. i remember thinking at the time that i would be able to cover them, always a problem when i don't have a hold on reality and then slip back into the lulls of my disorder.

i have been staying in a motel for the last 9 days because i have nowhere else to go and can't ask friends for help as they wouldn't want to know about it. sure they may show some sympathy but that would be the extent of it. one "friend" that i asked numerous times to read this blog flatly refused saying he didn't need to. i guess i wanted him to know how i was coping. it gets back to how i have felt all along, no one cares enough about mental illness. i feel again that i am on my own with this so the past 9 days i have spent on my own.

tonight is the night that i will find peace, i am in a relatively good mood. i'm not depressed or manic. i slept most of today and then had a shower and rushed to bunnings before they closed. i had ten minutes to buy hose, a stanley knife and duct tape. it was quite surreal asking staff where the garden hose section was and stanley knives. i found myself running around the store so i didn't run out of time to get what i needed. i wasn't sure what diameter hose to buy to fit in to the exhaust without it being to large to tape the window of the car up.

it is 10 pm now, i will probably burn a cd soon so i can listen to it in the car later. have some washing to do as well, strange really why i would want to do that when i don't plan on being around to wear them.

12.40pm now, watched tv for a while, didn't do washing though. i have been having second thoughts about going through with this and trying to get my life on track and of course the agency. i even signed up for a new web hosting account.

i am getting tired now, going to get changed and go for a drive. if this is my last post then i say goodbye and i hope that anyone reading this will understand. i also hope that it may send a message to health departments and that so much more needs to be done for sufferers of mental disorders, especially when they cry out for help.

another day

i have been awake now for around 38 hours, tried to sleep before but i can't.

did some interviews today as they needed to be done, wasn't planning on going back to the agency to do them. (should probably fill you in on what "the agency" is at some stage)

it's a funny thing this bipolar, how just driving, a random thought will enter my head to steer the car into oncoming traffic. suicide is ever present in my mind, even when i'm not depressed these random thoughts will enter my head from nowhere. it can be anything from seeing myself hanging, holding a gun to my head or even stabbing myself. kind of weird when you think about it.

if i didn't know better i'd think i was possessed!!! (yay! made myself smile)

think on that note i will try to go to bed happy for once... Hope it lasts at least until i'm asleep.

vincent van gogh

These are some lyrics from the song 'vincent', obviously about vincent van gogh. Strange when i think about it as he has always been my favourite artist for as long as i can remember.

Around 10 years ago when i had a photo studio in adelaide, i went through a stage where i would turn all the lights off in the studio, tell my receptionist downstairs not to disturb me, and then i would just sit in a corner of the studio in the dark, sometimes with music playing, other times not.

I remember feeling like i was being tortured from the inside and that no one understood either me or my creativity, which was at an all time high then and when i took my best photographs.

I would compare how i was feeling to how vincent van gogh must have felt, delusional maybe as i will never be as gifted as he was. The strange thing is this was 9 years before i was diagnosed with the same condition that he had, bipolar.

anyway below are parts of the song that hit home to me the most!

look out on a summer's day
with eyes that know the
darkness in my soul

and now I understand what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free.
they would not listen
they did not know how
perhaps they'll listen now

and when no hope was left in sight on that starry starry night
you took your life
as lovers often do

and now I think I know what you tried to say to me
how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free

they would not listen
they're not list'ning still
perhaps they never will

sleeping to avoid life

12 days since my last post. once again i'm not really clear what i've been doing in those 12 days. the past week i've been sleeping a lot to avoid life. had a few really bad days the end of last week culminating in cutting my arm to stop the pain. I was really ready to finish it this time and always have a plan of how to do it. Something keeps me going though and i'm not sure what that is. It's not support because i don't have that and i'm not about to ask for it from friends, not that i have many of those. I tend to lose them easily through lack of contact although it's easy to make new ones when i'm going through manic episodes.

I think i regret letting people know i have bipolar, i thought it would help them understand me a bit more and at least know why i act the way i do sometimes. Bottom line is they have no patience for the symptoms i sometimes have. I am not looking for sympathy or pity, far from it, just acknowledgement that i can't always control my disorder.

I thought reducing stress would make a difference to everything, not sure that it has though. I still don't want to be here, i think the only thing that has happened is that i'm not having the manic episodes. I think i miss them because of the intense high and excitement that they give me, instead of this dullness that i have been living with the past few months.

I still haven't done anything about documenting mental illnesses, don't have any motivation to do anything at the moment or the energy to propel myself forward out of my current state.

I even wonder why i continue to write this blog, who even cares enough to read it. So i do it for me, nobody else, and the way i feel at the moment i don't give a fuck whether they do or not. I have dealt with my illness by myself and will continue to do so until i decide i've had enough.