Heavy days

What is it that makes certain days so much harder to get through? Could it be something as trivial as a bad tooth? Is it the antibiotics? Or the infection? The fight inside my body?

Or is it finishing The Shepherds Crown? Because now it really feels like Terry Pratchett is dead. Like The Discworld is dead. Like the portal to that place is gone and lost forever. And that place is one of my favourites. I love his last ten or so books. I like all of them but they did get better and better.

My feckin tooth. Let me tell you about it. In may, while in England, I got a crazy infection in my jaw. I went to a doctor who gave me antibiotics and told me to see a dentist as soon as I got back. I did, they immediately pulled out a wisdom tooth and gave me more antibiotics. They also told me I needed a root canal. However since I was moving to Denmark social services didn't want to pay for it.

So I moved to Denmark. I tried to figure out if I could still get the root canal in Sweden - if I paid for it myself - but I never managed to find out.

So the problem was that "me paying for it myself" meant that Chris pays. I knew that I had to find a dentist, my tooth was hurting more and more, I couldn't eat or drink anything colder than room temperature but I kept putting it off. I knew it was going to cost.

Finally I called the closest dentist. Just around the corner. I got an appointment and went in for a consultation and x ray. Yes, I needed a root canal. It would probably take a couple of go's. Fine. I came in for the first step of the root canal last week, got an injection of anaesthetics (the thing that makes you numb, not the thing that makes you fall asleep). They started to drill. I screamed. It was horrible. More injections. More drilling. More mind shattering pain. I was crying and apologising. They told me not to worry, we would try again on Monday.

On Monday morning I took a diazepam and a citodon. I went in, had 5 injections of anaesthetics (one in my jaw and the rest around the tooth) and then got to wait more than 30 minutes for them to kick in properly. Half my face was completely numb but, of course, the second that drill touched my tooth it felt like an axe hit my lower jaw. I was crying again. They stopped, because there was nothing more to do.

They told me to call my doctor to see if there was any way to figure out what was going on with my anaesthetic receptors, or something (the diazepam had me pretty lost at this point). I called my doctor and they said they could not help me at all (they literally said "this is not our problem" and I said "that is not helpful at all" and hung up). I called my dentist again and they called my doctor and then my doctors office called me and told me to come in an hour later. I slept for 40 minutes and then went to see my doctor, who talked to an anaesthetic...ologist? She told me that there was no way to find out why the anaesthetics didn't work (they had worked before, I have several teeth that have "mendings" in them) but they were confident that it would be possible to put me under (the only other time I've been under anaesthesia - the sleep kind, not the numb kind - was when I was 12 and had to pull out a tooth that hade grown out in the roof of my mouth, super freaky. The thing was that I got a double adult dose and it still took me hours to fall asleep). A lot has happened in medical science during the last 20 years, according to my doctor.

So. I'm sure my doctor told me some more stuff but I was too woozy to understand much. I went back home.

On Tuesday I didn't call anyone. In the evening I realized that I probably should have, but I wasn't sure who.

On Wednesday I called my dentist. They said that they can't do anaesthetics (the sleep kind) so I had to contact a specialist-dentist. I tried to process that information but felt confused and had no idea how to find a specialist. A while later my doctor called me (maybe she's a bit psychic?) and told me where to call and what to say. Today I called that specialist and got an appointment for a consultation for Monday. So we'll see what happens after that.

Until then I'm still in pain and my half-drilled tooth is not making me happy at all. My face is still swollen and everything feels completely horrible.

BUT! I have gotten a time at the psychiatry!

good news everyone

It's ten thirty and I'm feeling tired.

Feeling tired is pretty unusual for me and feeling tired before midnight... I can't remember the last time that happened. I can't explain how good it feels to quit my meds. I'm not saying anyone else should but being medicated has not really been helpful for me lately. Since three years or so I've been super depressed and super medicated. I have no idea how this will play out, but this completely unexpected tiredness is nice. I also don't feel scared of going to bed, which I usually do. (Because of the anxiety you know? Lying in bed, in the dark, trying to turn off the chaos inside, trying to ignore the black sticky tentacles around my neck, trying not to think, not to feel...)

I'm pretty sure it should be the other way around, placebo or not. I wonder if Iv'e been nocebo-ing the negative effects of the medication, just as I might now be placebo-ing the positive effects of not being medicated? I still feel a little bit of abstinence dizziness and stuff from the old meds, the new ones probably didn't have time to start working properly. But I've taken so many different pills and I really need to know how I work without them. My life has changed dramatically many times since I started taking them... (checks back in the blog archive) since march 2011 I think? Or was it later? April?

That's not three years. That's four. I might have been saying "three years" without actually counting for almost a year. Huh.

Gods it's depressing to check my blog archive. I was so hopeful. Everything was dark and horrible but I honestly believed that it was passing, waiting for it to pass, believing that every day that was not horrible was the start of getting better. Every time.

I still do. I wonder if this insane, unfounded optimism is the core of my problem?

Det blir inte bättre. Varför blir det inte bättre? Varför mår jag sämre och sämre? Det skulle ju bli bättre? Alla lovade att det skulle bli bättre?

"It doesn't get better. Why isn't it getting better? Why am I feeling worse and worse? It was supposed to get better? Everyone promised that it would get better?" - june 2011

Okay. I started taking anti anxiety meds in july 2011. After months of waiting to even see a doctor. I didn't get any regular contact with any doctor, I didn't get any therapy, I didn't get SHIT until... Today? Maybe? I had my second meeting with my new shrink today and the first one doesn't count so yeah, I crashed in march 2011, got medicated after four months of pure fucking horror and since then there's been a whole lot of pure fucking horror.

I've always been sensitive. I pressed myself beyond my limits back then. I tried to be a good girlfriend and boss and those things are probably - maybe - possible to be but it's hard to be a good girlfriend to someone who hates you and a good boss when your own bosses expect you to do impossible things just because they can't be assed to handle the sales department... It's a long story, feel free to go back in the blog archives to around june 2008, or actually even further, to august 2007. That's when a very strange night ended in broken bones. There was two nights, almost a year apart, that still affect my life. I used to joke about tequila shaping my life but I don't really do that anymore...

If it hadn't been for that broken collar bone, if it hadn't been for not being able to work, if it hadn't been for what I did instead and who I met, if it hadn't been for the job I got and the person who inspired me to leave Sweden, if it hadn't been for Ireland, if it hadn't been for that party at my house in Cork, if it hadn't been for that t-shirt, if it hadn't been for that night and all the insane stuff it lead to later, if it hadn't been for those stolen moments in the elevator at work and all the lies, if it hadn't been for that empty year, if it hadn't been for that unexpected email, if it hadn't been for my hopeless optimism and trusting nature, if it hadn't been for the economic collapse and what it meant to me professionally, if it hadn't been for so many small, separately meaningless details coming together and making my bad decisions seem so right... If it hadn't been for everything going to hell at once! And then just never getting better. Then... I don't know. If one of those things had been a little bit different. Then maybe my life would be too. If he had left the party early. If I had remembered my bike. If...

Iv'e been down this road so many times. Too many times.

Now it's an hour since I started writing this and I'm even more tired. I don't feel bitter. Everything that happened happened. No reason, no fate. It just happened. And now I'm here, back where I started, broke in the south of Sweden. But older and in a really nice apartment where I get to paint a landscape on my wall.

With a lot of important people still in my life. And a lot of new important people also in my life. And I have no idea how I feel or who I am anymore.

Whatever. I'm pretty sure no one has the time or energy to read all of my insanely long rants from the last few weeks and this is definitely one of them. So I'm writing for myself now. I must be going through stuff or whatever. Ugh. Who cares.

I think it's time for bed.

WHAT UP MY WITCHES

Okay so after another day of not taking my happy pills I feel even more calm and happy. My thoughts are settling in my head and I finished the sky bit of my mural and did laundry and stuff. All good.

The last few days I have been researching "no poo", the practice of washing hair without shampoo, since shampoo is actually pretty harmful to your hair. If anyone can remember that far back I used to wash my hair with only conditioner for a year or so. I stopped about two years ago because I wanted to use styling products and stuff but I almost never do anyways. So intense research has been underway! I'm really exited about it, since I get really exited about stuff in general.

At the moment I'm experimenting a lot. So my hair looks like.. I don't know, troll hair. Zero shine and stuff but really structured? And it smells faintly of chocolate. So that's nice. The interesting thing here is that the internet is full of people who have no idea what they are talking about. I mean look at this. I've seen this tip about bleaching your teeth at home with hydrogen peroxide loads of times. Like... No. Dude. "Just keep it in your mouth for 20 minutes" - that's corrosive chemicals that you're mixing together and putting in your mouth. Your mouth. Just... No.

I'm trying to go by "if I can't eat it I don't want to put it on my body". I know it sounds a bit dirty hippie, but, well, okay. I might be. I'd rather be smelly (chocolate smelly! It feels okay!) than fucking eating hydrogen peroxide. I know those are two extremes but whatever. Shampoo is a really new invention, people have always had hair. I washed it with coffee grounds and baking soda yesterday but that might not be a great idea since on a different page the same mix is used to remove hair. So maybe not that. I also put a lot of lemon juice in it, which was a popular thing for girls to do when I was in eighth grade because they wanted to bleach it but they also made it really brittle, so that might not be super clever either, even tho it might? I'm not sure yet. I think the hair mask of coconut oil and honey that I put in my hair before "washing" it probably protected it a bit. Also it didn't really wash out. Heehee. After arriving at really kind of oily but still clean-feeling and completely odorless hair I wanted to go out, so I put some more baking soda in it, mixed with arrow root and cocoa powder and some cinnamon. I reached the current state of big, matte, curly, fluffy troll hair. I think I'll leave it until some kind of mix of corn starch, arrow root and cocoa powder stops feeling helpful (maybe within... I don't know, a few days, a week?) before subjecting it to more experiments. (I seldom wash my hair more than once a week, even with shampoo.) I'll keep you posted, whether you want me to or not. I'm also going to make my own deodorant! Ever more dirty hippie-warning!

Don't distrust, I still love science. I still own zero cats. I still don't love lentils. But it's a slippery slope, and being an artsy, slightly "eccentric" (if that's possible for poor people to be even), crafty woman over 30 it's easy to go all the way and just start wearing all linen and not eating pizza and maybe taking a pottery class. I already spin yarn and paint murals, so I mean this could just be a question of "when" rather than "if".

And my extreme distrust in doctors probably doesn't help... Welp, tomorrow is shrink day! Better get some sleep so that I can stride in there like the radiant lunatic we all know that I am, full of energy to change my behavior through understanding it! YES I also have zero trust in cbt. As mentioned. Vigorously.

I understand my behavior and I can change it at will. I would prefer to solve my problems. But we'll see. Tomorrow is the first actual treatment meeting. I wonder what he will say about me deciding against chemical warfare on my brain? (And also my body I guess! Altho I really don't give a fuck about my shrink's opinion on my hair.)

Calm

So the day - and the week - is over. I feel pretty good right now. The whole day passed and I (almost) didn't even cry! I did the things I wanted to do. (Most if them at least.) I went out with a friend who's visiting from the cold north, where there's snow. (Uppsala.)

I didn't manage to force myself to take my meds. I know it's important and it takes time and blah blah but it feels like walking around in a dark cave. I'm safe from the dangers of the outside. I have no idea what those dangers are but I'm safe in my cave. "I can't see or hear anything in this bloody cave!" I call out into the darkness. Far away there's a voice calling back: "if you stay in there for like... Two or three more weeks your eyes will get used to the dark!"

"But I don't want to get used to the dark. Can't I just go outside? I can see the exit from here."

"NOPE"

out of my mind

Yeah I am super sensitive and annoying. Like... Ugh. All those feelings, in peoples faces, all the time. I have thought a lot about that hungover-drama-llama-post from yesterday morning. I have resigned myself to the fact that I'm pretty crap at shutting up so trying to fake it and act like a "normal person" would probably at best make me extra super sarcastic all the time. In my mind I get a picture of myself as a snarky nineties goth-girl.

SO. This wasn't supposed to be a post about my feelings. I've been whining enough the last few weeks. I woke up this morning feeling not bad. Like I wanted to get up and do stuff. I did. It felt good. Not among things I did was take my meds. I know I should but I really don't want to throw myself back into that black hole, I need to vacuum and stuff. I'll take it later. After vacuuming and maybe some painting.

I've really been trapped inside my head lately and blogging is my main way of "adjusting the pressure". So all my angst goes here, so that it wont spill out on people around me. I'm not ALL ANGST ALL THE TIME. Even when I am. You know.

Realizations

Okay I give up, I'm a night owl and however much I want to be something else I always revert to getting stuff done at night. It's when I'm relaxed and creative and calm and logical. It's easiest to focus on painting and drawing and going through reference pictures and looking for inspiration. I do other stuff too, like cry and play puzzle games on my phone (a difficult combo since the tears make it harder to see the screen) but that I can do any time of day.

One of the reasons is that I don't have a good reason to go to bed. I wait until I'm really tired so I can minimize the time spent lying awake and feeling like poop on a dead hamster. I have no reason to get out of the house and no reason (or will) to get out of bed. Sometimes I wake up feeling rested and just force myself to keep sleeping because reality is just too horrible. (By "sometimes" I mean most days.) 

Every day I stay in bed longer and go I bed later. I force myself to eat. I think about death and wonder what it feels like. I drink coffee. 

Being less medicated, apart from making me shake and feel nauseated and cry uncontrollably, makes my brain function differently. And by that I mean that I feel smart. I can use my intelligence. So can my depression. I hate it. I get WAY more creative and I have more energy to do creative stuff. 

I like this externalising of my depression. I don't want to view it as part of me, of my personality. I want it to be a separate thing. It makes it much easier to specify - if not to anyone else then to myself - what is ME and what is just my demon. The black, sticky, cold demon stuck to my back. Like the bug in that ep of doctor who. With Donna. Except not a bug, a huge, heavy, sticky, rotting creature that wraps it's long, thin arms around my throat and hangs there, strangling me. The creature is whispering to me. Whispering that I'm as useful as a dead hamster. 

I'm only going to post about my sleeping habits forever

Seriously, it's five in the morning. I was drawing. And suddenly it was five in the morning. I was drawing and listening to an audiobook and music. Focusing on three different things at once is perfect for me. But I don't really notice the passage of time.

In other news; I'm actually seeing a psychologist next week! Amaze! After three years of being super fucking depressed! Yay! I asked my doctor if I could try to not be medicated maybe but she says no and I'm worried that they'll start screwing with the therapy if I'm not following their orders. I've been medicated for three years and I don't know if it "helps" at all. I'm alive but also pretty dysfunctional. Maybe it would be worse without meds. Maybe not. I'll never know (if they get their way). 

I'm worried that I'll be smarter than the psychologist. They don't like that. Neither do I. 

I really should sleep now.  

Every damn night it's the same

I think "soon I'll go to bed" and then I paint and then it's god damn four in the morning.

At least I've been in a pretty good mood today. And I survived the first day of my new, even lower dose of meds with only ... Well, a lot of abstinence jitters and forgetfulness and stuff. But you know. No suicide today!

Another day closer to dying of old age. ASAP.

Tonight I'm goin to bed early

I think every night. And then, when I think "okay enough painting and audio book listening for one evening" and look at the time it's fucking three in the fucking morning again! And when I go to get ready for bed I realize that I forgot the last of the dishes I said I'd do and I accidentally make a lot of noise and one of the people I live with is really easily woken up and I know they'll be disappointed in the morning because there's still dishes and I feel like absolute crap. I don't want to start doing dishes at three in the morning even if it is Saturday. I brush my teeth and go to bed feeling like the failure that I am.

And I still feel bad about a character in a book that died and I feel like I'm trying to make up for a lifetime of painting with acrylics in just a few days with drying oil paintings on every surface I can find. And I'm painting on everything, peices of cardboard, old paper bags, card stock, everything with a surface. And it's bad. Most of my paintings are crap. I know it's a step towards getting less crappy but it's frustrating to see amazing artists make better things than I can ever hope to make and never get any recognition, and to see people who can't paint for shit get rich. I know it's just my opinion but yeah. I guess most artists have opinions on art. Whatever. My infantile crap is going up on the art blog along with the doll that I'm actually really happy with. 

Anyways my throat hurts why does it do that I wish it would stop. I wish I was not stupid from withdrawal. I wish my sleep schedule would stop being fucked up. I wish I was... Happy?

Correction

Okay I take it back. I am more suicidal now. Life is utterly meaningless.

Day two

So yesterday was the first with a lowered dose of cymbalta, the depression meds I've been on for a couple of years. I think I've taken five or six different kinds in different doses and combinations. The lowered dose has already made me feel kinda queezy. Cymbalta is - according to my personal experience as well as to what others have told me - the worst to quit. Nausea, strange dizziness and headache is ordinary.

The new kind that I'm supposed to be switching to is called voxra and a friend of mine says that it's one of the best meds she's personally taken but I really don't want to be medicated anymore. After three years of being medicated and extremely depressed it's starting to feel a wee bit pointless. (So does everything else. But you know.)

Can't sleep

My meds make me really... strange. It's hard to know if they turn me off or make ne feel better. At the moment I don't really feel anything.

I'm tired and I can't sleep.
I'm happy that sweden made it to the final of the eurovision.
I miss my camera.
I'm thinking that maybe I'll get a piercing or two. Before summer comes along for real.

But mostly I don't really feel anything.

Is it good or bad? Is it just the absence of pain or is it actually the absence of feelings? Did I do the right thing when I broke up with both of my boyfriends?

I think so. Maybe I'm getting better. Maybe that is what this is. I don't know.

I should try to sleep.

These pills

I stayed up late. Really late. Maybe until four in the morning. And I'm waking up now, at half past two. That's about ten hours. The minimum of hours I sleep. Often it's 12. If I try to wake up earlier it just doesn't work.

This is possibly one of the many interesting side effects of my new medicine. Among the others are feeling dizzy a lot and sometimes a feeling like my blood pressure falls.

At least I don't want to kill myself when I take them. So it's all totally worth it.

Medicated feelings

I'm okay.

My feelings are muted. They're there and I can feel them but I don't really know what they want?

I have a new roommate and there's a woman in the ward who gets electric shock therapy.

I'm tired. I sleep a lot.

Another day in paradise

So today I had a long, stressful, confusing and pretty bad day. I had a stupid and meaningless fight, I was tired, my confidence is crap (I'm in a fucking mental institution, good luck feeling on top of shit) and stuff in general is shitty.

Ended with a game of scrabble at the ward and it was fun. It feels nice hanging out with people who also feel like shit. We can laugh at it. And we do, and we laugh at the fact that we're laughing. We tell each other that our craziness is okay and laugh at it. We're all here. We all have reasons. I can forget about my life and all the crap and all the things I've done that have lead me here. I can forget about how I have failed completely. I'm normal here.

And when I'm not here that feeling lingers for a while. It follows me out into the world.

I'm getting new meds soon. And tomorrow I'm going home to do some laundry.

Grawr

My throat hurts in a weird way and my stomach and I feel sad and angry and I'm not sure why.

I packed stuff. I have lots of work left to do in school. I don't have enough money. The stress makes me want to vomit. 

Oh and my sleeping patterns are totally fubar and I'm taking lots of different pills and I'm extremely sensitive and it feels like everybody hates me. 

Ugh. 

Can't sleep

In bed. Tired. Body aching from restlessness.

Looking at pictures of dogs. Looking at Instagram. Looking at Facebook.

Missing my man.

It's late and I have to get up early. Think I'll take a sleeping pill.

Today has been a bad day

And I feel bad.

I couldn't get out of bed. I could not motivate myself to go make breakfast. I had zero energy.

I DID do my workout tho! And took a shower. Maybe I should focus on that. Hah.

Spent all day in front of my computer. Watching YouTube things. Funny things and meaningless things. Meaningless day. Barely ate anything. Didn't do anything.

My back aches and I feel empty inside and I stayed up too late and ugh.

Just took one of my new meds. It's called cirkadin and it's a melatonin... Something. It's supposed to make me sleep better during the night so that I can stay awake in the daytime. I think.

So goodnight.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

What happened? I am crawling out of my own skin. I am drowning, exploding. I am out of balance, spinning too quickly, wavering. I can’t focus. White noise fills my head.

I am not inside my body. I am not in contact with my head. I am a storm of inspiration and angst and I need to get it out of me, it crawls out of my fingers, my eyes, it makes me shudder, it makes me nauseous.

I feel like I am trapped inside myself without being able to control myself. I am watching the world through my own eyes. I am writhing in pain inside myself, I am watching myself writhe in pain, I feel non-human.

I want to go home.

transitional management

ALRIGHT Y'ALL I just went through and labeled all my seven hundred and fifteen posts with "swedish" or "english". So now it's a bit easier for all my non-swedish-readers to find the posts that are in english.

In other news I'm cutting down my dose of happy pills and the difference is HUGE. I have loads more energy and life feels easier.

Met E this weekend for the first time in four months. It was great but I don't think I can go back to wanting a relationship with him. He is too immature (despite being 34), he's a control freak and he has a need of proving himself which is a huge turnoff. Prefer men who trust themselves and others, who can be silly and funny and relaxed.

We switched rooms this past week. I got T's room, the kids got my room and T got the kids' room. Last night I finally - after a week of cleaning and sorting and fixing - felt like it's getting finished.