My Constant Flow of Cheer

This little thing right here is part of my optimism.

Did I mention I am stable on meds now? I have no idea, but if I didn’t, now you know. My magical cocktail: Trileptal, Seroquel, and Abilify. The Trileptal controls the mania, the Seroquel does the same and helps me sleep, and the Abilify treats bipolar depression, which is so difficult to treat for most of us.

I can’t believe how happy I am now. I know it’s not because When Stars Die has a publishing contract because if that were the case, depression would still be breathing down my neck, and I’d know it. I wake up every morning, thinking, “When am I going to be not sleepy so I can live?” instead of, “I just want to sleep all day because everything feels stale and pointless.” It’s terrifying to know my brain chemicals are fully in charge of my mood–one blip, and I could wind up depressed all over again. But it’s beautiful to feel this way. I feel like an immensely different person: confident, driven, motivated, loving, sensitive, artistic.

For anyone who has ever suffered from a mental illness that took a while to treat, it truly is the little things that make a big difference. I have my appetite back. It was so strange feeling hungry for the first time in a long while. I couldn’t pin down the sensation until my stomach started growling ten thousand times. I’m also not tired all day long. I used to yawn hundreds of times each day, begging to go to bed so I could just sleep away everything. I have energy. I just want to do things all the time now and I view sleep as a hindrance to productivity–but I do sleep because I know I need it. If I were manic, I wouldn’t even care.

Because I have my appetite back, I no longer struggle with irritability and anxiety. I feel perfect, just cheery, optimistic, hopeful, ready to take on the day. When I was depressed, the fight didn’t feel like it was worth it to me, but now that I’m better, I realize the fight was definitely worth it, and I hope to remember this the next time I’m depressed. As my therapist says, “You are going to feel better because you always have felt better.”

And to think that it was just at the beginning of last week that I still struggled with suicidal ideation.