This year has been rough from the start. When I never really got excited about gardening, it was a bad sign. If you've been reading with me through the years, you know I always order too much because I want too much; this year I still ordered too much but it was because I just couldn't make up my mind ... and suddenly it was too late to order from my favorite catalogues at all. Once the orders came, I never really gave a damn about planting - and it seemed as if the plants knew it. In one planter, foliage that should have grown to nearly three feet tall never topped 12 inches, and even the sweet alyssum that edges my circle garden never filled out, which is unheard of. Three flats of annuals simply sat in one neglected garden all through the seasons ... in fact, two of them are still out there, frost-killed.
We've tweaked my meds again and again, but it never seems to make any major difference. I think some of that is because I just haven't known what to SAY to my psychiatrist. I generally see him first thing in the morning, when I'm powered up to go to work - and I'm an entirely different person at work than I am at home. Thus, he sees me when I'm at my best - and at that time I have difficulty explaining, even to myself, why I think I'm depressed. It comes out sounding like a whine.
Because at work I'm fine. I'm capable, pleasant and productive - well, 85-90% of the time. Not perfect, as I'm sure my co-workers would jump in to point out. Interruptions rattle me; I can get thrown in a big way when my routines are disrupted, or when other people are too loud; and I still have some issues using the telephone (a post-traumatic souvenir from 1987 when my house was repeatedly burglarized and I was notified by telephone) ... but I cope pretty well nonetheless.
It has taken me months to figure out that I can be in the middle of a depressive episode and still get along well at the office because I've had 20-odd years of experience in How To Behave At Work. I feel something halfway physical happen when I walk in the door - like putting on a cloak of professionalism. Thank goodness it's a very informal office, so if I DO get rattled I can pound on the desk (not recommended - it hurts) or run outside and stomp around for a few minutes.
The other things that keep depression at bay at the office are the inherent structure of the job and the fact that I am kept busy with work that (a) easily prioritizes itself and (b) I know how to do.
However, as Labor Day approached, tension was growing at work. We were organizing a large charity event - celebrities and everything - to be held Labor Day weekend, and since we knew absolutely NOTHING about how to do this sort of thing, we got more and more stressed the closer we got to the event. Thus in early August I went into my psychiatrist's office and stated in a loud voice:
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"
Nice pdoc. He gave me some Zyprexa right away, before I even sat down. I took that for about a month and had a brief but perfectly timed little stretch of hypomania that got me right through the charity event - even the day we got up at 4:00 a.m. and didn't leave the venue until 8:00 at night.
As soon as the event was over, though, my appetite soared - I started grazing in the evenings, and that was it for Zyprexa - Dr. Meyer said to hold it for the next time I got stressed out. Around the same time, Walgreens switched my prescription for Prozac to the generic fluoxetine, and I started itching all over. Stopped taking fluoxetine, stopped itching. My pdoc was furious at Walgreens. I didn't feel up to a confrontation, though, so I didn't take it back, just decided to leave Prozac out of the medication cocktail.
The rest of September and October saw me slipping back into the same familiar pattern: doing fine at work, while having multiple symptoms of depression at home. I kept digging myself deeper into a clutter-filled chasm; retreating into books or solitaire when I had work that needed to be done; I lost bills and wound up paying late fees and finance charges. I grew more and more irritable, began having wild dreams again (most often dreams of driving a car with failing brakes), and started to have spells of crying for no reason. As the days shortened I found myself angry with the sun for setting earlier, angry because there was so little daylight left by the time I got home from work. Just as I felt myself prepare positively for entering the office, I'd feel tiredness slam me in the car as I drove home. And as October dwindled to its end, another stressor began gnawing on me ... the approach of Election Day. A lot of people said the 2004 election was going to be the most important election in their lives. I felt that way, too.
I'm Bipolar - Table of Contents
