Recovery

So…  I went on a little technology diet.  And took sleeping pills.  Appropriately, not like suicidally – it’s okay, I know I have to clarify things like this.  Part of being a bipolar brain.  But no, sleeping pills to actually help me sleep so my brain didn’t keep spinning farther and farther into mania.  And between those things I’m doing quite a lot better.  I also spent some time with my nieces, and some time with my mom, and some time with my best friend, and those are all helpful and grounding things, too.  I did spend the entire day on Sunday having horrible sensory issues, but… thankfully that only lasted one day and now it’s mostly just echoes.

Sensory issues is… my brain… well… normal brains take in all this input all the time – sensory input – sights, smells, tactile sensations, etc.  Right?  There’s about a billion zillion things in our environment all the time.  The thing is, we don’t actually tune in to 99.9% of them.  The brain filters out things that it deems irrelevant, like 99% of the things in your visual field…  like the sensation of your clothing on your body, of places where your skin is touching itself (your toes, your fingers, your lips on your teeth, your tongue in your mouth, etc.)  You don’t hear every voice in a busy restaurant and every conversation.

Your brain fades it out into a background buzz which it then mostly ignores in favor of the conversation you’re having with your own table mates.  Your brain doesn’t need to constantly signal that your toes are touching each other in your shoes, or that your socks are touching your feet, or that your feet are touching the insides of your shoes, or that your lips are resting against your teeth, or that your fingers are touching each other… your brain doesn’t tell you every written word on the menu in front of you – it focuses only on the words you want to read at that moment and the rest just blurs out.  When you scan the table, your brain doesn’t shout out in your head all the words on the little happy hour menu in the corner, it just skims over, registers it as a menu, but doesn’t register every word and letter on the paper…

Except… my brain does.  It does all those things.  Sometimes.

I lose the ability to filter and block out irrelevant sensory input.  Usually it’s tactile for me.  Once I had an episode of visual filtering fail and it was horrifying…  I can’t explain what it is like to not be able to NOT read words.  I went into the bathroom and I couldn’t set my eyes on anything because glancing at the shampoo bottles – all of the text on the bottle was suddenly in my head, and the toothpaste tube, and the Advil bottle, and the deodorant container… You never realize how surrounded by words we are…

But anyway, usually it’s tactile.  And it was on Sunday.  My right arm was the worst affected.  I could feel the texture of the sleeve of my shirt on my arm.  And I couldn’t stop feeling it.  It was constant.  Touching me in a billion places.  My shoulder is actually still sore (this is what happens) because I couldn’t stop shifting my arm, trying to “shake off” the sensation.  Which, of course, I can’t do…  But I can’t stop trying because it is so maddening… so I end up chafed and sore, usually from these episodes.

It’s been trying to latch on to my toes (touching each other) and my lips (touching my teeth) and I have to work really hard to breathe through it and not respond to it and it’s weak enough now that if I don’t move (thus creating more sensation) my brain kind of lets it go.  Although it wakes up again every time I DO move, like eat, or drink, or talk… or walk or shift my feet.  So… that’s annoying.

But overall… recovering.

I really wanted to take down my last post because it was… me drowning in my own brain.  And I find that embarrassing.  And I find my behavior embarrassing and I just overall find all of it embarrassing and shameful.  But Sir wouldn’t let me take it down for the first few days.  And now he’s talked with me about it and I’m indecisive about it.  He isn’t telling me, “no” anymore.  But he’s suggesting that I consider leaving it up because it is honest… and that’s kind of why I have this blog.  I’m honest about my disease in other aspects.  And maybe that helps someone somewhere.  And if I want to be honest about my disease it isn’t really authentic to take away the embarrassing parts of it.  Yet, it makes me terribly uncomfortable having it posted, like I am exposed, like my worst self is out there to be judged.

Sir says that isn’t my “worst self.”  It isn’t any of my self.  It’s my sickness, which is different.  I’m not sure if I agree with him or not.

I’ll leave it for now.  I will decide later, I guess.

I also got news from my doctor.  A lot of news.  Heavy news.  I’m still trying to decide how I feel about it all, and I’m not really ready to write a lot about it.  But I guess I will, later.

It’s bringing up grief for my dad.

I don’t know why.

Well, I do.

I just don’t like it.

Another day, it’s time to sleep.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Like