A New Drabble

 (I've been tinkering with Drabbles lately, that is, stories exactly 100 words in length. Here's one for you, I hope you enjoy it. ~FG)

Miss Mary’s Teacups

On the uppermost shelf of a tall curio cabinet in the corner of a modest kitchen, a row of porcelain teacups slowly gathers dust.

Some were received as gifts, others were bequeathed after the passing of someone significant to her; grandmother, mother, aunties. Each held memories woven into the pattern in the fine china. Some had mismatched saucers, after their original met with an unfortunate fate. The disharmony did not trouble Miss Mary; each was a priceless treasure.

She could never bring herself to drink from them, and wondered whose shelf her cup would sit upon after she was gone. ~F.G. 2021

Waiting

CW: Depression, Medication, Food, Weight

It’s been months now that I’ve been dealing with a long bout of bipolar depression. It started towards the end of November, lightened up a little around Christmas and then dove down to the depths as soon as December 26^th arrived.

I’ve tried to paint (with limited ‘success’) and tried to write (with no success other than a few blog posts the past month and a few creative writing Tweets) but my brain is stuck in low power mode and just won’t kick over into a more cooperative state.

This is especially frustrating because a med change almost three weeks ago was going to bring some improvement, or so I hoped. But nothing has gotten better, and to add insult to injury, I’ve gained back three of the pounds I’d tried so hard to lose in the past six months. Since I can’t exercise weight loss is especially difficult. With the meds I’m taking, it has felt damned near impossible. Still I managed to lose ten or so pounds (a small miracle, in my book) and was within two pounds of reaching my first small goal. Now that goal line has been moved, I’m cutting back even more on portion sizes and overall food intake, and I’m almost always hungry.

Weight loss and psych meds do not go hand in hand. The fact is they’re known to cause the kind of weight gain I’ve suffered over the past ten years. It has been almost a decade since I was finally properly diagnosed with Bipolar 1 (for decades before I was miss dx’d with major depression).

In that decade my body has become something foreign to me; a weight I have to drag along with me like some hellish personal version of Marley’s chains. Though he ‘forged his chains in life’, mine have been clamped onto me by the diseases that plague my brain; Bipolar, OCD, PTSD.

It’s gotten to the point that my doctor told me with concern that I was pre-diabetes last year. He told me he believed it’d reverse if I could lose twenty pounds. I looked at him with tears stinging my eyes, thinking he may as well have asked me to fly.

My relationship with food has never been great. Eating disorders run in my family, and I picked up destructive behaviors in my teens that have stayed with me through the years. It makes all this tracking what I eat and watching every bite nerve wracking; it feels like unhealthy behavior, and yet I don’t want to become a full-blown diabetic. I need my meds, and I need to lose weight. How am I supposed to do that?

First, I gave up the sugary drinks I shouldn’t have been drinking in the first place; gave up a lot of other things and cut severely back on even more. And after six months, it seemed to be doing something.

Then we upped one of my meds by two lousy milligrams, and that progress in weight loss seems to be going away. And for what? For no improvement in my depression?

I’m waiting to hear back from my psych doc with further instructions. Either she’ll tell me to keep going where I am and hope things improve, she’ll tell me to cut back my dose again, or she’ll tell me to increase it even more.

While my sad brain hopes she wants to increase it because I’m so sick and tired of feeling how I feel, the food-obsessed, unhealthy part of me hopes we cut it back down and that those three pounds will go back to wherever they came from.

If you’re struggling with meds and their side effects, please know you’re not alone. That’s why I’m posting this, in case anyone else out there is fighting this unending battle and needs to hear it’s not just them. From responses to tweets I’ve posted in the past few days, I know I’m not alone, even if it feels very lonely while I sit here and wait.

Sending love, love, love out into the skies…

~bru

Taking My Medicine

 I’m in the middle of another med increase right now, and my brain is refusing to cooperate to write a blog post that is anything other than absolutely dismal. So to spare you that, I’ll just say I’m hoping you’re safe and warm out there (oh Texas and surrounding states, my heart is breaking for your suffering…) and I’ll post a painting I did this week.

 

"Ballerina" acrylic on canvas

Hoping I’ll have something hopeful or positive to say next week, if only the med increase will do something to beat back this awful winter bipolar depression, the surging OCD, and PTSD.

Sending love, love, love out into the sky…

~bru

Winter Sleep

 

I think sometimes I was really meant to be born a bear. Strictly for the whole hibernation thing. I don’t know how anyone is supposed to stay awake most of the time when it’s so cold and snowy outside.

In addition to craving piles of blankets and long sleeps when it’s cold, my mood tends to drop severely in the winter, and I know I’m not alone in this. The decline begins sometime around Thanksgiving, with a slightly buoyant rebound phase around Christmas (Lights! Music! Giving gifts! Wheeee!) But then the day after Christmas comes, with that nowhere/nowhen week existing between Christmas and New Year’s Day and I get lost somewhere in there.

If I’m lucky, in the weeks following I can devote enough of my scattered attention when I am awake towards art and writing; if I get too depressed, though, I can’t rally the strength of will to do much of either. That’s where I’ve been for a while. It causes me to doubt myself as a creative person, and makes me long for times past when mania would drive me to write all night long and there were no medications reigning those impulses in.

I know, though, going back to the way it used to be isn’t an option. My health would suffer too greatly, and the price to be paid for those long manic phases is too high. Not just for me but also for those I love. So I’ve struggled through many winters (and springs, and summers, and autumns…) to find a balance somewhere creatively where I can make things that bring me some sense of accomplishment but don’t set alight the fragile rope bridge upon which I balance my existence.

"Winter" 12X12 acrylic on canvas, painted last week.

 

Social media is a challenge, as well, during this time when every instinct I have is telling me to withdraw from all social contact… something my therapist is opposed to for obvious reasons. It’s not healthy not to connect with people somehow, and with my bad health (physical and otherwise) online is where my socialization, such as it is, has to take place. 

It would be nice to have some ‘in person’ friends I suppose, someone with whom, when there wasn’t a pandemic, I could browse a bookstore with or go for lunch with now and then. The problem is I have so little energy to invest in life in general with the pain levels I live with that I fear I’d make a pretty awful friend.

Long ago, back when I had ‘in person’ friends, I had to often cancel plans because of pain and chronic illness. I get tired from long phone conversations, even texting can wear me out quickly at my normal pain levels. When I’m at ultra-high pain levels? Forget it and call me a hermit. My solitude becomes my survival.

I care deeply for my online friends though, despite (or more correctly, because of) all of this. I wish I could give them more than I can but I try to support, encourage, and cheer on as I’m able. I hope those interactions bring something of value to the online world in general; telling others "I see you, I hear you, I will hold space for you if you need it, to the best of my ability."

My doctor has just tweaked my meds after a long time of staying at the same levels of everything, and I am desperately waiting and hoping to see if this change will start chipping away at the iceberg of depression I find myself stranded on.

Thank you to all of the dear, kind friends I have on the bird app, who have thrown me more lifelines than they know. I appreciate you, I adore you, and I hope I can do the same for you when you just need to know someone is out there and hears you.

I hope your winter is cozy and filled with moments you want to remember.

I’m sending love, love, love out into the sky…

~bru