Hi,

Just thought I’d better write something since it’s already May.

April was a washout. Failed dismally.

I manged to write for about six hours, if that.

In April there were two down cycles, the first for 5 days, the second is just about ending, since at least I’m actually blogging, and has so far lasted for 14 days.

Yep, it seems I still get downs, even with these heavy duty anti-depressants. Thankfully, I don’t go down as far as I used to.  I’m sure by now you are familiar with my 0 to 10 scale where I go from 0 (suicidal) to 8 (hypomanic). Well now I don’t get the hypomania, the mood stabilising drug, Lamotrigine, has taken care of those (100mg per day) and I only go down as far as a 3 now.

Good? Well, it’s an improvement.

To be honest, it’s actually hell, and has rendered me completely useless this month.

You see, being at a 3 means I am fully conscious of the fact that I am hopelessly depressed. If I’m at a 1 or 2, then I’m pretty much out of the realms of reality, and sleeping 20 hours a day to prevent myself thinking about suicide.

And that’s the difficult thing. Being fully conscious of your own depression is bad. Very bad. Frustrating on a huge scale.

You see, I’m okay, on the outside. If you saw me, you wouldn’t guess.

And if you know me well, you’ve probably seen me recently, since I’ve not been confined to the house in these recent depressive episodes. It’s just that I can’t actually do anything. I can’t concentrate for any length of time, I can’t motivate myself to do anything. My sleep patterns have gone haywire (currently sleeping from about 3am till 7am, then lie in bed dozing till 10 or 11am) and my food has got stupid too.

I’ll eat, but not properly, I’ll miss meals, since I’m having breakfast when Rich is just about to have lunch, and I’m eating comfort food too. (I’ve put on a stone this past month, that’s 10% of my previous weight.)

And I haven’t achieved anything. Well, maybe one thing, which I’ll come on to later.

I can go out and do stuff if it’s organised for me. Go and see friends, a night out here, a day out there, working at the Ricoh, bit of shopping, etc, but actually doing stuff at home, where I have to mentally think about and do everyday tasks, projects, writing, blogging, etc, well that’s been impossible. My brain just isn’t with it.

You see, being depressed doesn’t just mean being sad or unhappy. My body/brain is ‘depressed’ too -Reduce in the level or strength of activity in a biological system.

I have no motivation and gain no pleasure in anything I do, so I basically have no inclination to do anything.

Amazing how you just get lost in depression.

A close friend used the expression: Drifting, which at the time I had difficulty in understanding, but know I fully understand the feeling, since that’s exactly what is happening to me.

I am drifting; stuck on a surf board on the ocean, with no inclination to look for a wave to surf into shore on, let alone stand up and ride it.

And when you’re drifting there in the ocean with the beach in view, watching everyone else enjoying the sunshine, you sure have loads of time to think about the circling sharks.

I had big plans at the beginning of April.

I even entered ScriptFrenzy, confident I could churn out an average of 3.33 pages of script each day for 30 days. I managed 6, I think.

I planned to finish my full length play for my Nuffield graduation piece. I have two scenes left to finish writing and one last scene to write in full. I’m very nearly there, and very proud of it, but it’s been a couple of months since I last looked at it for more than a minute or two. I simple haven’t the the brain power to work on it.

I planned to write another half a dozen chapters of a novella I’m writing for a mate’s 3 year old son. (Hi Josh) It’s great fun, and I love it, but I get no pleasure from doing anything at the moment, and again have hardly even looked at it this month.

I had the brilliant opportunity of going to Bury St Edmonds to work with some actors on devising a play. It was brilliant, again it was something that was planned for me, so I went. I got all enthused, and managed to write 3 scenes before this lastest depressive down kicked in, and have since had to cancel two further meetings, with, of course, the guilt that goes with it.

I’ve been trying to get other bits and pieces done, accounts, youth theatre commitments, etc, etc, but just spend all day staring at the computer screen. Generally watching the world go by on facebook and twitter, rarely joining in.

I have managed to watch a whole season of Star Trek Voyager to take my mind off the depressive feelings of inadequacy. I watched six episodes one night and moved from the sofa once in four and half hours, and that was only cause I had to change the dvd.

So you see, I’ve not achieved anything to be pleased with this month, and the to do list is growing by the day. 37 items at the moment, and I stopped adding things three weeks ago as I realised things were going downhill fast. The rest are somewhere in my brain, hoping they won’t be forgotten about. Which reminds me, I need to renew my library books, again, on Friday.

An no, I haven’t done any reading either. And I love reading.

I must admit, I am being hard on myself here. At least I’m able to get up and go outside and do some things, like talk to people, answer the phone and meet up with close friends. It’s a vast improvement, I can assure you, just equally frustrating that I’m so nearly there, yet so far away.

Just drifting.

One thing I have done this month is spend a lot of time learning touch-typing on my Mac. Basically I’m typing out words that fall down the screen in a space invaders type game. Meteors fall at faster and faster speeds, all I have to do is correctly type the word to blast it out of the sky. There a comets too that fly across or down at twice the speed for bonus points, and little spaceships that fire back at you destroying your base stations if you don’t type the word quick enough.

It’s fun. And my touch-typing has improved phenomenally – I can even type without having to look at the keyboard, albeit at only about 20 words per minute. And that can only improve as I’ve got into the habit of playing it every day for at least an hour. Not much else to do.

I guess I’m thankful the game is improving my typing, and I haven’t got addicted to some mindless facebook game, which to be honest could so easily have happened this month.

Well, I guess that’s it. I’ve been touch-typing my way through this post and I am at least pleased with myself, for a change.

Oh and if your wondering wtf Mexico has to do with this post, then perhaps I’d better explain.

I have found a website to help with writing. The idea being to write 501 words each and every day. They helpfully give you a word to spark off some creative thinking and help get you started on those 501 words. Today’s word was Mexico, so there you go. I was stuck for a title for this post and Mexico was my cop out.

As you’ve guessed, I’m not exactly in a creative writing mood atm, but at least I’ve written a blog post, and at 1407 words, it’s a long one too.

And if your depressed too atm, then pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you did actually achieve something today. You’ve read this post. So thank you.

More soon.

PS: I’m conscious I haven’t created hyperlinks to things I could have done, so I will create a separate links post in the next couple of days, as I really can’t be arsed to do all the working out atm.

PPS: Plenty of news to update you with soon too.