Lighter days.

I guess I remember about this thing once a month now. It's usually a good sign, in that I don't feel driven by misery or mania to write. It would be nice if I felt like writing during the in-between times, but whatever. In those times, I'm usually doing something way more fun than staring at a computer.

A topic keeps coming up over at the Crazyboards, about whether to tell people about our mental illnesses. I almost always tell, because it's part of who I am, and it takes so much fucking time up sometimes. Not telling would be like not mentioning that I have kids or something. When I'm doing well, and I have been doing well-ish for awhile now, it's a pretty small, mundane part of my life. When I go totally crazy, I have to focus a lot more energy towards it. It's like an annoying part-time job, one that usually doesn't pay me. Unless I get manic and start writing and painting and sewing and baking and running rampant through the woods. Some of those payments are pretty good.

And anyway, if I tell someone that I have the crazy and that person doesn't like it, well they can fuck off. I don't want to be friends with people that judge me harshly for something I didn't choose. Didn't choose, and work really hard to control.

Speaking of control, I went down to a half dose of Stelazine, and for about a week everything was great. I even started smiling a lot, like I used to. Talking! To strangers! It's been a little hard to take on the emotions that welled up, but I'm managing. For about a week or so, I did have some hallucinations, hearing things, seeing stupid things (like, seriously, the palm tree was waving it's branches at me maliciously and I figured, hey, that palm tree is actually an alien out to get me, but I shut my eyes and went to sleep and I don't hold it against that palm tree). Mostly I was able to remember that it was just my mind fucking with me, and it stopped. It was probably just something to do with dopamine flooding my brain. Or maybe I'm just seeing and hearing things as they really are.

Whatever the reason, my doctor told me I can continue to go off of it, because if I need it, I can always start again. Of course, there is a downside to stopping and starting it-- there may be a higher risk for tardive dyskinesia doing it that way instead of just staying on it. Sigh. Whatever. One day I will be off every med and live in the woods and I can talk to the trees, talk to the squirrels, and there won't be any people around to condemn me for it. What I really want from life is to just be the person I am and not have to jam myself into this fucking horrible space not meant for me. Which makes me wonder, why am I doing that?