The first day in nine days

Sorry that I keep going MIA. I just don't feel like writing I guess, or my thoughts have been too muddled to get anything out, and really, anything I have to say is boring anyway. That combined with the fact that I haven't been feeling great - mentally/emotionally, and as the date of my departure fast approaches, they are working me into the ground.

I have set a date - I am leaving early - not yet, but prior to August 1. I'm happy about it. The form is in. It is covered by FMLA and my short term disability. I should have gone a long time ago. But the guilt has prevented me. The thing is - I am the only one who feels like I don't deserve this time off. Everyone else thinks I deserve it. Even the people I work for have said that.

Though they seem to understand and not understand at the same time. Or maybe they just simply don't appreciate the seriousness of the situation - but that is partially because they don't know the details of what is going, nor do they need to. In any event, when I told them that I needed to leave early - the response was okay, but could you do 25 things first, this new project, finish those old three, wrap up these other six things... and I thought to myself - this is half of the reason I need out of here. I have the work load of two people and I can't get a break.

So, in preparation for my leave of absence, I will be working probably 12 hours a day until the day I leave and maybe some on the weekends also. I'm okay with it I guess.

Really my ability to handle it depends entirely on the day - or the hour sometimes. Today is the first day in nine that I have felt in the middle, even, dare I say, like a normal person. Last Thursday I went in the depressed direction and pretty low one day. And then on Tuesday-Thursday of this week I was the other way - hypomanic. Is the medication working? Why does this all seem so intolerable now? I still can't figure out what happened that I lost the ability to tolerate this fluctuation.

And then a funny thing happened Wednesday when I was hypomanic - I realized how much I love that feeling. It allowed me to be super productive, motivated, optimistic, happy, alive, mind racing, moving through tasks 1000 miles an hour, feeling like anything was possible, like I could do anything (sometimes the up is more of an agitated, angry, anxious feeling - not so great). I love it - the good kind of up. I love it almost as much as I love the numb feeling that I get from drinking. And it only really occurred to me yesterday, when briefly I had it and I realized how much I didn't really want to give it up. That up feeling - it's how I cope with the stress of my job. I get into the "zone" where I am able to work 14 hours a day 7 days a week for a few weeks on end. That's how I deal with it.

Thing is - work is that busy right now - with me trying to leave. But I can't get fully into the "zone" anymore.

So naturally what happened Wednesday is that I became obsessed with it. OBSESSED. The way a person becomes obsessed with the feeling they get from drinking in early sobriety. Where you think, I want it, I need it, I have to have it, I cannot live without it. It totally caught me off guard and surprised me that I would feel that way about the manic feeling. But why wouldn't I? Who wouldn't love that feeling? Plus, I am an avoider and it is a great distraction. I get numb when I get that way - numb to my other feelings that is. The obsession went so far that I started to think about the fact that even though I have told all these people I am on bipolar medication - I could simply stop taking it and just not tell anyone and continue to have my mood cycle the way it always has. Like every alcoholic I know sometimes thinks - but I could drink and no one would know. I won't of course stop taking it - I mean hell, I'm still waiting to see if it's going to work, I just thought about it. The up is really great - most of the time, though you don't always know what you are going to get. But the down - it's scary.

So what's going to happen now that I've lost my two favorite feelings in the world, and possibly my two best coping mechanisms?

The past nine days have been exhausting in some ways and almost intolerable. I am grateful for even one day of feeling "normal."