Thursday, April 16, 2009

Climbing the Chasm

After that last post, my yo-yo got stuck at the end of the string, and I was in an extremely unpleasant place for a couple weeks... angry all the time, and tired, and uncomfortable in my own skin. But then my psychiatrist told me to just jack up the lithium to the next dose and see if that helps (and if it doesn't, we'll add an antidepressant, maybe Zoloft or Wellbutrin) ... and it did! It made me very very sleepy for a whole week, but I was no longer depressed or angry.

Well, I was angry, but not so much. I've discovered that a lot of the free-floating anger I've been experiencing lately is actually caused by people: I am very angry with certain specific people, and I have no way of talking to them about it... I actually doubt that talking to them would even make a positive difference; and with no way of processing the anger, it just sits and festers and makes me irritable so that I become angry at other people and things and situations for no apparent reason.

But my mood, in general, has been pretty good (aside from the fatigue, though that's starting to pass off, as well), no crying or screaming or needing desperately to get out of my body. And I guess that will just have to do for the time being... unless you have a pill for this creeping sense of hopelessness? This odd sensation that no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to get any farther than the quagmire in which I currently wallow? Do they make a pill for that?

?

So, during that very dark period, I had to go off of my diet. It occurred to me (and this opinion was backed up by other authorities) that my severe limitation of carbohydrates might be having a deleterious effect on my mood... apparently, too few carbs can trigger serious depression. So I went off the diet, allowed myself to eat a scone here or some toast there... but nothing crazy, still no candy or white-bread or potato-chips.

In fact, I probably only added a few hundred calories to the daily intake, almost exclusively from whole-grain (or "slow") carbs. And my weight-loss slowed, but didn't stop. I'm now 22 pounds down, and almost ready for those size-36 pants (which I fortuitously stored in the basement when I had to start wearing 38s...I got rid of the 34s, though... I mean, let's be real).

The financial diet has been harder than I expected, though. I have been paying my bills, stashing my savings, and keeping very close track of my expenditures; but numbers are not exactly my forte, and I can't figure out why my financial register (which I maintain in Excel) doesn't match with my bank statement. So then I sit and try to compare and (uhm, what's that word again?) reconcile the numbers, and it gives me an immediate headache.

Maybe I'll get better with practice. But I'd rather spend my frightfully limited energy on something else, like maybe my work. Speaking of which, I have to go there again...

May the heavens tickle you in the naughty places!