The High

Two weeks into the land of tablets and I find myself sailing scarily high above the ground. I feel happy. Achingly happy. So much so that I looked at my DVD collection this evening and thought, 'No that films not miserable enough, I want emotions.' Emotions have been the very thing I've avoided these last few months because to touch them would mean falling deep into that well inside myself and opening a floodgate of tears.

I'm scared by how I feel today because it feels like I used to once upon a time but it's very alien to me now. And scary. It means there must be a fall coming, surely. There probably is. But it's been so long since I've been balanced in my mental state that I don't really recognise it.

So since the tablets have begun I've slowly and then very rapidly noticed changes. The first major change being my bowels, which don't seem to know how to process these tablets. But otherwise I have found myself able to get out of bed, cook, run, do the washing up, read without having to go over the same paragraph fifty times, do my job, have small banter with customers instead of raging at them and there's been no tears. None. Even that feeling of dread and anxiety that creeps up on me seems a little more manageable. Although, that said I spent most of last week hiding indoors and anytime I needed to leave the house took quite a bit of force. That feeling seems to have passed this week. This week I have been smiling, to myself. Just thoughts in my head have made me smile, even laugh. And I'm day dreaming. Mostly about Ryan Gosling but day dreaming is something I had forgotten how to do. Imagining something happy, fun...something hopeful. Hope, I feel hope again. Optimistic about the changes I've been through and what they will lead to. Optimistic about my future. A future. I have one.

This may seem very melodramatic and it is. But I haven't been able to be sing songy melodramatic in YEARS so excuse me whilst I wallow in it.

Now I do know this is going to plateau out at some point and the little battles underneath it all will sneak through but for the moment I am enjoying the sense of being in ascendence. It's a long time since I felt like I was doing anything other than falling.

For the first week after my Doctors I felt this overwhelming exhaustion. It was as if my body just collapsed from years of stress being finally treated. But this week, as I was warned, I am hyper. It feels like I've woken from a very long sleep and I can't do enough and I can't do it quick enough. This will fade. The need for speed that is. Too fast...is it too furious next? God I hope not. Rage is boring. From the outside I imagine this all sounds a little scary, like the tablets are changing my moods but in fact it's not like that, it's just that I've been numb and low for so long that everything I am feeling seems to be in technicolour but as this feeling becomes my normal state it will plateau and I will just feel like everyone else. How I used to. Up and down but steady. But before that, I will probably descend again. This optimism is false. It's a sense that I am in control but at the bottom of all of this are the triggers and the things that set me off down this path and they have to be addressed before I can get trully better. But for now, I'm just going to roll with the high.

I chose life. And steak. And Ryan Gosling. Obviously.

Hannah 2 - 0 Depression.