Category Archives: *Personal

I’ve been off the internet for how long now? One month? Two? A long time, anyway. I won’t say I’m back, not completely, but I’m edging back into everything slowly. The last few months have been rough, and sometime in December (or end of November?) I gave up everything and fell off the face of the earth.

So yeah. It’s been rough. I haven’t really been doing anything, though, but I feel better. A little bit better, anyway. Getting there, at least. I’m not going to jump back into anything (like the obsession I had with Twitter and GoodReads), but I might check stuff out occasionally. Edging back: better than jumping head first, that never ends well for me.

Writing… I haven’t written a word in a long time. I started a Christmas story I wanted to upload here as a free read. I wanted to finish both Wounded Souls and Lost Souls before the end of the year. Didn’t happen. Nothing at all has happened in this part of my life. I hope it comes back, the need and the want and the motivation to write, but… I have another semester of college left and it is stressing me out mentally, even though I haven’t actually got anything to stress about yet.

I’ll see what happens. I do my edits, even if I’m not writing anything new. 2015 is going to be a good year for publishing, it’s all scheduled with novellas/novels I wrote in 2014. So it’s not like I’m in any hurry to get something new out. I’ve got plenty. So I’m taking it all slow, letting all come back by itself instead of forcing it.

For now I’m not freaking out about not being able to write. It’ll come back eventually, it always does. Until then… I’m just going to relax. Figure out my studies. One last semester, then I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in the box. I can do it. Surely? I’ll try anyway.

And if I want to write again… nothing will be better than that.

Today is one of those days where I hate my life. Hate it with a fiery passion. Tears are pressing because I hate it so much. I just want to lie down and weep.

I want to have my own place to live. I do have a place to live, but living in the dorms isn’t the same. Here I only have one room. Sharing bathroom with one person and kitchen with five. I want a flat, where I don’t have to share anything with anyone. Where I don’t have to listen for people in  the kitchen, because I’m having a day where I can’t face anyone. I want a place I will live for longer than a year, where I don’t have to worry what’s going to happen next.

I want a dog. Someone who can be there with me so I don’t have to be alone, who will love me and I will love. Someone who I can take for long walks and just enjoy being around. I don’t want to be alone, but I can’t live with another human being. I long for a dog. Dogs are my favourite pets, they’re always there, so cuddly and loyal, but they don’t expect me to talk or explain or be happy all the time.

I just want stability. My psychologist say I shouldn’t worry about what’s going to happen once I finish school, but how can I not? Of course I worry! What am I going to do next June when it’s all over? Where am I going to live? Am I stable enough to get a job? Where am I going to get money?

As it stands now, I don’t even want to finish college. I’m tired, I hate it, I can’t face anymore exams or assignments or classes. I don’t want any expectations. They’re going to shit anyway. My grades are shit, my life’s shit, everything’s shit. I want a place of my own, where I can be alone and feel safe. Where I don’t have to share bathroom and kitchen. Where I can have all my own stuff around me. Where I can buy things without having to worry how I’m going to bring it with me when I have to move out next year.

Is that too much to ask? I feel it is. I don’t know what to do. Or what I’m going to do. I know what I want, but I have no clue how to get it. So I just sit here hating everything.

This summer is known as the summer of murderous rage. It’s quite alike summer of 2013 in that I was in a hypomanic state, but otherwise it’s quite different. For one, this summer I wrote like a fiend. Some of my best books to date, in my own opinion. I didn’t forget what was important to my: my writing.

I suppose this summer was a bit of a mixed state though, with both hypomania and depression. Because I had a lot of energy – to the point where I did several things at once, and managed to complete tasks in record-time – but it also turned into uncontrollable tears quite easily. Or maybe I was just rapid cycling something extreme? I don’t know. All I know I wrote a lot, and I loved it, but I was always angry.

I was raging most of the summer. For small, little things that doesn’t really bother me when I’m on a baseline mood. People gambling for example, or the customers in general, or a car coming exactly when I was going to cross the road. Small things I never think about now, but this summer it could bring me into a fit of rage that lasted for hours.

It’s exhausting. One night after work (where I was so angry), I came home and was suddenly so depressed. I was tired of everything, so I got online and sent off a request for an appointment with my doctor. I got an answering text the morning after, but I had to get through the weekend before I could see her.

When I did, she mentioned bipolar. I agreed. I’d just finished two novels with a bipolar character, and him and me… not quite alike, but a little. The doctor wanted to refer me to the psychiatric service in the small town where I go to college, and I couldn’t be happier. Finally.

I should’ve been in the system years ago, what with living with a parent who suffers from a mental illness. But no, nothing happened with us kids. Now, however, I took charge. It was hard, it was horrible, but I did it. I don’t like to speak about personal things, but now I had to. If I wanted to get help, I needed to speak. If I didn’t get help, I don’t think I could’ve gone on. Not like I was that summer.

But strange as it might sound, if I had to pick between this summer and the last one, I’d pick this one. Because at least I was able to write – and I wrote a lot. And it was good writing too. Despite the irritability, the anger, the rage, I’d take it every day over the false happiness of last summer, because that was truly a nightmare. This was too, of course, but not quite as much.

Otherwise known as the summer I was AWOL from everything I enjoy for FOUR MONTHS. Thinking back, this summer was a nightmare – and the first time that I can remember where I was in a classic hypomanic state. I got a job as a waitress/bartender and I loved it. I was supposed to just be an extra person, work if needed, but I’m pretty sure I worked more than 100%. I worked all summer, almost every day. Hardly ever had a day off. And it was wonderful.

I was going to quit school so I could continue working there. I even signed a contract! Nothing else mattered to me that summer but work and being social. I was in a relationship. All around, I was energetic, talkative, happy. But what I really enjoy, writing and being online, was forgotten. It didn’t matter at all. I had quit writing, didn’t want to do it, I had better things to do. I debated quitting paying for my website. (Thank fuck I didn’t do that!)

And then I came crashing down and realised what I’d done. I’d signed a bloody contract for a job that wasn’t me at all. I hate working with people, having to be all nice and smiling all the time no matter the shit you get in return. I have no interest in relationships or what they entail. A nightmare was what it all was, despite my happiness when I was right in the middle of hypomania. But that’s what hypomania is, it’s not really me.

When my boss told me he wouldn’t have enough shifts for me to work full-time and that perhaps I should look for something else part-time, I was happy again. This meant I could go back to school – and I did. I left it all behind, the job, the relationship, every nightmarish thing I’d got involved with that summer.

I hadn’t done any sort of editing. And there’s deadline’s on those. In my hypomanic state that hadn’t mattered, it hadn’t been important. I had far more important things to do than some lousy editing. And then I came back to myself and realised with horror that I had almost thrown away everything I enjoyed. My writing, my books, my life as an author.

I did my editing and handed it in. Way too late. But what could I say? Back then I didn’t know about my bipolar diagnosis. I didn’t know it was the hypomania that had fucked everything up. I didn’t know anything. I tried to put the summer behind me, forget about it all. I’m not in contact with anyone I got to know that summer. I don’t want to have any contact with them. I just want to forget the whole nightmare.

Yes, I was happy last summer. When I was hypomanic. Thinking back, it’s just a nightmare. A nightmare I never want to experience again. Ever. I made so many bad decisions, so many things out of character, I used up all my money. And I earned a lot of money that summer, with all I worked. Poof. Gone. Nothing left to show for it.

But at least I went back to school. That’s something.

I came back to do what I enjoy: writing.

And I just hope that I never experience a hypomanic episode like this again. Who knows what I’ll do next time? Maybe I’ll fuck everything up for good, in a no-way-back sort of way. I don’t ever want to do that, I don’t ever want to experience anything like this ever again. Yes, I was happy, but it wasn’t worth it. Because I wasn’t me. I wasn’t doing what I like and enjoy.

Never again. NEVER EVER AGAIN.

As of a month ago, anyway. But I’ve now decided to have a Personal tag on my blog, because I can’t manage keeping track of two blogs, so I’m just going to have everything here. Maybe I’ll actually manage to update this one more often then too.

This summer, I felt so horrible I finally went to see my doctor. She referred me to a psychologist. I’ve now seen said psychologist for over two months, and for a month now I’ve had my diagnosis: bipolar affective disorder. More specifically: Bipolar II, though it perhaps Cyclothymia is in question. It didn’t come as a shock, the diagnosis, more as a relief. I have done a lot of research on mental illnesses, and I’ve written two books with a main character who’s suffering from Bipolar I, so I know exactly what it is. I knew when I went to the doctor this summer, and she too mentioned the possibility of bipolar. It used to be known as manic-depressive (and I’ve seen Bipolar II described as creative-depressive), but I prefer the term bipolar.

So yeah, it was a relief to finally be able to put words to what was wrong with me. It was something, it wasn’t just something in my head. Even if yeah, it is completely in my head, but there’s actually a diagnosis for it. I’m not the only one with this disorder; a lot of people out there manage to live a normal life with it. That’s what I want, isn’t it? I don’t want to sit here and stare at the wall, or freak out about every little thing, or lay in my bed because the thoughts jump around, or I’m too depressed to move, or too angry to the point of wanting to hit someone. That’s why I went to see my doctor. That’s why I’m seeing a psychologist. That’s why I’m now on medicine.

I just hope it works. But like everything, it takes time.