Hi everyone. Blimey, it’s been three long weeks since I felt up to posting here. I have been over at moodgarden quite a bit in the last week however. The folks there have been very helpful and supportive.

So honeys, what happened? Well I thought things had bottomed out, then for a coupla weeks they just got worse all of a sudden. It was a scary experience. I had a headful of dread. Of guilt and shame. Panic. I stopped coping. Had to go to bed for a few days. Then had to force myself to get up again. Have been under the Crisis Team for about a week. Seen several different psychs in the last week. May be going back on Lithium alongside Depakote but not sure yet.

Have now been on Citalopram for two weeks. Maybe they’ve done the trick for me. Certainly the last three days have seen the depression lift to a great extent.

I’m not out of the woods and still feel intermittently tired, wrung-out, jittery, isolated, anxious, somewhat dissociated from the world.

But I am more sure than ever that therapy holds out some hope for working with my condition. I am pretty much convinced that some of my symptoms stem from trauma (PTSD), and this interacts with the bipolar. While the bipolar may or may not improve with a change of meds or staying on the same ones, the trauma is definitely something that can be amenable to therapeutic intervention.

And I will also say that despite having been in one of the most awful places I’ve ever visited (sheer suicidal hopelessness) I also realised that I feared such thoughts, and was able to reach out and let others pull me out of the swamp I was in. That I love life and want to stay alive AT ALL COSTS! That other people’s kind interventions made a huge difference to how I felt. That being able to share how I felt honestly and openly and just be heard and not dismissed kept me hanging in there…with gratitude and hope in my heart.

I was ‘lucky’ throughout this horrific time to be at least able to sleep at night. Sometimes it was the only respite I got. But at least I could look forward to laying down my head on the pillow at night and having only fairly sweet or neutral dreams, or just blessed oblivion, for about eight or nine solid hours. Without meds.

So, I think I’m back folks. Beginning to take the baby steps of getting my life going again. Trying to resist the temptation of biting off too much at once. Gotta give up the fags sometime soon. When the time is right.

Hope I haven’t lost all my readers! Lots of love, Zoe xxx