It’s probably a whole whack of things that have gotten me to this point. A few shitty days at work. A couple nights with far too much to drink. Weight gain. Boy problems. Mum and Dad not being around. Having slowly pushed my friends away. Feeling like everything is slipping away.

I’m sitting here in my apartment, crying, watching a video memorial for one of the hockey players who committed suicide this summer, watching grown men in the arena cry openly. Wishing I had his courage. Feeling like whatever courage I had that has kept me on this earth this long is leaving me slowly, pulled out of me by the ravages of everyday life. The tears flow harder when I think of my friends reading this, wondering why I don’t reach out. Wondering why I shut them out. I don’t know why. I can’t do it anymore. It’s like something broke in me last week, and now I can’t even pretend anymore. People at work are noticing. Every morning I just want to run back home the minute I’m in the office. Not that home is much better.

Managed to get a last minute appointment with Dr. A today, which was good. Started out strong but was sobbing by the end. He wants me to try the hospital again. I won’t. Another med change. Big surprise. But was good to cry. Now I can’t stop. Even Sasha’s scared. Probably good that Mum isn’t around. Too many missed calls and she’d be banging down the door.

Wish I could curl up and sleep forever.

This is the worst post ever. Probably gonna get some worried calls/texts/emails. I’m not gonna do anything stupid. I don’t have the guts, that much is obvious. Just needed to vent. To no one. Pretend you didn’t read this.

I had a pretty shit day at work today. It started on the weekend when I had a fever and sore throat — but not a regular sore throat, it was like there was a huge lump in my throat and it literally stopped me from eating and drinking for the second half of the long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving indeed. I went to the walk in this morning to find out I have a bacterial infection of the mouth and throat that may or may not clear up after a week or two at the earliest and I have to rinse with and swallow some really gross medicine three times a day until it’s gone.

Oh, and because I can’t swallow properly, I also have only been sporadically taking my meds over the past few days. Never a good idea.

Work was relatively okay, and the day was actually going by quickly. I had emailed the jerk who previously made me almost cry at work (we’ll call him Q, to make it simple) about some issues I wanted to talk to him about since my boss is away for a few days. He responded nicely enough, but somehow our email exchange turned into me trying to get something very simple set up to an account I’d created, and him literally berating me for wanting to set it up to a personal account, climaxing when he basically called me an idiot for not seeing the problem and then, when I set up a new “non-personal” account, with him saying, that wasn’t so hard now was it?

Okay, maybe this doesn’t sound so bad to an outsider. But if you knew this guy, you’d understand. I’d dare you to find one person in my office who thinks highly of him, or even thinks he’s a nice guy. (He doesn’t work in my office, by the way. He owns a separate company that we’re partnering with.) I would dare you, but I won’t because there’s no way you’d win.

It just sucked that I had to sit there and take it, and not have my boss there to get feedback from. Everyone else in the office is going through all their own shit, and of course when I’m feeling like shit I tend to close up and be the listener to everyone else’s problems.

So that was my bad day.

What upsets me most is how easily he can get to me. I keep telling myself, he doesn’t matter, his opinion of me doesn’t matter, it’s not just me who can’t stand him, I’m not blowing this out of proportion. But it still gets to me. Maybe because I’ve never had a “co-worker” (I put that in quotes because he wouldn’t deign to call me a co-worker, he’d call me an employee) who is so abrasive and snarky (and I’ve worked with huge egos in the banking industry) and never apologetic. When I get something right, he never comments on it. It’s only when I do something he deems wrong that he comes out of the woodwork to shit all over me.

On one hand, I know I need a thicker skin and that his comments don’t matter as long as my bosses say I’m doing a good job. And I know I’ve dealt with this shit before, from Q and many others, and have lived through it. But on the other hand, I’m bipolar, and I’m super frickin sensitive and it makes me feel even worse when I’m sitting at my desk trying not to burst out crying. Especially when the first thing I think of is, I should just quit, and the second thing is, It’s not even worth it and I should just die.

It’s really frustrating to go through life with that being one of the “solutions” that comes to mind. Even if I’m not feeling depressed (even though those times are few and far between these days), I still go there, automatically. It fucking sucks. I hate this. I want to scream and shout and punch holes in walls just to get all this emotion out of me. I’m so tired of hiding it every day, pretending everything is fine, and only feeling a release when I get way too drunk and inevitably do something stupid. Which of course ends up making me more depressed the next day.

Fuck.

This fucking sucks shit. Fuck fuck fuck.

Michael Landsberg publicly announced his depression but it wasn’t until the death of his friend and hockey player Wade Belak that he spoke about their struggles together with mental illness. In response to this article Landsberg posted on tsn.com, I wrote him the following email last night.

Dear Michael,

This letter is a little late, but I wanted to tell you how much your post on TSN about Wade Belak meant to me.

I was diagnosed with depression about ten years ago, and suffered from it for years before that. It took a suicide attempt before I was able to get help, mostly because I didn’t think my family or friends would take the depression seriously. Two years after the diagnosis, I was re-diagnosed as bipolar II.

Since then, I’ve been on almost every medication imaginable. I’ve seen numerous psychiatrists, and was hospitalized for a month at CAMH in Toronto. I’ve developed insomnia, further highs and lows at increasingly rapid cycles, and gained, lost, and regained about 30 pounds. My limp, as you expressed it so well, became an amputated leg. It disabled me, if not fully, enough that my life has never been the same.

I’ve done everything I can to work through this. I’ve read books, talked to friends and family more openly, and taken my meds religiously. But nothing helps. It seems that as the years pass, more and more obstacles push the depression into further lows, and the highs are fewer and far between thanks to the mood stabilizers.

My friends are very supportive. Extremely supportive. They’re often the only way I can get through things. My family took longer to open up about my illness, but we’re finally at a point where I can be honest about what I’m feeling and going through, which is amazing. I know I’m blessed to have such amazing support where others find themselves lost in it alone. I don’t take that for granted.

I’ve had my fair share of texts with close friends who know me inside and out, and didn’t hesitate when I replied “Fine” to the “How are you?” question. They accepted my fine, just like you did Wade’s. And I know the outcome was different in my case, but even if they called me out on my “Fine”, there wouldn’t have been much they could have done. I don’t think anyone can pull a suicidal person out of their mindset. I truly hope you don’t blame yourself.

A couple of your lines really struck me.

“People kill themselves when the fear of living another moment outweighs the fear of dying at that moment.”

“Suicide is what happens when the angel of death and the angel of mercy start working together.”

I completely agree with these statements and thought they were very eloquently put. I’ve felt that pain, too many times for my liking. I’m feeling it right now. The fear of living another moment is constantly with me, even when I try my hardest to live my life and be as happy as I can be. I feel like the angel of death and angel of mercy are bickering right now, over what should be done with me, and I’m living in a kind of limbo while I wait for the decision.

***

I believe a big part of the problem of people not getting diagnosed correctly is that they don’t understand the illness. Especially men, who, like you said, see it as a form of weakness. For someone like you – a well-respected sports personality, a real man’s man – to speak out about your struggle and how you felt after Wade’s death is a huge step toward opening up the world of mental illness to the public. I wish I could shake your hand for that.

The only way I can try is through my blog, in which I detail my problems and meds (or problems with meds), my doctors and my support network. I don’t know how much it helps, but I did get through to a woman dealing with depression who decided to do the in-patient program at CAMH that I did. From what I can tell, she doesn’t have any friends to talk to about her problems, and she found comfort in my blog. If no one else ever reads it, it’ll be worth it for her. My friends read it to keep up with how I’m doing, which helps. I can put a post out in cyberland with no immediate reaction, and not have to tell all my friends individually how I’m doing. It’s been a really great experience – my own form of therapy.

***

A week after I was released from the hospital after my big attempt, my parents took me back to the house I shared with three friends at university. My dad wanted to help them understand what had happened and what I was dealing with, so he prepared some information for them. But the most important thing he said was, “Asking a person with depression to ‘snap out of it’ is like asking a person with diabetes to start producing insulin.” It stuck with my friends because, unbeknownst to my dad, one of my roommates was diabetic. I’m not sure it sticks with people in general all the time, but I hope that it will.

And I truly hope your message about your depression and Wade’s will shine a little more light on mental illness – right now it’s just a few candles in a dark room, but with help, we can fill that room with light.

Thank you for opening yourself up to us, and for making me realize that there is hope for the future, even if I don’t always see it.

And I know this doesn’t mean much, since I didn’t know him, but I’m a huge hockey fan, and a bigger Leafs fan – and I thought Wade was great. One of my favourite hockey moments was seeing Wade score after his long drought and the amazing look on his face. You could see his smile on the ice from anywhere, all the time. It’s amazing.

That’s how I’ll remember him, and I know you do too.

If your friendship with Wade is anything like mine with my closest friends, Wade knew you’d be there for him should he need you, but he couldn’t. That’s not your fault. There is no blood on your hands. I hope one day you’ll realize that.

Your friend in depression (and with hope for a future of happiness),

Had a really bad day today. It started with an hour of trying to have a doctor take my friggin blood to check that all the freakin meds in my system and to see how fucked my thyroid has gotten in the last three months. All signs point to pretty fucked. We’ll see what the results turn out.

I got to work an hour late to emails from our newest client, pissed that I’d written something about our product on their Facebook page. Fine, I apologized and removed it, thinking that was that. No, the manager of our partner company proceed to ream me out and forward the email the client sent him in which she called my message “unclassy” and he said he was “very unhappy”. You’d think they’d never made a mistake before. Luckily, my boss was awesome about it, although probably because I started tearing up when I told him what happened. He made a joke, and as he walked away, he mimed “go for a smoke” even though he always tells me not to smoke. That was nice. Later, after we did a really great presentation and I was still pretty sullen, he asked if it was still bothering me. When I said yes, he tried his best to make me realize it was okay and mistakes were bound to happen. That was good.

The rest of the day was pretty much me staring at the computer screen, trying not to cry and not wanting to talk to anyone. I got to leave early to see Dr. A, which was a freakin treat. I told him how I’d been feeling, explained the bad day, and we talked about my meds. Then, to make the day even worse, he said, there’s one more thing we need to discuss, and looked right at my expanding waistline. Lovely. I know he knew already that I was getting pissed off with the weight, but it just irked me the way he brought it up. Anyway, it seems there might be some other meds I can take other than Seroquel that won’t make me gain weight, provided the weight gain isn’t due to my fucked up thyroid. Again, we’ll see what happens with the blood results. Can’t change anything until we get those freakin results back.

I got home and crashed on the couch, but every time I go out for a smoke, I stare at the sky and relive those emails. I’ve been trying to remind myself that it’s not the end of the world. We’re not curing cancer. I’ve made mistakes before and I’ve lived through them, so I can do it again. Dr. A thinks the reason I’m having such a hard time letting go of this one is that I was already depressed before it happened so I’m extra sensitive. I think I’m always extra sensitive, but this time I actually allowed myself to cry.

I don’t know what has to happen to bring myself out of this depression. I had a couple of manic days last week, which was a complete surprise — even Dr. A raised an eyebrow when I mentioned it. At first it was nice, but then I remembered how shitty the crash is afterwards. The cycles are starting again, and I’m scared.

The weekend was really bad, fair enough. But I wanted everyone to know I’m feeling better. Better in the sense of I’m not going to do anything stupid. Still down, but at least I have my work to throw myself into. That’ll do for now.

And here we are again. Once again my world is crashing down around me and I am powerless to stop it. A month ago, the guy I was seeing abruptly told me he just wanted to be friends, while he “figures things out” with his life. Fine. I thought we could actually be friends, but now I know we can’t. I want more. He doesn’t. I guess that’s that. Problem is, he’s integrated into the AIM group now, so I will be seeing him once in a while. I was fine with that before, but today I told him I want to cut contact. I figured I’d probably stay away from the AIM things for a while. But our mutual friend is part of a comedy night on Thursday so I’ll have to see him.

I guess that doesn’t sound as bad as it does to me. Whatever.

Anyway, on top of all that, I got way too drunk on Friday and have been paying the price all weekend. Luckily it’s a long weekend and I don’t have to worry about work tomorrow. Oh, right, I finally started that job, about a month ago. It’s going really well. Actually, it’s the only thing in my life right now that’s keeping me relatively sane.

Today I spent the whole day crying and avoiding phone calls. I stared at my bottles of meds for about an hour, wondering if I had the nerve to take them all. I haven’t been this depressed in a really long time. Thoughts of suicide, thoughts of wanting to get out of my head as quickly as possible, leave everything behind. If I wasn’t such a coward, I would have jumped off the balcony already.

I can’t take this anymore. I know if I tell my doctor about this, he’ll freak out about my meds not working and tell me I need ECT. He’s starting to wonder if I’m medication resistant and if I am, ECT is the only way to go. It scares the shit out of me.

I feel like I’ll never get to the point that I want to be at in my life. I know these are old worries, but they’re starting to be my breaking point. I’ll never find someone who’ll love me. I’ll never get married. I’ll never have children.

I’ll never find someone who’ll love me.

Why does that have to be so difficult for me? Why, when I finally find a great guy who understand the illness, does he suddenly decide he just wants to be friends? What is it about me that is so unloveable?

I can’t take it anymore.

And I don’t want to talk to anyone, not even my best friends. I’m hiding away, and being coccooned in my apartment is the only thing that I can handle right now.

I just want to stop feeling like this. Why is that so god damn hard?

The past week has been a bit up and down. The other night — Thursday or Friday — I couldn’t sleep and was suddenly overcome with irritability. I thrashed around in my bed for a while before getting up and pacing the apartment. I thought about writing something here, but I couldn’t focus enough. What I wanted to do was scream really loudly, but of course, that wouldn’t have done anything but scare the cat. Eventually, the feeling passed and I was able to go to sleep, but the past couple of days have been a mix of those feelings and a bit of depression. It might be because I still haven’t heard back about the job I apparently have (they keep postponing me signing the acceptance letter until they’re ready for me to start) or because — being as impatient as I am — I haven’t seen any results from the week of eating well and exercising.

I know, I know — it takes time to see results. But like I said, I’m impatient.

Anyway, that was my week. Before today, I lost two pounds in water weight (did you know you can get rid of water weight by drinking more water? Shocking, I know, but it’s true!) and then today my body was ravaged by a silent but quick stomach flu that took off another couple of pounds. But believe me, this is not how I wanted to lose the weight. I feel like my insides have been ripped out.

Getting better though, so moving on.

Things are still going well with the guy, which is good. I haven’t displayed my real highs or lows in front of him yet, but not because I’m afraid to, just hasn’t happened.

Sleep is harder and harder to get. Let me rephrase that — I can’t fall asleep easily. Even with the Seroquel, it takes hours and hours to fall asleep. Once I fall asleep, it’s either nightmares or just waking up every hour. I don’t get into a good groove until well after I should have gotten up and started my day. This will have to change soon, if I get this job.

Other than that, all that’s changed is I’m smoking more, which I like to pretend is offset by the fact that I’m working out. I know, wishful thinking.

Later this week I’m volunteering for a charity golf event whose proceeds go to mental health awareness. I’m so honoured to be a part of it, not only because it’s obviously a great cause but because it’s in memory of my friend’s brother, who committed suicide 11 or 12 years ago at age 17. The idea that I’ve known this family for years and haven’t helped at their events or donated to the charity they set up in his honour makes me sad.  It’s a great charity and an amazing family. I’ll report back on Thursday.

Once again, I’ve left it too long since I’ve written here. Again, mostly because nothing much has been going on. In terms of mental health, that is. In the rest of my life, I’m close to landing a great new job and I’ve started seeing a great new guy. But this isn’t the place for those challenges. All I’ll say is that the guy is a friend of my AIM friend, so he’s aware of mental health issues because of her, and he’s so far the opposite of the last guy I dated, in that he understands the medications. Phew!

In terms of mental health, I’ve been doing pretty well. Still having some ups and downs, but that’s normal, and nothing too far in either direction to be worried (well, maybe a couple of lows here and there that have kept me from doing things, but not nearly as bad as previously). Dr. A increased my anti-depressant a few weeks ago, and that seems to be working out well. (60 mg of Cipralex, if you’re interested.)

I also got an email from a reader of the blog that just absolutely made my day. She was looking into the AIM program, as she’s thinking about doing it, and wanted some more information. She said she can’t talk to many people about her illness and was happy to find my blog to see that she’s not the only one dealing with these things. Like I said, made my day. I was so happy she found the blog informative and helpful. We’ve exchanged a few emails — both of us venting to each other and me giving her as much info about AIM as possible.

It made me realize that I should write more about the program. Because I think it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done for my mental health. Not even the actual program so much as the people I met there. Being able to talk to people like me, learn from each other, and lean on each other — those were the main things I took from AIM. Don’t get me wrong, the actual program is fantastic. But the support group I’ve gotten out of it is the best thing.   It’s probably the reason I haven’t been venting here — now I have a group of people I see once a week where I can say everything I’m dealing with and have them support me, listen to me, give me advice or just a hug (and lots of laughs!). It’s amazing. These people are quickly becoming some of the most important people in my life. They’ll never know how much they mean to me (unless they read this!). And I love being able to listen to them, help them if I can, or just be there to give a hug. They’re taking the place of the blog!

So I’m going to try to stop that from happening, and keep posting here. But for now, I can say that I’m as close to happy as I’ve been in a long time. I have my amazing friends who have been there for me from the beginning and a new set of friends who understand me in a way few others can. And I have a great new guy who makes me feel beautiful even when I’m not, and who’s quickly becoming very important to me.

It’s a nice feeling.

I just came in from a cigarette and laid down on the floor of my apartment for almost an hour. Sasha very kindly kept me company, although I think she was just hoping for more belly rubs. She got them.

I’m not entirely sure why I laid on the floor; I’ve never done that before. I think I just needed a new perspective. I’ve been pretty much cooped up in my apartment since last Tuesday. Looking at the same things day in and day out can get tiresome. I’ve tried sitting in every possible place on the couch and armchair. I’ve paced the apartment, stood in one spot for ages, sat on the balcony for hours. Anything but lie in bed. Because once I lay down, I can’t get out. The Seroquel (200 mg) only does so much. Once I eventually fall asleep, I wake up numerous times throughout the night. Then, when it’s time to get up, I fall into a proper sleep and stay in bed until late afternoon. Yesterday I didn’t get out of bed until 5 pm. That wasn’t the first time this week.

So far it’s 1:30 am and I took my Seroquel at midnight. Yes, I realize I should have taken it earlier, but I only finished working at 10:30, so I wanted some time to relax. Anyway, the point is, it takes forever to kick in. And once it does, so do the cravings — for anything salty or sweet, preferably both, one after the other. Add that to the reasons I’m gaining weight like a pregnant lady.

The real problem though, is that even after cutting my drinking waaaaay back (as in, one drink in the last seven days), I’m still depressed. Very depressed.

I spent today working, and somehow also managed to make plans for the rest of the week. I just hope I can manage to keep them all. I’m seeing Dr. A on Tuesday and Barbara Streisand on Thursday — those double up weeks are always hard. Especially since I confessed my drinking issues to Barbara and now she’s trying to get me into all these addictions groups and such.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe, the future is pressing on me so hard. I feel like I can just barely make it through the day to day stuff, but when it comes to the future, I’m either blank or scared shitless. All the things I think I want seem so far away, so hard to achieve. I feel like I’ll never be able to hold it together long enough to get what I want. Sometimes it just feel so pointless. Sometimes the only thing I can do is think about ending it.

While I was smoking earlier, moments before I turned into a character from a Radiohead video, I went through all the plans I’d made for the week and how I could break them all without anyone getting mad at me. By the time I got up off the floor, I realized that I had to at least try to keep the plans. Obviously a week of me by myself isn’t doing me any good.

And to top it all off, I absolutely can’t stop picking at my thumbs. I’ve tried everything — bandages, applying cream constantly, friggin’ wearing gloves at all times. I can’t stop myself.

Oh, no wait, this is the topper — this morning I had two very lucid, audible hallucinations. The first was whispering on my right side (I was in bed, about half an hour after waking up) and the second was on my left, a very animalistic sound that scared me so much I literally hid under my covers. I’m actually a little afraid to go to sleep in case it happens again. As one of my AIM friends said, I shouldn’t freak out about it until after I talk to my doctor, so I’m trying to do that, but it’s hard not to get freaked out if it happens again. It was funny, when it happened, I lay in bed listening to the whispering, and I actually pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, and checked my radio and phone to make sure it wasn’t from that. The animal sound came from the side of the bed the closet is on, so either there’s something living in there and it’s angry, or I did really hear something.

It’s after 2 now, so I should probably go to bed. I’m having lunch with an AIM friend and then I should probably finish my grocery list. Maybe I’ll even have the energy for a workout. Who knows. I might not be able to get out of bed and will end up not doing any of that.

I just need to vent a little.

Since I left AIM, things have slowly been going downhill. The past week was full of outings with friends and meetings with AIM friends. However, these outings and meetings all managed to turn into ways for me to get drunk. Sometimes I did things I wasn’t proud of and other times I only had a couple of drinks. Either way, I spent the week chasing a high. That’s what I figured out later — I’ve been chasing my highs, which I’m no longer getting thanks to the meds. The meds that should be also taking away the depressions, but aren’t. It’s frustrating when the only thing I liked about my illness is taken away, and the bad part of the illness is worsened.

So I’ve been drinking to find that high. The week before last, I got inordinately drunk and found the bad high — which got me kicked out of the pub for being “confrontational.” The other times I found the good high — I was happy, fun to be around (I hope), felt attractive, etc. It was the way I like to be…. followed by the depression that inevitably follows a night of drinking.

I should clarify that these drunk episodes were never by myself, although I am worried by the fact that I need to drink to enjoy the evening.

Anyway, that’s one thing — chasing the highs.

The other is that the depressions are getting worse. I probably shouldn’t judge right now, since those depressions were worsened by the drinking, but I’ve been having suicidal thoughts again — even though my lithium level was raised, and as I’ve mentioned before, lithium’s claim to fame is that it controls the suicidal thoughts. I have yet to bring it up with my psychiatrist because I can’t get an appointment with him until two weeks from now.

Finally, I’ve been having panic attacks, something that never really afflicted me, except when I was on Wellbutrin. On Friday I went to the ballet with three friends. We went for dinner before the show, and I was unhappy with the meal I ordered, to the point that I figured I wouldn’t be able to eat it. My friends urged me to return it and get something else, saying it wasn’t a big deal. But I was so anxious about it that they had to coach me for almost 10 minutes before I was able to spit out a lie about not knowing there was bacon on the dish and I “didn’t eat bacon.” Of all the lies to tell.

Of course, it was no big deal and I got a meal that I thoroughly enjoyed, but I kept thinking the waiter was going to throw something at me or something ridiculous and my heart was pounding the rest of the time we spent at the restaurant.

When we got to the ballet, we made our way to our seats, higher up in the balcony. Super steep steps and an already panic-ridden me was not a good combo and I was very anxious when we sat down. I tried to downplay it, doing some deep breathing, etc., but it was really hard to sit there and to come and go for the intermissions.

On top of all that, I was just not feeling myself all day. My friend came over with her baby before we went to drop off the baby and the car at her husband’s office. On the way there, I kept stumbling over my words, getting things mixed up (like my left and right), and a few other things that bothered me then but now I can’t remember because I’m about to fall into a Seroquel slumber. Anyway, suffice it to say that I was not myself and I didn’t know why or how to fix it. I got so upset at myself and just wanted to turn around and go home. And to top it off, my clothes were super tight cause I’ve gained about 15 pounds since I went into AIM and I felt like a heffer standing next to my beautiful, thin friends (two of which had children recently). I’m still feeling like shit about my weight, but I’m going to take steps to fix that, and I’ve already started, by eating better.

So that’s my venting for the day. I’m basically feeling like crap for no reason (and cause I’m fat — even though my friends will say I’m not, 15 pounds is a lot!) and I don’t know what to do about it other than controlling my drinking and trying to see people at least once a day for a little while.