I know the year isn’t so new anymore, but
I’m just building up the motivation to write this now…
I ended last year badly, spending the end
of November until mid-December in hospital and then after being home for six
days I took an overdose of Stilnox, had a night in Emergency, got sectioned and
admitted to the public psych ward only to be discharged after about two hours
because my psychiatrist arranged for me to have a private admission instead. I
then spent 10 days in the private hospital I used to go to, including Christmas
day. I was given 12 hours leave for Christmas day, so at least I got to spend
it with my Mum and brother. I’ve actually been pretty good since leaving
hospital, with the exception of some nightmares and anxiety I’d say things are
going well.
So a new year begins and my life remains
pretty much the same. Instead of weekly 30-minute appointments with my
psychiatrist I’m having twice-weekly 45-minute appointments with the intention
of practicing schema therapy during those times. I’m not going to explain what
schema therapy is because I don’t have a strong grasp on it my self, if you’re
curious a simple Google search will help. I have few childhood memories and
these are important for schema work, I’m worried I’m just going to unintentionally
make things up. I have a lot of false memories from looking at photos, I look
at it and think I remember the moment but I’m just inventing something from
what the photo looks like.
I’ve started the painful task of reducing
my medication. I’m thinking very slowly and can’t comprehend or remember well;
the likely culprits being Neulactil and Stilnox. Last Monday night I took
one-and-a-half Stilnox instead of the usual two and kept that up for the whole
week. Last night I cut down to just one and had a very interrupted night of
rest, still I’ll do it again tonight and see how I go. I’m going to reduce
Neulactil too but not until my next hospital admission, last time I tried I
became very suicidal very quickly so my DR wants to wait until I’m in a safe environment.
I hope by going through the pain of reducing, with an aim to ending the use of
these two meds I’ll get back the use of my mind.
I’ve started work on a novel, well just
character development so far, and I’m terrified. Even whilst reading I can’t
follow a plot. I’m reading Sense and
Sensibility for the first time at the moment and I’ve had to look up
characters and check how they relate to each other because I forget where they
came from and why they matter to the story. If reading is so hard I can’t
imagine how I’m going to keep track of the plot of something I’m writing and
successfully make it interesting. I guess just keep a lot of notes. I’m working
on the characters first. When writing in the past I’ve made solid characters
and then kind of thrown them in a situation together to see what happens. My
main character in this novel will be alone most of the time but there will be
scenes from her past and the future with others in them.
Maybe those of you reading this can ask me
when you see me how the writing’s going, and keep me accountable. I’m scared of
getting confused by it, of writing something awful and of just giving up when I
need something productive to do with my life; I’m not up to working and I’ve
studied (a little) writing so why not give it a try.
