Fortunately, I have wonderful friends who have a multitude of skills and I did not have to spend my birthday (last Friday) in a soft room while wearing a canvas jacket that encourages the wearer to hug herself for hours on end. It was that scary where I was.
Even better, I have friends who were able to recognize and name the symptoms of hormone-related mood swings.
Well, no shit. THAT's what that was. Holy cow.
I remembered, eventually, that a dear friend had told me of her bout with menopausal mood swings. She was sober, healthy, with a loving husband, good job, nice home, secure in every sense, only one day, for no reason that she could see, she spent the whole day in suicidal ideations and the darkest, deepest depressive state of her life. Fortunately, her sponsor recognized what was going on, got her to an ob/gyn the next day and got some hormone replacement therapy to even things out until her body was through that particular fit of age-related adjustments.
That memory and the fact that it explained a lot of what I have been going through helped take some of the pressure off over the weekend, but it did not change the fact that I still was depressed, still was exhausted, still was not sleeping worth a damn and still moved through my days like a zombie. Some friends came over for a birthday party on Sunday and that was fun, but there were times when it felt like the party was going on around me but I was not a part of it. A couple people noticed and asked if I was ok, which was wonderful, but really, I wasn't ok. I was hurting. Only a party is not the place to break down and sob and go all weird, so I soldiered through. Later in the evening, when the crowd thinned out, I could relax enough to cry, and I did.
This week I spent some time arranging an appointment with an ob/gyn (next week) and gathering information and resources. I need to find a therapist, certainly, and I need to find the right combination of supplements and/or hormones to even this stuff out. Sleeping at night would really be nice, but I am not willing to take sleep aids. That stuff is too scary for me. I played with over the counter sleepy stuff as a kid, I dare not dabble with it now.
So, that's where I am chemically.
Emotionally, things are still pretty cattywumpus. My sweetheart did call last week, and she ended up being the person I was able to reach out to when things got darkest, and that means a lot. I realized over the weekend that I had been trying to demand and push and direct and get pushy and that stuff was causing a bunch of friction and none of it helped my head or my heart. Today, I am less inclined to push. I am less inclined to try to run the show. I have some stuff of my own to work on, and that has been made very clear to me. So I must work on it. I will take this relationship as it evolves and roll with it, instead of taking it as I'd like it to be and run with it. Two very different philosophies. Two very different approaches to things. Would I still like to go out to where she is and sweep her off her feet? Absolutely. Am I willing to risk either one of our mental health to do it? Not a chance. This will grow or this will wither as it is supposed to, whether I fuss with it or not. My best bet is to take each day as it comes and not try to force anything. It goes against how I usually operate, but after last week, I'm willing to try. I don't want to be there again. It was awful.
So today I am better than I was. I am still not great. I am still not operating at 100% capacity, but I am better. I have a plan and a map and support and a contingency plan. I am more inclined to do serious self-care these days than I have been, and that's nice. Updates will come as I have them.
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