Where am I now?

Revolution from dissolution, hypnotizing and demoralizing
Pressure of the future, too much for today
How many hours will I let slip away
Before I realize existing and living
Are not the same
Are not the same
      -MSMR

I'm not exactly sure where I am right now. Many places, I guess. I'm stuck, I know that much. Stuck and annoyed and frustrated. Frustrated because I'm coming back to square one.

Last Wednesday marked two weeks of being on the Zyprexa. Two weeks of subdued, controlled mania. Two weeks of "stability".

Two weeks of steady cognitive decline.

Yep. Cognitive decline. Noticeable cognitive decline. It started innocent enough. Shortened attention span, being a little more easily distracted. Nothing big, nothing to write home about.

But then it became insidious, permeating everything I do. My focus was gone. I couldn't concentrate. I was very easily distracted. Everything changed.

On Monday, at work, I was going over discharge instructions with a patient - something I have done literally thousands of times. I stopped mid sentence. I had no clue what I had just said. Or what I was doing. Or what I needed to do. Luckily I'm awesome and I recovered and carried on, the patients none the wiser of my folly.

But that's not like me.

And then it happened again. And my mind would wander off as I was speaking and then I would stop, a bit confused. I couldn't focus on my charting. If there were distractions I was done. I'd have to check over everything I had just entered.

I felt overwhelmed more easily. Things that would have never flustered me were now an issue.

This past week, my first week back at work, was difficult. Because of the above. What's wrong with me?

I noticed my typing changing. I leave letters out of words or switch them around. Those damn red squiggly lines that spell check loves? Almost every word. I have to go back an recheck everything. And now? Now I leave motherfucking WORDS out of sentences.

WORDS people. Who the fuck forgets to write words? While thinking they're there? Me. That's who *points to self*.

I can't work like this. I can't. So I made a decision: no more Zyprexa. Wednesday night was the first night I didn't take it. Thursday morning my cognition was a little better. But I happened to tell two friends who made me take the one I had in my purse for "breakthrough" mania. And I was worse in the afternoon.

So Thursday night and last night I didn't take it. I'm focusing a little better, my typing is a little better.

But my mood? My mood is now not better. It would seem I'm going back to being in a mixed episode. Yesterday at work I started the day hypomanic. Then I got irritable. Then I spent almost 20 minutes in the back room sobbing, crying the ugly cry, while filled with crippling despair and hopelessness. I was depressed for awhile, then down, then irritable, then hypomanic.

Today I've been cycling between feeling down and being irritable. Right now, as I write this, I want to hide. I want to be alone, in bed, under the covers, crying. It's what I want to do so badly but I can't. J and A are here and we're going to decorate our tree soon. It should be a happy time. It should be fun and I just want to hide away and not exist and not deal with the shit anymore.

This is so frustrating, you have no idea. I can take the Zyprexa and be stable mood wise but lose essential cognitive functioning (not to mention the insanely increased appetite and sudden appearance of about 5000 pimples). Or I can not take it and have my brain power but be mixed and unstable again.

Why the FUCK can't I just be okay??? Just okay. That's all I want. Just to be stable and okay. But I can't. I can't have that. I can't just be okay.

Why can't I just be okay? Please. . . 

I'm scared about what's going on, about these two choices I have in front of me. My choice, for now, is to not take the Zyprexa. I'm done with it. I can't do it. But this starts, again, the search for a different med to replace it, lest I want the mixed episode to worsen.

I'm not okay with either of these choices. I'm not okay with any of this. I'm not okay . . .

Please . . .