I’ve been pushed to my limits. My mood swings are as wild as the storm that came over my town last night. A storm I went walking in. I swung on the swing in the playground as wind howled around me, everything feeling surreal. There is a pattern to my moods. At night I am a different person. I get angry, I get reckless. I try to recruit people to do stupid things with. The other night I texted my friend who lives an hour away asking if he wanted to go to the beach. It was 1am. I would have caught a taxi to his place but he was asleep. At night once the world’s retired I often dance around the study. I get all this energy and I enjoy it. I live off the moon, and my emotions are powerful. I don’t need drugs or alcohol to get high. The other night I found myself listening to feel-good songs like Aqua, a blast from the past. I posted the song “Doctor Jones” to Facebook. The nights feel like a ride. After my big night I fall asleep at sunrise and sleep all day. When I wake up I feel horrible, like I’m hung over or something.

Depression flips into mania and mania flips into depression. Last night Aqua morphed into Linkin Park. I found myself listening to a suicide playlist on YouTube. Someone had turned a poem called “A cutter’s lullaby” into a video which was set against the song “Valentine’s Day”. I felt like sitting in the garage leaving the car engine running.

I did a little research into rapid cycling bipolar. There seems to be a rare type of bipolar where mood shifts happen within 24 hours (called “ultra-ultra-rapid cycling”). Shifts between mania and depression can even happen within hours. There is some controversy over the diagnosis. Some consider it a mixed episode, and others say ultra rapid cycling is more indicative of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). However with BPD something usually happens to trigger the mood swing, such as a relationship.

Some research has found a link between being a night owl (delayed sleep phase syndrome) and bipolar. Apparently light therapy is huge in rapid cycling bipolar. Someone online recommended no bright lights four hours before bed, especially screens. I am very guilty of this as I sit on the computer all night. I’m addicted to it and am not sure it’s something I can change.

Putting labels aside, I feel like all the anger and the partying is a cover up for how miserable I really feel. The world overwhelms me and my own body overwhelms me. My nerves are totally fucked. I get scared of going to bed at night because there’s nothing to distract me from my overdose symptoms, such as my pounding pulse. I am also tormented by a buzzing sensation on my head, which started when I was given an antidepressant called Effexor many years ago. I was on the starting dose for only a few weeks. I took the “medicine” every day thinking it was healing me, not knowing that it was wrecking my brain. I also became manic and, unlike the short bouts of mania I get at night (which are technically more hypomania), this episode became really scary. I had a panic attack and started feeling like no one else really existed, they were just a hallucination, an extension of my own mind, and I was completely alone in the universe. I am basically dealing with psychiatric trauma. I probably would have been able to heal without the drugs I were given. I feel like shaving my long hair off hoping, somehow, it will fix the buzzing on my scalp which feels like someone is pulling my hair. I’m also going to try numbing the area with clove oil.

I wanted to rid myself of all drugs. But I have started taking some meds again, desperate for some relief from the lows and the distress I feel at night. I took temazepam again the other night. I was trying to stay away from it because it was one of the drugs I overdosed on. But it really helped me the other night and even helped with the overdose symptoms. Today I took dexamphetamine again to try and lift my mood a bit. Strangely, it tends to have a different impact on me each time I take it. Today I felt better for about 15 minutes but then crashed again. I was depressed and grumpy. The day just got worse and worse. I saw my mum and helped her move a heavy bed base some jerk had dumped outside her house. We started carrying it along the road to someone who had booked a hard rubbish collection. But I forgot to wear my earmuffs and got overwhelmed by all the traffic. I then banged by foot against the metal corner of the bed base. It was extremely painful and was exactly where I injured my foot at badminton. This was the last straw, and I broke down in front of my mum and the people passing by. I don’t usually cry, but I shed a few tears today. Everything is just so fucking hard. I really hope my foot recovers. It’s been vibrating a bit, like it did with the first injury. It doesn’t take much to injure my nerves it seems. I worry that the vibration will be forever, as I’m used to shitty things never ending. My nervous system just doesn’t seem to recover anymore.

It’s my somatic issues that are distressing me the most now. I have seen GPs, psychiatrists, neurologists, physiotherapists, Chinese medicine practitioners, reiki healers, you name it, and no body’s been able to help me. I think about fleeing the city, but I am too depressed to move.  I’m going to get an MRI done, which will probably show how fucked up my brain is. I both want it to show something so people will finally stop saying my problems are all in my head, and am scared of what it will show.