#turtlequeb

It’s wild just how much medication can help people.

Without the Lamictal that I took for three years, I have reverted into severe depression, and it has been debilitating.

It’s like I WAS an adult with full control (lol, mostly) over my mental and physical capacities, but now that I'm off the medication, I have reverted to a child, a preteen, a helpless human with no ability to regulate my own emotions, or even influence my own behaviors.

For the last three years, I was finally able to utilize my intellect, my experience, and my wisdom, while dealing with stressful situations.

Now I feel like I'm 13 again, lost, desperately clinging to distractions to keep from dying inside, from falling apart, or disappearing.

But it turns out that the whole reason for going off of the medication might have been avoided.

During these treasured three years of mental stability, I experienced symptoms that negatively impacted my physical, and mental health. I went to doctor after doctor for this unusual issue, only to be told that there was nothing to be done.

Until I finally got the referral to a specialist last week, and they immediately diagnosed the actual issue, and said that the other concern was false.

So all of this suffering could have been avoided if one of the 10+ primary care or ER doctors I've begged for help these last 3 years would have said "you know what, this is an unusual and persistent situation, why don't I refer you to a specialist," instead of "this condition you're describing is incurable, take these pills, there's nothing else we can do" (even though it is NOT NORMAL to have these issues consistently for 3 years).

The new specialist caught me dissociating after diagnosing the issue in under five minutes. When I asked about the new med they were prescribing, they apologized that I hadn't been given the opportunity to take it before.

I now have to wait 3 months on this (non psychiatric) med to see if those symptoms will be finally be helped, but now that means I have to/get to retry the mood stabilizer, or something else since Lithium, Concerta, and Hydroxyzine are clearly not enough to keep me functioning.

I fucking advocate for myself y'all, but I was misdiagnosed, and kept getting sent away in tears. Now I'm spacey, dissociated. Still too scared and hurt to hope that this new thing will help.

I'm tired.

All I want to do is write. I will literally take whatever pill lets me get back to my preferred writing schedule. Gimme.

I'm trying not to let guilt pile up about not connecting, about not being able to write like I could when I wasn't severely depressed. Logic brain and depresso brain don't mix though, and my pile of unanswered comments and unread fics here and on Ao3 have been making me sad.

But it's just because I love this lil world, and I WANT to be here. I plan to try Lamictal again, or something else in about a month since I want to give the new med some time to observe any side effects.

For now, my mood stabilizer of choice is endless reaction videos of therapists and rappers reacting to Hi Ren, The Hunger, and Chalk Outlines. Ren's music fucking gets into me when nothing else can, and I'm trying TRYING to remember the lines that sit me down when I start to spiral.

It's helping me write to see him use his pain and trauma to create absolute beauty.

This is a giant ramble, but one more thing, I swear!

When I began writing for our Numbers Girl, and even when we got into her backstory, and trauma things started coming up, I didn't think about it like this. Since I've been diagnosed and medicated for 3 years, my ability to manage most of my psychological symptoms felt amazing. Those conditions went from being disabling to manageable and it was freeing. Writing about dissociation and trauma was easy because I know it all too well, it was satisfying because I wish I had found media to relate to when I was deep in it, and it was healing, because I was on the other side of it.

Now I'm back there. I did not mean to write a reader character dealing with mental health trauma while in the middle of it myself.

Hopefully I can hop back on some meds in a few weeks, and have the physical and mental symptoms I've been struggling with ease up.

I'm a trying.

It just made me sad laugh a couple of times while writing our Numbers Girl going through it recently, because I am now right there with her instead of reaching my hand down the deep, dark hole to help her climb into the light.

But we'll get through it together, and having such wonderful, supportive people cheering on my healing and writing is incredible. I can't begin to describe how grateful I am to all of you, and how excited I am to get back into this amazing community.

Just gotta go easy. Soften. Relax.

Thank you for reading 🙏🏼