I waited eleven hours in the emergency room again. I spent twelve days in the hospital again. It’s been six years since the last time. In some ways it felt like yesterday, others a lifetime ago. A strange sense of nostalgia flouts around the place, present in the sounds, the smells, and how it feels to curl up underneath hospital sheets again.

It was a very straightforward and peaceful stay. Some long overdue changes were made to my medications.

For anyone interested in these changes:

-I am tapering off lamotrigine and escitalopram

-My lithium dose was lowered and switched to the extended release variety.

-I switched from regular to extended release seroquel and increased the dose.

-I started taking propranolol to combat my lithium tremors

Things are going pretty smoothly with these adjustments. I am getting some dizzy spells, but no major issues otherwise. It may be a little early to tell but I think there have been some improvements to my mood.

Now, about the title of this blog. I’ve spent the past years doing enough to stay afloat, not much more. I stayed afloat mainly for the family around me, rarely for myself. But I am learning that I can’t live like that. Maybe nobody can. I can’t keep moving forward for somebody else while wearing my heavy cloak of self hatred. I keep getting caught up in the mud and tangled in the vines of sickness that hang down around me. To put it simply, I can’t live for you, I’ve tried. I have to do it for myself, or else I run myself into the ground, and wonder if it’s time to quit.

It can be terrifying. The idea of doing it for myself this time. The idea of building myself up, rather than tearing myself down. Trying to build belief that I can be somebody other than the doomed character that I’ve believed myself to be. The outrageous idea that it is okay for me to feel okay. I am wrapped up in so many levels of poison and trauma that it feels wrong to be anything other than sick. Anything other than a lingering tragedy.

At this point in my life. It is easy to be sick, to write my story through the eyes of a failure.

I need to change the ink, flip the script. And work on healing myself until I don’t feel like an imposter in the world that you live in. Because I belong in it too. This time, I’m doing it for myself.