Testing... Testing...

Today is my 5th day with my new med. I am deeply frightened of how happy I've become. It was almost an overnight change, which makes everything more frightening, because I've learned from my life that when I'm happy I make mistakes - big ones, small ones, some invisible to anyone else but me. Somehow the mistakes are more bearable if I'm not happy, but when I make them when I'm happy the crash starts, dropping first to the place where I have enough misery to do something terrible and enough energy left to do it, and then into blankness then into utter indifference to everything.

Happiness is tinged with guilt and fear for me and I don't know yet if I can ever unhook those things. Inside I'm vigilantly watching my hands moving, afraid they will do something they shouldn't. If I laugh, I frantically search everyone's face around me in case I laughed at something I shouldn't and hurt them. I'm trying to not say anything until I've thought through it twice, and if I do say something without thinking through it, I search everyone's faces again.

No, I'm just now in a constant mode of looking at people, wondering when I will do something wrong, because I will. And there is a wise part me that knows this is going to be okay, and I will be forgiven. But what I don't know at this moment is whether or not this calm peaceful, but still deliciously giggly sometimes, happiness will turn into what it always does. Or will I somehow get through it without the normal destruction?

One of the most horrible things about the dynamic of the crash that happens when you are manic is that in the middle of the storm you have just had unleashed in your mind is how at the very moment you likely have done something wrong, you become the most vulnerable and in the most need of support, often from the very people you have just hurt. That starts a vicious cycle of guilt like you wouldn't believe.

So I'm scared... and happy...

But it's a different kind of scared, and still... happy!

^_^