October 25th, 2023

Image by Moondance from Pixabay

I don’t know how I was able to function at work today with having to help five different trainees, by myself, at the same time. Sometimes trainees would have to wait up to a half-hour for me to come help them with their online training modules and tests.

I have only gotten two hours of sleep within a 48-hour period or longer by now. The manic episode I had on Monday really triggered my insomnia. My mania wouldn’t even allow my nighttime meds to take effect. It’s like being manic was fighting off my pills and wouldn’t allow them to make me drowsy enough to sleep.

You would think that I would be ready to take my night, night nuggets now, at 6:15 p.m., and get under my covers and finally get a full night’s rest, but I think from being overly tired I am still having a hard time trying to sleep.

At work, around noon, I was helping this lady with her online tests and I started to nod off while trying to take the test for her. I had to excuse myself and stand up, get some fresh air, and smoke a cigarette so that I could try to wake up more. That helped a little bit but I was still feeling so exhausted that my vision even got blurry.

It was getting extremely hard for me to fill out forms that needed to be completed because while I was looking at the forms and trying to fill them out, I would start to see double and I had to look away from the paper for a moment to try to refocus my vision.

After work, I ended up getting a random burst of energy that has yet to subside. Maybe my insomnia was trying to get me to go three days with limited sleep. One more day of no sleep and I would have to take a day off of work yet again when I am trying my hardest to maintain a better work attendance record. I just have two more days to go until I get my weekend off.

I requested a week off of work from November 8th to November 15th and I would return on the 16th. My one brother is getting his tonsils out and they are also going to be trying to widen his throat so that he can breathe better at night since he has sleep apnea just like me. My mom will be staying in Fleetwood at his house to help him out after his surgery and she plans on staying there for a week.

The reason I requested off for my brother’s surgery is that I wouldn’t have a ride to and from work that week. Plus, my mom wants me to stay with her at my brother’s house for extra help. I would be happier about my week away from work if I had PTO or vacation time to use but the company I work for doesn’t have any paid days off. There is no PTO, sick, or vacation time.

I don’t really want to stay at my brother’s house for an entire week because I don’t feel comfortable sleeping there. I even get anxious when I go to his house to visit him.

I would have already started my online class at GCU (Grand Canyon University) by the time I will be staying at my brother’s so I would definitely have to bring my laptop and a notebook with me to complete my class assignments. I love my laptop because it runs great (it was a gift from my ex) but it has to stay plugged in since the battery doesn’t hold a charge anymore.

I wish I could stay right at home for the week I am off of work because my bedroom is my safe haven and my sanctuary. Since my mom asked me to stay with her to help her out, I feel like I can’t say no to that after everything my mom has done, and still does, for me. I don’t know how much I would actually be able to help while there since I plan on focusing on my class assignments while I have a break from work.

GCU gives you access to like two weeks’ worth of assignments so that you have the option to complete certain assignments in advance. That is something I would like to do while at my brother’s house.

I talked to my boss about me starting school this coming Monday and I admitted that I have tried various colleges and I usually end up dropping out after the first semester if I did poorly in a class. I would just give up so easily. My boss told me to stick with it and not to get discouraged if I got a bad grade or failed a class. She told me to just keep going and try to do my best in school.

Then, my boss asked me what kind of job I could get after I graduated and if I would be able to take on a behavioral specialist position and I said yes. My boss seemed pleased with that. I don’t really want to be a behavioral specialist for a company like mine. I really want to be a mental health counselor or therapist. I want to help people who suffer from mental health disorders achieve a better life and understanding of how to cope with their emotions better.

I’ve helped some people by creating this mental health blog along with some of the 20k people in the My Bipolar Mind Support Group I created on Facebook, so why not try to make a career out of it. It would be something that I would love to do. I would like to eventually have a job that I love doing instead of working in random places where I am just trying to survive each workday without losing my mind in the process.

It could take me up to five years to complete school in order to graduate and get my degree. I am only taking one class at a time so that I don’t get too overwhelmed. That’s why it could take me up to five years to meet the requirements to graduate. Every time I tried to further my education in the past, I would be taking multiple classes at the same time. So, with only having to focus on one class at a time, I might do better this time around and not get as discouraged.

I should probably take my meds sometime soon so that I could be asleep by 9 p.m Once I do lay down, I hope that Jasper doesn’t bother me to be petted. Normally when he wants to be petted, his vicious side comes out because he wants to be petted but also be left alone at the same time. Those are the times I usually end up getting scratched or bitten.

Once I go to bed, I’m just going to want to curl up under my comforter, try to slow my racing mind, and go to sleep. When I am getting myself in a comfortable position to sleep in, my one hand would be under the comforter and my other hand would be under my pillow. Jasper doesn’t like it when I don’t have my hands out to pet him. That’s when he sometimes tries to attack my face.

I actually haven’t smoked my medical marijuana since Sunday. That is odd for me because normally I would smoke up daily after work and before bed. Something must be wrong with me, right? I’m thinking maybe I didn’t have the urge to smoke up since I was manic for nearly two days and I get this kind of high off of that. I feel too exhausted to smoke flower at this moment and I don’t want to deal with the coughing since I have a wheeze going on today. I don’t even know if my lungs would let me smoke up tonight.

I skipped eating dinner and breakfast three days in a row now. I am hoping that when I take my meds and the trazodone starts to kick in it will make me hungry since I haven’t been eating much so far this week. I’m not intentionally limiting my eating, I just haven’t had an appetite for the past three days. That was most likely due to the manic episodes I had on Monday and Tuesday.

Too bad I wasted most of my mania blogging when I should have used the extra energy I had to clean my room up. It’s a mess right now and I haven’t had the motivation to clean. I have piles of clean clothing all over my room since I haven’t put my clothes where they belong for some time now.

I haven’t really been socializing with my family for the past four days. Sunday, I stayed in my room and basically slept the whole day away. On Monday, Tuesday, and today, I literally set my bags down downstairs when I get home from work, get what I need out of my purse, and head straight up to my room without emerging until after my family is all asleep. I haven’t even bothered going downstairs unless I need to get another drink or another pack of cigarettes.

I finally journaled for the first time last night since back in April when I was still a store manager for Turkey Hill. I journaled from 11 something at night until about 4:15 a.m. Once I finished journaling, I finally went to bed, and by the time I was able to fall asleep, there were only two hours left to sleep until my alarm was set to go off at 7 a.m. I felt like a zombie this morning. I didn’t want to leave my bed but I had to since I couldn’t miss work again.

My stomach was a little upset this morning after I started drinking my cup of coffee which was probably caused by my not eating much for a few days. For me, it gets hard to drink coffee on an empty stomach because I will get heartburn, a sour stomach, or my GERD will act up. It’s probably from the acidity in the coffee.

By 11 a.m. today, I started to get really hungry and that’s when my co-worker ordered me Chinese food. I got the pepper steak lunch special with white rice, an eggroll, and an extra container of the brown sauce that they used to make the pepper streak. I like to mix the container of brown sauce with the white rice because it tastes so damn good from the place we ordered from.

Since I am trying to fill my Saturdays up with random activities so that I don’t have the opportunity to miss my ex since I blocked him, I have a visiting nurse coming to give me a check-up at home and the nurse will show up anywhere between 8 a.m. and noon this coming Saturday. Then after that, my mom and I might go to my cousins’ house to give her some of the crystals and such that my mom got her.

In 10 minutes it will be 9 p.m. So much for being asleep by 9. I’ll probably take my meds around 10 p.m. and pray that they take effect tonight so that I don’t over sleep and put myself at risk for waking up and feeling like I didn’t get any rest at all. When I sleep too long, I end up feeling even more tired like I still need some more sleep after I wake up.

My body aches and needs time to rest so that I am not in so much pain in the morning. I haven’t allowed my body to get the rest it needs since Sunday. I feel like everything is hurting right now in my body. The two hours I slept wasn’t enough for my body to feel rejuvenated. Mentally, I feel like I am still in my mid-teens to my early 20s. Physically, I feel like I am in my 80s and I am only 37.

I need to come up with some new topics to write about on this blog. I do have a list of ideas in my Microsft To-Do app but I am not sure how I feel about them or if I even want to write about the topic ideas I jotted down. I have completed 23 of the topic ideas I came up with. It really doesn’t feel like I have written that many articles on here since I came up with the topics but apparently I have.

Every time I ask my readers what they would like to learn more about or if anyone has any topic ideas they’d like to share with me, no one ever posts a comment about what they have in mind so I gave up asking. I am very close to hitting 600 blog posts on here. With that many posts, it’s hard for me to remember every topic I wrote about and I don’t have the patience to go through every post I’ve ever created.

To some people, 600 posts might seem like a lot for a blog, but it’s a milestone for me. Just like I am nearing 600 followers on here and 11k followers on the Facebook page for My Bipolar Mind and all my posts I write automatically get posted to Facebook and Tumblr. I don’t even remember my login information for Tumblr. I had even more followers on the blog’s Twitter (X or whatever you want to call it these days) page. But WordPress stopped posting to Twitter. Elon Musk ruined Twitter. It’s just not the same anymore.

I decided to take my nighttime meds now and it is just after 9:30 p.m. I hope my meds kick in by 10 p.m. so that I can get roughly 8 to 9 hours of sleep because I really need it.

Now, I am hoping that my Trazodone doesn’t make me hungry since my family is most likely in bed by now or at least getting ready to go to bed and I don’t want to ruffle through the fridge and make noise when my mom and brother both sleep downstairs. I don’t want to risk waking them up because I know they need their sleep too. If anything, I’ll get something light to eat tomorrow morning from Wawa and eat then. What’s a little hunger, right?

I only ate once today and that was my lunch at work. I didn’t even eat the egg bites I bought from Wawa. They are sitting in the fridge at work so I don’t even know if it would still be good. Maybe to be on the safe side, I’ll just buy fresh egg bites tomorrow.

It is hard for me to eat almost everything in the morning. I don’t know why, but eating and having to chew the food makes me feel nauseous like I am going to vomit. I noticed that I can only tolerate bananas or yogurt in the morning. On rare occasions, I am able to eat the egg bites in the morning when it’s been almost two hours since I woke up. Once a few hours have passed since I woke up, I can finally get myself to eat something. Around 10 to 11 a.m. I am usually able to finally reheat the egg bites and eat them.

Well, I am going to get ready for bed. I apologize for always writing such lengthy personal posts, but everyone should be used to that by now. Have a wonderful night and sweet dreams.

Much Love.

Samantha ❤