It has been a long time since my last entry.  Good news is I am officially off the Zoloft.....the bad news is that I am officially off the Zoloft.  I had 4 days and nights of insomnia followed by another 4 days of mania followed by a very deep depression.  I finally got to see my psychiatrist and he upped the Wellbutrin like we had discussed and he said I should be feeling the effects in 3 or 4 days.  So I hung on just a few days more AND........nothing.  Not a damn bit of difference.  I don't understand!  Usually when we up it I do better then I find a dose I can live on and life goes on per usual....not perfect but manageable.  I guess the joke is on me.  Some might say that the holidays can be a trigger and I can see why they might say that.  I am a wife and mother of 3 so I am all about making Christmas as perfect for them as possible and my best is never good enough so imagine my disappointment when I am not even close to my best at the moment.  My husband said everything went off without a hitch and yet I can find many things that could have been better......if I had been better.  In the past couple of weeks I have found myself on the bathroom floor crying hysterically just because I don't want to feel this way anymore.....it's not fair.  If I wasn't sick then I could do everything a perfect mother would do to make Christmas perfect for my family.  But if I stop and think about it....who wants perfection, really.  Perfection must be boring, being a supermom must be fulfilling but how challenging is it. These  moms who can fly all over town getting kids to their appropriate places on time without forgetting and have amazing plans for dinner and pay just enough attention to their husband so he has his needs met....let them walk a day in my 3 inch stilettos and see how it feels.  Try and deal with the hundreds of thoughts that pass through my head about failure and falling short and not being enough and they deserve better and etc.  Try having to talk yourself off an invisible ledge everyday, sometimes many times a day just to get through it.  The bipolar in me will never be close to perfect but if I can show my kids that everytime I get knocked down by this hell of a disease, I get back up and wait for more....because we all know, there is always more.  But we get back up to show the ones we love that they are worth it.  Don't get me wrong, it has been HELL trying to get back up everyday, to get out of bed every day, to fall asleep at night knowing I will have to deal with another day in the morning but I do it because I choose to.  Sometimes it makes me physically ill but I do it.  My head still tells me I am inadequate, I fall short, they deserve better and guess what, they do but while they want me around, I will be here, fighting everyday to survive, maybe even do a little bit better than survival but no promises.  I hope my rantings help you understand that you are not even close to alone out there and I am always here if you want to talk, just leave me a comment.  Love you all!!!!

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WITHDRAWAL

So as I stated earlier, I am in the process of trying to get off some of my meds.  I have officially stopped taking the Zoloft and am now in the wonderful world of withdrawal.  Now I have been off and on many, many medications and I have never really experienced any withdrawal symptoms.  Looking back now I see maybe it's because while I was getting of a medication I was also getting onto something else.  This time my doctor didn't increase  and dosage of my current meds or add a new one.  Well I have stopped taking the pills and didn't bother reading the withdrawal symptoms, thinking that I just wouldn't have any.  BOY WAS I WRONG!!!  I found out it would take about 2 weeks for it to leave my system.  I was expecting a little discomfort but was not prepared for what I was about to experience.  Week one was insomnia.  That was awful!!  The anxiety every night about when or whether or not I would sleep and how much I would get was terrifying.  So let's play this out- I'm not sleeping which can cause me to go manic, I have anxiety every night that fuels the insomnia which fuels the mania.  Then I am hit with week two and crippling depression.  See I have lost one of my antidepressants and my doctor wanted to make sure it was gone before upping my other one.  He was afraid it would cause me to go into a manic phase.  Guess he didn't have to worry about that, the insomnia did that for me.  My week two depression also corresponded with the week my husband was out of town so I am dealing with depression alone and trying to take care of my three kids.  This has been one of the hardest weeks but I survived.  You do what  you have to for your kids.  I won't lie, there were a few suicidal moments but I hung on.  The moral of all this is to just hold on.  When things look like you just can't deal, just hold on.  There could be hope around the corner.  I see my psychiatrist this week so hopefully he will tinker with my meds to give me hope for a change.  Everyone just hang in there.