Cleolinda Jones (cleolinda) wrote,
Cleolinda Jones

Quick updates

Finally recovering from my probably convention-induced sinus infection. Even after I fought off a tickle of a cough that only lasted a day or two, I felt weirdly clammy, not-feverish, and exhausted for another whole week. I mean, honestly, I was still that sick six weeks after Dragon Con 2014, so I'll take it. There's also some personal stuff going on--I'm used to a lot of creepy on the internet, but experiencing some of it IRL this month kind of rattled me, I think.

@cleolinda: [...] I may take a Quiet Day [last week]. Feel like the walls are closing in on me a bit.

(Window Guy returned last week. I briefly overheard him rattling on about rail guns and "safeguarding your homestead" to my stepfather as I left the house for my quarterly psych visit/med check. My stepfather later texted my mom, "HE WILL NOT SHUT UP, HELP." We have all agreed not to have him back.)

@cleolinda: So I think that, plus coming home from a few weird incidents at Dragon Con, to a week of home repair guys, has overwhelmed me a little.

(Gutter repair guys. They were fine, but it was still unnerving to have them hanging around outside my second-story window for a week.)

I'll get into those in the Dragon Con writeup I've nearly finished (last year's "writeup" ended up being a tangent in a Hannibal recap, so I feel like I'm doing pretty good). Short version, if you didn't see my tweets at the time--I wasn't threatened or assaulted or anything; the one incident that got physical was a wild elevator almost-fight that I was merely present for. I view the other two incidents as "negligibly weird" and "inconveniently weird," respectively. I think what really happened last week was, when you throw in "inappropriately talky doomsday prepper who WON'T LEAVE OUR HOUSE" and multiple new/exciting weirdnesses, it turned into a "more than the sum of its parts" kind of weight. Because no individual incident was anything to worry about. But this is what people mean when they talk about the weight of microaggressions (usually in the context of enduring far more than this), I guess--a collective phantom heaviness, not a singular thing you can confront or resolve. (Have you heard my new ambient noise prog-rock supergroup, The Phantom Heaviness Collective?) So I just started feeling... crowded.

The Stealth Moth Invasion is not helping with that sensation, to be honest. I was away traveling/convening for the better part of six days, and then I was sick for--what, too? My vigilance slipped. I look around, and suddenly it's MOTH COCOONS EVERYWHERE.

@cleolinda: "We thought you needed some dust so we got you some dust for your dust" -- our moths, apparently

My living space has always been dusty, even at the best of times--remarkably so--but the dust has taken on a different quality since the moths arrived. A... clumpy... quality. Like... tiny dust-bunny tumbleweeds. Look, I don't want to know if it's moth vomit or excreta or SHUT UP, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW, I JUST WANT TO GET RID OF IT. (Have you heard my new grunge-goth quintet, Moth Vomit?) Apparently there is also a Moth Quota, because when I swept a small colony of cocoons down (I cannot tell you how grossed out I am by that sentence, forget actually confronting the reality of it), their numbers almost entirely renewed within a day or two. Whereas, if you leave them alone, they increase at a slower rate (said the moth anthropologist. The mothropologist, if you will). It reminds me a lot of when my stepfather buzzcuts our jessamine vines (STOP THAT) and they shoot forth massive Angry Jasmine regrowth tendrils within the week. You realize what this means, right? Either the moths are a sentient collective monitoring their own numbers... or there is a Queen Moth who is REALLY, REALLY PISSED OFF.

(Queen Moth is the lead singer of the Phantom Heaviness Collective, not Moth Vomit. I know, I was surprised as well.)

@cleolinda: What they don't know is that now that my sister's moved out I have inherited an AIR FILTER (*THUNDERCLAP*)

I mean, she moved out in early June, but pre-PCOS treatment, I was a listless apathetic mess. Like, just in life generally. So.


And then my amazing $47 vacuum cleaner promptly fell apart. My understanding is that you have to work a bit to get the hose attachment really thoroughly screwed in, and it'll be solid once I achieve that.

But back to the PCOS treatment regimen, which at this point--on top of what I take for bipolar II--is Spironolactone, Sprintec, a prescription-strength vitamin D supplement, and (new, from my psych, yet to be filled) a folic acid supplement to help... process serotonin? The first three really, really helped keep my energy up at the con, I think--I would hit the "no more will to con" point, but then, after a bottle of water and some crackers, would return in about half an hour to a much higher health/energy baseline than I had been used to (I started taking the vitamin D the morning I left). The first few days I was sick, I had too much mental energy to sleep. Previously, I had thought of my bipolar cycle as largely a neutral state of existence with dips into depression and leaps into hypomania or mania. By comparison, that now seems like I was depressed and listless all the time, with the occasional tumble into even deeper depression; my "normal" now feels like my old cheerful-productive hypomanic state, which rarely came around--albeit calmer and more even. Like, other than the second week of being sick, it's how I feel all the time now. That just blows my mind. I had no idea that I could function at this level in the long term. Now, I was practically giddy the first couple of days I was taking Spiro by itself, and that did wear off; it's possible that these are temporary benefits that will level off. Plus, we're creeping toward the Dark Time of Year, and all bets may be off once we hit the SAD winter doldrums. It's still just... I've been getting used to all this for the better part of a month, I've started a second cycle on Sprintec, two or three weeks on vitamin D feel pretty consistent... I don't know what to make of it.

In fact, it reminds me a lot of my sophomore year of college, after I'd spent a summer getting used to Zoloft and therapy, and I started discovering an entirely different person. Or rather, mostly the same person, but with some character traits that were the complete opposite of how I was used to functioning. Maybe part of it was just growing up; you can probably attribute a lot of sarcastic, shy, resentful insecurity just to being a young teenager. But it was like I had this weight lifted off me by antidepressants, and I discovered an unexpected confidence and enthusiasm, a "let's put on a show" initiative that led to me proposing and running poetry readings in our little college coffee shop. I absolutely would not say that medication is for everyone, but it made, and continues to make, a huge different for me. I met the the person I am today that year. Now that I have all this new energy, both physical and mental, I'm wondering what else I don't know about myself, and who else I'm about to meet.

Anyway, that's more Hella Deep than I intended to get. I recorded two fairly substantial podcasts last week, both a Dragon Con-themed Made of Fail with Emily and a report on the Hannibal-related activities + finale and series discussion with the Matter of Taste guys; the latter for sure should go up this week, I think. (There's two more things I would not have been able to fathom doing at age thirteen: public speaking without a second thought and running my mouth on multiple podcasts.) Now that I'm shaking off the sinus infection, I'm going to finish the convention writeup and then get back to recapping "Contorno," I guess. I have some other things I'd like to work into my (very loose) posting schedule, but I've always hoped to do multiple things and then not had the energy to follow through. We'll have to see if things work differently now.
Tags: health, mental health, pcos
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