I know I’ve not been doing too many posts as of late, and I will blame nursing school for that. As much as I love learning, I am about ready to be done so I can read a book that isn’t related to medicine; my brain hurts and just wants to sleep. Even creating something artistic is exhausting, but I’m not going to get a break for a while. I’ll keep fairly cryptic about that until after finals for this semester, but let’s just say that the past three months have been rough on me.

Like … I’m fine? But I’m also overwhelmed and have a lot of thoughts regarding my worth and my need to try at anything anymore. It’s hard to be positive about your strengths when literally every single thing you do seems to be wrong, or at best, short-sighted or poorly planned. Take my desire to create a little garden this year: well, first we had unexpected frosts, and then a lot of rain, and then another frost; by the time it got warm enough for me to actually start things, I just had no motivation and couldn’t even figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I did plant some herbs, a banana pepper plant, and a strawberry bush in some pots, but I really wanted to create this whole herb garden on the side of the house, with mullein, lemon balm, lamb’s ear, goldenrod, etc.

I’m also having to reframe my life for myself because it 100% is not what I thought it was going to be. I mean, I’ve never had any idea of how my life was going to be, but I’d always assumed things would just fall into place and … be? I suppose, like my sister said, I could look at things from the positive side: how exciting it must be to have nothing tying me down, which is appealing to me on an elemental level; I could be anywhere, doing whatever I want. But I think the fear is that I will always be here: wanting but not moving because I don’t know how.

I thought I was improving with therapy and meds – I am, but I feel like there are plenty of deficits that I need to make up, obviously – but with setbacks and frustrations, I’m just discouraged and wondering if there isn’t more that’s wrong with me. Or maybe my bipolar diagnosis didn’t go far enough? I don’t know. But I’m feeling a depressive phase coming on, and I don’t really know how to handle it. It’s the first I’ve had since I started feeling the effects of my medications, so it’s a bit of uncharted territory. I have an appointment with my psych NP coming up, so I’ll be discussing it with her to see if maybe she has any ideas as to what’s going on. I just truly hate it here.

But I can’t just wait for more of the same, wishing that maybe things will be better tomorrow. What can I do today to ensure that tomorrow will be an improvement? I honestly don’t know, but I think I’m going to go play around with some watercolors. Art almost always gets my mood up.