So here I sit, on my birthday, and instead of reading the comic books Blake got me, I’ve been up since about 4am thinking about Jenny McCarthy. Last week I read the Time magazine article, “The Autism Debate: Who’s Afraid of Jenny McCarthy?“, which spawned a lot of other articles, namely one at Bad Astrology called “Jenny McCarthy still thinks vaccines cause autism“. From that article, I started following links to other articles on Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaccine crusade and near the end of my link hopping, I found an old article that said Jenny McCarthy believed her son to be a “Crystal Child” and herself to be an “Indigo Mom”. I even found an article she herself wrote about this prior to her son being diagnosed as having autism (which he may or may not have had all along).

Anyway, this blog post is not about Jenny McCarthy or autism or whether or not vaccines are harmful. This blog post is about how I am medicated versus non-medicated and the crystal/indigo thing was the catalyst. Longtime readers will remember that about 6 or 7 years ago, I was convinced that I was an “indigo child” and had a deep belief in a lot of metaphysical things, such as psychics and reiki. And I wrote about these things. A lot. And now, looking back at all of that, it’s embarrassing because I was clearly manic during this period of my life, although I wouldn’t know what the word “manic” even meant until many many years later.

This weekend Blake and I talked at great length about me medicated versus non-medicated because really, I don’t see much of a difference. I no longer have “million dollar ideas” though, so there’s one difference, and I don’t get as obsessed about random things as I used to, but other than that, I couldn’t really tell you any other differences. But then Blake reminded me that there was a time for about 3 months where all I did was sit on the couch and cry and I don’t do that any more. I don’t have suicidal thoughts as often or as persistently as I did before. I’m more rational, logical. My thinking is clearer, I’m more focused.

Apparently what I’m going through right now is really common in psychiatric patients, where they’ve been medicated for a long time and they feel normal so they forget how bad things were before and that’s when they tend to go off their meds, thinking they don’t need them anymore. I’m not going to do that, but I can understand how this all works because while I can identify that I’ve had bipolar disorder my whole life and could chart my peaks and valleys on a piece of paper from about age 5 to present, I do forget what it feels like to be suicidally depressed and psychotically happy. I understand that I experienced these things, but I think it’s similar to how women forget the pain of childbirth or something. The memories are distant and dull and only make sense when someone else tells you how it used to be. It’s a very strange thing.

Sometimes I miss the old days, I have to admit. I think I was more fun when I was manic, definitely more interesting than I am now. The depression I’m glad to be rid of, though.

I dunno, as I said, it’s a strange thing. I don’t really know where I’m going with this post, nowhere I suppose, it’s just been what’s on my mind over the weekend and I wanted to throw it out there so I could stop thinking about it.