Guess What?

I slept the whole night last night.  No waking up at two and three in the morning, no feelings of anxiety or panic, no horrible nightmares.  I slept the whole night and woke up on my own about twenty minutes before my alarm went off.

I feel great.

This is it.  I am finally getting my life under control again.  I feel like I can take on the world.  It's a very satisfying feeling.
Dog sitting this weekend is exciting.  I swear, that dog is crazy.  This morning she kept wanting to go outside.  So we'd go outside and all she would do was eat the rabbit crap.  So then we'd go back inside.  Repeat the cycle not five minutes later.  Crazy dog.

I've been watching "Say Yes to the Dress" while I'm over there.  I think I am addicted to the show.  I love it.  Now, I'm not a wedding crazy person or anything, but I love the dresses.  (I have an idea of what I want when the time comes for me to get married.  Crazy, yes, but fun anyway.)  And watching the brides - wow.  So many of them break down into tears when they're trying on the dresses. 

When the time comes for me to get married, I want to be a beautiful bride. 

Ok, enough of that.  Moving on.

Today is a loaded day filled with homework, cleaning, writing, and knitting.  Oh, and dog sitting. 

Bring it on world.  I'm ready.

~Meaghan

Today is a Good Day.

I think my new medicine is kicking in.  Things didn't bother me as much at school as they would have two weeks ago.  I feelt like I am starting to be able to handle life again.

My friend Emily and I went over to Baja Fresh for lunch today.  It was the first time I went over there and it was pretty good.  We had a good time talking.  You know, girl time.  Plus the food was tasty.

Of course, when I got back to school I discovered that it was free food day.  That's my luck most of the time where free food is concerned.  But the tacos were totally worth it.

I didn't have to give my psychology presentation today.  We ran out of time.  The beauty of this is that I can now add to my powerpoint to make it even better.  I'm pretty happy about that.

Oh, and I met a boy at school who seems to value me for my intellect.  It's kind of nice being seen and accepted for who I am.  He's a nice, funny, odd guy, too.  And he reads.  I would have never gotten to known him if he wasn't in my group for speech class.  It makes my day a little happier.

And on that note, I'm off to the chaos of the rest of my Tuesday.

Until we meet again, dear readers.

~Meaghan

Where Did the Weekend Go?

I'm so used to my weekends being long and drawn out.  This one broke the trend and flew by - I honestly can't figure out where it went or what I did, actually.  I think I underestimated my time for homework; as it stands, I still have things due tomorrow that aren't ready to go.

Eh. That's life for you.

Which reminds me.  I need to register for the fall semester today.  Registering can be a hassle, but for the most part it's fairly straight forward.  The real fun is thinking about the possibilities of the new semester.  You know, what you could learn, who you could meet, what you could do.  It's exciting.

I'm still not feeling entirely well.  I think this medicine is going to be good as soon as my body catches up with it.  I don't feel as depressed or upset as I did last week.  The real test is going to be school tomorrow.  Last week I left early on Tuesday because of a panic attack and on Thursday I felt like the walls were caving in.  (Over hearing people talk about you doesn't help any either.)

If I can make it through tomorrow without having panic attacks, fear, stress, anxiety, or tears then I will be happy.  I can do it.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

On a different note, my group presentation is going to be awesome.  The two people in my group are fantastic; there will be references to zombies (thank you, informative speech, for being the best thing I've done in public speaking thus far) and lots of making fun of celebrities.  I can't wait.

I'm also back to working out.  So far, it's been brutal.  But I'm trying to see the ending goals: being a size tweleve again, doing a 5K with my sister next year, and just generally being healthy again.  It keeps me going.  And I'm not doing it alone, either - a few classmates are doing it with me for a psychology project.  Plus my mom's doing it as well.

As for where everything else is...well.  I applied for a job over at Borders and I'm going to apply for one over at Home Depot.  My poetry is the best it's been in a long time.  So it's not all bad.  It just seems like it at times.

And now I need to eat some lunch.  I'll write later, my dear readers.

~Meaghan

Yay Coffee.

I made the mistake of drinking a McDonald's vanilla coffee today.  I do fine with mochas for the most part and I can handle regular coffee.  Kind of.  But I think the amount of sugar and caffiene found in the coffee that I consumed today was over the top.

I'm not saying it wasn't good, because it was amazing and I would drink it again in a heartbeat.  But I have such a case of the jitters.  Oh my goodness.  I mean, this is why I don't drink Mountain Dew, folks.  The jitters are bad news.

In other news, I started my new medication today.  Provided everything goes well, this should prove to work to my advantage.  As long as I can still write good poetry (the stuff from this week has been amazing, you have no idea) and as long as I can function without feeling like the walls are caving in, then it should be good.  I'm ready for some positive results.

I'm hoping that this week at school will be better than last week.  I'm still waiting to see if the boy with the braces is going to talk to me.  Maybe I blew that one out of the water.  Maybe I missed my window.  But I'm trying to be hopeful. 

I'm also hopeful that, if people mock me for reading, I won't hear it.  (I overheard some things last week; it's not even really worth my time to mention it here.) And that if I fail at my presentations, I fail with style.  Honestly, the worst part of things is over.  It should all be downhill from here.

And now I have to go finish my paper for this week. Joy.

~Meaghan

It's Not Mono!

Yay!  That makes me very happy.  And my liver enzymes are going back down to where they are supposed to be. 

That is the good news.

Now, here's the interesting/bad news.

The doctor won't put me back on the same medicine I was on.  In fact, she doesn't want to put me back on anything to regulate me because it's killing my liver.  That's all well and good except for the fact that I had a near panic attack at school this week and I've barely held it together.

So I told her that.  And she's decided to try an anti-anxiety pill to see if that's going to help.   It's not necessarily because I'm dealing with depression or anxiety she said, but more or less because my stupid PMS is so bad.  It's one of those things that they prescribe women who deal with it like I do.

I'm just curious as to why there doesn't seem to be middle ground for me.  I feel a lot better today than I have all week, which is definitly an improvement.  But I can't seem to stay in the good vibes for very long.  This week was a prime example of that.

I want to feel things cause that's where all my good writing comes from, but I think there comes a time when you feel too much and become overwhelmed.  I don't know how to regulate that out.

So what I'm going to do is give the medicine a whirl and see if it'll help keep me from panicing at school for the next three weeks.  I'm also doing a thing for psychology that requires me to work out every day for the next four weeks.  My thinking is that I will be able to stop taking the medicine once I get through school and get regulated from the exercise. 

I better not be able to lose my ability to write.  That's the one thing I'm concerned about.  I want to do poetry for the rest of my life.  If there is no feeling, there is no writing. 

We will see how it goes.

~Meaghan

The Way My Brain Works

It's kind of like on endless loop, I'm discovering.

Prime example for you guys:

I have a presentation and paper due this week in my psychology class.  It's the easiest thing: find three case studies about your disorder of choice, summarize the abstracts in a paper due Tuesday, and create two to three slides to present to the class on Tuesday.  Easy peasy.

So naturally, I've been putting it off.  The truth is, it didn't seem that pressing until now.  I thought about it.  I decided how I wanted it to go down.  My disorder of choice - anxiety - has tons of stuff out there; I casually went down that aisle of the bookstore yesterday just for fun.  Basically, I have it under control.

My brain didn't agree and it let me know.

I had this dream about school last night.  It wasn't a happy dream, like the one I had Thursday night wehre the nice side of school was emphasised.  Oh no.  This was one where I was trying to give my presentation in front of the class and completely and totally failed at it.  My notes were messy, my slides were wrong, and the teacher ended up asking me to sit down and shut up.  I woke up nearly panicky.

That is how my brain works.

So today I did my presentation homework for Tuesday.  It took me just over an hour.  I think my brain and unconciousness just doesn't like the idea of me slacking off.  Bombing my last presentation didn't help either.  And the truth is, I suffer from my own anxiety problems.

See, readers, that's part of why I chose the topic of anxiety to explore further.  Depression was too dark for where I've been; I see enough of OCD when my sister methodically makes sure everything is in even numbers.  Eating disorders scare me.  Multiple personalities bother me.

But anxiety I can handle.  I'm already dealing with my own so much better.  When I first started school, I had to be at class an hour before it started.  I had this fear that I would be late or that I would get lost in the school; my palms would sometimes sweat.  I didn't stack my classes really close together because I wasn't sure I would be able to switch classes quickly enough.

Now, most of my classes are within fifteen minute incriments with a break halfway through my day.  I can get to class as late as ten minutes before hand without feeling panicky.  Granted, if I'm late I won't go and I still get nervous when instructors run over.  But it's a lot better than it was and in effect, I'm feeling a lot better health wise than I used to.

It is interesting to see studies on anxiety.  One I found that I really like and did my slides on is about yoga.  Apparently yoga helps your body create more GABA, which is an acid that helps lower the feelings of depression and anxiety.  I have a book of yoga moves around somewhere; I think I might start doing them again.

Prayer has also helped me a lot.  I know I probably sound like some pious prick, but I can assure you that's not the case.  It's just one of those things that I've found to help me calm down - it's like having a conversation with someone who's always listening and always interesting.  It forces me to slow down, too, and actually see the forest, not just the tree.

Knitting is also a good controller for me.  It gives me something to do with my hands that's productive.  I find that while I'm knitting, I can sort out what I'm feeling and compartmentalize it a bit.  It's helpful as long as I don't over analyze; that's never a good thing to do.  And making something - a sweater, a hat, a scarf, etc. - is really satisfying, too.

But anyway.  Back to where we started here.  My brain is weird, and so I have to appease it so that I can sleep without having endless nightmares about things like school or my old job (oh yeah, I still dream about Bagel Hell when I'm stressed...).  It is a cycle.

Off to the next thing, I suppose.

Until we meet again.

~Meaghan