I wish I could write consistently on one aspect of mental health, instead of my experience as a whole, but I am at the whim of my chemistry. I would love to tackle a single strain to completion. There are days I feel like continuing a thought or feeling from a previous entry, just to be blindsided by the tiresome rat race that is my brain. It would seem that the main theme perhaps is the unpredictability and fragility of my circumstance. The chemical ups and downs, ins and outs, twists and turns at a moment's notice. I cannot tell you to what degree that is the bipolar aspect of my affliction, but it definitely tires me out. The sun, moon, and stars seem to have more control over the state of my mind than I do.

My last entry was quite some time ago. I struggle with longer entries, because I rarely have the desire or staying power to delve deeper into something, when I could just spurt out an entry and release quickly. About every other day I have sat down and not felt that I had the ability to write, mostly because I wouldn't know what to say. Spewing worthless bloggage to no real purpose would probably make me feel worse.

It is difficult at times to decide whether writing these entries provide a beneficial cathartic release, or if they simply cause my mind to mull and ruminate on things I feel cannot change. There are those days where writing sends me off on a detrimental mental tangent. Perhaps I should try making these entries a bit longer and working through to a resolution.

Here is the trouble with these longer entries:

1. I kind of feel like I am writing an essay for school. The fact that it feels like an obligation takes away the joy.
2. There is truly no end or resolution. My hope is to bring up a subject, tackle it, conquer it, and walk away with a smile on my face. This is fairly unrealistic, but it resides over my thoughts.
3. Even if I "conquer" a subject, I feel that there is no real correlation to my life. If, theoretically, I figured out the root of every aspect of my mental disease and talked it through to conclusion, there is a snowball's chance in hell that it equates to or affects that actual resolution.

I understand that there are several flaws in those feelings, but they are still there. My university provides therapy to a certain extent for students, and I have been seeing a wonderful therapist there for a few months now. The number of sessions per year is limiting, so we mostly focus on keeping me on the proper mental track from killing myself, but I do wish we had time for more. She recommended I find a therapist outside of school, so that I could be seen as often as needed. However, between my packed schedule and limited budget, I would rather stay with a therapist that sees eye to eye with me. Finding another therapist that I jive with is too much trouble.

The last week I have battled sickness. Nothing major, but some sort of flu that generally wiped my energy. In addition, I have felt like a ping pong ball bouncing between mental exhaustion, low grade depression, and serious anxiety. I don't really know why anxiety came back onto the scene, but it seems to be setting up shop. School is probably the largest part. School has provided significant struggles and damaged my self esteem. I am not doing as well as I expected, especially considering the effort level I am putting in. But life is all about adapting, which I am still working on.

Getting through the next three weeks is going to be key. I have some large projects, several tests, and finals looming. This all adds up to serious stress and the crappy part of it is that I really cannot predict how my mind is going to react to the stress. Even when I was not in control, there was some solace in knowing that I knew when my body would respond to a stressor and in what fashion. Even though I was not in control, I felt a level of it through foresight.

Day by day. For now, the sun rises and brings with it what it will. Until I am back in control, I have to take what is given to me.