Jekyll

I have begun a hardcopy journal again. This is something I haven't done for many years, and this kind of medium is probably the reason, but I'm using it for the cracked-pavement-honesty that I can't bear to have linger in the cyberworld for an undetermined amount of time.
Things that I know about myself, the unclear-label condition of my mind, and how I need to face these issues/how they affect my relationship.

Today I had a job interview. The first in a long time that was any kind of work I know I could do. I will know within the week whether I'll be offered the job, and I shall have to knuckle out if it is indeed right for me. Even if not, it feels good just to have the maybe.

I have been feeling very unlike myself for quite a while, and I've been trying to reconnect with that sense of 'self'. Doing things the 'old' me would  (journals, job interviews, performing onstage) has felt very akin to sliding on a long-lost but well loved pair of old favourite shoes. Relief.
The sheer relief to feel like me.

I am looking into the possibility that my anxiety is not a cause, but an effect, of my upside down mind lately. Right now my doctor and I are working on finding out if Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) may also be a factor. The more I learn about it, the more I see similarities in my mother's traits. I used to think she was just a little nuts as well as having nutty hormones, but I'm learning (both via this research, and in my physiology classes) that hormones can very well be the culprits that drives one nutty. These things deserve way more respect than we initially imagine.

They mess with my state of Jekyll.

When we were first discussing it with a new counsellor (since the last blog post re: my counsellor, I have not returned to her, instead my partner and I are seeing someone else together), I told them that once the clouds of the condition have passed and I am released from these personality-changing imbalances, I feel just that: released.

The cool, soothing wave of cold water that floods over me, like a shining, silver, fish that has had that searing hook removed from its mouth, and handed back out of the burning, dry air... slid back into the stream.

That is the feeling of finally waking up after a week or more, and finally feeling back in my own skin. It lasts only a moment, but it has built up... making the short transition something to savour as much as can be done.

Until then, I simply watch from the shadows, as the Hulk smashes and yells and sets fire to the forest around me. I barely choke on the smoke. I'm cloaked in apathy, straining against a chain as a tiny sliver of me tries to scream and tell the Animal to stop. I see my hands but they are not my hands, I hear my words but they are not mine, I feel the anger but I know that way back here in the shadows I am not angry. I try to plead with the Monster, and tell it to stop, to look at who you are hurting but it shouts back at me that it does not care. It douses me in apathy again and numbs me down as best it can until only the innermost core of me mourns.

And this is the unfair part. Between the rampage of the Hulk, and sweet release of the Silver Fish, that innermost core - the one most like myself, with my values and my beliefs - has her shackles removed and is finally allowed to see and feel and touch the damage. She dips her hands into the embers left behind and cries like her soul is ripped out. As she picks up the remains and tries to mend all that's broken - and it can take some time... at any point Mr Hyde can re-erupt - she slowly turns into the Fish, and hopes that the stream is not far away.

Then that morning comes. A brief release as the Silver Fish swims away. And Dr. Jekyll is back.


This is me every other lunar.
At this stage there's not much else I can do but to know what's coming and prepare for it, stay as conscious as I can, and plod forward.