April's Brain Journal

me: opens lorien legacies tag



me: remembers when the entire fandom was pretty much just this kind of mindless, gross character hate wall-to-wall, usually with ableism and fatphobia aplenty thrown in

it's like, the dumbest, most sigh-worthy bullshit, but also there's a reason i am defensive of my son

also jesus will these people at least get a better sense of humor to go with their idiot hatescreeching, seriously

 

Spoiler: med records

started taking lamotrigine late wednesday night at 25mg doses, have kept up every day since. slept like a rock the first couple days taking it around midnight--slept right through my alarm multiple times, in fact, which is Unprecedented for me, especially having trained myself over years to wake up instantly whenever i hear the alarm go off; might become a concern on days with early shifts--and then started having fractured, extremely unsatisfying sleep that left me feeling like i hadn't slept at all. delayed last night's dose to this morning at 7:20; still tired, because i only got like four hours of sleep because i have an early shift and make good choices, but slept like a rock again and didn't wake up with that cold, pukey, staticky all-nighter feeling. think i'm gonna keep taking it in the morning.

also i swear to god if my skin doesn't stop doing weird shit and giving me stevens-johnson scares. no rash, just dry skin on hands and sudden acne in places where i don't usually get it. uuuugggghghg i hate blackheads so much and now they're popping up all over

 

when ur hyperfixating and trying really really really hard not to annoy everyone

 

been struggling a lot with gaslighting at work and with the aftermath in general of long-term gaslighting, intentional or not, and my extreme difficulty and discomfort just Trusting people when they say 'no, that pattern you're recognizing really doesn't mean anything, i promise,' and with articulating what would actually help

...and then rowan's response to 'my paranoia is acting up really badly in response to this pattern i'm seeing, help,' was, instead of

'you're just imagining things, i promise,'

'....oh, i didn't realize that was happening.'

which is quite frankly the very best response i could ask for in cases like this, because even if the reasoning my brain is supplying for why a thing i'm seeing is happening is false, acknowledging that the thing that i'm noticing is happening is Actually Validating without feeding the paranoia by either agreeing with it or telling me i can't trust my own perception of reality at all

in other news my boyfriend is very good and i love them

 

i'm glad it helped. i honestly wasn't paying much attention to my responses and i'm glad you pointed the thing out

 

minds and bodies, as it turns out, have a lot of selfcare needs, wtf

 

i mean i knew this! i am just continually boggled by it every time it hits me that of course i feel less than optimal, i haven't showered in days, or that a need for attention is something i Have and actually need to budget around and take care of

like ???????

 

Spoiler: meds recordkeeping

two weeks on 25mg lamotrigine daily, dose goes up to 50mg tomorrow, only missed one day so far (i think? i legitimately don't remember if i just dreamed that i took it or not and i didn't want to risk it). so far so good.

 

my whole brain feels like a cramp today and i'm not sure what to do to rest it besides taking a break from lioden. come on, brain, i know you're overstimulated but i got responsibilities and some of them are on time limits. :/

 

think i'm starting to realize that 'banging out prose' is not the Only Part of the Process That Counts as Writing, and it's certainly not the Complete process, at least for me

and that it's not only not cheating to stop during dedicated writing time when i'm getting lost to hammer out motivations and tone, but it's actually much much more productive than staring at the screen and flailing my way to a dead halt through a draft where i have zero idea what's going on and increasingly hate what i'm doing

feels good man

 

Spoiler: meds recordkeeping

man, i wish lamo would make up its mind whether to act as a stimulant for me or not. :/ starting getting hypersomnic with occasional dizzy spells a couple days before i upped my dosage, dizzy spells seem to have stopped but the hypersomnia is kicking my ass. or maybe the hypersomnia is actually a normal amount of time to need naps daily for someone who's slept as little as me for so long? time of day that it hits varies, usually between noon and 6pm, then stays that way more or less continuously until... ????? sometime the next morning?

could be other factors like spending a lot of time in the house on days where i finally get a break, or that i've felt like i haven't been eating enough the last few days even though i think maybe i have??? maybe??? but hypersomnia and drowsiness is apparently a semi-common side effect throughout the first month of taking lamo, so

i'd try to switch back to taking it before bed, but it doesn't seem to be making me tired on much of a schedule so i doubt it'd make a difference :/

 

tfw you want to infodump really badly about one specific au version of one of your ocs but you don't infodump well without immediately triggering yourself unless people are Interacting and Contributing to the Thing, and even then you're uncomfortable about doing that with most people even when it's not a weird dumb self-indulgent porn au and fsdd g ffg nnnnnnnnngggghhhh

 

i'm just. Intensely Uncomfortable sharing any kind of intimacy with anyone who's not on a Very Short List my brain has decided is Okay, and it's not good and i have zero idea why it's this way or how to work around it because it's not good for me to keep pushing away and failing to develop every possible connection except for one or two at a time because 98% of people are just. intensely, massively draining to social with in any but the very most casual way

i don't know why i'm like this and it's not healthy and i wish i knew how to deal with or fix it

 

like hi, brain, i would like to be able to have more than two conversations a week with someone who's not One of the Chosen without feeling instantly crowded and restless and overwhelmed and panicky and avoidant. being able to actually make actual close friends with all the cool people i know would be really nice

 

i'm not being hyperbolic, either, i literally just Do Not Socialize with people save for very occasionally popping up now and then in a few places where i lurk to say something, or very rarely having very short one-on-one conversations with people i Really Really Like and Want to Get to Know. it's fun for maybe five minutes and then it becomes so immensely draining that every reply i manage to make feels like punching myself straight in the face and desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel for Something Appropriate to Say

 

talked with my therapist about the AAAAAAAAAAAAAA and apparently it's an ADHD thing to have a visceral freakout reaction to unexpected things, especially when it comes to coping mechanisms, so that's comforting to know at least. she says she's going to help me with some better ways to cope with it, and we're gonna focus on that for the next few weeks probably, so progress! kind of a huge relief to be getting help from someone who knows what's going on instead of trying to piece it together by myself on the fly.

 

god for some reason my brain is like 'today is a day to be Salty about how every sympathetic conflicted morally gray garbage man character with a tragic past who is at least somewhat a decent person with emotions and motivations and vulnerabilities and psychological needs is always subby, always, in fanon or in canon'

i love subby garbage men but give me doms who aren't just stage dressing for their partners' emotional journeys you cowards

(queer ones at least. we have more than enough weird gross heteronormative takes on that)

 

i've been very emotional the last few days for some reason but apparently this is a real actual thing and i'm not just a Baby who can't deal with a little heat and sun and i am crying a little with relief

 

Spoiler: meds recordkeeping

four weeks on lamotrigine, going up from 50mg per day to 100mg per day. had a few ups and downs with side effects, still not always in a Great mood because of other health/lifestyle stuff, but i haven't once had anything quite like that sense of Weird Otherworldly Sucking Despair i was having at least once a day since the very first dose. wish me luck.

 

Spoiler: meds recordkeeping

went up from 100mg to 150mg today. took it several hours late and without food, though, blegh. oh well.