Tiny bit Up from normal

A little on the upside of normal today, I think. I definately feel good about everything without feeling super-fabulous :) I like this normal I've been having.

One of the reasons I'm keeping this blog is to be able to track my moods to see how long the cycles are. I was diagnosed with rapid-cycling bipolar in January and have been on lithium since. Maybe I'm staying Up or normal because the weather is warming up (finally) or maybe the lithium is really working. Normal for me used to be only a day, then it would always be on the way Up or Down, so this normal is rare.

The lithium I'm taking is not even a full beginner dose. The psychiatrist started me on 900mg/day and I didn't like that I felt dead all the time. Or maybe I missed the highs, I do find them addictive. So I lowered the dosage to 750mg/day and didn't feel like it was working. Then I thought I should do a better job of drinking water throughout the day and see if that helps. Surprise, surprise it actually did. I pee so much I wonder why I bother to leave the bathroom all day, but I seem to be evened out. Now I'm hoping that my body will get used to the water and send it out less often. The other side effect of diarrhea has gone away as well since I started guzzling more water. So this is definately better for me and I'll have to learn how to keep it up.

Part of the problem I'm having is that I don't know anyone else who is bipolar so I have no idea if the medication is having acceptable side effects or not. I also don't know how anyone else deals with being bipolar. Either there isn't much in my city or I just haven't found it yet.

On another note, I did talk to S about everything and things seem resolved for now. I do think it might be fun for me to explore the city every so often, doing things I don't think he'd like to do. As well, I've never really done anything alone, so that might be a good experience as well. In one way, his computer game is a good excuse for me to get out and do things that I wouldn't ordinarily do. But he did mention cancelling the game to solve all of this. I can't see this being a very good option, I can just see it building resentment in him later. One thing at a time, I suppose.