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Oh hai!
Hi! Sorry I was away for so long. I was having some pretty rough times, mental health-wise.
In fact, I was too depressed and anxious to figure out how to renew my medicine for dealing with depression and anxiety, so I didn't.
As it turns out though, that's been mostly a good thing, to my great surprise.
I'd thought for a long time that I needed to talk to a doctor about changing my doses or medication because what I was on wasn't doing the job. But even though I'm in Canada where medical care is much more affordable than the US, there are still costs and complication because I'm just a visitor so I don't have any coverage. I didn't have the spoons to navigate that.
Now that I've been off of those medications for a few weeks, my brain is different. My mental state is less stable, and I have more trouble managing frustration and anger at times. However, I'm also finding that I have been more productive more consistently than I have in literally years. It's a mixed bag, but it's been more positive than negative so far.
I still want to talk to a doctor about brain meds. However, the wait lists for psychiatrists in Saskatchewan are very very long (6 months to a year) and while the GP I saw some time ago as a walk-in is willing to help me experiment with meds (I think), the situation there is going to be me saying "I want to do X" and him probably just going along unless it seems like a really bad idea and what I'd really like is someone with psychiatry training to help me navigate these things. So for now, as long as the situation seems managable as is, I'm going to go along without brain meds.
I also, at the same time I stopped looking at LJ and Dreamwidth, stopped going on Facebook. At all. Folks, that has been a very very good decision. I think I'm done with Facebook.
But I would like to be here more. Because, honestly, I'm feeling pretty lonely and sad a lot of the time. Even if the weather was better (I hate the weather here *so* much), Covid would keep me from trying to make any local friends, and I've never really figured out how to maintain relationships well online so I have essentially no social time these days and haven't for months. It would have been nice if things had gotten better after moving somewhere where I speak the primary language, but no dice. Maybe when the weather is warmer I'll be able to try to do things outside with people other than my partner, who really and truly is an awesome partner-person, but it would be nice to see another human's face once in a while, you know?
Anyway, more here to follow. I want to write about things like my work on applying for Canadian permanent residency and the 40-something punk-rock-looking guy in my online class who went on a totally unexpected anti-McCarthy, anti-Cold-War-homophobia history rant that made me love him a lot.
Oh, and gender transition stuff too, probably? Like, I'm still doing that.
In fact, I was too depressed and anxious to figure out how to renew my medicine for dealing with depression and anxiety, so I didn't.
As it turns out though, that's been mostly a good thing, to my great surprise.
I'd thought for a long time that I needed to talk to a doctor about changing my doses or medication because what I was on wasn't doing the job. But even though I'm in Canada where medical care is much more affordable than the US, there are still costs and complication because I'm just a visitor so I don't have any coverage. I didn't have the spoons to navigate that.
Now that I've been off of those medications for a few weeks, my brain is different. My mental state is less stable, and I have more trouble managing frustration and anger at times. However, I'm also finding that I have been more productive more consistently than I have in literally years. It's a mixed bag, but it's been more positive than negative so far.
I still want to talk to a doctor about brain meds. However, the wait lists for psychiatrists in Saskatchewan are very very long (6 months to a year) and while the GP I saw some time ago as a walk-in is willing to help me experiment with meds (I think), the situation there is going to be me saying "I want to do X" and him probably just going along unless it seems like a really bad idea and what I'd really like is someone with psychiatry training to help me navigate these things. So for now, as long as the situation seems managable as is, I'm going to go along without brain meds.
I also, at the same time I stopped looking at LJ and Dreamwidth, stopped going on Facebook. At all. Folks, that has been a very very good decision. I think I'm done with Facebook.
But I would like to be here more. Because, honestly, I'm feeling pretty lonely and sad a lot of the time. Even if the weather was better (I hate the weather here *so* much), Covid would keep me from trying to make any local friends, and I've never really figured out how to maintain relationships well online so I have essentially no social time these days and haven't for months. It would have been nice if things had gotten better after moving somewhere where I speak the primary language, but no dice. Maybe when the weather is warmer I'll be able to try to do things outside with people other than my partner, who really and truly is an awesome partner-person, but it would be nice to see another human's face once in a while, you know?
Anyway, more here to follow. I want to write about things like my work on applying for Canadian permanent residency and the 40-something punk-rock-looking guy in my online class who went on a totally unexpected anti-McCarthy, anti-Cold-War-homophobia history rant that made me love him a lot.
Oh, and gender transition stuff too, probably? Like, I'm still doing that.
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Not been so good for me either- very complicated family stuff. Admittedly some of it good, but some of it awful and opening up a lot of bad memories.
Transition stuff? You know where I am! :o)
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And thank you! Maybe I'll write you, if only to write about how I never really know what to write when I write people about complicated things like that. But it really makes me feel better that you would offer an ear.
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Been there, done that, worn the (low cut) tee shirt. :o)
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For now, I'm just going to keep going along without meds. I want to talk to a doctor about getting on something again, but for now I seem to be functional enough, and talking to a psychiatrist is far enough in the future, that I'm going to just keep on am I am. Though I have some stability issues, like spikes of sadness/anxiety/fear that hit me hard sometimes, I'm still in a much better state than I have been for much of the last couple years.
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