I'm feeling really overwhelmed tonight. It seems like one crisis after another keeps happening, and I am powerless to do anything for anyone. I feel useless, pointless, aimless and kind of hopeless. So instead, I sit here, numb to any comfort that I can glean from anything.

It seems so awful that so many of us are in crisis or coming into crisis phase at this point. What is going on?! Where is all this agony coming from~ our own personal beasts of hell trying to tear us apart at the seams? WHY all at once? How do I face my own demons when so many of the people I care about are trying to fight for their lives against their own? I don't know what to do!

I've taken 2 Klonopin to help calm me down, and a sleeping pill to try to make me slow down and try to rest, but so far it's not helping much. And I can't really afford to go to sleep right now~ my Mom stepped on a yellowjacket hornet and it stung her mutiple times and she's allergic to them, but she won't let me take her to the hospital. Instead she's trying to tough it out~ I'll never forgive myself if I go to sleep and anaphylactic shock sets in and her throat swells shut. I think tonight I'm going to put the baby monitor in her room instead of my son's so that I can hear what's going on with her if she gets into trouble. That's the best I can do. I can't force her to do anything. She won't even let me help her get around or give her some pain medication to allow her to sleep tonight. I guess I can't do anymore~ I've given her as much help as she'll allow. I can only hope it's enough.

I had my first session with the psychiatrist who does diagnostic testing this morning. For some reason it was really stressful for me, even though I've been through this before with her a few years ago. I'm just so dangtired of having to repeat over and over again the things I've dealt with in detail over the last year or two~ the hypomanic episodes thatturn into black holes at the end, sucking me in andletting no light in to guide me back out. The constant low gradedepression that is with me at alltimes, andthe times that I experience mixed episodes; elated and filled with edgy energy and a sense of being on top of the world, but feeling the bottom droppingout underneath to swallow me up too. It's like the tight-rope walk from hell, no net to catch you if you misstep. But you can'tfocus on anythingfor any length oftime, run from one idea to another, taking on a million things to accomplish to grasp ahold of the good feeling so that the yawning cavern below doesn't swallow you whole.

I'm sick of the need to categorize my illness~ to put a specific label on it, to put a label on me. Everyone'sfight with this illness is different to some extent, everyone having behaviors and patterns and thoughts and backgrounds unique unto themselves. At one time I believed getting a diagnosis, a label, would somehow fix it~ give me power over it. But it hasn't. If anything it's terrifying because I know now that this is for the rest of my life, however long it may be, and that as I age it will continue to progress, even though the medications will slow it down some. Will I one day be one of those patients I am so scared of becoming~ the ones so drugged up on Haldol and sedatives that I'm just a drooling, empty shell, unable to participate in my own existence. I've already been down that road because I made the mistake of trusting a doctor I barely knew and he considered my severly, psychotically depressed~ so I was so overdrugged that I could do nothing but lie on the couch, stare out into space. I am NEVER going to let them do that to me again. NEVER.

I need to try to go to bed. I have to be up at 6 a.m. to get my son ready for school and then take him. Tomorrow's going to bea very rough morning. But the one good thing that happened today was that the podiatrist's office finally called me and want me to call them first thing in the morning to get me an appointment ~ hopefully tomorrow.

Goodnight all. I hope better days are ahead for all of us that are suffering right now, and good days to continue for those of you that achieved some sort of balance in your life currently.

Goodnight Dtribe~ sleep in peace and comfort in knowing that you are cared for and loved by others, and something much greater than ourselves.