morning

Good morning.

I'm in Utah now.

I have a court appearance in one hour. I hope the Judge doesn't throw the book at me! Last time I wore flip flops and was turned away via having a large book thrown on my head.

When I was in Olympia, despite all that I love about the place, I had begun to look forward to when I would leave for Christmas break. This was mostly because of how cold my room was. The rest of our house is a comfortable temperature, but my room alone was like the refrigerator room in Storehouse.(does anyone remember Storehouse Market? It was a poor person grocery store and the Refrigerator and freezer sections were two separate rooms, chilled to the temperature of refrigerator and a freezer. I had forgotten about this until recently something triggered the memory. As a kid, shopping with my mom, I dreaded having to go in those cold rooms. If I am dressed appropriately and acclimatized, cold weather is fine, but to suddenly be in freezer temperature in wearing shorts and not even underwear(as a kid I often didn't wear underwear. I once burnt my penis on my sister's hot car seat because of it) was very unpleasant, as I remember it. What a bizarre idea to make the entire room cold. I wonder what the adults thought of it. As a child one often thinks that adults enjoy everything they do, otherwise they wouldn't do it, but now I am an adult I realize that even without parents there are still forces compelling me to do things I don't enjoy.)

The day before I left Olywa I discovered the reason my room was like the storehouse freezer room. It is what most people would have checked first thing. My heating vent was closed.Kahea had looked at it earlier, and said it was open. I had decided take a closer look at the vent, see if I could notice something stuck inside blocking the air flow when I realized the vent was simply closed.
Having a warm room again made such a big difference, and I no longer felt the longing for home I had on previous days.

8 more days till I am reunited with the love of my life. Having such a highly anticipated event happen the day after Christmas is like when the Sun is visible, the stars seem not to not exist. (Marissa being the sun, Christmas the stars. not that I have anticipated Christmas with much excitement since i was a child, but even as an adult I have often found myself looking forward to it.


On a different note.
I experienced a brief lapse into mania for a few days. I believe it was triggered from stress of and lack of sleep involved with preparing for quarter's end. Although mania can, at times, be very enjoyable to experience, this was extremely unpleasant. When the mania reaches a certain intensity that I feel a total loss of control over my mental processes it can be pretty scary and uncomfortable. At times a constant stream of words, with no obvious connection to each other will flow through my mind at high speeds. Or it will feel as if 3 or 4 streams of consciousness are occurring simultaneously. I had some visual hallucinations, mostly colors and movement out of the corner of my eye.
Fortunately, my roommate has an anti-psychotic, that also works well as a sleep aid. Even though I had been up for 3 days straight, I wasn't able to sleep, and asked my roommate if I could take one of his pills. This allowed me to sleep and brought me out of my mania. I am lucky to have that, otherwise the episode could have lasted much longer.

I feel kind of discouraged about it. I haven't had mania interfere with my life for a long time, and somewhat felt it was behind me. But now I have accepted this is something I must forever be vigilant about.
The timing was bad. It interfered with my successfully completing all my classwork, but I am looking into what my options are as a person with a disability.

One unfortunate thing about mania, is that since it is triggered by stress, it tends occur at the most inopportune times. Generally, if a situation is causing me stress, it means I am in a situation that requires my full attention and mental functions, but when that stress triggers a mania, I then lose my grasp on reality to be able to complete what is required.
When I came down I crashed pretty hard, and felt depressed and anxious in ways I hadn't for a very long time. But I seem to have stabled out and am doing well. It is nice to be home at a time like this.

Off to Court. Order in the Court!