So, I had my psychiatric appointment yesterday and I got prescribed lamotrigine, which is what I wanted. The psychiatrist wasn’t very keen on this idea but he agreed. I am fairly pleased with my psychiatric team, they seem to listen and are trying to be supportive but I do have the impression that doctors see treatment of bipolar differently to how I see it.

For me the main thing is that meds make me feel good and I am hopeful that I’ll find the medication that will do exactly that. For doctors the focus seems to be on preventing another maniac episode. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be maniac but I also don’t want to feel miserable while stable.

I sometimes reflect on what caused my last episode and I need to admit that I was delusional for quite a few months before that. I believed I was put on speech and language therapy delivered by the community. I believed that my diagnostician was telling people how to talk to me (obviously not everyone, I was not that delusional). What didn’t help is that in general I was being treated differently by people than a few years ago. The difference was that people seemed to be supportive and tried to understand me.

I also still don’t know how else I can explain the fact that John started talking to me in a very gentle way when we decided to give our relationship another go a few months after I broke up with him. If it wasn’t my diagnostician who advised him, what was it? Perhaps he watched some advice online? But it seems to me like, due to being autistic himself, he wouldn’t be able to follow it, but maybe I’m wrong here.

I also don’t understand how come I managed to bring myself to my family home in Poland when my first episode started. At first I tried to book the flight with Ryanair but the website didn’t react when I clicked ‘search’ and then I had the same error with EasyJet so I went to Polish Airlines Lot website. I attempted to buy a flight to Prague and then to Wroclaw ‘to destress’. Neither of those options worked and only then I tried Warsaw and finally I managed to book. Warsaw is only around 120km from my village, with frequent bus service to the closest town so it was easy to get there.

What would happen if I travelled to Prague instead and started hallucinating there? I’d probably end up being arrested. That would be extremely traumatic and I was traumatised enough regardless. How come I allowed workplace problems to influence my life so much?

Yes, I was right and my employer was wrong but…

Never mind. What I am trying to say here is that, despite the fact that there are some strange coincidences in my past that worked in my favour, I must accept the fact that I was never monitored by anyone, except possibly by God.

Maybe I should go to church then and pray? But why God wasn’t monitoring my dad when he had his mental health breakdown?

Yes, the unusual beliefs I had caused me to get more and more paranoid when I started my last job. I didn’t know if people around me are themselves or if someone keeps telling them how to talk to me. I was getting more and more confused every day and the fact that every resident seemed to be happy confused me even further.

So perhaps if I didn’t have any paranoid beliefs I’d not get another psychotic episode. But everyone wants me to be on meds! And I don’t mind. As long as they make me feel good.

Keep your fingers crossed for me: I do hope that lamotrigine will turn out to be that magic pill.