Every time that I feel like I’ve regained my sanity and can function as a normal adult again, life happens to bombard me with problems.

Ever since the beginning of this year, I noticed myself feeling more depressed and unwilling to do things — more than normal. I spoke to my psychiatrist about this dip and we agreed to increase my sertraline dosage from 50 mg to 100 mg. And it did work… Temporarily. It’s been about a month since my increased dosage and I’m feeling myself slip back into that dip. It feels as though I am losing my sanity because I cannot figure out why this is happening.

To add on to that, my physical health is becoming a cause for concern once again. I’m positive for HPV for the second time in two years. My pap smear was normal; however, between the time of my normal pap smear and the time of my colposcopy/biopsy (roughly 3 weeks), I had abnormal cell changes once again. Despite the doctor stating they looked like mild changes, it’s still concerning that I went from normal to mild abnormalities within a month. Am I just destined to end up with cervical cancer? It honestly wouldn’t be the worst thing at this point.

I’ve been experiencing so many odd, mild symptoms throughout the past month as well. Nausea, excessive thirst, and pelvic pain. My pelvic exam was normal, yet I still feel mild pelvic exam occasionally. My nausea may be related to stress, but feeling nauseous just makes me stress out more because I don’t know why it’s happening. The excessive thirst I’ve been dealing with for the past couple weeks is, by all means, annoying. My water intake has increased due to my excessive thirst, but my labs associated with possible causes of excessive thirst are completely normal. I’m not diabetic, my blood tests were normal, and yet I’m still experiencing excessive thirst.

Socially, whenever I decide to rejoin society because things have been fairly calm, I get bombarded by added conversations and problems to address as a moderator within my Facebook community.

In all honesty, I am not okay. I feel like I am losing my grip on my sanity. This tug-of-war with my sanity is exhausting, and I don’t know what more I can alter in my lifestyle to make it better. I’m already practicing having a consistent sleep schedule (but still struggling to get quality sleep), eating slightly healthier, getting some physical activity each day (not extensive but walks and flights of stairs), and trying to give myself personal time.

I considered another inpatient psychiatric stay, not because I’m suicidal or a harm to others, but because I just really want to hit that reset button. My first psychiatric hold was refreshing; I was able to disconnect from all of my external stressors and focus on myself. It’s hard to mimic the same results without that same environment.

I’ve had two mental breakdowns this week. One was purely out of exhaustion because I just haven’t been getting quality sleep and I’ve been tempted to fall asleep while driving to work. I know it’s bad when I think that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I got into a car accident and ended up hospitalized because that would mean no responsibilities besides focusing on my health. My second break happened just last night, resulting in ugly crying and a massive headache. My will to help others and give back to the community through my Facebook group has been in a constant struggle with the drama involved with managing 12,000 members. Last night, I was dragged into a tiff that involved a disgruntled member (that was just removed) slandering me to his friends and calling me a “communist bitch.” I had absolutely nothing to do with his removal from the group, it was another admin who decided to remove him, and yet I got dragged through the mud for it because I had the last interaction with him within the group and the admin responsible for his removal refused to explain things to him. The disgruntled member messaged me directly asking what he did wrong and why he didn’t get a warning, which I sent to the responsible admin, and stated that I was not replying to him/getting involved. The responsible admin did not message him either, leading him to further believe it was I who removed him. Messages were later exposed that he was ranting to his friend, calling me a communist bitch for removing him from the group, and further verbally degrading me. When those messages came to light, rather than the moderators wanting to defend my name, they made fun of his outburst and didn’t want to get involved even more. Despite me, contributing a good amount to our community, getting slandered. The responsible admin for his removal even stated, “I don’t wanna explain it to him,” which honestly infuriated me because I have been speaking to this admin on a personal basis recently and thought she would at least set the record straight and take my name out of his mouth, at the very least. But instead, she wanted to wash her hands of it. So yes, I had my second mental breakdown within the span of a week, and I am not okay.

I keep taking days off here and there when my depression and such get really bad, but at this point, I think I need an entire month off because these singular days are not cutting it.