This week has been a whirlwind. I had 6 appointments / meetings in 4 days, which is rather full-on in my world. Going back slightly before that, I had decided, after a mood slump on my return from Bognor, that the guy I had been loosely seeing really wasn’t for me. He barely bothered to contact me, when we had met he’d been pushing me to do things I was uncomfortable with, and my gut feeling about him was gradually getting worse. After seeing his Facebook page I felt I just didn’t know him at all, and little things he said, or left unsaid confirmed this.

With this in mind, I reactivated my online dating account, and not because I was hypomanic, just purely because I was lonely. Within a short while a familiar face appeared in the email box, a guy I had chatted a bit with previously, and conversation took up exactly where we’d left off, as if no time had passed at all. We clicked. Now if at this point you are rolling your eyes and thinking, “Oh here we go again…” I honestly don’t blame you. Let’s face it, my track record recently has been pretty atrocious. But more about him in a bit.

On Tuesday I had an appointment with my new psychiatrist. I was so nervous! After being pretty much written off by the previous one last Autumn I hadn’t even bothered asking to be reviewed again until recently at the suggestion of my GP and my worker at Mind. I knew I’d been pretty unwell but my nurse didn’t seem very bothered, so I had figured it couldn’t be seen as too much of a concern to the community mental health team. Oh how different the reaction of the new consultant! Literally for the first time in months I felt like someone had hope for me – hope for stability, hope for a future where I’m well enough to work again, and have a ‘normal’ life. I felt heard. My experience and opinion were validated. I can’t begin to express how incredible that felt. Meeting this larger than life gentle giant had turned around how I felt about the future within the space of a 30 minute appointment.

My antidepressant has been ceased, my mood stabiliser increased with immediate effect, and he wants to review things in a month with a view to changing me to a different mood stabiliser in the longer term if there’s not sufficient improvement. He is also chasing up my nurse to increase my support while my meds are being reviewed. His body language spoke volumes as I described how rarely and poorly I had been supported to date. Just wow!

So back to the other gentleman who has been making me happy this week. We arranged for him to come down from London Thursday evening and stay until Friday lunchtime. Even chatting on Match we’d observed a sense of the relationship being for the long term. There’s something very natural about it. We make each other laugh. We talked for hours about a wealth of topics, in addition to the usual chat about our families, our kids, work, growing up, relationships, interests, politics, you name it in fact, we probably touched on it at some point. We just loved being in each other’s company, it was warm, relaxed, oh, and earth shatteringly passionate!

As I waved him off on the coach, and we blew each other kisses as he disappeared into the distance I felt decidedly warm and fuzzy. Before I knew it he’d sent me a text message telling me how lovely our time together had been. I just keep smiling. Funny how things can turn around in the space of a few days. And I feel settled, not high, just fine. It’s probably too soon for the med change to be having that effect, but amazing what a bit of hope can do.

Watch this space 👼🏼