Geez
I keep doing this. Er. Sorry :c
Baaaaaaaaaaaasically I was still having issues annnnnnddd I ended up just
blocking out everyone from my life except for abouuuuuuttttttttt four people? And two were my therapist and my mum :s So. I also felt ignored by this place. And bad about my art. And I felt like there was no point in being here. I was gonna delete my account but you can't here yet. But I guess I might try coming back. But for some reason it's very difficult for me to successfully make friends. Anywhere :s
So. Sorry for disappearing again. If you need an apology. If not that's okay too. Idunno. I also deleted everyone off my skype too. If you still wanna talk to me go ahead and send me a message.

The rest of this journal is me writing down everything that has happened in my life since January-ish, so if you don't wanna read that don't worry. tl;dr: I had problems with bipolar and failed a few classes and the school won't work with me to help me fix everything.

So.
About a year and a half ago (fall of '12) I had been diagnosed with depression for a few years and I was taking an SSRI called Zoloft. There was a period of time I was feeling fine and I ended up not taking it for a good while. When I decided it would be a good idea to keep up with it again, just in case, I took it one weekend.

Suddenly I started feeling really excited about everything. I couldn't stop talking at all. I was talking really loud and it was near impossible to get me to shut up. At first I was just excited, but then I had to sit for an hour at one point for something and I could not stop fidgeting. I literally felt sick at my stomach if I sat still for more than 30 seconds, just because I had so much energy. It starting becoming really unpleasant and I got really anxious about what the problem could be.

I checked it out with my psychiatrist who diagnosed me and started me on the medications and we found out that it was what's called a hypomanic episode. I basically have so much energy that I cannot release it all. This time it was triggered by the SSRI, but the root cause was that I don't have depression. I have bipolar-II disorder.

To expand, there are a few types of bipolar disorder, the two main being bipolar-I and bipolar-II. Bipolar-II is much less common, though. Bipolar in general is characterized by episodes, or periods, of depression and mania (or hypodepression and hypomania).
Depressive episodes are pretty much just depression (and hypodepressive episodes are just mini-depression). They last anywhere between a week and several years (I had a five year depressive episode).
Manic episodes are periods of having an incredible amount of energy, usually happiness/elation, but sometimes anxiety, irritability, or anger (and hypomanic episodes are the same thing, just about half as bad). They tend to last between a day and a week. To explain what it's like, imagine you're excited for something and you're really energetic. You talk more, you get giddy, you move a lot, etc. This is that, but 40x stronger. And that's not an exaggeration. (Hypomanic would be not quite as bad, but still bad). People who have bad manic episodes can experience delusions and hallucinations, and sometimes have to be hospitalized in order to keep them safe. Manic episodes can be triggered my medications or drugs (which is a common problem; substance abuse can make someone who has bipolar disorder manic in an elated form).
Bipolar-II tends to have major depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes, while bipolar-I tends to have depressive or hypodepressive episodes and larger manic episodes.

Anyway. So then I had been diagnosed with bipolar-II. We took me off Zoloft and put me on Lamictal, which is a mood stabilizer that would bring up depressive episodes and put a cap on my hypomania. It was just kind of a thing. Like, I knew that it was real, but I had no problems until recently.
This year, I got really frustrated with my friends (or lack of which) not doing anything with me (or even talking to me outside of school) and I ended up going online to try to fix my forced asociality. I found friends in various places, starting with FAF. Then with the whole exodus deal I ended up coming over here to Weasyl and Weasyl Forums. I met a few more friends. But, with all of this, I started staying up later and later because I was so excited to finally have some social interaction. But staying up late was not a good idea.

As I got more and more tired and my sleep schedule ended up more and more shifted, it triggered a depressive episode. Personally, the first thing that happens when I start dipping into depression is pretty hard to notice. It looks like I start being a lazy ass who doesn't want to do work. Every time I try to do schoolwork I kind of sigh and think, "I'm too tired to do this..." and start messing around instead. It's not me being lazy, though, it's just the underlying depression. As it starts getting worse, it becomes more obviously typical of depression.

My biggest hint was that I watched Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain and near the end [spoilers] there's a scene where she imagines another character coming and being her boyfriend and kissing her but she thinks he doesn't love her so she starts crying. I identify with this a lot, so I was empathic to it and starting crying too. I felt really sad. I do this a lot with movies. The problem was when the guy actually did come and become her boyfriend, I was still sad. And when the movie ended I was still sad. And then I ate ice cream and it still didn't go away. I just kept getting sadder. It was just kind of soul crushing. It was depression. It lasted the whole weekend and then we figured out I was in a depressive episode.

We started increasing my dose of Lamictal to try to control the depression, but that takes a few weeks to figure out whether it's working or not, and it takes a few months to make sure I'm entirely stabilized. But. In the mean time, I'm still failing all of my classes. Like, all of them. Like, F's.

My family and I went and talked to the school to try to get them to allow me to have special accommodations through a 504 plan (basically a "special ed" thing, but just saying that I can have time to make up work and am allowed to miss a lot of days because I have a legitimate medical problem). Initially, the school was glad to help out. We worked out that I would have my schedule changed so that I wouldn't have a first period so I had more time to sleep in so I could try to fix my sleep schedule so I wasn't perpetually exhausted. We had done this on a Friday.
The next Monday we came and asked if the new schedule was in place. My counselor was out (she didn't tell us she was going somewhere). And apparently my schedule was not in place. We just said to put it in place.

The next week, my counselor came back and claimed we had never discussed a schedule change or an 504 plan. Seriously. I'm not joking. We started talking more seriously and bothering them to help out. They said that they have to wait 60 days to put a 504 in place, assuming they'd let me do it. They said it wouldn't be worth it. They finally agreed to a schedule change but didn't want to put a 504 in place. We kept trying to get them to do that for a while.

In the mean time, I discussed with my teachers what was going on and that I needed help and needed to be allowed to make up work.
My chemistry teacher was the greatest. She has a daughter who has some similar problems and so my teacher was wholly helpful. I was allowed to make up all of the tests I bombed because of it, in addition to the work and the labs (I still have a few labs and tests to finish).
My history teacher has been really good to. She's allowed me to make up things and have extra time to finish units and such. I still have two units to do before the end of the year.
My calculus teacher was amazing too. I just had to drop her class because it was a college class and the second semester had started earlier and there was just no hope of making up all the stuff I missed in addition to me other classes' make up work. She said that it was totally understandable and that I definitely need to take care of myself first. She said I could come back and take second semester next year and that she thought something was up because I got an A in the first semester but this semester I was bombing everything. So I just dropped her class and got a W instead of an F (cuz college class).
My English teacher, however, was not understanding at all. She said that I was allowed to make up three assignments. Three. And she'd take late points off. And I'd have to get literally 100% on every other assignment for the rest of the year to pass. For a 70%. Baseline C. So, no. I dropped that class and have to make up 11th grade English over the summer or something. That's yet to be determined.

During all this I also ventured back to tumblr. I was invited to mod on a social justice blog by a friend from Weasyl and then things happened and I ended up making personal blog and no longer being on that blog. Since then, I've created my own social justice blog (which is getting pretty popular <3 400 followers! :3 ) and I made friends among the community there. Although I barely talk to any of them any more.

Anyway. I've been doing better in chem and history and I need to make up some stuff still but I can definitely do okay in them. But we've still been fighting with the school about getting a 504 in place. As of now, they have been doing this for three months, although they were supposed to get a meeting of parents, teachers, and vice principal together within 60 days. My meds psychiatrist of 40 years says that they're being difficult and it takes a week to put a 504 in effect. But. We've consulted with bipolar advocates and they told us how to write up a 504 that would be helpful to me and we did that and submitted it to my counselor. At first she refused, then she modified it and put it in place. However, upon reading it, it gives me literally no accommodations. It just says what I can do now. Extensions and makeup work at the teacher's discretion. Which is the problem I had with my English teacher. So it's bullshit. We've set up a meeting with the principal and we're gonna talk to him and if stuff still doesn't work out we're getting an attorney.

So. I ideally have a week after the school year ends to finish my history course and take the final and then I'll be done except for summer school. Thankfully. That'll be fantastic. And yeah.

That's what's up with me.
Hope y'all enjoyed this wonderful journal <3

Edit: I forgot to mention that at some point in there I developed anxiety problems so now I have that bucket of fun to deal with too (wooooo). I also deleted everyone on my friends list so feel free to add me back if you want.