Monday, September 27, 2010

Just have to get ONE post in for September!

If you look back on my archives, you'll see that I blog in cycles. Sometimes I feel a compulsion to write every day, other times I don't feel the need to blog for months (years, at one point). I feel guilty about it sometimes--stupidly, I think, because I doubt I actually disappoint anyone by disappearing, though I hope people at least wonder about me sometimes--but, if you've read my Blogging Manifesto, then you know I am trying to give myself a break about it. Because I blog for me, right?

But I am still here, and do have some lovely pictures to post of all the things I've been doing here. I am tremendously happy. There were a few pretty bad days a few weeks ago, brought on when I ran out of my medication and fell into melancholy, but David convinced me to call up the doctor here and get more medication. I didn't think it was possible. Even in America it's a huge process to get antidepressants sometimes, seeing as you have to go through a psychiatrist and be assessed and all that. But GOD BLESS THE NHS. I don't care what anyone says, I have never had a bad experience with the Universal Health system here.

I went to the doctor--a GP, not a shrink--told her what I was on, she asked a few questions and wrote me a prescription right there. For free. FOR FREE. And I paid only three pounds for the drugs themselves, drugs that cost me a $15 copay at home, where I have insurance. It was like a small miracle.

So I am much better now, and after a few stilted writing days I'm back on the old word wagon. Plus the weather's been really lovely, and David's mother has been taking Jack and I for long walks through the Scottish countryside almost daily. Something about spending that much time outside, surrounded by green, is more therapeutic than a mountain of medication.