Y’know, when I think about it, none of Doctor Who’s regenerations seem very pleasant experiences.

It’s difficult for me to look back on my life and wonder who I am anymore. Whether, after this terrible experience or that medication, if I’m even the same person. If I’m not, then who am I? Is it worth every step on that path if I no longer am who I really should be, whoever that is?

This is really something everybody experiences, but when you go through the experience of discovering that, hey, not everybody’s parents are like yours and it’s very arguable that your father is insane or, more scarily, entirely sane and evil; or having to pick up entirely new identities because you’re being stalked by said parents; or, well, medications that act on the psyche….

I’d have to say that the Abilify has changed me, even at a tiny dose of 1mg. I tend to be calmer now, and it reminds me a little bit of the time way back when 200mg of Lamictal was enough (and then 400, and then 500, and then it capped).

2mg caused, um, problems that I think I won’t talk about here, because they were rather traumatic. ((They were emotional WTF, basically, severe emotional WTF; have friends around when you try stuff like this.)) Afterwards I thought of the experience as one that drove me sane, so to speak.

My body is still getting used to the effects of Abilify in the first place, so I seem to flicker between new me and somewhat-older-me-who-is-going-through-a-depressive-bipolar-cycle. This is especially apparent during certain times of the month, like right now, so things are a little… wall-eyed… but hopefully the Abilify will help nullify my tendency to have a hideous PTSD-triggering nightmare somewhere between Monday and Tuesday, when the bipolar and the PTSD seem to cross the streams. Which would be less than 24 hours from now.

A friend of mine told me that I was still me—just calmer. What I feel like, when the Abilify is effective, is that I’m in suspension; neither speeding up or down on the rollercoaster that is bipolar. At first it was a little unnerving, since having my sense of self altered in this manner is just weird.

But then I thought of it in terms of Doctor Who’s regenerations. Every Doctor is still the Doctor, but each one has a certain aspect emphasized. And, at least for the Doctor, each regeneration results in a bit of… instability, shall we say. One of the reasons the Tenth Doctor is still my favorite is due to, well, the fact that he acted a bit bipolar at times and had a tragic past he was still trying to deal with, even after being the Ninth Doctor. In contrast, the Eleventh Doctor seems to have had mood stabilizers injected. I mean, he’s still the Doctor and will never not have moments of silliness and moments of darkness, but he seems to be a return to the pre-Time-War Doctors.

From an audience perspective ((That isn’t too attached to one specific Doctor.)), the change between Doctors not a bad difference, it’s just different. Although I’m quite certain that things are different from the character’s point of view. Does the present, Eleventh Doctor show a preference for one or some of his previous regenerations? Or does he hold each of them in a kindly perspective, because they were the best of him for those times?

I dunno. I don’t even know how I think of my own former selves. Maybe we were the best of who I was for those times. I suppose any time where you survive in the face of great odds counts, even if they were sucky times to exist in.

Oh well. Here’s to the current regeneration; may it last longer than the previous.