Has My Universe Come Crashing Down Or Is This A Life Lesson?

About 2 weeks ago I got a letter from SS Benefits Determination department indicating that my benefits would be ending in March, including Medicare which means Medicaid would stop; the whole house of cards that I have lived under for the last nine years would crash to the ground. I have appealed the decision as I think they were erroneous in labeling me as “fit to work”.  However, I never filed the claim for medical (physical) reasons. It was for mental health reasons.

Now I am questioning whether those reasons may have changed. I do not feel unwell or unstable although I must admit the letter of cessation of benefits rocked my boat quite a bit. But, now I am back in my gently rocking boat surfing the nice calm sine wave. If I am completely honest with myself, I have to see that I am not really completely unfit to work. Of course I have been physically able to work the entire time, but my mental state was unstable. That’s not so true now. I seem to have come to rest in a valley between mania and depression which, being balanced, represents a certain type of stability, and quite possibly, remission of the disorder that plagues me the most: the dreaded Bipolar. 

 

There are some obstacles to my going back to work, although I do not think they are insurmountable; it is simply going to take an employer willing to take a chance on someone whose resume lists their last job as having been in 2007. The job gap is probably the biggest hurdle. I have no children, so I can’t say I was at home raising children. I have been going to school off and on in that time frame, but not consistently. Mainly, I have been focused on getting well. So, I really do not know how to explain the time gap effectively. I do not want to just blurt out I have Bipolar disorder and I have been sick for the past few years. That would be akin to committing job suicide. I can only imagine the face of the interviewer if I were to do that. I am sure there are ways around that. Then, there’s the issue of the resume itself. It clearly shows a pattern of only working two years at any one job since graduating from college. An astute potential employer pointed that out to me (more like he asked why had I only stayed two years at any given job). It is a very valid question. Due to reasons that are no longer valid, I was fired from one job. And, due to reasons that are only partially valid now, I was fired from the second job. And, I was fired from the third one by a crazy, micromanaging boss due to medication issues, and just generally, because she was horrible to work for. That one’s kind of up in the air; I quit in an email. and then she turned around and fired me in the response to the email. Its ambiguous.

What I don’t know is how long the appeal is going to take, and I really can’t be job hunting while I am appealing the decision to stop my benefits. So, come March 2015, my benefits stop. Which leads to another problem. I do not make enough on Disability to save money. I have broken the monthly amount to an hourly wage, and it is less than the legal minimum wage in my state. The entire check goes to paying my bills. And, if I cannot job hunt during the appeals process, how do I cover April, May, and potentially June? I also lose my insurance because Medicare stops and that has allowed me to enroll in a Medicare advantage plan that is much more cost effective than getting individual insurance. By quite a bit. I take medication that costs $38.00 and $16.00 per dose. So, that’s another hurdle. How to pay for insurance and medication that costs an ungodly and obscene amount of money?

Lots of questions with no clear answers yet. I just know that if appeal number one is denied, I will have to hire an attorney, and I really do not want to do that as it would be very expensive. I would rather have help with my bills while I look for work than pay an attorney. There’s also the possibility that the appeal will be successful and I can enter the “Ticket To Work” program where you can “test” the waters of working while maintaining your benefits. So many questions, so few obvious answers. 

Another Thing That People Do/Say To The Mentally Interesting

This is going to be a short one. I should say another pet peeve is when somebody tells me it’s all in my head. Ummmm…..no shit. That’s why I take toxic chemicals that are probably killing me faster than cigarettes ever will. That’s why I have been in therapy for 11 years and been seeing a string of psychiatrists over the years. All in my head. I mean, really?

It All Started At Birth ~ Rehab

It got a little painful writing my life’s story and the events that led me to become a very serious substance abuser.  I was trying to mask the feelings I had after being assaulted by my “boyfriend” at the age of barely 16. I did not know at the time that I had developed PTSD, and was verging on having what had been Chronic Depression become full blown Bipolar disorder. I just know that I felt dead inside while at the same time experiencing psychological pain that even years later seemed to much to bear. So, for about six years, I was a “what have you got” type of drug abuser until settling on morphine, cocaine, meth, and crack as the way to deal with my experience. However, all “good” things must come to an end. Sometimes an end that nearly kills you.

I quit doing all drugs (pills, morphine, cocaine, crack, meth) cold turkey. I did not know then that quitting benzodiazepines without stepping down in dosage over a period of time was incredibly dangerous and stupid. But, I would exactly call my behavior at the time intelligent, so it stands to reason that I would not know this little tidbit of information. So, I quit cold turkey; just stopped taking all the medications and street drugs. About five days later, I woke up to go to work, and I was hallucinating. I did not connect it with my brain basically short circuiting due to lack of the benzos that I took by the handful. After about two or three hours, I was feeling sort of okay, but not really. I had stopped hallucinating but the world around me was surreal. Cellophane flowers towering over my head type of surreal. I made it through the workday. I do not have any clue how, but I did it. Around 5:00 pm, I started feeling very weird again, and very, very sleepy. I was at the front desk, and I rested my head on my arms and closed my eyes. I became immediately unconscious. I remember something about that scared the living hell out of me; maybe it was the fact that my eyes were literally jiggling like being in REM sleep but much faster. I came to in a matter of seconds, and went home where my roommates had cleaned the apartment of all drugs. I do not remember going into a Grand Mal seizure. All I remember is washing my face to go to bed, and closing my eyes to wash the soap off my face. I woke up on the floor completely covered in water, and not knowing how I had gotten there or why I was all wet. I had been very fortunate in that I had a friend with me at the time, and he had seen me go into the seizure. I hit my head pretty hard on a small table that was in the bathroom, and my friend was calling my mother to let her know he was going to take me to the hospital. I refused still not really realizing what was happening.

I went to my mother’s house instead where she tried fervently to get me to go to the emergency room. I refused until I closed my eyes again and the jiggling returned. By now, I was starting to become scared so I agreed to go to the ER. Because I had hit my head pretty hard on the way down at my apartment, the ER doctors ordered a CAT scan. In the tube, I once again closed my eyes. I was exhausted. The jiggling returned immediately. I tried so hard to keep my eyes open. I was put into the observation ward just off the ER, and within minutes was unconscious and having another seizure. The last thing I can recall from that night was a bunch of faceless people standing around me asking if it would be okay to put Valium in my IV. I remember thinking why did I have an IV, and answering that yes, putting Valium in the IV was fine. I was out for the rest of the next 6 hours, and awoke very groggy (I have no idea how much Valium the doctors gave me), but feeling somewhat better. I found a nurse that hung my IV on a rolling stand and wheeled me out to the ambulance bay to smoke. Very cool nurse. I fell back asleep when I got back to my bed, and awoke to find my primary care doctor and mother standing over me. My doctor was saying something about going to a rehabilitation center that had a bed for me, and were awaiting my arrival should I choose to go. I chose to go.

This was, perhaps, one of the scariest and most insane places I have ever been mentally. I had not been sober in about 4 years. Literally not a day had gone by that I was not completely high on something since I was 16, and I was now getting ready to turn 20. I do not think that I would ever like to be in that “headspace” again. I had to write the fearless and soul-searing moral inventory of myself, who I was, who I had been, who I had started out as. I had to write every nasty thing I had ever done to another human being while in the throes of my substance abuse. I even shocked myself, though I should not have been shocked. I have always been a kind of gun without a safety. The first 2 months of sobriety found me depressed, scared, unsure of everything, and begging to get high again. If I fought with my mother with whom I was living, all I could think was that just a little morphine would fix everything. All I wanted were my pills and my needles. I thought I had gone insane. But, nope, not insane, just sober and looking at the world and my place in it with an uncloudy mind and clear eyes. I made it through about 9 months of the rehab’s therapy groups until I was reassigned to one that was full of drinkers trying to get clean. I wasn’t a big drinker. I was a druggie, a junkie. I couldn’t understand their dislike of me until one night a man said to me “Well, at least what I did was legal…” Then, I figured it out. What I had done was against the law and, therefore abhorrent, but somehow being an alcoholic was okay because drinking was legal. So, I asked him how many times he drove home drunk, and how many people had he managed not to kill while driving drunk. He shut up, and I left rehab. I did relapse a couple of years later, but that is a whole different post. This was painful enough  remembering all the things I did and said specifically to hurt people so they could feel the way I did. I lost a lot of friends and I lost myself in the process.

On Whether Manic Depression Is A Blessing Or A Curse Or Both

So, this is a question I struggle with periodically. Is Manic Depression a blessing, curse or both? There is no denying that my life has changed immensely both for the good and the bad since being diagnosed in the early 2000’s. But, is my life really worse than it was before? Was I truly happy, or was it a semblance of happiness? Would my life have taken the same path regardless?

Now that I have been practicing Nichiren Buddhism for about 5.5 years, I can honestly say I really do not know. One goal of Nichiren Buddhism is to become indestructibly happy to the core of your being so that you can face the obstacles and struggles that are inherent in life with the knowledge that whatever life is throwing at you you can handle it with maybe not, joy, but not anger or blame either. Which brings me to the question of whether I was happy before the diagnosis, or was I operating under an illusion that I was happy?

Having thought about this quite a bit, I really do not think that I was a happy person before the diagnosis. I had moments of extreme happiness and joy which I do miss primarily because those moments involve someone I miss a great deal. However, in general, I do not think I was what I would call a happy person, and never really had been. I was not a popular student, although I was certainly a very dedicated student throughout Middle School and High School, but I had no close friends or a person that I could take my problems to. I buried them, and not very successfully either. I got better at that, though. Probably not a good thing, but a necessary defense mechanism. I was “odd” in some way, shape or form that kept the other students from wanting to be my friend.

This was my reality until I went to college, and discovered an entirely new world of people my age, older than myself, and all with different life experiences. I was truly happy in college. My therapist thinks I first presented with Bipolar in college (I had already been diagnosed with PTSD), and looking at my transcript, I can see some signs that there may have been a problem with my moods. I dropped in and out a lot, couldn’t decide on a major, and drifted a lot. I dropped out for two years when I was 19 to “sow” my wild oats because I had not had that experience in High School. I got myself in trouble; some of it serious. But, with the help of rehab, and outpatient therapy, I pulled myself back together and went back with a strong determination to find my major and to earn my degree. I met my ex-fiance, and he rekindled my love of bicycling as he was an avid cyclist, and I had always enjoyed cycling. So, yes, I think I was happy in college. I “fit”.

After graduating, I set out to my find my first real job (the kind that pays more than minimum wage, or relies on tips). I landed the second job I applied for with a salary of about $28,000 per year. Although I thoroughly enjoyed what I did for a living, I was not happy with my environment, my boss, and the way I was treated by some of the other employees. To clarify, I was the Payroll Benefits Coordinator for a 200+ employee hospital, and was frequently blamed for people’s paycheck errors. That’s what the time clock is for. To keep track of your hours; if I don’t know if you worked, I cannot pay you. Pretty simple stuff, and most people did it once because I did not go out of my way to get them special checks to cover their mistakes. However, my boss was a micro-manager and I do not function well under constant scrutiny. So, I was very unhappy with that aspect. Then, I was asked to resign after I made a mistake that in retrospect was a pretty big one. They kept me on to train my replacement. That was my first go around with almost unbearable anxiety, and prescriptions for Xanax. Fortunately, I found a position at the University doing the same type of job for about the same salary. I was over the moon! I was back at my beloved University. It was during my tenure at the University that I had the breakdown that led me to seek out a therapist.

Our whole office was under extreme stress for reasons that are too complicated to explain. I found myself doing the job of two people, and working 12 to 14 hours per day. It was here that I met the individual that was probably as close to a soul mate as I have ever found. He made me happy, and therefore the environment was bearable. Then I melted down, and after about 6 months of weekly therapy, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Type II disorder, and then bipolar Type I with Psychotic tendencies. My world came to a screeching halt. I was once again fired, and this time was very different because now I was clinically mentally ill. I became very unhappy, and became a “frequent flyer” at the mental health unit of a local hospital. I was up, i was down, I was drinking…..heavily. My whole world turned on its head again.

At this time, I would say that Manic Depression was most definitely a curse. The doctors were trying to stabilize me, and onto the med-go-round I hopped. Most of what I can remember about that time is very fuzzy as the doctors tried one medication after another attempting to return my moods to something resembling normal. I was very depressed, frequently drunk, and just as frequently, suicidal. I just could not see any way out of the hole I had fallen into. My whole life revolved around doctor’s appointments, medications that didn’t work or caused unacceptable side effects. I was miserable. I was most definitely caught in the “Why me?” trap. So, yes, I would say the first 4 to 5 years were a curse. And, then I reached the point I call stable madness. I was still a danger to myself, and now I had the means, and I used them. Then one evening, I took a full prescription for Geodon (an anti-psychotic) and one of Welbutrin (an anti-depressant), and I waited. Then the drugs started to kick in, and I got very frightened because I could feel in my gut that I had gotten it right (or wrong) this time. I called 911, and told the dispatcher what I had taken and how much, and the paramedics were there in about 5 minutes. I was taken to the nearest emergency room where they put about 8 IV’s in me trying to flush the now digested medications. I almost died that night. I made a pact that evening that if the Universe and everything in it that was divine that if it allowed me to live through this with no ill effects, I would never do it again. The 6 year anniversary of that pact is approaching in July. I have been suicidal since, but you do not break pacts made with the Universe so I have never tried again regardless of how much I wanted to. My whole view on life changed during the time I was hospitalized following the successful revival of my life.

Not long after I made this pact, I was introduced to Nichiren Buddhism. At first, I thought the practice was weird, and the tenets difficult to understand. But, I kept at it sensing that something greater than myself was at work. I have never been religious, but I have always been spiritual. As I gradually learned more and more, and began to be able to say the prayers more easily, I started to feel better. This was entirely foreign to me. Something was working. I was becoming grounded, I was becoming more stable. I began to ride again. I wanted to see and meet people. I was beginning to think that perhaps life was worth living if only to practice and study Buddhism. I began to see that my previous trials and difficulties had left me with a gift; I was becoming appreciative and grateful for things and people I had taken for granted. I was having more good days than bad. And, the most peculiar of all, my ability to sense when another person was hurting or struggling in their life was becoming heightened. I began to think of others ahead of myself. I still had to vigilantly monitor my moods, but I was becoming less restless and dissatisfied. I became the Vice Women’s Division leader for a group of fellow Buddhists, and then the Women’s Division leader. Things were becoming okay. I was beginning to accept my illness, and think of it less as an illness but as something medically treatable.

It was about 2 years into my practice that I began to understand the practice as being essential to my life, and to my satisfaction with the cards I had been dealt. This is about the time I began to wonder if Manic Depression was a blessing, a curse, or both. Today, and the reason I wrote this, is that I realized that it is both. It is a blessing in that I have learned to appreciate and be grateful for the things and people in my life who make my life worth living. It is a blessing in that I have learned that I am not nearly as bad off as others I have met. And, it is a blessing that I have realized that I truly enjoy helping relieve others of their pain even if it is just a little bit and for a short time. It is a curse in that my moods still fluctuate though not nearly as badly as they once did, that I will be on medication for the rest of my life, and that I will still experience bone crushing depressions from time to time and that I will still have a desire to end my life at those times. So, I have finally answered my question: yes, I am a happy person today. I am alive. No, I am not always surfing the perfect sine wave, but that is okay because the sine wave always comes back. Sometimes, it just hangs out off shore for a while.

Blog For Mental Health 2014

I will start with the words of the founder of this project: “I pledge my commitment to the Blog for Mental Health 2014 Project. I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others. By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health. I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.” 

About 13 years ago, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder Type I with Psychotic Tendencies, PTSD, ADD, Panic Disorder with and without Agoraphobia, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I already knew about the PTSD. I could have diagnosed myself. I had been suffering from symptoms since I was a few months past my 16th birthday when I was sexually assaulted by my “boyfriend”. I was officially diagnosed when I was 20. I have never received counseling for this event, nor have I talked about it with anyone. Perhaps, that is why the symptoms of PTSD linger. I have become used to the now occasional nightmare, the hyper-alertness, the jumping when someone or a noise startles me; it is just how I live. I have also lived with the anxiety disorders for most of my life. I can remember feeling anxious as far back as age 6. I used to make myself sick because I would become so anxious about something as “simple” as going to school.

The depression that I have suffered since about the same age is what I guess became Bipolar disorder. My paternal grandmother was manic-depressive and brilliant, but abusive as she was more often than not in a manic phase. From what research I have done, I understand that one can be predisposed to the illness. I feel bad for her as she was manic-depressive when there was no such thing, and no treatment for it. Lithium did not become approved for the treatment of manic-depression until 1972, and by then she was displaying the early stages of Alzheimer’s. She was a brilliant woman as so many mentally interesting people are. She was an accomplished oil-painter who did one woman shows at museums around New Mexico. She had a Master’s in Mathematics from SCU. She was one of the most interesting people I have ever known. I sleep underneath a beautiful painting of lilacs every night, and I see it right before I turn out the light and marvel at her ability. I have tried to paint. It is not my milieu. Writing is the one thing I have consistently done well throughout my lifetime. I received my first journal at the age of 12, and have been writing my life, thoughts, opinions, and what not down for over thirty years. 

When I was first diagnosed with manic-depression or Bipolar disorder, I was diagnosed as a type II as my therapist did not feel that I had experienced a full-blown manic episode. She felt that my mania was confined to hypo-mania, but the more I talked, the harder she listened, and she came to believe that what she had initially thought were hypo-manic episodes were, in fact, mild manic episodes. I experienced a lot of bouncing thoughts, I was hyper-sexual, I self-medicated and had done so for many years, I took many risks with my health and relationships, I had no control over money; basically my life was constantly on the brink of complete and utter ruin due to manic behavior. I was also depressed a good deal of the time. Where the psychosis occurred, I have no idea. But, then that is the nature of psychosis; you do not know that you are psychotic. 

I have been hospitalized numerous times both voluntarily because I did not feel safe around myself, and “involuntarily” because others felt I was a danger to myself. I saw many different manifestations of Bipolar disorder, I saw people with Schizophrenia, people who were just psychotic for whatever reason, and I saw people who were simply depressed, had attempted suicide or were afraid that they would. When you are in the hospital, everyone is “crazy” which is a term I really do not like. I do not consider myself or others “crazy”, “nuts” or any other moniker the public chooses to attach to us. What I see are people fighting very hard to maintain some semblance of normalcy in their lives. We know we are different than “normal” people. But, that begs the question, how are “normal” people different from us? There are some pretty odd “normal” people out there. The only difference seems to be they can hide it better than most of us not so normal people can.

So, yes, I have been a frequent flyer at the mental hospital here. I was verging on alcoholism, and when I was drunk, it always seemed a good idea to take all my medication. I had a very difficult time adjusting to the diagnosis. I lost my job, I couldn’t work because the medications they gave me had horrible side effects for me, I couldn’t go to school for the same reasons. As far as I was concerned, my life was over. The only that had to be done was the physical taking of my life. And, every single time I tried, something pulled me back and I would call 911. I have done this somewhere between 11 or 12 times since I was 16, with most of the attempts coming after the diagnosis of Bipolar type 1. Like I said earlier in the paragraph, as far as I was concerned life was over, and the only thing left to do was get rid of the body and the mind.

After I came to grips with my diagnosis, and was on an effective medication plan, I realized how much grief I had put my family through. I do not believe that even at my lowest point that I could rival in feeling how my mother and my father must have felt. They were sure that some day I would succeed and they would lose their first child to a mental disorder. Children are not supposed to die before their parents. Especially when they are in their 30’s. I was an adult, not a child, not a teenager. I should have been able to control it better. Interesting thought I just had. At the time, I felt that my life had fallen apart and I was justified in dying by my own hand. Now, years later, I feel that I should have been able to control myself. I still have Bipolar disorder. I am still medicated, and have been seeing psychiatrists and the same psychologist for over 10 years, yet my statement feeds directly into the stigma that I try so hard to fight. That’s weird. I still have suicidal thoughts, I still wonder if everyone would be better off if I was dead; these thoughts are still with me, yet I feel I should be able to control them. Bipolar is not controlled, it is managed. There is a difference. 

At any rate, this is getting too long. I have not really experienced any real stigma from the outside world; even from people I have told that I do not know well. But, I am very well versed in hiding it when I am in public. The real stigma has come from a corner I would never have seen, and that is my family. My father does not talk to me or see me anymore. It has been 4 years since I have seen him, and the same since I have talked to him. Surprisingly, he called and left a message on my birthday. I did not call him back. He emailed and texted on Christmas. Out of consideration for his efforts I responded albeit rather impersonally. My uncle and his wife have not invited me to any family gathering in a number of years. My cousins don’t know where I live or have a working phone number for me. I am the oldest granddaughter. My last grandmother died last year. She was the glue that held the family together. She never made me feel different. She was very Christian, and believed that God made us exactly the way we were supposed to be. Everyone else, on the other hand, has made me to feel ostracized except my mom and her husband’s family. So, what I would have expected  from society came from a totally blind corner: my family. But, I guess they are part of society, too, and have their own thoughts about mental illness.

2013 ~ A Year In Retrospect

Opening a blog post is akin to writing that all-important thesis statement for your next “brilliant” essay. As I look back on 2013, I realize this has been a rough year for me and the people who care about me and that I care about. I have had to come to terms with the fact that the man I thought I married was not a man in the true sense after all, but rather, a fairly selfish individual who did not really love or care about me. He gave it great lip service though with Birthday cards, Anniversary cards, and Christmas cards all exclaiming undying love and devotion and signed with “Love you madly” or “Yours always”. He got the madly part right, except it is my madness that we are talking about.

Romantic Heart from Love Seeds (Photo credit: epSos.de)

He said the vows; the promise to love and honor in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, but somewhere in there, he realized he really had not signed on for that when it came to me. That my one and only marriage failed in such a blaze of glory is a lesson in learning to be myself again. I had become a person I did not like, let alone, love, trying to make him love me. I now realize that we married too soon, and while I knew of some of his proclivities, I did not realize the ramifications they would have on my self-worth, my self-esteem, my mental health, and my ability to love someone. I also now realize that I do not think he knows how to love; that love means sometimes you agree to disagree, that sometimes you will hate each other, that arguments happen and are not a reason to hold a grudge or use it as an excuse to hurt, that it is important to spend time with one another, that you put up with each other’s annoying habits without getting irritated (or trying not to), and that, above all, love means you accept without question the other for who and what they are, and who and what they may become. And, you still love them. I do not think that kind of accepting love ever really goes away. It just changes into a different form.

So, one month to the day of our fourth anniversary after the “deal breaker” fight, I filed for divorce, and became a free woman about 2.5 months later. I am not at all slightly nonplussed to say that I was not particularly sad on the day I opened the mailbox to find a thick, white envelope from the District Court. I must have read and re-read the word “dissolved” over 50 times. It was an unreal experience to realize that I could learn how to be myself again, that I would not have to fuss over make-up that wasn’t me,  trying to do something with my hair that wasn’t me, or wearing clothes I felt uncomfortable wearing. I tried so hard to make that union work that I lost my self in the process. Not a good thing to lose. 

Father & Daughter (Photo credit: Enigma Photos)

2013 was the year that I think I finally came to terms with the fact that my father is never going to be my dad again. He is a father and nothing more or less, but he is not a dad. That man left my life a long time ago, and I have been in mourning ever since. I keep a black and white photograph of him when he was about 29 years old by my bed because that goofy, smiling, long haired, bearded and happy man was my dad. For many years, I have grieved the loss of my dad. For many years, I have thought that he left because I am the way that I am, because he could not cope with what I have. Now, I am beginning to realize and accept that the problem is not me; it is him. It still didn’t prevent me from compulsively checking the mail like a five year old waiting for a present except I was waiting for the Birthday card that never came, the Christmas card that never came. I was sure he sent one; it was just late or lost in the mail. I did not want to acknowledge the truth that he had not sent one; I simply couldn’t believe that he would forget. The truth was he didn’t forget, he just didn’t send one either out of oversight or having to much to do or being out of town. I will never know why he left, or if I could have done something different, or if it just isn’t in him to deal with the real difficulties of life. It is so much easier to leave a person that one has come to view as a situation just waiting to happen. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so difficult to just dismiss him if every time I looked in the mirror I didn’t see him; I look just like him right down to the now reddening strawberry blonde hair and freckles. Maybe if I had not kept that photograph of him as a younger, happier man with one toddler, and a baby on the way. Maybe if……..

Those were my two greatest challenges and two greatest learning experiences in 2013. I am slowly returning to my self, and realizing that I have not yet finished contributing to this world. I feel very strongly that I have a great deal to teach other people (hopefully young people) and to learn from other people. I am slowly but surely returning to the girl who loved to walk and use public transit (annoying as it may be in my city) because one sees things differently and meet very different people leading very different lives when one has to slow down. I feel much stronger for having learned these things about both myself and about the others written about in this post; I feel stronger for surviving the train wreck that was my marriage, and for coming to terms with the reality that my dad is gone and has been replaced by someone I do not really know, but I would like the chance to get to know him as he is now. And, I would like the chance to have him know me as I am now; not the person he remembers from a few years ago. I am older and much wiser than I was then. I have hit rock bottom since then, and clawed my way back up fighting my mind’s whims everyday. 

2014 is shaping into a challenging year, but I am sure that it will just provide me with new opportunities to learn and grow……..

Christmas

Christmas is that time of year when friends and families gather to bask in the warmth of togetherness, exchange stories, and catch up on each other’s lives. But why is it only one day or a few out of every year that people do this? It is a question I have had for years among others that I can find no logical answer for. Why are people seemingly more giving at this time of year? There are so many opportunities to give of yourself year-round. There are homeless people ~ families and people whose families are gone for one reason or another that need the generosity of others for the whole year. There are people who have outlived their families and friends, and they spend the holidays alone. There are families torn apart by misunderstanding. People who have fallen by the wayside of a society that has no use for them except for those two or three days a year that they are remembered and helped. I am not one of those “merry” Christmas people. I am one of those people who is actually quite sad this time of year. I wish that I were not one of those people. But, I have lived too long, and seen too much for my idealistic nature to have remained completely intact.

When I was a relatively unaware child, none of this really bothered me. But, then I became older. I became friends with homeless people, people society has forgotten, the kids who have run away because the streets are more forgiving than their homes, the people that are too far away and too poor to travel, the people whose families have forgotten them, the people whose families wish they could forget them, and the people who are estranged from their friends and family either by choice or not.

Selfishly, I spend each Christmas feeling that my own problems are the worst; that everything would be okay if my father (notice I never refer to him as my Dad) could somehow find a place for me in his thoughts and heart that was not a place of disappointment, that everything would be okay if I were not painted with the brush that labels me mentally “ill”. I do not feel mentally ill; I simply feel more intensely than others. I should feel fortunate that I am not among the homeless as so many of the mentally interesting are, and I do, although it is one of my greatest and perhaps, most irrational, fears. I have seen how my particular “flavor” of mental interestingness has manifested in others just like me who are not functional. I should feel grateful that I am, for the most part, functional. But, sometimes, being functional seems to make this time of year harder because I do see the men and women on the street who are made older by weather, circumstance, mental health, lack of care, lack of food, and, frequently, addiction. I see the people who have had to create alternate families because their own are either gone or do not want them. And, sometimes, I see people who, in spite of their problems, rise above them. These people give me hope and renew my faith that resilience is an amazing human trait.

I guess in my idealistic little brain, I do not understand why it is only during the “Holiday Season” that many people feel compassion and generosity and understanding towards others when they ought to feel it year-round. I think this New Year, I will make a point of finding a way to work with the disenfranchised despite my limited mobility both because my city has the worst public transit system, and my own desire to hide.

I am one of the disenfranchised; treated and thought of differently because I am not like the roughly 92% of the population that does not have to battle themselves and their thoughts everyday. I take medication everyday so that I remain “even”. I have resented that for years. I have resented that my thoughts sometimes lead me to behavior that in retrospect has hurt many people, but I remedied that years ago. I think that’s what I will do. I will work with the lost, the homeless, the missing, the addicted, the mentally disordered and hopefully, make a difference in their lives on a daily or semi-daily basis. Humanity does not have to occur for one month every year. Humanity, in all its forms, is with us everyday. 

 

I Am The Dark Side Of The Moon

This is the Sine Wave. When it looks like this with equal frequency and amplitude, everything is ducky. It is like being on a gently rocking ocean.

So, my divorce is official, and has been for about 2 months. You would think I would feel relief at being out of a situation so negative and hurtful that I barely survived at times. I do feel relief that I am not being disrespected and degraded by some one who “claimed” he loved me and that he could handle the Bipolar part; he had dated two other women with Bipolar in the past, and in fact, his most recent breakup was with one of those women, they both walked out on him, not the other way around. I find that interesting. All of his longish term relationships have ended with the woman leaving the relationship. Hmmm. 

At any rate, I am finding that I am slowly almost imperceptibly becoming very depressed. I am still at the point where I can hide from people who do not know me well. I am on a fucking roller coaster. One minute I am crying like I lost the last pet on the earth, the next I am thinking ‘hmmm, the kitchen needs cleaning,’ and no more crying for a while. I know that I am still on the okay side of this mood swing because I still care about what I look like, engage in personal hygiene, that sort of thing. The very fact that I do not out the kitchen off until tomorrow tells me I have not fallen………yet. I may still be on the okay side of this particular piece of the sine wave, but that doesn’t mean I won’t slip off.

I know there are many ways that people with manic-depression have devised for themselves when they feel an episode coming on. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, and hooray for them, but what do you do when it blindsides you and cold-cocks you in the face? What are you supposed to do when you both belong to the same religious organization, and you see each other at community events? How the hell are you supposed to heal from everything he put you through and everything you did to him? It’s not like you can decide to be a Zen Buddhist (I am a Buddhist, as an aside), and go climb a mountain and empty your life of all desires both material and those that are more fleeting, and come back enlightened. I mean, hello, most people have some sort of life including myself as unhappy as it has been for a time now. We don’t have time to climb mountains seeking the “way.”

Besides the only thing I can see coming out of that is a lot more money in the savings account due to one’s lack of desire for earthly things. (Sorry to the Zen Buddhists, no offense meant). Then I stop and think about one of the key concepts of my sect of Buddhism, and that is to make a plan then take action on it. Making a plan is great, but what will it accomplish, what will it get you if you do not take action? Nothing.

So, my ex-husband and I had the mother of all of our fights about first week in June. It was one of those fights where you are yelling but then get quiet because you have become so angry, you are afraid to speak. I sat there and let him yell, and I yelled back, until he said “You’re lucky there are no lethal weapons in this house.” I got quiet real fast and kept my butt glued to the couch because within my immediate sight I could see about 5 lethal objects. The next words out of my mouth were calm and modulated. I stated that I had enough of this discussion, and I was going to bed, and he could do whatever he wanted. 

That night I curled up around my teddy bear (yes, I still have one), and I thought very hard about something I had mentioned before in passing fits of temper: Divorce. This time he had not just crossed the line, he jumped over it like he was an Olympic athlete. You do not threaten people with bodily harm. Especially those of us who have PTSD and a very strong fight mechanism. So, that night at about 3 am, I decided that come hell or high water, I was filing by Friday of that week. And, that’s what I told when he woke up the next day, and that is exactly what I did by that Friday.

I said all of that to say this: one can never be prepared for what is going to come unhinged in your mind that will set you up to break. I had been so unhappy in that marriage for two years, and I honestly thought I had worked through all the emotions. I was so wrong. I have been awful. I have been up for a few days then crashing out of the sky for a few more. I feel like the boy, Icarus, in the Greek legend who flew too close to the sun with wings of wax. I feel like I am hanging on to my sanity by the most light and gossamer of threads. I have become the dark side of the moon.

What Exactly Is Bipolar Disorder? Part Three

This is my summation of my research, and some personal opinions gleaned from a lifetime of mental illness:

Part Three:

Due to the length of this treatise, I am skipping the different types of psychotherapy and just saying that your therapist and your psychiatrist should communicate and be on the same page. As for the patient. Complying with treatment including psychotherapy is key to recovery or management, whichever you prefer. Also, if you are going through a tough life event, it is a good time to talk to your doctors about your medication needs and you therapy needs. You may need to add a medication or increase you already take, and you may need to see your therapist more frequently until you feel that you are safe, and can handle the situation.

In closing, Bipolar Disorder in all its various forms, manifestations and severity of symptoms is a rollercoaster ride. I tend to compare calm times to being on a long frequency sine wave where you rock gently through the ups and downs, and episodes both depressed and manic as being on the Richter scale. Then you are like an earthquake, and you never know what devastation you will leave in your wake. Hopefully, you never go higher than a 2.0 earthquake because then real damage can be done. Having Bipolar Disorder, in my opinion, requires a level of inner strength that is difficult to achieve because you will lose friends, you will lose husbands and wives, lovers and partners, jobs, and a sense of who you once were. You will question your self-worth, and your worth to other people. It is a devastating disease. It takes and takes, but will never give back. That you have to learn how to do on your own. It is a very needy disease that wears out everyone including the afflicted person. Even if you have the best doctors, and you have the disorder mostly managed, it is usually at a great cost to a lot of people including you. It can be a very lonely illness. But, this is not to say that it is a hopeless situation. You can manage it, you can find friends who will understand or will be willing to learn about it, you can find partners that are understanding that it’s not you that is acting out of sorts, it is the disorder. It is possible to rebuild your life with sympathetic people who will be there when you really need them, and they will understand that you are going through a rough patch, and need help. So, all is not lost as I once thought, and I would imagine other people have felt upon being diagnosed. If you choose to educate yourself about the whole thing, medication, therapy, mood swings, etc. you will know what you are fighting, and you can get the better of it.

 

Just Finished a New Book About How To Manage Bipolar Symptoms

BiPolar – What’s Up? – Dunno, I’m kinda Down (Photo credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton)

I am sure that most people in the Bipolar world have heard of Julie Fast. She has been living with Ultra Rapid Cycling Bipolar II with psychotic features for about 15 + years. It’s not that far away from my own diagnosis of Bipolar I with psychotic features except i am usually in a mixed state which is just the worst. You are the most motivated depressed person and the least motivated manic person. They sort of bleed into one another.

Anyway, the book is Bipolar Happens! and it has a very unique outlook on managing Bipolar symptoms such as anxiety (I knew there was a connection), depression, mania, paranoia, and other subtle symptoms of Bipolar.

She starts the book with that familiar saying and complaint: “I just want to be normal.” She states that people are often taken aback by that statement. People often ask “What is normal?” or “is anyone really normal?” which personally I would find somewhat offensive because there is such a thing as “not normal.” She states it is not normal to not be able to hold a job for more than two years (hmmm, been there), or taking 8 years to finish college (hmmm, been there too). She says it is not normal to hear voices that tell you that you are worthless and you should just die.

She states in return to these statements that everyone is abnormal to some degree, but there are normal people out there. She knows that because she knows what it means to be NOT normal as I suspect many people with mental interestingness would attest to. She points out that “normal” people think about one or two thoughts at a time, not twenty (flight of ideas) whirling around inside your brain. Ms. Fast writes that it is not normal to break down every behaviour looking for the negative meaning. It isn’t about hearing voices that tell you that you’ll never amount to anything so why bother trying (I have experienced those voices for many, many years, and I would dare say that most people with Bipolar have also to some degree). 

One thing that really resonated with me is her writing that normal people live day-to-day while Bipolar people have a tendency to live in the past and feel that there is no hope for the future. I am guilty of that. Especially of reliving my childhood where I was a weird kid, but not a Bipolar person, yet.

She writes a great deal on depression and how to combat it in the book (maybe because women are more likely than men to have depressive episodes). One thing that she talks about that I had already discovered on my own is how truly beautiful this world is. Instead of walking with your head down looking at all the garbage this world produces, look at the sky, the bees collecting nectar, the unsual arrangement of pots that make up a planter; of course it helps if you don’t have a car, but I have seen more beautiful things that I would have missed had I been driving. I have met some very interesting people as well.

She asks the question: are you looking up and seeing the beauty of the world and feeling better, or are you looking down and letting depression get you? I know it is hard when you are in the throes of depression to see any beauty in anything, however I have found that getting outside and walking can be very spirit lifting. Basically, she says you have to tell the depression NO! and fight it like an enemy. She suggests writing down the symptoms of your depression so you will know it is the illness talking and not something else. Basically, you have to learn your behaviours so well that you can feel them coming, and you can take action to stop them.

Another topic she writes on, which I think is terribly important, is for your friends and family to be educated about the illness so they can see when you are ill, and take steps to help you rather than as one person I know put it when I asked them to take me to the hospital, “I am so sick and tired of all of your drama and chaos!” That wasn’t what I needed to hear from that person. If a Bipolar is asking to go to the hospital, just take them. They know what condition their condition is in, and they are asking for help not being screamed at. At the time of the above occurrence, I had all my meds lined up in a row an the counter in the bathroom, and I was wondering if I had enough to kill myself. So, yes, I think it is extremely important for those who care about you and whom you care about to be educated about this sometimes fatal illness. 

She writes on how to recognize the early stages of a manic episode and how to stop them. Of course, this is very personal in how the mania manifests itself. The are a myriad of ways that mania can insidiously crawl into your life. And, it can be a very destructive force in relationships, financial matters, work place etiquette, etc. It is important to know what triggers your manic episodes. 

Basically, this is a fast read, and many of the techniques she describes are ones I have tried and been successful with. If you had asked me 5 + years ago how I was doing, I would have had to lie, and say fine. And, since I am really good at hiding my illness from others, people believe me, and are then rather shocked when I become so depressed I can’t get dressed or bathe. However, I find that sticking to a regular sleep cycle, always taking my meds, trying to eat right and exercise, and doing things I enjoy seem to help. All are mentioned in her book. I guess when you have been an untreated bipolar for 15 years and treated for 11 years, you sort of work out your own “health” plan. I do, however, recommend this book. It is short, simple and to the point. And, it makes a lot of sense. She does not claim to be “cured” just very well managed.