One Week

In one week, I will find out if I have an income for April. Next Friday is the day my benefit check would normally be deposited. I think I am experiencing all of my mental “issues” at the same time: depression, check, anxiety on a level unknown to normal people, check, mania, check, fear, check. I am one 5’10” walking ball of nerves, irritability, hostility, depression, mania, anger, and fear. You want to make someone who is Bipolar sick? Cut off their source of income, and watch them try to cope with it. I think they do it for fun, personally. But that is probably paranoia talking.

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. 

The Dreaded One Year Anniversary Is Here

Dissolution of Marriage

Today is the one year anniversary of the dissolution of my marriage. I have no idea how I feel today. I do not mean depressed or manic as those are mood states that encompass many other emotions. I am definitely not depressed (well not really depressed; I am always depressed), and I am definitely not manic (at least in any noticeable way). I am something else today. I do not know if I feel sad although I know that would be an appropriate emotion to have, I do not know if I feel somewhat angry that my ex-husband’s behavior forced my hand and made a divorce the only logical thing to do, or maybe I feel both sad and angry. Perhaps, it is a much more tangled set of emotions: I feel sad that marriage counseling didn’t work, I feel angry at him for not taking the counseling and/or my feelings seriously, I feel a certain amount of failure that, in spite of two attempts at counseling, the marriage still came apart. Maybe, I feel a certain amount of relief? That just seems so wrong to feel, though.

I know I am still angry with him for the behavior he engaged in that was really the root cause of the failure. I am trying really hard not to blame him; the behavior he was and is still engaging in is classified as an addiction in the DSM~5. However, it is very difficult for me not to blame him to some extent because I think that everyone has a tendency to point the finger at the other when it comes to things of this nature. He blamed my reactions to his addiction on my having Bipolar disorder (which he never bothered to become even remotely educated about), he blamed it on my lack of ego (if I had no ego, his addiction would not have bothered me to the extent it did, hello), he blamed my reactions on low self-esteem (once again, if I did not have some regard for myself, it wouldn’t have bothered me because I would have been a door mat). He pointed the finger at me and blamed me for his addiction. That still just flat out pisses me off. However, having been an addict of a different kind, I can see the behavior of blaming whoever and whatever is handy, and understand that is part of the nature of addiction.

He doesn’t and will never see it that way until he knows with his heart and soul that he has a problem. It is one thing to know intellectually that one is an addict. It is another thing entirely to own it, make it yours and yours only, and then get help. So far, he has only recognized it intellectually, and with me gone, he sees no reason to stop even though it will impact the next relationship and the next and the next. In many ways, I feel sorry for him that he just cannot see it.

I think also that I feel a sense of loss of self. I am not the same person who went happily into this marriage thinking it would be my one and only for the rest of my life. I have allowed myself to become jaded, cynical and suspicious of the motives of men, in general. I didn’t really realize this until several guys had hit on me, and my reaction to them was to question their motives. They could have been nice guys who just wanted to get to know me. I have been deeply wounded, and I do not know how to heal because the person who hurt me claimed they loved me more than anything else. And, I believed that……for a while. If he had truly loved me, he would have educated himself on Bipolar disorder, he would not have tried to change me from the boots and jeans type of woman I am into a woman who ran around the house cleaning in high heels like some mad version of June Cleaver, he would not have tried to make me look like the women he saw in Texas (of all places; no offense meant). Had he truly loved me, he would have let me just be me. But, he didn’t. 

I think more than anything I am confused. I loved him so I did the things I thought or that he had expressed would make him happy, and I received nothing but blame, emotional and verbal abuse, and shaming in return. And, he wonders why I divorced him. Had he really wanted to, he could have changed for me, or we could have compromised. I always thought compromise is part of a relationship. At least it was in the ones I have been in before him. I am also quite confused by his present behavior. It would seem that he wants to reconcile, and he is being the person he was (for the most part) before we were married. I have no reassurances, however, that he won’t go back to the person he became and, at heart, probably still is. Why can’t this man just be normal like everyone else I have been in long term relationships with? Why the confusing gestures and mixed signals? I dissolved the marriage for a reason, and in my experience, those reasons rarely change all that much.

 

 

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.

Absence

I know I haven’t been blogging much over the past month or so, but, I just haven’t had anything to write about. Which is odd for me. I did write a 4 page thesis in my journal about my fear of my doctors’ retiring, people passing away before me, and how I could rationalize suicide so as not to be left alone with only myself to look after me. I do not always do a great job of that.

I did have the pleasure of taking the MMPI (Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory), and it confirmed that I am nearly equally as depressed as I am manic. So, that was nothing new. My paranoia score was quite high, but this little diagnostic tool can be quite accurate if you report honestly. Apparently, I am having a hard time trusting people. I think it is that my chemical riddled brain is finally starting to process how abusive my marriage really was. Leave it to me to marry a guy who really couldn’t show emotion or attach himself to a person and has a rather banal addiction to internet porn. It is interesting, though that since I have been divorced my level of “self-worth” has ridden. Probably because I am not trying to be something that I am not. My anxiety level is higher than normal, but I chalk that up to being a slave to public transportation. Would explain the paranoia too. You would believe how many men will stop to offer me a ride. I mean, really? These guys really think I am going to get into a stranger’s vehicle. No, I value my life and personal safety too much to do something that erratic. You feel really exposed sitting on the side of a street waiting for a bus that may not come for 45 minutes especially when you are female even if you are 5’10” tall, and could probably take a potential creep down. See, paranoid.

Another blogger posed a very interesting question in his last post. He stated that many people with manic depression consider it to be part of who they are, and if there were a “magic” pill that could fix everything, would you take it? I do not consider Bipolar to be part of who I am, fundamentally. I believe that it is something that I have. It is estimated that somewhere around 3% of the population have this disorder to varying degrees. It is gender neutral and can afflict males and females equally. Hence, I am not the only person who “suffers” with this affliction. I have always been moody, and generally depressed. I had my first major depressive episode when I was about 12. I had my first nuclear meltdown when I was 30. I was diagnosed with Bipolar I with Psychotic tendencies, Panic Disorder with and with out Agoraphobia, PTSD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. But, I have always been anxious and a bit high strung. This is the personality that I am used to. If there were a magic pill that could take all that away, who and what would I be? People live productive lives with this disorder all the time. Just Google “famous people with Bipolar”. You’d be surprised who also has this disorder, and hide it quite well. I hide it quite well. Most people just think I am weird. 

I guess my biggest fear about a pill that could fix everything right now is that it would also change my personality which I have grown quite fond of, even if no one else is a big fan. I do not know how I feel about that idea. I mean, getting rid of the paranoia, the anxiety, the fear, and the constant mixed state so quickly might trigger something else. It’s like my father explained to me once; for each medication you take, it locks like a key into the neuroreceptors that it was designed to fit. This opens up other receptors kind of like doors. One medication closes a door, but opens new ones. The scientists do not know how most of these medications really work in the brain. A magic pill could be like the genie in the bottle. It opens, you make your wishes and hope they were the right ones. So, in response, I would have to really consider what a “magic” pill would do before I took it. Mostly, I would be afraid that it would so fundamentally change my brain chemistry that I would no longer be who I consider myself to be, and would end all of the traits that make up who I am aside from the Bipolar disorder. Your basic nature is a combination of genetics and your environment. I do not know I feel about messing with the brain at the genetic level. That freaks me out a little bit. 

In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, “…And that’s all I have to say about that..”.

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. 

 

Mad Morning Hair

English: Albert Einstein Français : Portrait d’Albert Einstein (Photo credit: Wikipedia) ~ This is how mad hair looked this morning.

So, I decided about a month ago that I was going to cut my hair. Yesterday was the big day. I spent two weeks poring over pictures of short, short hair (decided my face shape was wrong), medium short hair, and medium length hair. I decided to go with medium short. I figured it wouldn’t be such a big change that I would freak out and not do it. Please understand my hair was about 4″ from my waist. It had been that way for quite a while. So, the stylist put it into a ponytail and lopped it off. I plan to donate the length to a charity that makes wigs for women going through cancer treatment. It is really underestimated how much that really matters. If you ask, say, 20 women what their best feature is, you’ll get eyes and hair. I know it was my safety blanket, as well as, being one of my top two best features: eyes and hair. But, it is gone. I keep running my fingers through it, and my fingers keep going long after my hair ends. I have no where to hide now. 

Now, yesterday when I left the salon, it was super cute, but I suspected that it be so in the morning. OMG! I highly underestimated what it would look like after a rough 9 hours of sleep. I looked like Einstein when I woke up this morning. Now, if I was Einstein, I would be too concerned about my lofty and genius theories about everything to care. However, I am not Einstein. I am not a genius. I do not spend my day in lofty thought, okay, maybe that is not quite true. I spend a good part of my day dreaming about all manner of things. But, certainly not theories of relativity and time-travel as Einstein was wont to do. So, I figured, I would brush it, and that would solve the problem. Noooo….. It is clear to me that the only thing that will help is water, shampoo, conditioner, styling products and a blowdryer. What have I done? When my hair was long, my only concern was that it was dry when I went out otherwise the ends would freeze. That was pretty do-able. Since I am relatively inept at styling hair, this should be a challenge. It is not a medium bob, it is now a short bob. If I smoothed all the layers down, I would resemble a 20’s flapper. Hhmmmpphhh.

Well, a haircut was what I wanted for Christmas (sometimes, as you get older, Christmas becomes about what you need), and it was sorely needed. A haircut is what I got. I am in day one with new hair shock. I feel like Bridget Jones! Well, time to go wash new hair or lack thereof, and see if I can manage to style it. This is going to be an adventure!

Lost And Confused

From confusion comes opportunity. (Photo credit: wasabicube)

 

 

So, I am not feeling particularly bad about divorcing my ex-husband right now. In fact, we belong to the same Buddhist community and he introduced to this form of Buddhism. Our community is divided across the city into smaller groups or Districts. I am now and have been the Women’s District leader for the group he had practiced with since moving here about 8 years ago. Upon the divorce, he made the choice (thank the powers that be) to move to another District because I sure was not going to give up my group because of him, although I did try for other reasons. But, I was shot down. So, at any rate, for the past month or so, I have been in and out of a fairly intense mixed episode. I cry at the drop of a pin, I am manic as all hell with the motivation of a seriously depressed person. It’s cool. Fucking rocks (pardon my French)……the problem is I still have to do shit.

 

Actually, sitting here listening to Pearl Jam’s “Ten”, the song “Alive” is playing. Always one of my favorites, ever since it was a new song (yes, I am an aging Gen-Xer, and was around to see the very beginning of alternative rock and Grunge.I am getting old…er). Anyway, this particular lyric has always gotten to me, probably because I have been Bipolar for 20+ years and did not know it. At any rate, here’s the lyric: “…..Is there something wrong, she said. Well, of course there is. You’re still alive, she said. Oh, and do I deserve to be? Is that the question? And, if so….if so… who answers…who answers….” (Pearl Jam, Ten “Alive”) For some reason, this lyric has always touched a nerve. Maybe because I don’t feel worthy of life, worthy of happiness (my marriage certainly validated that feeling), worthy of a happy life. Somewhere along the path of my growing up, I decided that psychological torture (both by self and by others) seemed to define the “norm” of my life. This is how confusion has been reached. Confusion is not a state I find my self in often. At least not about emotions. I just choose to not have them if I can possibly avoid them. 

 

However, confusion and complete discombobulation is where I find my self. I do not like it. I do not enjoy this. I choose not to feel for a reason. Feeling has caused me nothing but pain over my lifetime. I do not hold much hope for the same reason. Every time I have dared to hope, it has gone dramatically and catastrophically awry. I seem to find my self in a position where I am actually feeling bad that I divorced my ex. Neither of us put much into marriage counseling (it, I believe was too far gone by then), and as a consequence we paid co-payments for psychologists that couldn’t help by that point. Initially, I thought, he was falling asleep on the couch because he was staying up too late, and then, it gradually dawned. He didn’t want to sleep in the same bed as me. I have these questions that goes around and around and around in my mind: was it his porn addiction or my having Manic Depression that caused the rift? Was it a combination of both? Was it my reaction to what he saw as normal and healthy? He blamed the whole thing on me, always telling me that I was all talk and no action (I had actually been thinking of divorce for a year or so). 

 

Then, the “deal-breaker” fight happened and he threatened me with bodily harm. Lethal bodily harm. I have PTSD. I have an intense fight or flight mechanism; it depends on the situation which one steps up. I also have a fairly “distinctive” career as a substance abuser (see post: “Self-Medication” in the archives). When he said that I was lucky there were no lethal weapons in the house, he was clearly thinking about guns. Idiot. I felt this really scary calm come over me. I have only felt it a few times, and it always involved a threat to me of some sort. I just looked at him, and found him pathetic. I, mean, how dare he threaten my life? As if I was going to let him hurt me? So, I looked at him much like you look at a specimen of algae in Biology class. He had become a non-entity; something to be disposed of. I looked around the room from my position on the sofa, and I could clearly see at least 10 lethal objects not to mention the knives in the kitchen. I asked very calmly what did he mean there were no lethal weapons in the house, that I could see about 10 from where I sat. He was clearly out of his element. I had been a fairly violent child, and it got even worse as my substance use led me further and further down a very dangerous path littered with human land mines. I told him the conversation was over, and I was going to bed. It was 2:00 am. I spent an hour trying to fall asleep, and in that hour decided that I was leaving. He really fucked up when he threatened me because a vital part of my self shut down, and part of that part was my love for him.

 

Which gets me to where I am now. Confused. And emotional. I feel bad for divorcing him because I know he thought I would put up with his shit forever. No, sorry, even my self esteem has a point at which I say no more. I mean, he clearly was hiding from me. He would spend all day locked away with his computer and his porn. Didn’t leave much room for me. So, I filed the first of the paperwork 4 days before my birthday and one month after our anniversary. I have always had a great sense of timing. I think what is bothering me now is that I just don’t feel that bad about it. In my eyes, I was protecting my self from further damage. I isolate the word “self” for a reason. It was the “self” that was being attacked and damaged. I have spent far too much time in therapy, in the hospital, getting medically “stable” to watch it all go down in flames. Maybe that makes me a cold person, but I do not think so. It makes me a survivor, and it makes me someone who wants a life. I feel bad for him, but, at the same time, I do not feel anything. That’s new; I have never just not felt anything. Maybe its because it is the Holidays, and I feel so much that it feels like numbness.