I Feel…..

I feel lost, alone, adrift on a sea not of my making. I feel rejected, hurt, angry, and I feel like it is not okay to feel this way. I feel like everybody wants only the “manic” me. The happy, bouncy, bubbly champagne in human form me. No one wants to deal with the person who feels too much, thinks too much, and forms what are sometimes misguided perceptions of reality.

 

I feel abandoned, misunderstood, like I am an old person who becomes an annoyance to the family so they stick you in some home where you slowly die while your entire life  is sold out from under you. Your relatives take what they want from your possessions. Like vultures descending, your world is dissected with precision, and you have no control over it. I feel like I have no control over anything. I am an automaton doing what I think will make others feel as if I am doing okay when I am not, and I know it, but as I have been told many times, I hide when I am sick very well. No one knows how sick I am becoming, nor do I really think they care. I just know that I am sick, and I do not have the time to be sick. I need the time to be sick, and I really need someone to understand that I am not well. I only appear that way because I have to. This illness sucks. I want a new diagnosis. I am tired of this one. I want a new brain that works the way it is supposed to work. I want to stop feeling. I am tired. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Godsmack ~ Awake

 

IV (Godsmack album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

This sums up about where I am at right now: too much weirdness has happened in life for the last few weeks . I am fighting tooth and nail to remain well. I am afraid I am not doing a good job at it. But then, again a diagnosis that includes psychosis doesn’t mean that they really are not out to get you 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stress Induced Insomnia

 

I am experiencing probably one of the most debilitating aspects of Bipolar (at least to me): stress induced insomnia. One of the things the “professionals” will tell you about the disorder is to maintain a regular sleep-wake cycle. I am doing fine with the go to sleep part of the cycle. It is staying there that I am having issues with. All this accomplishes is to make you tired and cranky and depressed (or manic depending on how you swing). I think insomnia rivals the “mixed episode” as my least favorite thing about this disorder. I love to sleep. Sleep is the little respite you get from this disorder and the stress and anxiety that generally accompany it. For about 8 hours, you do not have a mood disorder, all is right with the world, and you are blissfully ignorant. But once that is broken, you are no longer surfing the sine wave; the troughs become deeper and the swells become higher. Your frequency is off. You start getting tired, and want to sleep, but you cannot, and that is so frustrating. It begins to build on itself. The more you want to sleep, the less able you are to actually get a solid 8 hours (or whatever works for you) of sound sleep. The longer this goes on, the more you stand a chance of relapse.

There are a few simple things about this disorder that will keep you from relapsing: take your meds the way you are supposed to, maintain a regular sleep pattern, and see your doctors.  It is pretty simple, really. But, if one thing is off, especially sleep, you will begin to feel weird. You can’t handle everyday problems, you become unfocused and you aren’t productive because in your mind, all you want to do is be able to sleep. And the longer this goes on, the less able you are to function. Even my mother says I get weird when my sleep cycles are off. At this point, i do not care if I am weird. i just want this stress to go away so I can sleep a full 8 or 9 hours. I do not like it when the sine wave is off. I do not like feeling as though my gently rocking boat has hit tempestuous waters. I much prefer the gentle rocking of my boat on the swells of a calm sea.

 

So I Got Mad At Microsoft

house july 4 06 (Photo credit: mygothlaundry)

I know I haven’t been writing as much as I should be since that is the main outlet of my feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc. I haven’t really had the time. My lease is up at the end of this month, and my husband and I chose not to renew it because the property company priced us out of our budget. So, now I am really stressed out. My husband is really stressed out. And, we are in marriage counselling to boot. So, things are just ducky in this Bipolar nation that I survive in. On top of everything, I got mad at Microsoft, and switched my operating system to Linux. Now all the things that I used to take for granted (Word, Excel for example) get saved in formats readable only by other Linux users. As I do create a lot of documents, this is a problem. But that is not really the real reason for this post.

The main reason for this post is that I am so anxious about moving. I do not like to move. I like and need stability. The move is making my husband and I fight more (not a good thing in the Bipolar world), and we are fighting about stupid stuff like where I left a box. And, he isn’t doing any packing at all, and he has more stuff than any person I have ever seen. That is making me really nervous since our last move to here was a fiasco due to his lack of focus on getting the task of packing finished on time. We ended up having to pay prorated rent for the days we were over our lease, and if that happens here we have to pay double the daily rent for every day we are over the lease. This does not even include cleaning the place. I have hit the end of my rope and the knot at the end is fraying rapidly. I have become manic and ineffectual. You’d think that in a manic state you would be more focused, but no, not me. I also have ADD and I cannot focus. My mind is so scattered because of everything that has to get done, I feel as if I have come unglued. My brain is truly splattered right now, and all my journals are packed so I can’t sit down and write in an attempt to re-focus. i have no idea how I am going to get through this. I am truly freaked out.

My grandmother is also going to be 97 years old this Thursday, and last Sunday, she had to move out of the house she has lived in for 50 years. She has become unable to care for herself, or she just won’t. So, i am going through this emotional disaster because I grew up in that house. There were Christmases, Thanksgiving’s, and she and my long deceased grandfather (she called him Daddy) were married on the 4th of July so we used to have big family parties on the 4th to celebrate. i can remember being there when I was little and asking my Granddad where the toys were, and he always told me they were off yonder. Like anyone really knows where yonder is, but I did. I also do not think she is going to be alive too much longer. She has congestive heart failure, osteporousis (I cannot spell that), and all the things you would associate with old age. But, now she has lost her independence. She gave her car up a few years ago, so living on her own was the only thing she had left to define her personhood, i guess you could call it. Now, she has lost that too.

There is just too much upheaval going on around me right now. I can take things as they come, but not like this. This is too much emotional upheaval, and that is not something I handle well. I would like to say I am super woman and can handle everything that comes my way, but the truth is I am hypersensitive, and anything that rocks my emotional world just doesn’t process well. I think I am in a bad space, and the people I rely on like my mother are just as fragile as I am right now. And, my husband just keeps getting irritated with me. I just want to smack him into reality. We are trying to reduce our rent to a manageable level and he keeps looking at places that we could afford…. if we didn’t need to eat. It’s like he is engaging in Magical thinking or something. Some fairy is going to come along and make everything all better. But, there is no fairy, just cold hard reality, and he doesn’t see it. So, that is stressing me out too. I am going to end up in the hospital again. I just know it. I can feel it. I am tryingso hard to keep a grip on things, and the knot is fraying. Fast.

Yet Another Doctor's Appointment

English: Wavelength for sine wave (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Quite possibly, the one single thing that has really begun to bug me about this having Bipolar Disorder thing that causes me to have to put caustic chemicals in my body and ultimately my brain, is the constant stream of doctor’s appointments to assess how I am doing. If it isn’t the psychiatrist (today) checking to see how well a dosage change is affecting mania or depression, it is the therapist next Tuesday to assess my emotional status. I mean, do not get me wrong, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to both them and my parents for paying for them, but sometimes I just like to be left alone to ride my sine wave, and have a good or bad day without it becoming part of a medical chart, or part of my diagnosis. If I am having a sort of bad day when I see the psychiatrist, I get labeled Bipolar Type 1 ~ “low mood”. Of course it is “low”, I am having a bad day. That doesn’t mean I am depressed or about to jump off a bridge! It means I having a bad day, not week, not month, but one single day.  If I am happy and effusive then I am Bipolar Type 1 ~ “manic”. No, not manic, just happy and content. It once again is a one day thing. 

I just get tired of all the notes taking down every word I say for further review. All the writing and prescriptions that have created a medical chart that is thicker than a PhD. thesis. Or my therapist listening for “key” words in our sessions that might be significant in some way that I do not know about. I have no idea when one thing I say prompts a flurry of handwriting or something that I consider to be pretty significant does not. It’s like I just do not know the rules of the game that I am playing and the Doctors all have the upper hand. And then there are the appointments that I go to where I have nothing to report or just do not feel like talking. Those are the most fun. I do not feel like talking and yet, there they are, pens poised in anticipation of the next “great” thing to come out of my mouth/brain. Quite honestly, I do not have something to say all the time. Sometimes, I have no thought pattern whatsoever, yet, there they sit waiting for me to say I am depressed, I feel manic, I feel suicidal….all those things they are expecting.

Most of the time I just feel pretty normal, except I do not handle stress or irritation well. But that is something that is common to a lot of people, not just those of us blessed with Bipolar Disorder. And, I do mean blessed. I would not be as strong as I am without this disorder. If I were one of those people who seem like they just glide through life, I would be at a serious loss as to what to do when the glider came to a screeching halt. I would fly due to forward momentum straight into a crisis that I would not be able to handle. People who have been tested by life seem to handle things better than those who have not. Life is not “Leave it to Beaver” land. It is difficult, testy, irritable, irrational. It is not a Toll House cookie. And, I am sick of being poked and prodded. The meds work. I am fine. I am surfing my own little sine wave, and enjoying it. If you want to knock me off, make me an appointment with a doctor so I can be poked and prodded at. My cage doesn’t even have a Hamster wheel. One of those might be nice. At least I would get some exercise. 

Maybe I just do not want to go out and drive a 70 mile round trip because it has been incredibly hot here, and even though our air conditioner is set to cycle down during the hottest part of the day, it is still at least 20 degrees cooler inside. Heat makes me chappy. I am a Fall/Winter person. I like cold. I hate hot. Now, a nice 70 degrees would be blissful. But, alas, where I live that doesn’t happen until November, and we aren’t even out of June. That’s definitely it. I do not want to drive 70 miles today. I have to attend a meeting after the appointment so I won’t even be home until 9:30 or 10:00. I just do not want to go. I am being peevish. 

The New Version of Normal

Why Can't We Just Get Along?

I do not understand the reactions of some people when you try to do something nice for them. My husband is a cactus/plant nut, he’s really good at it too. Well, we just had this huge storm with a couple of hours of high winds, and it occurred to me that one of his tall cacti (?) may have blown over, so I opened the blinds to check, and sure enough, the plant had blown over. I told him it had, and that I would go get it. It is not like I have not picked up this plant before. I grew up in New Mexico. We have a *&^%load of cactus varieties here. I am used to dealing with them. He got all pissed off about it to begin with, and when I told him (nicely) that I would go take care of it, he just turned on me, and in a very inappropriate tone for the situation informed me that HE would take care of it, that I did not know how. He has no idea how many times I have picked that damn plant and others back up after wind storms. He stopped just short of yelling at me about a fucking plant. We were watching a movie, and I decided I did not want to be there, so I came to my office, and now I am “getting an attitude.” Excuse me? I do not want to be near a person who is in a negative mood, and is telling me that I have an attitude? Who the hell yelled at who in this scenario? So, I left. I was having trouble watching the movie anyway; “The Land of Blood and Honey.”

He is under a lot of stress now, which I understand. I have been through a similar event myself, but I did what I was supposed to do. He did not and is now suffering the consequences. Hey, if there is one thing I have learned having had Bipolar I for some 20 years, it is that life happens. Sometimes you can control it, and sometimes you can’t. Well, this is a situation that should never have happened because he failed to do what he was supposed to do. So, it is his fault that the ramifications that have occurred did so. It is not rocket science. I understand that he is tense. I really didn’t like having the IRS sending me letters that they were going to levy me, or garnish my wages. I couldn’t afford that, so I stayed on top of them, and made sure they were aware of my situation, and made payment arrangements which I fulfilled. Sometimes life is so freaking easy, and a person has to go and make it difficult. And he says, I cannot live without creating chaos and crisis. All I see from him is chaos and crisis. That and he goes through what I think may be Cyclothymia (soft Bipolar) which is a cyclical period of depression followed by a normal period. For those who follow this blog, you know very well how other people’s moods can affect yours, and you are probably aware of the “Bipolar Spectrum.” Cyclothymia is bipolar without mania.

I just do not appreciate the fact that he has this thing hanging over him, and he won’t talk about it to me, because I am too “young” to know anything about anything. If he would only listen to me when I speak about my past as a junkie, an alcoholic, a speed freak, the suicide attempts. But he says he has heard it all before. Hardly, I lived that life for almost 20 years before I straightened out. I know what trouble is, I know all about bad things happening to good people, I know and understand deeply the feeling of loss, I know all about what it is like to have people wanting to kill you because they think you ratted someone out and now they are in jail or prison. I know and understand so much, but I am too young. I am 41 years old for fuck’s sake. If I haven’t learned anything about life in that frame of time, then I am sorely out of luck. I hate it when he does the “more time on the block thing.” We were just on different blocks, but the lessons learned are the same as well as different. I have friends who are ex-cons that are some of the best people in the world. I can relate to people whose lives are troubled because mine was for a long time.

He just thinks because I grew up in a “small” city that I know nothing of life. Unless, my head has been in the sand for a good 25 years, I have learned a lot. He just thinks he knows everything because he grew up an ethnic minority in a big Mid-Western city. BFD, I grew up an ethnic minority in a Southwestern city. I got the crap beat out of me everyday I was in school. Until the private school. That was a whole new brand of bullying. At least when someone hits you, you can hit them back, and they’ll usually leave you alone if you hit them hard enough. Drawing blood helps, too. But, the private school? I was not prepared for that kind of psychological bullying. And, I came out of those experiences knowing I could take care of myself, and being a little more sensitive and wiser about people. But, him, no, he has a fucking chip on his shoulder the size of a small boulder. Mine has been slowly eroded by therapy and medication and Nichiren Buddhism.

I understand he is tense and upset, but to take it out on me was uncalled for because now I am in a bad mood, whereas before, I was feeling a bit more sympathetic to his plight. Now, I just feel cold, and my opinion is, he did it to himself. He has no one to blame, and he tried to blame me. Fuck that! I have nothing to do with this, and had he told me anything about what was happening, I would have advised him to continue on the path he was on. Which is the one that was working things out between him and the creditor. I have the lowest credit score in the world, and I have had numerous accounts sold to collectors. I have had them threaten to sue me. Go for it….you can’t get blood out of a rock. I just do not really care. I have more important things to worry about; like my health and maintaining a healthy lifestyle because then the mood swings are less frequent, and if my mood swings are less frequent, then life around here is a lot more pleasant. i cannot even begin to explain how many times I have faked a better mood than the one I was in just to keep the peace. If I stopped and let every little thing bother me, I’d be in a mental hospital. Been there before too many times.

So, now we are both pissed off. And, all I was trying to do was be a good wife, and do something for him so he could relax and watch the movie. I just gotta what the fuck?!?!?!?!?! (Sorry for the cursing in this post. I am pissed off. Which would be why I am here and he is there). It is better that way for now. And I am sure after the movie, he is going to run to his little computer porn sites because they are a “diversion” for him. But, that is a whole different post.

Bipolar Moments

It would seem that over the last several weeks, I have been having a series of bipolar moments. My general m.o. when I start to cycle is to want to hide in a cave and stay there until I die. Or, I just want to sleep because how can a person be depressed about anything when they are asleep. I mean, yes, your subconscious mind will find new and interesting things for you to do and places to visit. But, on the upside, sometimes you can see people you haven’t seen in ages. That’s always pretty cool. 

What is not cool is the fact that I am cycling. Which means I am depressed, but with little touches of manic spurts thrown in for good measure (if it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger; at least that’s what they say). I hate cycling with a purple passion. I cannot cycle like a “normal” bipolar and be just manic or just depressed. No, I get to be both at once. First you find yourself crying over nothing. And, I do mean NOTHING! There’s no reason to be crying. But, there I am crying like someone just killed my kitten.Then I also get irritated very easily, and everything seems to be standing in work boots on my last nerve. Not a good time to talk to me, or ask me what is wrong because I will tell you. I have a mouth-brain disconnect during these cycles.

My husband is currently not talking to me because he made the mistake of asking me what was wrong this morning. I have held this particular set of feelings back for quite some time now. You can imagine what happened. I didn’t yell, scream, kick my feet or throw a tantrum, but I did explain what was wrong in no uncertain terms. He hasn’t talked to me since. I have no idea why he hasn’t; all I did was explain that I cannot keep asking my mother to pay the rent because I am paying all the utility bills trying to keep us with TV to watch, gas to cook with, you know all those essential “amenities.” I must have said something the wrong way. I guess, it isn’t like it doesn’t happen every single day of my life. And to make things worse, I am a Nichiren Buddhist who believes in the law of Cause and Effect. You make a cause, and the effect will manifest either right away or at a time when you least expect it. So, I must have made a bad cause this morning, because the effect has been silence. Not my fault, he asked.

I have even had a mental health care professional explain to him that while I can manage this illness, I really do not have control of my emotions. He still refuses to read anything that would lead to greater understanding of this illness. He says I put my illness first, then my cats, then he comes in third. I do not know where he got that idea, but yes, in order to remain well, the illness must be dealt with daily. If  I do not keep a vigilant watch over this creature, there will be no relationship, although I do feel vibes from him that maybe he is starting to move in that direction. Won’t be the first. It will hurt more because I love him enough to have married him, and still do.

I do not know where this comes from. I wish the general public and researchers would take mental illness more seriously instead of just saying that we are crazy. Because we are not crazy, we have medically treatable problems that make life more challenging for us, and those around us. I just think that if more people were aware of the effects of the more common mental health issues affecting millions of Americans and people worldwide, there would be more research into the causes of these illnesses. I am not alone in this. I have millions of people who are just like me; having problems at work, with personal relationships, with mood swings, and many other symptoms. I can deal with having trouble in the workforce, I can deal with the mood swings, the irritation, the agitation, but I do not think that I would handle the loss of another relationship very well. There have already been too many.

You just have to love those bipolar moments. They are so not worth the inevitable crash. And, when you do crash, the depression bites in with fangs, and will not let you go. It just shakes you around like a rag doll until you just give in or give up. That’s about where I am headed right now. I can feel it coming just like it has for 20 years.

Waking Up On Seroquel……

is like being clubbed with a small rubber mallet. Your head hurts slightly, your legs don’t want to work, and you stumble into things like the wall that just moved. It is amazing how many things become animate when you are trying to walk while still asleep on this stuff, plants, walls, doorways, all kinds of stuff. Seriously, though, even though this is one whopper of an atypical anti-psychotic, it has been my “magic pill.”

I learned the hard way that I am not supposed to mess around with this medication. It started as a gentle slide, the slope so  miniscule that I could not even see the train wreck that was coming. It is notorious for helping people gain weight as well as controlling mania. So, my doctor and I dropped the dose from 600 mg at night to 400 mg at night, and added Adderall to my daily regimen of medications (I do actually have ADD, so Adderall wasn’t an arbitrary addition to help me lose weight.) Adderall, on the other hand, taken with a cup of joe, will wake you up faster that being smacked upside the face with the same rubber mallet. Anyway , thus began the slow, ever so slow descent in the rabbit hole otherwise known as major depressive episode, madness whatever you wan to call it, and I ended up in bed for a week not bathing, not eating, and a big one for me, not washing my hair. I have this thing about clean hair. I have given my self excruciating headaches washinc it in mountain rivers. It was the not washing my hair that clued me into what had happened; depression had snuck on me. Another thing you apparently can’t do without caffeine while hungover from Seroquel is type. At any rate, that depression landed me in the hospital for a week with a bunch of other people some of whom had much worse problems than I hope to ever have. More coffee….

Okay, have more coffee, yea! Once the doctors raised the Seroquel back to its normal 600 mg, I had no more problems except we increased the Adderall. Adderall is speed. For some reason people with ADD respond differently to stimulants than their normal counterparts. Back to Seoquel and the little mallet. Seroquel seems to have eproved to something of a wonder drug for those in the Bipolar community, it can stop a mania that is happening, and it can prevent occurrences of mania. If it were for those shifting objects, and the little rubber mallet, i would agree. But, seriously, it has far fewer side effects than anything I have been prescribed.

Trying to Dig Even Deeper

Okay, since my writing prompt book says that one of the goals this month is to dig deeper into the emotion(s) of the subject you are writing about, here we go again. I have been suffering from a depressive episode fro about 3 or 4 weeks now. It has a life of its own. Some days, it gives me a gentle reprieve, and I do not feel like cutting off my head. Other days, it attacks full force leaving me curled in a ball in bed, not bathing, not washing my hair, not wanting or needing to talk to anyone, and wanting to cut my heart out of my chest. It is the only way I can see out. Dying. There is no other way. The depression, however, is so paralyzing, so bone-crushing that just breathing requires concentrated effort. Opening my eyes is like lifting weights at the gym with some sadistic personal trainer. So, dying is out of the question because it would involve effort and energy I just do not have.

Depression like this is debilitating, you can’t work, you can’t read, you can only sleep so much before your body says enough, so then you are awake and in mental traction, just shifting position is impossible.

The reprieves are wonderful. You are still depressed, but you can do stuff like breathe without thinking about it first, open and close your eyes with little effort, your brain doesn’t think your whole body is in traction. It is almost like being normal again……except, now you have the energy to do the one thing you can’t do when under the spell of bone-crushing depression. Die. Fortunately, I made a vow to the Universe about 4 years ago that I could not do that. So, dying is out of the question. Which is not to say that when things get really rough, I do not think about it.

Bipolar is a scary disease. It is chronic and progressive meaning it will not get better with time. It gets worse. The episodes get closer together. Unless you are very careful, you will lose friends, family and lovers as they are the ones you lash out at. And, they so not deserve it. I have decided on a new project. It is called: “Think first open mouth second.” Maybe that will alleviate some of what I have been going through with my significant other.