Portions Of Blog Post This Morning By Bradley On Coming Out With Mental Illness ~ Got My Brain Going (Again)

From Bradley’s post:

“Coming out of the mental health closet was also difficult. I tried to hide it from all but my closest friends and family. I did feel shame. I didn’t want to appear lazy when depressed or crazy when manic. Eventually, I did choose to come out as a man with bipolar disorder for the same reason I came out as a gay man. It was time to be who I am.

A study published by The National Center for Biotechnology Information, a branch of the National Institute of Health, determined that coming out of the mental health closet is similar to coming out as a person who is gay. The report emphasized they were not suggesting that homosexuality is a form of mental illness, rather, the public stigma and the personal stigma of each have similar qualities. For example, gay men and lesbians are not recognized by others unless they somehow choose to identify themselves as such. Similarly, most people with serious mental illness are not obvious unless they discuss their illness or mental health history.

From the study:

• This kind of hidden identity may protect the person opting to remain in the closet, i.e., deciding not to let others know of one’s mental health history. People who come out about their mental illnesses may expose themselves to additional discrimination and social disapproval. Research suggests however, that people who are out about their condition often report benefits. Studies on the gay community, for example, identified benefits including less stress from having to no longer keep the secret……

If you have decided to be open about your mental illness, there are some important points to consider.

•  Most important is to accept yourself. If you are not fully comfortable with your illness then you’ll probably want to confide in no one except your closest friends or family. Remember, once you tell people you have a mental illness, you cannot take it back. Unlike your local paper, you cannot print a retraction.
• Coming out is not a one-time deal. It is a lifetime process. When you make new friends or get a new job, you will need to decide, once again, who to confide in.
• Prepare Yourself. Start with a list of the most significant people in your life to help you decide who to come out to. Perhaps you’re prepared to tell everyone, or, only your family, or, only your friends. What about your job? Do you work in an environment that will be supportive or could it have a negative impact? If you are unsure, then it’s probably best not to tell your boss or co-workers.”

 

This post got me thinking about the process of “coming out” about your own mental illness. We have all seen the celebrities like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jane Pauley (I believe) come out about their own diagnosis of Bipolar II disorder, and as public figures, the news made the tabloids, the celebrity watch magazines, and even People magazines. Most people are not going to have so dramatic an experience as they can choose who to tell, and who they would prefer not to know such as employers or co-workers.

As the quote above suggests from the study done my The National Center for Biotechnology Information (a branch of the NIH): “This kind of hidden identity may protect the person opting to remain in the closet….Research suggests however, that people are out about their condition often report benefits. Studies on the gay community, for example, identified benefits including less stress from having to no longer keep the secret…”

I know that, initially, I felt like a Mack truck had hit me. I was first diagnosed as a Bipolar Type II which is a little kinder and gentler than a diagnosis of Bipolar Type I with Psychotic Features which is my current diagnosis. I was okay with the Bipolar II diagnosis because, me being me, I immediately began researching the idea of the “Bipolar Spectrum”. I cannot battle that which I do not understand. I came to a certain peace with the Type II diagnosis. Then, I got “upgraded” to Bipolar Type I with Psychotic Features. That was when the Mack truck plowed straight into my world. I was shattered, I was broken beyond repair; I mean how do you swallow the pill of “with Psychotic Features”. When one thinks of psychosis, many people think of homeless people talking to themselves, or schizophrenics (the most widely know psychotic illness). However, upon doing yet more research, I began to understand why the tag had been added to the Bipolar I diagnosis. I hear things such as TV’s, radios, people talking; none of these things are real, they are auditory hallucination. I also have a propensity for being paranoid which is another psychotic feature.

It took me about 4 years to accept that my life was forever changed, I had not only been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, but PTSD, Panic disorder with and without Agoraphobia, and adult ADD (just to add a little icing to my already bouncy brain). It was a lot to absorb. It was nice to know there were reasons for the way I felt, the things I heard and had been hearing since I was a child (I just didn’t tell anyone), that there was treatment available (it took forever to stabilize me). At some point, I became comfortable with the fact that my childhood and teenage depression had morphed into something much more serious, and I began telling people that I recognized as Bipolar as well that I also had Bipolar disorder. I do recognize other Bipolars when I meet them. There is something about this illness that if you just take the time to observe, you will see bits of yourself in another even though manifestation of the illness is different for everyone.

Once I had accepted that this was going to be my life, I felt a very strong urge to tell others; to make them understand that I wasn’t crazy and I wasn’t “moody”, that there was an underlying medical problem with my brain chemistry that I could manage with therapy and medication, but that I would never be able to control. That, by the way, is a very important point. One can never say they have Bipolar under control. One can be in remission, partial remission, etc, but that does not mean you are well. Bipolar can and will come up and bite you on the ass no matter how finely tweaked you are.

Coming out for me was a very natural organic experience. It just happened without any pomp and circumstance. I made no conscious decision to talk about it; I just began dialogues with people with the goal of educating both them and myself. Since, I have always known who and what I am, once I was stabilized on anti-psychotics, and I have a tendency to be too honest sometimes, the words just began to pour out to anyone and everyone. I do not work, but that is one place where I would have to seriously have to consider talking about it. 

Bradley makes some very good points some of which are outlined above to consider when contemplating coming out. It is a deeply personal decision, and a frightening one due to the social stigma surrounding mental health. I just decided if I was going to be true to myself, and hopefully educate some people in the process, that I was going to talk about it without fear of stigma or judgment because I believe open and honest dialogue is vital to changing the image that mental illness has. The following statistics suggest it is much more common than most people think.

It All Started At Birth (Ages 12-16) Warning: Potential Trigger

I left the telling of this long story about how I came to experience madness at the age of 12. As I mentioned in the first part of this tale, this was the beginning of my series of trial and error attempts at killing myself. This one would be the first attempt. I used ammonia to try and poison myself after being reprimanded for cursing at the explosion of the soda bottle upon opening it. At the time, I was prepubescent, very emotional, unhappy at school, and had a general sense that something must be wrong with me due to the fact that I reacted to most things with emotion rather than rational thought. A rational person would not have done what I did in reaction to being reprimanded, however, I think it was a result of built up tension and the anxiety that I constantly felt. I was never good enough. I never could seem to reach the bars set for me by both my parents, and the even higher bars I set for myself. I literally set myself up to fail. I didn’t see that at the time, though. However, it is still a very early age to be contemplating suicide, and impulsively carrying the thoughts into reality. That should have been a warning signal to the adults in my world that something was off kilter about how I perceived the world and my reactions to it. It took the Principal of my middle school/junior high school calling a parent-student meeting, and explaining that I was having trouble with school, that I was being bullied, and seemed socially isolated (which I was). So, my first suicide attempt didn’t appear to have set off warning bells in the adult’s brains, but my behavior at school did, and led to my first therapist. 

The first therapist I saw was truly no match for me in every sense of the word “match”. She was a rather large woman who complained constantly that she had to go to Dallas, Texas to purchase clothing as there were no stores in this city that catered to the “plus-size” professional woman. At 12, I saw a logical answer to the having to go to Dallas to buy clothes: Lose weight. Seemed logical to me, so, upon having learned that my parents had seen fit to tell her that I still sucked my thumb (I did up until a few years ago while I slept, but not while I was awake), and her telling me I was too old for that behavior, I told her I would make a deal with her. If she stopped complaining about the shopping issue she had and lost some weight, then I would make a conscious effort to stop sucking my thumb. Seemed reasonable to me, but apparently it was an offensive bargain to her. That was the last time I saw her. That was the last time I saw anyone for about 4 years. Apparently, I was not cut out for therapy, at least at that time in my life. The next 4 years would be integral in shaping who and what I became for the next 20 years, give or take a few on either side.

I found myself at the age of 12 nearing my 13th birthday taking tests to get into a private school. My parents had decided to remove me from the public school system so that I would be more intellectually challenged (I was really bored at school), and so I would not be knocked around by the other kids. I had no idea that I was going to have to learn to swim with sharks. I remember the first day of school at the “new and improved” private school. My father brought my younger sister and myself to school early that morning. I was crying and telling him that I wanted to be taken back to my old school, that I didn’t want to be at this much smaller and “elite” private school.  I think that somehow my instincts were telling me that I was a bad fit for this school; that I had better get back to my old school where the violence was physical and not psychological. I knew how to handle physical violence. I was ill prepared for what these kids could dish out. I somehow just knew that everything about me from the clothes I wore to the music I listened to was about to go under the magnifying glass, and that I would not pass muster. I was right. I did not pass go, and I did not collect $200.00. My clothes were all wrong, where I shopped was all wrong, my hair wasn’t right. and I most definitely listened to the wrong music (I just couldn’t get on the 80’s British New Wave invasion train; I was a rocker, not a whiner).

This was where it started to get really bad. If I thought that what I had endured for the past few years was bad, I was so very, very wrong. I was in the shark pool now, and I did not know how to swim. I was now at the mercy of a bunch of rich kids who thought money could buy everything including people as long as they were worth buying. I was not worth much therefore I had few friends for the first year. It did not help that I left school for three months to travel to Japan to live for a few months. When I left in early January of that year, everything was fine. When I returned to school later that year in the spring, everything was different, and tense. My few friends were not really my friends anymore. Or at least that is how it felt. I had yet to experience what they were really capable of doing to a person. I found that out a couple of months into my freshman year where I became an “Upper” class student (yes, this school was that bad. You didn’t go to high school, you became an “upper” class student, and those below you were “lower”class students. Caste system?). 

When I was 14, I was a “popular” kid for about 2 months of the very beginning of the school year. Then I said the wrong thing to the right person, and everything changed overnight. I had no idea that sharks had a calling tree. Go figure? I went to school the next morning, and I had no friends at all. I started receiving phone calls at random times after school with the voice at the other end wondering why my mother hadn’t had an abortion, why I didn’t just kill myself and put everyone out of their misery, and other choice things. I began to have anxiety attacks whenever the phone rang. Being ignored at school made it even worse. Most people do not consider ignoring a person as a form of psychological warfare, but it is, in fact, a very effective tool that can really make a person question their worth. Thus began the first major depressive episode. I did not talk to people including my parents, I did not eat, I slept all the time, and I had some physical symptom as well.

Eventually, I made friends with a girl who had been a freshman when I was in 8th grade. She had returned to this elitist, preppy hell of a school after something happened in another school. She was in my computer class, and was continually falling asleep in class for a reason I did not know. I just thought it was weird. as it turned out she and I shared musical tastes, and that was enough to start a friendship that lasts to this day. She knew the guy I really liked who worked at the big video and record store back in 1986, when I was much younger and much less “experienced” than I am now (yes, I returned the vinyl recording of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” four times claiming there was a scratch on it just so I could see this long-haired rocker guy…..I had it that bad). She introduced me to him, and I was beside myself. With her I began to hang around a completely different crowd; people who were odd just like me. I met a guy I liked, and we became boyfriend and girlfriend.

Then the worst thing in the world happened. I was at his apartment, and no one else was home. We were fooling around on the couch and somehow found my self on my back with tugging my jeans off. He assaulted me that night. I was just barely 16 and a virgin. Afterwards, he thanked me. how sick is that when you have just raped your girlfriend. I told him that I was a virgin, asked him why he was all bloody, and then I backhanded him so hard his head whipped around. I got home to find my parents waiting for me, however, I think I will stop here and post the next installment soon……

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.

 

Bipolar And Married To A Chronic Depressive

Bipolar Affective Disorder (Photo credit: tamahaji)

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On the Threshold of Eternity (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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I have Bipolar I with Psychotic Features. I do not always perceive what is real or true, and what my own warped mind has fabricated. I get angry at things most “normal” people would brush off, I get combative when I feel I am being attacked, I experience extreme changes in mood, and the list could go on forever. 

My husband is a chronic depressive (not diagnosed) who is constantly harping on me about my illness, and how everything revolves around me. He complains that no one cares about him myself included. I ask him what is bothering him, and he either tells me that nothing is wrong, or he will start talking, and in the end, it is inevitably me who is causing all his problems. I will admit to taking out past frustrations on him, and nobody deserves that. However, there are things he does in the present that have caused arguments as well. He is in nearly complete denial about his depression. He calls it “being out of it.” Call it what you like, he is depressed. I know it when I see it; I have spent most of life that way.

Currently, our marriage is barreling downhill at an astonishing pace. He sleeps on the sofa downstairs, and I sleep in the bed. This has been the arrangement for several months now. He will not talk to me, and when he does the conversation invariably turns to “No one thinks about me, they only think of you.” They are my family. Of course they have my interests at heart; and he has made more than a few mistakes in this marriage and with my family that have caused them to be somewhat against him. He feels entitled to all the attention I “get”.

When he does speak, it is almost a given that my having Bipolar disorder will become the focus of the conversation. I do not think about having Bipolar very often. I have had it for decades. My meds are like taking an aspirin for a headache. I just do not think about it that much. I do monitor my self with regards to mood, anxiety level, etc. so that my psychiatrist can adjust my medication accordingly. He is the one that always brings it up, usually in relation to two other Bipolar women he’s known. He just doesn’t see that I am not them, that Bipolar manifests differently in every person diagnosed. Some are very high functioning, and some are not. I tend to be relatively high functioning (most of the time), so I do not understand some of his criticisms of me. I think it’s transferrence or projection of his feelings onto me. I am the mirror of his own illness; it is easier for him to look at me and project his feelings onto me because I am a diagnosed Manic Depressive than to look at himself and realize that he is depressed and not functioning very well. 

For myself, I try not to let his mood get in my way. It is so easy for a Bipolar or anyone, for that matter, to start to feed off the feelings of someone close to them. However, for the Bipolar individual, it is even more important to not allow someone else’s feelings about themselves become your problem. As far as I am concerned, I have to look out for my health first because if I go down the rabbit hole with him, there is nobody to take care of daily household business. That, and Bipolars have a very high suicide rate, both completed and attempted. So, when I get too stressed or feel myself sliding down the rabbit hole for tea with the Mad Hatter, I become concerned because I do have attempts in my past, and the thought will flicker briefly every day that being dead would be easier.

It is difficult enough for a relationship to flourish when one party has Mental Health issues, but when both parties have mental health problems, it becomes survival oriented, communication breaks down as the depressed person becomes more withdrawn and the Bipolar half starts to cycle rapidly through episodes. I have a tendency to think everything is my fault, so when he goes off on one of little journeys, I am often left wondering, “What did I do or didn’t do?” The question drives me nuts. He will claim it has nothing to do with me, but it generally is some oversight on my part. Basically, I am left holding the bag for everything that goes wrong. He won’t even admit to himself that maybe his own problems with depression may be having a negative effect on the relationship. Nope, it is always my manic depression. This type of relationship where both parties have a mental issue doesn’t go very far. It can’t because it always in survival mode; it takes a lot of work to make a relationship like this work. One has to have basic respect and compassion for the other, otherwise it will end as one or the other begins to feel that they need to protect their sanity.

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. 

Not So Sure About This Marriage Counseling Thing

A couple of 14-carat gold wedding rings. Picture taken in Brazil, where 14-carat is the most common kind of gold used in jewelry. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I came out of that counselor’s office so angry the other day, I thought I was going to break something, so I went for a bike ride instead. I can easily see this type of counseling making me relapse. It was so confrontational and stressful that I ended up triggered which is not a good sign. This would be why managing my illnesses is of utmost importance. Especially the bipolar disorder, because if it is going to be like this every time, i am going to end up in the hospital. I do not think that my husband really understands that when he indicates that in order of importance I care first about my illness, then my cats, then him. Of course I am going to care about my illness first. If I do not care about it above all else, I decompensate and become ill.

My becoming ill again is not productive for the relationship. We cannot have a relationship if I do not manage my bipolar first above everything else. And as far as the cats go, I feed them, clean their litter box, make sure they have water, and give them a little attention. That’s not making them more important to me than he is; it is responsible pet ownership. I would really like to know how often he cleans, makes dinner, fixes morning coffee; these are all things I do for him and for myself. I don’t see how his never having anything else to do but play on the computer, and take care of his plants is putting him third. If anything, he comes first then managing my illness. I wish he would take up reading books, then maybe he might have a better idea about how this illness functions. I have even ordered a new one geared toward both the ill person and the family of the ill person. I keep trying and hoping. Hope does spring eternal, unfortunately. We’ll see how this goes. The minute I find my self sliding down the rabbit hole to have tea with the Mad Hatter is the day I quit. Stress is a huge trigger for me, and this is the most stressful thing I have ever done. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. I will try to be more open about the process, but that doesn’t mean I am not going to get mad about some stuff.

Starting Marriage Counseling Today

We are finally about to start marriage counseling today. I really do not know how I feel about this. I am very apprehensive about the whole endeavor because he has this tendency to blame everything on me. Like he walks on water. Everything that is wrong with the marriage is my fault because I am mentally ill, therefore, everything must be my fault. What he doesn’t understand is that his own problem with depression makes me sicker. He withdraws into this dark world of Internet porn, and he thinks that’s okay. When in reality, he is paying no attention to me whatsoever, and he won’t have sex with me, half the time he won’t sleep in the same bed with me, and somehow, I am supposed to okay with all of this. He spends his time watching other women fuck (pardon my french), he spends his time looking at pictures of other women naked. And I am supposed to be okay with this? He has no idea how rejected I feel, how ugly and undesirable this all makes me feel, and quire frankly, I do not think he really cares about how I feel about anything because he just continues to do it. Yesterday, he spent the entire day on the porn sites. And, somehow, I am still supposed to feel wanted? He is an asshole if he thinks that is all okay for him to do. He claims he loves me, yet his actions are completely separate from his words. If he truly loved me, he would quit the Internet porn thing, because he knows how I feel about it. And he claims it all about trust, he trusts that I am not doing anything online, so I should trust that he is not either, but how am I supposed to do that when he is looking at the base asses of other women. It is no different from cheating on me because he obviously derives some gratification from it, or he wouldn’t do it.

Well marriage counseling went swimmingly. I am apparently a superficial bitch who thinks of illness first, my cats second, and my husband third. Anytime I try to empathize with his situation whatever it may be, he says I come across to him as shallow and superficial. In other words, a stuck up bitch. All I am trying to fucking do is let him know that I do understand he feels bad about something. I am not trying be some fucking psychic who knows all. Pissed me clean the fuck off. 

One thing the therapist did point out was that my husband spent twice as long explaining his concerns as I did. Basically he dominated the conversation. He talked for like twenty minutes about how he thinks I am saving money to move. Now, i f I wanted to move, I would talk to my mother about staying with her for a couple of months until I had enough money to move out, get my stuff out of storage and I would be gone like the wind. Simple as that. No conspiratorial hoarding of money, no reason why I am constantly broke except I cover about $500 worth of bills and my rent $464. Which actually comes to more than I make in a month. I do not know where the fuck he got this idea that I am going to abandon him and leave him high and dry. I am not that kind of person. Why the hell would I have made a commitment to hearing all about what a bitch I am that thinks only of herself and not other people, and how I need to fix this, that, and the other thing about myself. 

I understand he feels isolated, but he just doesn’t wake up early enough to come with me to meetings, or out to see people. I understand his car is in bad shape. I had no car for 2.5 years. Finally bought one, and it nickeled and dimed me to death so I stopped driving it for like 7 years and rode a bicycle. I took the bus,and  fucking walked evrywhere. So, yeah, when I  TRY to empathize with his car problem. Been there, done that. For many years. I am just going to stop trying to support him, because it obviously is not what he wants. Or thinks he doesn’t realize he needs.

I give the fuck up! I am so tired of his habits, but I am not supposed to take my bipolar seriously? FUCK HIM!!!!

P.S. Sorry for the language in this post. I am really angry, and trying to deal with it with out going off on him.

Life Used To Be Simpler

My life used to be simple. I woke up, had some coffee then grabbed my bike and headed off for school. During the time when only my fiancé was working and I

mountain bike in downhill race in forest ski trail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

was going to school, I used to mountain bike every morning without fail. I always went out between 9 am and 11 am (I am fair skinned, and the sun is still low enough in the sky that you won’t get burned as badly). Nothing beats the thrill of coming down that bitch of a hill that killed your legs going up. Especially if it is winding. It seems that I have always felt better on a bike.

I remember one ride where I actually hit the “zone” that athletes are always talking about. My then fiancé and I were up in the mountains and it started to storm quite seriously. I am talking about lightning and thunder at the same time. That’s how close the lightning was to us, and all I could think about was getting the heck out of there because my bike is made of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is an electrical super conductor. So, I just started to haul ass out of there. I wasn’t into getting fried that day. It was the most amazing ride. I was one with the bike (which never happened),  I was not thinking about how I was going to make a turn or over a log, I just found a way, and it worked. All I was really thinking about was, OMG mountain storm! Get out now! I think it was my favorite ride ever. I wish it were possible to use words to describe the experience of riding your bike through the mountains with all this lightning and thunder and hail and rain. It is one of the most exhilarating thing ever, And yes, it even beat sex.

Life was just so much simpler in those times. I was happy, I was in school and doing well, I was in love, and I had a great best friend that I used to go to the mountains with after school was out. He and I were like little kids, we explored everything that looked like it might be a trail. We were joined at the hip. If one of us showed up somewhere, it was a safe bet the other was not far behind. The sun is coming up, and the sky is turning pink. It is beautiful.

Anyway, this was long before the “diagnosis” and the medication-go-round that I ended up on. This was long before I got married which I am still trying to decide if that was big mistake or not. I love my husband, please do not get me wrong, it is just sometimes he can be incredibly difficult to deal with. He doesn’t seem to want to learn about what bipolar really is; he’d prefer to rely on his past 2 experiences with bipolar women, and both were total tramps. One was a “I’ll try anything once” type, the other one just cheated on him a lot. And neither one of them would stay on their medication so they were constantly going up and down. I, on the other hand, am medication compliant, and actually start to freak out when I have run out of medication because I know what happens when I do. It is simple, take your meds, and the mood swings will be closer to those that normal people have. It really isn’t rocket science nor does it require an advanced degree in physics.

What I think is that he cannot face his own depression. He has never received treatment for it until now when we finally reach a point where marriage counseling has become necessary, and they have a treatment plan that has us doing marriage counseling every two weeks and him doing one on one therapy every two weeks. He says that he has looked at himself and knows who and what he is. Therapy will fix that. Therapy forces you to look at yourself in a new light. He is going to finally have to confront the ugly in his nature. At least he will if he is honest with himself and the therapist. If he isn’t then therapy will do him no good. Therapy can be very scary. You will have to talk about things that you have buried so deeply it can take years to work your way through the maze of emotions surrounding the issue. I do not think he gets that. I have been in therapy for about 8 1/2 years, but I had some very dark things I had to take care of. I remember one session where I spent the entire session in a fetal ball (this was a few years ago). Something had triggered me. That’s another thing he needs to learn about: triggers. Once you can recognize them, you can control how you react to them, or at the very least manage not to let them set you off.

I swear life used to be so simple.

Whose Depression?

Depression (emotion ) (Photo credit: Andreas-photography)

As you know if you have been following this blog, my husband and I are having dome difficulties in our marriage. We have not been talking to each other, and when we do, it almost always turns into a fight regarding my diagnosis of Bipolar I. Some how, I always get blamed for the problems in our marriage because I am officially diagnosed as mentally ill. The key part of that sentence is “I am officially diagnosed” where as he is not.

So, we’re going to be doing couple’s therapy, because neither one of us really wants to throw in the towel, and admit defeat. Besides, how can you admit defeat in a battle you’ve never fought; you can’t. So, marriage counseling. I was being nosy the other day, the papers were in plain view, so it wasn’t like I had to move boxes to see this weird little tidbit of information. He had reported to the counselor that it was “difficult to live with someone who is always depressed.” I thought that was an interesting comment. Especially since I am not always depressed, bored maybe, but rarely truly depressed. If I am, there are a whole bunch of red flags: not bathing, not changing my PJs, not getting out of bed, hyper somnolence, not washing my hair, no makeup, letting my manicure go. Like I said a whole lot of red flags that I am becoming or am already depressed.

With that having been said, I believe that my husband suffers from uni-polar depression. He is withdrawn, stays to himself, grunts when talked to, is constantly talking about making determinations and then taking action on them. I do not see him doing this at all. He spends all day, everyday on his computer. He will not admit to being depressed (a good sign that someone is). Fortunately, is the process of getting to marriage counseling, he is receiving one on one therapy which he is to continue even after we start marriage counseling (I have my own doctors). All of this is great, but his comment about it being difficult to live with some one who is depressed all the time just begs the question: Whose depression is hard to live with, his or mine?

Especially, considering I am on to very effective mood stabilzers, an anti-anxiety medication, medication for ADD, and an anti-depressant. That my sound like a lot, but believe me, my arsenal is much smaller than a lot of people with Bipolar. My psych believes in only as much medication is needed. So, I am finely tuned, I do not get manic, I do not really get depressed. I surf a low frequency sine wave. I have ups and downs just like everyone else, I have good and bad days just like everyone else. 

All of which leads me back to my original question: Whose depression? Because it’s not mine.