I Have No Idea What I Am Right Now ~ Manic, Depressed, Stressed Or Are They All The Same

bipolar-quotes-02-300×240 (Photo credit: Life Mental Health)

 

I have one certainty right now. I have BPAD type I with psychotic features, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder with and without Agoraphobia, and Panic Disorder. It it not amusing that 3 of 4 are anxiety disorders that are triggered by stress which I am undergoing to an extreme that I never have in the past. Not this kind of stress. I can handle work-related stress, the everyday stress that comes from sharing this planet with so many different people, but I don’t know if I can handle this level of emotional stress. I feel that I may go insane (I have a list to choose from), and this time I may not come back in the same form I left in. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I am paralyzed in my mind where I go to hide. I feel like a coin being tossed and whatever comes up heads is where I go that day. If it’s tails, do not bother getting out of bed, it won’t be worth the time, energy or pain that will go into trying to stay positive in the face of extremely negative circumstances. 

 

Everyone thinks I am strong and I am not. I am a quivering mass that is hiding behind a facade of normalcy and strength. Unless you have experienced this type of emotional stress, you will not understand what I am going on about. My husband is going to be served with divorce papers tomorrow, and neither one of us have a place to go live other than where we are. So, we are living together for the next three months. I do not think this is going to finally be the proverbial straw, and I go off the deep end (I am already in the deep end), and never come back. This is going to color my world for a long time, I think. My whole paradigm about relationships has shifted, and it remains to be seen in which direction. My last long term relationship lasted 9 years, but at the time no one knew that I had manic-depression. PTSD, yes. But nothing that could explain the Bipolar symptoms that were beginning to manifest. Now, I know, and I feel an obligation to whoever can love me to tell them so they will know from the get go what they are in for. Ideally, this person will not be swayed and will learn how to be with someone who has periods of mania and severe depression. And, they will care and not care at the same time. They will love me for me, and the disorder won’t always be the elephant in the room like it is now.

 

He doesn’t understand what he did wrong in the marriage, I totally get what I did wrong. I am divorcing him for those reasons, not because I do not love him, but because I do love him and care about his welfare, and I am not an easy person to be around sometimes. I do things and say things that are harmful and damaging. And, I am trying to protect him from me, and to a certain extent, myself from him. I cannot tolerate his pet diversion any longer and still respect myself as a woman. I can no longer live with someone who refuses to try to learn something about Bipolar disorder since that has been the most disruptive of all my diagnoses. How can one handle something that one has no real knowledge of? I have to live with it everyday. You can be damn sure I read whatever I can get that is legitimate and not “pop” psychology. I cannot do battle against something that I do not understand. No one can. At least not effectively. I hope I can get through this without becoming cynical and jaded. I hope that I can get through this without any drama, or me going way off the radar of “normal” feeling. 

 

I just hope that……hell, I do not know what I hope. I do not even know how I feel. I do not even know if I am feeling or if I am pretending which I am so good at. I just know something is off about me these days. I do not think I have allowed myself to feel because then I would be useless. Maybe I will let myself feel when I have time. Maybe.

 

I Just Don't Understand……Maybe I Really Am As Dumb As I Feel Sometimes

You Don’t Understand Me (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I do not get some people. It isn’t for lack of trying. Every person I have spoken to today has either been very snide or has outright yelled at me. Which tends to make me really irritable. I am already having a “manic episode” which means that I am not sleeping, eating, or anything else I supposed to do to keep myself healthy. What I do not get is why other people cannot seem to see when I am “sick” (I hate that term), and that is when they choose to get strange on me. 

 

I have no one to talk to about what is happening to me because nobody wants to hear it; they’ve got their own, much more important problems to deal with. I am being sued by my student loan provider, I am on the verge of being sued by my other student loan provider, if they win the payment amount per month that they want, I will be homeless because I simply can’t make nearly $300.00 in loan payments and pay rent. I figured it out. If I pay as the plans stand, I will have $662 (roughly) to pay rent, utilities, and try to feed myself. That’s impossible. I will be homeless. I will lose everything I have worked so hard to accomplish both socially and privately. Material possessions can be replaced eventually, but once you have been knocked down, it is really hard to stand back up.

 

I am going through a divorce and trying to live out the lease with my soon to be ex-husband. I can’t talk to him about how I feel about that. Most of the times, I feel okay about it. Neither of us were happy. But, then there are days like today where I really need someone to just listen to me. I feel very sad and lonely (as per the usual) today. I didn’t want to file for divorce, but it was the only thing that would resolve the entire situation between us. We fought all the time, made snide remarks about each other, he always defined me by my mental “interestingness”, but never by who I really am which is a normal person who feels life more intensely than most. I wrote him a note today trying to explain to him that I was not doing this out of malice, or that I can no longer tolerate him, but rather it was out of love for him and concern for his welfare that I was stepping out of the picture before I do any more damage, Apparently, it is very difficult to have a relationship with a bipolar person. I say it is very hard for a bipolar person to have a relationship with a chronically depressed person.

 

I basically have no friends anymore because he isolated me from them through very subtle emotional and verbal abuse. But, I am just as much to blame on that front. Sometimes, I think we fought about nothing just so we could hurt each other. It was really good for about the first year and a half, and then very slowly, it started to go downhill. Then it picked up momentum, and became it’s own living entity. But, how do you fight something you cannot see? How do you fix something when the other person is blaming you for nearly everything that has gone wrong, but they cannot see their own contribution to the demise of something that was once beautiful? 

 

I am feeling very uncomfortable today. I cannot seem to say anything right to anyone I have encountered today. I have been flat out yelled at by another mentally “interesting” friend who is really struggling right now. Nothing I said was right, she shot down everything I suggested as “impossible,” she put down any idea I had that might have helped. I even offered to help her clean and organize her apartment, But, that was met with more yelling. I tried to tell her that people are willing to help her, but that she pushes them away by repeatedly turning down their offers to help her. Eventually, people will get tired of getting shot down every time they try to help her, and they will stop offering. Why beat a dead horse?

 

I feel very alone in this. I know that I will be okay in the long run, but the short run is a bitch. I feel like the wicked witch of the west. I feel like he was right all along; that the destruction of this relationship was mostly me. I changed him, I damaged him, I hurt him, I didn’t show enough affection, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that. He never stops to think that he did two very important things: he spent hours on the Internet watching and collecting amateur porn which I felt very disrespected by, and he didn’t open a single book written by the people who are the experts on mood disorders to find out how to support me, or even to just understand me. To me, that shows a lack of real caring. It tells me that his love was conditional on my not getting upset about his porn addiction, and just let him carry on his merry little way thinking that he understands the multitude of bipolar manifestations.

 

I cannot talk to anyone about this. Everyone I know is happily married. When you are getting divorced, the last thing you want to do is talk to someone with a functional marriage. It just makes everything that iota worse than it already is. I find myself questioning whether I have made the right decision, or if I really am as dumb as I feel. 

 

I Need To Write But……

Swirling thoughts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

my brain feels stuck. Ever have so much running through your head that you have to get it out or you’ll most certainly go crazy, but you just have no idea where to start. I mean stream of consciousness writing is fine for your journal, but it doesn’t work well when you want people to be able to follow your thought process. I think this is the natural offshoot of a draft I started called “Marriage Counseling Round Three” that I never finished. It is finished now. 

Round Three of marriage counseling culminated in my being so angry and upset and frustrated with the fact that I had just sat there for another hour listening to how everything that is wrong with my marriage is due to my having Bipolar disorder (among several others that just exacerbate it, namely PTSD, but that’s a whole other post). It is not our marriage. It is my marriage like I own it as a possession. Last I looked marriage was defined by the union of two, not one, persons. Anyway, we stopped at Walmart on the way home, and not really wanting to deal with Walmart in my current state of mind which, at the time, was rather antisocial. Funny how listening to everything being your fault can do that to you. Especially, if it is a recurring theme. Anyway, I opted to stay in the car while husband went to buy juice and some other item. “I’ll be right out,” he says. An hour and a half later, I was handing the keys to the car to him wordlessly and heading for the bus stop. I didn’t really mean to stay out until 3:30 in the morning, but maybe I did. I know I wanted nothing to do with him or being around him or feeling trapped in the house. So, maybe I intentionally stayed out that late. 

I get home, and he is mad. Probably rightfully so. I told him that i had stopped by a dive blues bar that I used to go to with a really good friend, and that they had a band that night. He said he had tried to call several times but I did not answer. Ever tried to hear your cell ringing when a band is onstage tearing it up? You can’t. So, here’s part of where my brain gets stuck. He spent an entire hour telling what essentially amounted to lies to the therapist (he slickly left out his own predeliction to shopping when upset or just bored), and blamed our entire financial situation on my having Bipolar disorder. I can honestly say that, yes, having Bipolar disorder does sometimes make handling finances a bit tricky. However, I have managed for 22 years to keep a roof over my head, bills close to paid, and food in the fridge. Granted, I don’t have a stellar credit rating, but that may be a blessing in disguise.

Anyway, here he is telling me how he had gone out looking for me, and drove around for a couple of hours and called and yadda-yadda-ya. All this after spending an hour telling the therapist how essentially everything was my fault which is the same tune he sang a the previous two sessions. So, now my brain is trying it’s broken best to process this conflicting information and coming up with nothing. It’s like a seized engine. 

The relationship between us has been declining fairly rapidly over the past 6 or 7 months. He is sleeping on the sofa, refuses to sleep in the bed, no “marital” relations, you know, all the precursors for divorce. All of this also contains two fairly “feisty” arguments, one of which left me feeling so much rage after being yelled and cursed at for an hour that I had to take my night time meds and go to sleep rather than remain awake and prone to who knows what. Although, when I am that angry, I tend towards a sort of homicidal calmness that freaks even me out. I don’t curse, I do not raise my voice, I simply say exactly what I am thinking in no uncertain terms, and that can be a little much sometimes. I never claimed I was the vision of perfection. I am simply a person trying to manage life with several rather debilitating and chronic and potentially dangerous (to myself) diagnoses. 

Well, last night, I ended up bringing a friend home so he could just chill out for awhile in a relatively calm environment. Note: the friend was a guy. So, we kick back for a while and read the Craig’s List personals to amuse ourselves (they are amusing). Then about 12 am, I set off to take him home where he and his girlfriend commence their argument that was the reason he left in the first place. I didn’t think anything about bringing a FRIEND over. But, apparently, husband took it as I was cheating on him by bringing this male friend over and then hanging out at his house while he gathered some stuff and getting a motel room. When I got home, I sure as hell wished I had the money for a motel room. I was Jezebel for bringing another male into the house. I had disrespected the house, disrespected him, disrespected everything holy.

He said it was a good thing we had no lethal weapons in the house. That type of statement does not have a good effect on me. Inferring that you may or may not try to physically hurt me sets off a whole host of triggers; the strongest of which is self-preservation at all costs. I have already been assaulted and been in a physically abusive relationship. I do believe they call what I have as a result of those experiences in my youth PTSD. Any mention that you may be about to hurt me makes me defensive and ready to go an the attack because I will never be hurt physically again. I made my mind up about that a long time ago. So, we get into “feisty” conversation number two in the same number of weeks leaving me determined to end this whole debacle once and for all. It didn’t even occur to me to sleep on it, and maybe things would be better in the morning because I already knew they wouldn’t. Besides, now I have been physically threatened. Now it is a given. I am leaving. Staying and trying to work it out is no longer an option. He has threatened my life in a round about way. 

The main reason my brain is stuck is that I have never once accused him of cheating even though he would get all dressed up just to go run errands that took him 8 hours. The same errands took me about 2 hours. Where was he for those extra 6 hours? And he has the utter nerve to threaten me. No. Divorce proceedings will be initiated at the end of this week. He killed what was left of his marriage last night. I have had it with the constant barrage of well meaning remarks, had enough of being told that I am the problem, that because I have mental issues I am not worthy enough, that I had no life before him, that everything I do is not quite good enough, and lastly, being told that it was a good thing there are no lethal weapons in the house. You do not threaten me like that. You just do not. So, that’s the culmination of Marriage Counseling Round Three. Divorce. Sometimes you have to protect yourself.

 

Okay So I Am On An Old Childhood Song Kick Today

Cover of The Beatles (The White Album)

 

I tend to have better memories of my “formative” years before things got all weird in my family, and between me and my Dad through music and the lyrics. I am in a reminiscing mode. Sorry  🙂 My Dad loved the Beatles, and I happen to really like The White Album, so here we have “Dear Prudence”

 

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It’s beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play

Dear Prudence open up your eyes
Dear Prudence see the sunny skies
The wind is low the birds will sing
That you are part of everything
Dear Prudence won’t you open up your eyes?

Look around round
Look around round round
Look around

Dear Prudence let me see you smile
Dear Prudence like a little child
The clouds will be a daisy chain
So let me see you smile again
Dear Prudence won’t you let me see you smile?

Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It’s beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play

 

Hurt ~ Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash 2209720071 (Photo credit: Heinrich Klaffs)

 

This song was originally written and performed by Nine Inch Nails, but I think it was waiting for the right singer.

 

 

Exploration: Is Being Self-Centered The Same As Being Selfish?

Full-color image of from first MESSENGER flyby (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have this muddle going on in my mind. My husband said the other night that I can be very self-centered, and he did not mean it nicely. He said it the way he did because he knew that I would run home to mommy. I was so upset by his comment that I had to put the question to someone who knows me really well. He wrote me back saying it was dangerous territory and he apologized in advance if he offends me. He started by saying that I am an “exceedingly self-centered” person. But he finished the letter encouraging me to find the kind of love and respect that I deserve and he knows that I do not get it at home.So, the definition of “self-centered” is according to Merriam Webster, be patient here. I have to go look up the true definition of the word not just my explanation.

“Self-Centered” means 1) independent of outside force or influence (the role of the self-sufficient).  It also means 2) concerned solely with one’s own desires, needs or interests. (This would be the description of me)  3) these are interesting: narcissistic, egotistical, self-involved, selfish, self-seeking, etc.

After the email I got from my friend, and I had asked him because I know he has a personality like Comet cleanser (the powder kind) sometimes, and I knew he would tell me the absolute, no holds barred, unflinching truth even if he did run the risk of making me really angry. Because he is a very longtime friend of mine, he knew he risked telling me something I did not want to hear, but he would tell me because he does love me in his own twisted way. And I love him in my own twisted way. i love him because he does not play games with you. He shoots from the hip, and says what he means. He rarely will say something he doesn’t mean. Its like Mozart but different. It is as if everything he was going to have to say in his life time was predetermined. Its creepy sometimes. Anyway, seeing as how I am so extraordinarily self-centered, it is time to talk about me 🙂 

I think to a certain extent when one is ill mentally or physically, you have to be a little self-centered so that you can take care of you. In the end,  all we have is ourselves, and the aged bodies that we arrived in. Especially if the illness is chronic and progressive. Vigilance over one’s self is necessary to lead a fairly functional life. When this vigilance starts to crack and you sprout wings and fly, I am pretty certain you have gone manic/mad. So, no, I disagree with both his and my husband’s assessments of me. I am not an all consuming egotist that chews up everything I run across. I will admit that, yes, I do sometimes put myself ahead of others, and I admit this behavior doesn’t lend itself well to lasting relationships (unless both parties are nuts). I feel that a certain amount of self-centeredness is acceptable for everyone, sick or not, Vampire or not. We need it to survive sometimes. It can be our intuition telling us that we need to get the heck out of dodge like yesterday. 

But, yes, I will admit that since I finally developed this lovely disorder instead of just being depressed all the time, I have become more self-oriented, more self-centered than I was a few years ago because I had to become that way or the head doctors would still be testing their medications on me like I was some kind of lab rat. I had no idea that when you check into a mental hospital, you are their hostage guinea pig for at least 72 hours. That’s three days of brain damage they could inflict. I didn’t know. I wasn’t ready for it. And the doctors walked all over me. I left with 6 or 7 prescriptions; some for the morning and some for the evening. I was so messed up. We couldn’t even tell what worked because of the number of medications. So, yeah, I had to get a little self-centered and try to advocate for myself, and I have never had a voice. Maybe I took it too far.

Maybe I became everything I used to loathe about people; I had problems and  still have problems with people who speak before they think, and act before they think it through. I see a lot of that type of behavior in my own life. And, in my relationship, although he may not understand that I am doing the best I can; I am trying to think of him more ahead of myself, but since he never says thank you, and accepts his gift with an air of entitlement, like he has given so much to this relationship and I have contributed nothing. Well, I can tell you he brought one thing to the relationship that sends me over the edge is his addiction to Internet porn. his realistically longest lasting impression that he will leave on this relationship is that I walked out because I do not need to be taken for granted, and I sure as hell do not deserve a husband who spends 12-24 hours on the net collecting pictures of nude women. Hello! I am screaming over here, and you turn a deaf ear.

This Is Not What I Expected

This is not a marriage. it is not a team, partnership, or any other type of pairing. It is not even two friends sharing a house. It is nothing, gossamer as air and just as tangible. The bad times are coming more and more frequently and lasting longer, and the good times are as if made of spun sugar, melting as soon as it touches your lips and is gone. And, you only get it on special occasions. Or as a treat if you have been “good.” It is like a dandelion that has gone to seed. One puff and it is gone. That is not how it is supposed to be. 

I Learned Something About Myself Yesterday….

Bipolar Affective Disorder (Photo credit: tamahaji)

and I wish I had not come to this piece of enlightenment or wisdom, whichever you prefer. While I think I have been in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship for a while now (my husband has a tendency to speak in a condescending manner to me, he does not really support the things and activities that I am involved in, he gives me the silent treatment when I have done something that displeased him rather than talk it out, basically anything to demean or degrade me), I came to the realization yesterday that I am no different. I am emotionally and verbally abusive as well. And I became that way before he did. I do think there are reasons why. I have never had a good grip on my temper, or my moods. Medication and therapy do help, but there is no “magic pill” that will make it all go away. Bipolar is always managed; it is never controlled. I have been subject to fits of anger all my life, and I have generally taken it out on the people around me, but not the person that I am angry with. Clearly, it is something that I need to work on. 

There is a positive to this realization, however. I think it may be the first time I have really tried to look at my self from someone else’s viewpoint. Where I see someone who really tried hard to please people, someone else may see a person who is manipulative, and tries to please people for their own gain. What I view as sarcasm may be interpreted by another as just plain mean ( I do have this problem with stupid questions: ask a stupid question, you’ll probably be met with scathing sarcasm. It is not a part of me that I like). I cannot tell at this point whether being emotionally abusive is reactionary ( I am feeling attacked, and I have to fight back), or if I actually start fights just to start them. However, in my defense, I rarely call people names. or speak to them in way as to belittle them. I just throw temper tantrums or I become very quiet (that’s when you have to look out because a storm is gathering).

I have always failed to take the role of the other which is what happened yesterday. I finally began to see my behavior through someone else’s eyes, and I was appalled at what I saw. What I saw was a brat who threw temper tantrums to get her way.

How much of my lack of control is due to having Bipolar Disorder, I do not know. I just know that I am destructive and not terribly constructive, that I have a hair trigger when it comes to tones of voice, inflections, and perceived attacks. I do know that Bipolar is a chemical or organic versus situational disease. The depressions and the manias are not typically brought on by things in my environment, they just seem to come and go as they please. I also know my brain does not process information the same way as a non-Bipolar person. I have seen PET scans and MRI’s of the Bipolar versus Non-Bipolar brain, and they are chemically different. Whether or not this chemical difference causes my mood swings, and my tendency toward hurting those that I love, I do not know either. 

I just know that somehow I am going to have to learn how not to hurt the people that I love even when I feel like they are hurting me. The perception may or may not be correct. It’s very difficult when you can’t trust your own judgement.

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kind of Out of My Normal Song Postings…But Apt Today

This seems to apply to so many aspects of my life both past and present….and it was real popular when I was  a teenager (that dates me 🙂  )