This has always been one of my favorite James Taylor songs, and with the learning of a very good and long-time friend’s serious illness, I have been a bit melancholy as of late.
Illness
I Am Giving Up….. I Admit Defeat, I Have Failed
His last girlfriend was a bipolar as well, but he met her when she was manic and at her most charming. I was neither manic nor depressed when he met me. I was surfing a gentle sine wave. I was riding my bike every day, swimming in the pool for the rest of the afternoon, I had a life that I had carved out for myself with a lot of hard work and introspection. I had friends. Good friends that I now do not have. I do not know if this is the illness biting me in the ass, or if her has me so isolated from every one that people just stopped coming around.
He judges me on a daily basis. Because he is arrogant enough to point out that women/girls in big cities take the time to fix their hair just so, and make their lips look like Angelina Jolie after a collagen injection. I do not want to look like that. I want to look like me, just enhanced. I do not want to look like Mick Jagger. But, he says that is what turns him on (thank you Internet porn for warping my husband.) It didn’t used to be an issue. But, I still continue to be held to standards of female beauty that I just do not agree with. I have achieved a compromise with the all important lip liner. I just have to say that if he expects me to try to turn him on, he needs to bathe more than once a month. Why should I bother trying to be a porno slut if he can’t even keep his hygiene under control? That turns me off, completely.
I have hit the point where I really do not care if I turn him on or not. I am comfortable with the way I look. At the risk of sounding vain, I am not an unattractive woman. I know for a fact that I am beautiful. Both inside and out. Besides, having sex with him after nearly three months is going to feel like a one night stand. He’ll get up and go sleep on the couch, and I will fall asleep in the bed. It has been this way for months. He just refuses to sleep in the same bed with me. Oh well, benefit for me. I have less back pain than I did before 🙂 I can just feel my self losing faith in what is supposed to be a partnership, and a loving marriage. Granted, I can understand his position. He has inherited my anger and volatile temper along with a whole lot of hurt from life, in general. And, yes, I do lash out at him even though he has nothing to do with past issues, but the Internet Porn is all his doing. That is something he has done all on his own, and it has changed him from the man I used to know. He continues to view it for hours on end even though he knows that it hurts me and that I do not like it.
What happened to quid pro qou? He gives up some of the time he spends with the porn sluts, and keeps his hygiene up, and he might see a change in my attitude. but, as it stands now, nothing is going to change. i cannot change him, I can only change myself. And, he may not like that new self. I am half inclined to go with my mom today to file divorce papers today. I have rarely admitted defeat before I try to succeed, but this marriage seems hopeless. I am the only one who has to change, I am the only one causing problems between us (ummm, hello, hours on the Internet looking at other naked women, and watching them do anything; that one’s on him.) It just isn’t going to work between us. He is a big city guy stuck in a Southwestern “town” (never mind that there are 750,000 people living here.) I am never going to be able to be what he has decided he likes women to look like. I am who I am, and I am what I am. I have no apologies for that, I do not regret anything that I have done or has transpired to make me who I am. What I think is sad is that none of this had to happen. He could have stopped the porn stuff, and he could have been less adamant that I look like a big city girl. I am not from a big city, and therefore, I do take care with my makeup, but I have never had anyone with such an adamant and unwavering attitude that I must look like the big city women. I am fine with the way I look. Other men seem appreciative. He’s the only one who is dissatisfied with the way I look. And that argument is part of a larger whole of dysfunction in this relationship. it really isn’t about lipliner, it is about appreciation, and he might get what he wants if he would just bathe more often. This whole argument is about two people not wanting to do what it takes to make this work.
I am not the only one who has to change, he has his own issues that he should be working on, not focusing on my mental health issues. He says that I spend all my time thinking about my “illness,” I can guarantee you that he spends far more time on it than I do. Having Bipolar Disorder has just become part of my life; he’s the one who is hung up on it, and mentions nearly every day. And using lip liner is not going to help. As I said before, why should I bother when his basic hygiene is so bad? Why should I turn myself into one of his “fantasy” women if he won’t keep himself clean? I am giving up. I admit defeat. I admit that this failed because I was too defensive, too abrasive, and not enough of a whole lot of other things. I just cannot do this anymore. This argument is about respect, and compassion/appreciation for the other party. I have tried. I have failed.
When All Else Fails, Give Yourself A Manicure
What a way to start the holiday season. My grandma (mother’s mom) has been slowly declining in health for some time now. She was getting tired often, had very little appetite, lived alone, and had congestive heart failure. She was on a number of medications for high blood pressure, a diuretic for water retention, cumidin to thin her blood. Common medications for people with blood pressure problems, and very common among older people. But, she was hanging in there despite the fact that my Granddad (her husband of 50 years) had passed away in 1985; also in November. In fact, it was November 5th, 1985. I was 14 so even though I understood I would never see him in physical form again, I think I was too young to process his rather sudden death. I did not cry for his passing until I was 18, and it really hit me one day that this headstrong, opinionated, bull-headed man who had helped my parents take care of my sister and myself was really gone.
Due to a medication (Oxycodone) that my grandma had to take for pain due to a fracture in one of her vertebrae, my grandma could no longer be left alone, especially at night. So, the decision was made to move her into a hospice where someone would be available around the clock. She was moved out of the house where she had lived for as far back as I can remember (and I have a memory like an elephant), the house where she had raised two of her four children, where she and my Granddad would baby sit me and my sister if my parents wanted to take a vacation sans children, where I remember big Thanksgiving dinners, and many Christmases. I remember that she and my granddad were married on the 4th of July, and every year the whole family would get together for food and fireworks. She kept a lunchbox with toys in it in the hall closet, and even though I knew perfectly well where to find it, I would always ask, and she’d tell me it was off yonder. If it weren’t for her, I would have no idea where yonder is. Not that it is a specific place, but I will always know where yonder is thanks to her. She was a very strong woman, said very little but when she did speak, you listened. Believe me you listened. She was keenly observant of everything going on around her. It was really hard to slip under her radar. She never thought of herself as a smart person like my father’s mother who had a Bachelor’s In Mathematics from USC and was a brilliant oil painter. She felt that her life had been wasted because she wasn’t as educated as my other grandmother. She also wasn’t nuts like my other grandmother (she had untreated Manic Depression, thanks for the genes.) What she failed to realize was that she had the hardest, most rewarding and painful, most important job on the planet. She was a mother. And, judging by the way my aunt and mom and one uncle turned out, she did a damn fine job of raising her children. but, she couldn’t see that being a parent, especially a mother is the most important thing that someone can do with their lives. She may not have smiled as often as she should have, and I do not think I ever heard her laugh. Maybe, I did and I do not remember.
When I had my first car accident and could not find my parents (I was about 15), I called her, and she and my Uncle Steve came to get me. I remember being about 18, and living in my very first apartment. I had a kitten named Faustus. One day, I came home from work and I couldn’t find my kitten. She had somehow slipped out when I left that day. I finally located my kitten and she was covered in oil, holding one hind leg up, missing the fur on her ears and eyelids. She had either been in someone’s engine or she narrowly missed getting squashed by a car. It didn’t really matter. She was alive, but hurt badly. I had no money to take her to the pet ER, and I tried my parents (once again), but my Dad was out of town and my mother was working or something. I couldn’t find them so once again I called my grandma. I needed $80 to take my kitten to the vet. Now, my grandma never liked pets; they were messy, but she just happened to have the money that I needed to take my kitten in. I drove to her house holding my injured Faustus, and tried to operate a standard transmission with one hand. That’s a trick. So, she gave me the money and told me to come back for dinner when they were done with my kitten. The vets had sedated my cat and put her in a box. Even though I can’t remember there ever being an animal in her house, she let me bring my very groggy little kitten in to her house in the box. It turned out that my cat’s hind leg was completely severed at the joint. But, even though she had no use for pets, she still let me bring my cat in the house because it was winter time, it was night, and it was cold. I can still see her in her house that night. She always had this way of making everything warm and alright, even if every thing was wrong. She was probably one of the people on this planet that I respected and loved unconditionally. I always knew I could count on her for help, and if it was within her power to do so, she would help. She used to make me gifts of canned and dry goods because she knew that I was struggling financially and she had grown up during the Depression so she knew what being dirt poor was like. She was funny like that. She gave of herself and never expected anything in return.
She was such a strong, dignified, dedicated, and loving person. I feel like I was privileged to be born to her daughter. She taught me so much about inner strength, and just dealing with the situation as it was. There was not any thing else to do, and in her own, very quiet way, she passed that value along to her children, and her grand children, and her great grand children even though they won’t be able to remember much about her. They are all very young; about the same age as my cousins were when granddad died. If I was 14, then my oldest cousin would have been about 9. The great-grandchildren (except my sister’s) are all much younger than that. They will never really know how this woman in her quiet but thoughtful way taught her children and grandchildren how to live life.
Life was never easy for her and my granddad. They had four children and he worked construction jobs, and she took in people’s ironing and laundry to help make the ends meet. The family would move to where ever there was work for my granddad. It could not have been easy, but she went through life never complaining. She just accepted what was, and had faith that it would get better, and she got through it. I think people born in the early part of the 20th century had more strength to live life on life’s terms than those of us born later in the century. We all want it fixed or done now. We are a generation of people who want instant gratification, but there is so much more character and dignity and grace in learning how to live life no matter what gets thrown at you.
My family lost some one very special today. It does not matter one bit if she did not go to college, or was a brilliant painter or writer. She was a role model for how to live life on life’s terms. You do what you need to do in order to live no matter how menial it may seem. You raise your children to respect their elders, you raise them to respect people from all walks of life, to have compassion when someone is struggling, and to love and give without expecting anything in return. This is what she left my parents and her other children with. And, in their own ways they passed on what my grandma and my granddad taught them. Work hard, love and appreciate your family and friends, have thanks for what you do have instead of constantly yearning for what you do not have. Sometimes, no matter how hard it may seem, life may be all that you have. I know how important life is. Even as a treated Bipolar, I have tried several times to take my life, but I always clung to life in the end and would call 911. Apparently, I am not ready to die yet.
This was a woman who accepted me for who I am, the things I have been, and loved me anyway. She weathered the drug abuse, the drinking, the mental illness that makes me so moody, all the things that my own mother had to cope with as well. I wish now (20/20 hindsight) that I had taken more time to find out about her. I always meant to, but somehow never got around to it. I guess I thought she would still be here when I finally had grown up enough to see how amazing she was. I thought she would live forever, I guess. Magical thinking on my part, but when you are in your 20s and 30s, you still have this notion that you’ll never get old and neither will the people around you. But, that isn’t the way it works.
You hit 40, and you realize that time does not stop because you want it to. You age, and so does everyone around you. You come to realize that time will continue and you will age and so will those you love. You are born, you live your life to the best of your ability, and then you become old and eventually everyone dies. It is a cycle that never ends. Life will always lead to death. It is what you do and how you treat others in between that matters. My grandma understood that with her heart, and as a result, was an incredible person. I will miss her dearly. She was like my other mom. I only hope that I can continue to improve myself so that I am like her when I am old, and I can die with no regrets. Why she loved me so dearly, I will never know. But, I am glad she did. Even though I am the odd one out in the family. When life becomes really stressful, just paint your nails, dye your hair that color you always wanted, try a different color of eye shadow, soak in the tub, but above all, be nice to yourself and others. Good night, Grandma.
Velma Pauline Hatfield Varley: born 9/6/1915 and died 11/17/2012.
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.
Not So Sure About This Marriage Counseling Thing
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.
This Is Not About…..
my mental illness, it is about your depression, and your lack of desire to learn even one iota about my “disease”. You are of no use to me if you do not understand me. I have the books, I have a veritable library of books about Bipolar Disorder.
This is not about my mental illness at all. You just attribute everything I think, say or do to the “illness.” I have news for you. I am a treated Manic Depressive, I don’t have very many episodes, so what you are criticizing is actually me. Not the illness.
This is not about me, either, it is about you not accepting your own mental illness. You have chronic depression. That means it does not go away on its own, your brain chemistry is off, and needs to be corrected. You have to learn how to ask for help because you are in sore need of it. It is not necessarily all me that is creating the problems in this marriage. You and your depression have as much to blame as I do. When you told that counselor that it is hard to live with someone who is depressed all the time, were you talking about me or you?
I Hate Having Bipolar Disorder
I would like another diagnosis, please. I absolutely hate having manic depression. I never know how I am going to feel when I wake up in the morning. Some days I just want to stay in bed for days. I forget to bathe, wash my hair, and the thought of even attempting household chores is overwhelming. I never know when I am going to say something hurtful, or inappropriate given the nature of the situation. I feel as if I overreact to simple problems. Quite frankly, this illness scares me. I never know when an episode, either manic or, more often, depressive is going to occur. I am usually well into the episode before I recognize it for what it is.
I think too much about how my emotions would go away if I were just able to build up the cowardice to end my life. But, I can’t do that. I have seen firsthand the effects that death by suicide cause in a family. When I was about 25, my then fiance’s sister committed suicide. The family was never the same. Everyone blamed someone else for not recognizing the warning signs. They were all there, mental illness, anorexia, alcoholism. But none the less, her father blamed her mother, her mother secretly blamed herself, her brother blamed both his parents and his dead sister. Everyone felt guilty that they hadn’t been able to stop her, but she had taken all the pills she took in the early morning while she was drunk and everyone was asleep. She said nothing until around noon, and by then it was too late, her mother and I took her to the nearest ER, and she couldn’t walk, stand alone, or function. She could not breathe on her own and was put on a respirator. She died around 8:30 that night when the aspirin she took finally stopped her heart. So, that option is a non-option even with the issues I have had as of late.
So, yes, I would like a new diagnosis. This bipolar thing does not work for me. It makes me angry that I am set apart from so-called normal people just because my emotions fluctuate differently, and often, irrationally. It makes me sad because I used to be so functional, or so I thought. I probably was just stuck in delusion of efficacy in my life. Now, I have to have structure in my life: sleep at the same time every night, regular feedings, stable people (who can tolerate me). I have to be able to tolerate myself. When I was a teenager, it was much easier, I could chalk the mood swings up to hormonal changes. Now, I have no excuse. I have been labeled mentally ill, and it is up to me to manage my illness.
Being labeled pisses me off too. It is not like am Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: then I would have a completely different label. Honestly the whole thing about being labeled mentally ill just creates a bunch of misconceptions: you have to walk on eggshells around me (no you don’t, just give it to me straight, am going to like or dislike what you say regardless of bipolar), everything I do stems from illness (no, it does not. Sometimes I am happy or sad or angry or whatever because that is how I am feeling at the moment), the illness runs my life (no, it does not normally run my life except when I am experiencing an episode). So may misconceptions. They make me angry, sad that people shy away from me, lonely, feeling abandoned, neglected, and truly unwanted.
Having a “mental” illness is so much different than having a “physical” illness like heart disease, or renal failure. For some reason people are less afraid of people suffering with medical problems. But, often, mental illness is medical and lies in a chemical imbalance in the brain. Once the right combinations of medications are found, and the person afflicted has a good therapist, and, in my opinion, a firm grounding in a faith that suits them, symptoms often fade and do not recur as often.
I sincerely believe that the “de-institutionalization” movement that started in the 1960’s has had an extremely deleterious effect on how people with mental illnesses are
treated and viewed by society. Many of those who were completely stable in the rigidly regulated hospital environment were released to promised community mental health clinics. In most cases, these clinics were never built, so many psychotic people or people predisposed to psychosis were released on to the streets of the communities near the hospitals. They were not being treated at community clinics, and the wonder drug, Thorazine, was proving to be less than wonderful. It made the patient sluggish and had horrible side effects. So, people stopped taking it, and within days were psychotic again. Now that they are psychotic, and out of touch with the reality of their illness, are they going to know to seek treatment? No, because to them, their world is reality. So, they remain psychotic. Many state laws makes it impossible to involuntarily commit a mentally ill person, they have the right to refuse treatment. As a result, when many people think of mental illness, they think of the people who are homeless, and walk around having conversations with themselves (or they could be on their bluetooth, it is hard to distinguish these days 🙂 ).
Any way, enough of my ranting and raving over the state of affairs for the mentally ill in this culture. I do that on a regular basis. But it just seems to me that we, as a culture, are afraid of the term “mental illness,” when in fact when properly treated, most people can live productive lives. This is not to say that symptoms can’t arise, usually as a result of stress, and wreak some havoc. But, for the treated individual, this is far less likely to happen. most people know someone who has a mental illness, and is probably hiding it to avoid the stigma that goes with the label. It is the costume of normalcy that we are forced to wear, and I for one, can’t stand that. I have Manic Depression and that is what I have to deal with daily. I really wish more people would come out of their normalcy suits, and tell the world they have a mental illness, but this is who I really am. I am not my illness. My illness is just one part of me and who I am. Then, stigma would begin to reduce as more and more “normal” people realize they know someone with a mental illness. There are millions of us.
A Bipolar Journey Through The Rabbit Hole 