Mentally Ill People are NOT Evil People.

I had a post all ready today about the gun control arguments happening all over the interwebs sparked by the random shootings that have taken place over the past few days. I have even participated in several heated discussions regarding the Second Amendment and everything guns.  The gun control issue will not be resolved now, or anytime in the near future. And it won’t be resolved on the internets.

But gun control is not the only issue brought up by the recent shootings.  It is brought up with every random shooting.  And yet is it blown off, dismissed, and not taken seriously.  It is the matter of mental illness.  People are all too quick to jump on the he’s evil bandwagon, because claiming the shooter is evil is easier than saying they are mentally ill and could have gotten help.  It absolves everyone of any kind of responsibility.

It insults and offends and hurts those of us who are mentally ill, are getting treatment, and yet can understand and empathize with how their actions are possible.  I can not speak for anyone else, or any disorder, but I can speak for me.  I am convinced that I have been bipolar on some level since I was 15.  We just never considered it, there were always less frightening, less embarrassing than mental illness to explain my behavior.  I have only been diagnosed and treated since 2007.  Without getting in the whole explanation of bipolar I will say this.. bipolar disorder has two distinct spectrums, one includes hallucinations.  Bipolar does not party alone, it almost always has other disorders with is, such as borderline personality disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, anxiety disorder.  Once being medicated for bipolar disorder, you must stay on your medications.  If you stop taking them, and then start again, it takes the medications much longer to effect the mood swings, and stopping medications is a fairly common occurrence because suddenly a person feels better.

Mental illnesses are difficult to understand, even for doctors.  The term mental illness has the stigma of ‘Crazy’ or ‘Unstable’ and that’s because the only ones that bring mental illness to the public’s attention, are the ones who do extreme acts of violence.  The ones who function in society without killing someone are never noticed. Because of the attention in the media, because of the horrible acts mental illness is scary and nobody wants to take the time to try to understand.

Let me tell my story.  I have had mental breaks. More than one. When I have a break, I step into another world in my head, a parallel universe if you will.  I react to things the way I see them, my logic, my compulsions can be, and usually are dangerous and harmful to myself.  I am angry, I am out of control, during one break I destroyed my bedroom.  And just as quick as it starts, as violent as it gets, it stops just as quickly.  The emotions, the compulsions are sometimes overwhelming.

And to those who aren’t in my head, those who don’t understand my illness can not comprehend why I have done some of the things I have done. I have people in my life who don’t understand, who don’t want to understand my disorder.  There are people in my life who are embarrassed because they still see mental illness as crazy.  There are people in my life who blame me for all of my actions and are pissed off because of some of the choices I have made.  They haven’t taken the time to learn anything about my disorder, they have made no effort to understand my disorder, they want to pretend it doesn’t exist.

And that is the problem.  Mental illness still has a stigma, it is still an illness nobody wants to talk about.  Maybe because it’s just easier to say they’re crazy.  Truth is, we are, to some extent. Because of the stigma, a lot of people refuse to get help.  Unless you are crazy, you can’t understand crazy.  When you’re in Nutjobville, you don’t always know you’re in Nutjobville. Until you’ve burned half the town down.

The shooters this weekend were not evil people.  They are people who did evil things.  They were mentally ill, and therefore not in their right mind.  We, as a nation, need to learn to separate the people from their disease.  not and evil person, I am not my disorder.  My disorder does not define me. Sometimes my disorder is evil, and its at those I am

*The quote above in the image is by Glenn Close on the website Bipolar Planet.

A Place to Tell My Story with Bipolar Disorder

That is a screen shot of my ‘bipolar blog’, because I haven’t been writing here I added yet another blog to write. Clearly a manic move.

I started a special section of this blog, set it aside and gave it its own look, for writing about my life with bipolar disorder.  It’s brand new, (only 2 posts) but I want to grow it.  I have spent a bit of time going back through blog posts from the past, reading through my old journals, and seeing so many signs I couldn’t see then.  I want to post some of those writings there, along with my thoughts about those episodes.

The thing is, if only I had known someone else who was bipolar, who could spot the symptoms the signs and said something.  If only someone had shared their story and I could have recognized myself in their story, maybe I wouldn’t have waited so long to get help.  So maybe, in telling my story, someone will see themselves or someone they love, and seek answers, get help.

Welcome to My Life with Bipolar Disorder

I Have Never Told This Story Before, The Breakdown to Celebrate my 37th Birthday

Mama’s Losin’ It offers writing prompts every week. And while I don’t usually use them, I have them sent to me on the off chance there is one I would consider using.  One of them was write about what you were doing 10 years ago today.  Ten years ago would have been 2002, and I would have still been married to the girls’ dad.  We would have been married three years, and I was two years away from a divorce.  Muri would have been 5 and starting school, Megan would have been 3.  Their brother, Ian would have been 8.

For as long as I can remember I have kept a journal.  Not a diary, but notebooks that I could ramble in.  And thank god Wal*Mart sells them for less than 20 cents every year when school starts.  I can buy more than enough to last me through that year without going broke.  I have journals from September 16, 1993 up to July 1, 2009.  If ever you want an accurate description of my mood swings read those journals.  If you can stand them.

There are days I ramble on and on and on about nothing important for four pages.  About some guy I was kind of dating, about the girls’ dad  dealing with the first year of our divorce, about me trying to balance money and my manic tendency to spend what I didn’t exactly have on a lot of things I absolutely didn’t need.  There is page after page after page when I write “I just want to crawl into a hole and disappear.  I can’t wait to get home, get the girls settled and just crawl into bed.  Every morning it takes more effort that I am sure I’ll be able to muster, to pull myself out of bed and face each day”.

I have my 37th birthday which is the birthday I celebrated by having my first mental breakdown.  I spent 37 hours in bed crying, not sleeping, and just rambling in my journal. At 1:35 AM of July 4th, I wrote that page up there.

“Yesterday was my 37th birthday and it’s the last one I ever hope to have. I see no reason to stick around to see 38. Even my children would be better off with no mom instead of the emotional grave yard I am now.”

Eight pages of saying goodbye to my family.  At 5:30 AM I wrote “Another sleepless night” and I wonder now how many sleepless nights there had been. I don’t remember them. But I remember fighting so damned hard for weeks to just get through the day.

By 7:00 the morning of July 4th, I had managed to get about two hours of fitful toss and turn sleep which did nothing but make me realize just how far gone I was.  I couldn’t get out of bed. It took too much energy to pull the covers off of me, and the thought of getting up and walking was beyond overwhelming.  I had nothing left to give.

I finally called my mom, and the girls’ dad, they came and took me to the emergency room where there was no psych doctor on call.  I had played the game of ‘put on a good front, hide the horrible garbage that lives in my mind’ for so long that once I was out in public, I appeared fine.  I could smile, I could function, I actually told my mother that I was feeling much better and this trip to the ER was really a waste of everyone’s time. Except that I wasn’t.  I was so exhausted, I was so empty.  It was the manic phase that had hidden beyond the depression of that night. The manic phase that had kept my mind racing in downward spirals, had kept me awake for 37 hours. It was that part of my disorder that took over and hid the depression from the world. I got some medication from the doc on call who really couldn’t give me anything effective, beyond anti-depressants, which… are the worst thing you can give a bipolar in a depression.

By 3:40 PM on July 4th, I was home. I was showered and dressed which was an improvement, but I went straight to the couch and stayed there.  I was exhausted and had no desire to do anything.  I was once again alone with myself.  And even then I was two years from being diagnosed.  The doctors treated the depression because it was easy and obvious. The manic was what I considered normal.

The thing is, even in the midst of it, as I sat there in my bed crying, awake, alone in my own head, willing and ready to give it up, nothing I wrote conveys the depths to which I had sunk.  The darkness I was in, the hopelessness I felt, none of that has a voice in my words.  Even in the midst of my darkest day, I lied to myself, and I lied to everyone around me. Had that been the last thing I left behind, nobody reading it could have known how far down the road of no return I had gone.

I wish I could say that was my one and only breakdown.  I even wish I could tell you it was my worst one.  There have been others.  Reading further into my journal, I spent the month following that night in a manic high, about how my life was perfect, how it was going great for me.  Until August 14th, when I once again wrote

In the darkness where you feel nothing, there is no pain, no rejection, no emptiness. just floating in a void. Can I be there? Can I go there? Where I never have to feel unloved, rejected, forgotten, unworthy, insecure, unsure. In the darkness I don’t have to hear the silence of the phone not ringing.  Am I looking for someone to come save me? You bet, because I can’t save myself, and I’m not sure I’m worth saving. Maybe somebody else does.

Looking back it is so glaringly obvious I needed help.  The mood swings are clear, the depression screams from the pages, barely whispered by my voice.  We missed the signs, most people do at first.  It’s easy to see the depression and treat it, and the manic is just ‘normal’ even when it isn’t.  I have walked a tightrope every day, balancing myself between the two extremes.  Most days I win.

Bipolar is Not a Conviction, but Sometimes it Sure as Hell Feels Like it

Or How being on Twitter may have ruined my relationship.  Forever.

This was my Twitter stream on Friday.

The girls were at their dad’s this weekend, and because of a manic episode that exploded all over Twitter, I was sitting at home alone instead of at Brian’s house with him this weekend, reading blog posts drinking coffee. I was catching up on some posts I hadn’t read in a while, when I came across a sentence written by Pamela at 2 Much Testosterone.

Mental illness is a life long conviction.

Maybe it’s just me, and my recent County Jail Tour of 2012, but “conviction” sounds so, well, final.

There are those out there who see mental illness as a death sentence. Not just those who have been diagnosed with a mental illness, but also their family, their ‘friends’, their loved ones.  Mental illness is as hard for us (the mentally ill) to understand and live with as it is for those who love and live with us.  Maybe harder.

I was diagnosed with bipolar II, rapid cycling, mixed episodes in May 2007.  (basically I’m the Lindsay Lohan of bipolar disorder) For a while, I used it as an excuse for bad behavior, poor choices, bad decisions.  I refused to take any kind of responsibility for my life because I was bipolar I couldn’t help it.

Mental illness isn’t a conviction.  Conviction implies guilt of wrong doing, which implies choice.  There is no guilt or wrong doing in having a mental illness. It implies I’ve done something wrong, and now I will pay for it the rest of my life with this mental illness.

Except that mental illness isn’t a choice, and isn’t a result of bad choices or bad behavior. Mental Illness, bipolar specifically, is a disorder.

Disorder: to disturb the order of, to disturb the regular or normal function of.

To disturb the regular or normal function of.  Our brains, the chemicals, the neurons, are disordered. They don’t function properly.  Our illness in not our fault.

What we do about it, how we chose to live with it, that is.

I have been told by several of my doctors along my path of treatment, that I am a hyper aware bipolar.  I am fairly aware of my mood swings, and know when to get help.  I am also aware of triggers.  I am usually really proactive in my treatment.  But there’s that part of my diagnosis, that rapid cycling part, that says every once in a while things get away from me and I swing really far off the goofy crap-o-meter too fast for me to be aware and take steps to prevent it, control it, or minimize the fall out from it.

That happened this week.

I had back to back court dates on the 9th and 14th. While I was pretty sure I knew what to expect, court dates are still very stressful.  I had asked Brian for some things that I didn’t think were a very big deal, but I put a lot of expectations on them.  I apparently didn’t convey my wants to him clearly and the day didn’t go they way I had wanted or envisioned. That disappointment was huge to me, even though to him, or probably anyone else, it would have been minor.  Meredith has had two a day cheer practices this past week, and one a day cheer practices the week before, so that meant getting up early (and getting her up earlier than her summer routine) and driving her to cheer practice every morning, cutting into my daily routine,which throws me off too.  The girls are going to back to school, so there was the whole school supplies, schedules, decorate lockers, meet the teachers, get physicals, run around that also cut into my routine. There was also the bills.  The catching up on rent that I couldn’t pay while I was in jail, the usual water, electricity, the court fines, the limited income that just isn’t stretching as far as it should. And to add insult to injury, I had expectations of Brian this week that just weren’t getting met, or at least I didn’t think they were, and I was feeling shut out of his life.

A whole lot of stress, a whole lot of upheaval of my routine, a whole lot of demands being made of me, and a whole lot of expectations being made by me that I felt were going largely ignored.  Sounds like a whole hell of a lot of triggers to me.  And oh my god were they.  Every day it grew, every demand, every expectation, every need, every want, every outstretched hand needing, wanting, demanding, expecting something.  Innocent things said or done took on a look of guilt, and proof.  Everything said to me by anyone, or by me to anyone was wrong, oh so very wrong.  I felt like I was yelling into a vacuum when I asked for what I needed from everyone.  I was disappointing everyone around me, I wasn’t doing enough, I wasn’t being enough, I was asking too much. I felt shut out, pushed away, I felt so god damned all alone when I needed someone the most.  I wasn’t being heard, and I was spiraling. Both into a mass depression, and clear out of control on a manic rocket that I could no longer control.

I tried, oh dear god I fucking tried to control it all, and keep it all normal on the surface.  I fought hard to ignore all the dangerous comforts I could have reached for to quiet the war raging in my head.  I ignored the alcohol hidden deep behind everything under my kitchen sink.  I ignored the pain pills the doctor gave me for the tendons in my hand.  I ignored and walked away from every other coping mechanism I had ever turned to before.  I fought so very hard.

And it wasn’t hard enough.

I saw something on line, something that I’m sure was innocent, but added to other things from the past two weeks, didn’t look innocent to me.  And I went to Twitter to vent and rage and say all the things I was feeling, and thinking, and doubting.  I didn’t really believe half of what I tweeted, but god I was so mad, and so scared, and hurt, and frustrated from asking, begging, yelling, for what I needed from everyone around me and not being heard.  The manic/depression that I was fighting so hard to keep from everyone around me got away from me.

And they found out.

And it hurt them. And they don’t understand.  And they’re pissed.  Mainly Brian. Even though he wasn’t the source of all this anger and hurt and frustration, he ended up being the target. I said some awful things, no matter that I was only putting voice to my own hurt and frustration, it hurt him.  And I can’t go to him and say I didn’t mean it, it was my disorder.  It sounds like a cop out.  It sounds like I’m refusing to take responsibility for my own actions.  “I just needed a place to vent”  “I just needed to blow off steam”  “I just wanted to be heard”

It hurt him.

And I may have lost him.

Because lets face it, I’ve put him through a lot this year. And this was just one more thing on an already too long list of things this stupid fucking disorder has put him through and I’ve expected him to live with.

No, I can not wholly blame my bipolar disorder for the fucked up mess my life is, but I can’t discount it, or discredit it altogether either.

Maybe when he has time to cool off, maybe when the mad and hurt ease a little, maybe in a few days he’ll hear the repeated I’m sorry and I love you’s.  But probably not.  And that’s the price I have to pay.  I can’t blame him for walking away, hell I would run away from this disorder if I could.  He has the choice, he has that freedom.  I don’t.  You can expect a person to love you through hurt and pain and storms for so long, and I think this time, he’s reached his limit.

“I’m sorry” won’t be enough.  Maybe “I’m leaving” will be.

I May Be Sick, I May Be Broken, But I Refuse to be Crazy

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked in the head and you need help.

All of those words were leveled at me this weekend.   To an extent, they are true.  I have a mental illness.  That mental illness sometimes grips me so hard, logic and reason are beyond my reach.  Yes, I do stupid destructive things while in the midst of this hell.  They seem logical and right at the time, there is no impulse control To be honest that is my healthy brain screaming out for help, much like Reagan wrote HELP ME on her physical body from the inside while the demon possessed her. 

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head and you need help.

Words spoken by someone who not only doesn’t understand, but clearly doesn’t want to.  Spoken by someone who would not step outside themselves to help. Those words said to me were as painful and as hurtful and as destructive as real physical blows to my body.  My manic brains seized on those words and repeated them over and over and over mantra style inside my head. 

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head, and you need help.

I have two irrational fears  in my life.  The fear of getting fat, and the fear of being crazy. ( I said they were irrational fears)   I can live with “mentally ill”, I can live with “bipolar”, I can even live with ‘sick’.  I can not live with ‘crazy’. I know I’m sick, I know there are times I look/act/sound like I’m fucked up in the head, mainly because when I’m in a spiral, I am fucked up. But crazy, while it’s pretty much common vernacular for stupid behavior, it also still stirs up images of loony bins and straight jackets.  And I am scared to death of crazy.

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head, and you need help.

The truth is, I’m getting help, but help doesn’t make a difference over night.  Medications take weeks to be visibly effective.  Therapy can take years.  I’m never going to be normal, and life with me is never going to be Ward and June Cleaver.  When I’m sick, or crazy, or fucked up in the head, I can put on a charming smiling face and be a lot of fun to be around. if I work at it really hard. But the whole time I’m laughing and having a blast, the voices, the other person inside my head is saying things like “You know you’re crazy right? You know this is just an act.  You know that it won’t stay hidden forever.  Someday they are going to know just how fucked up and damaged you are.”  So, what do you do, when you’re falling down that rabbit hole and the person you reach out to for help, the one you should be able to count on, is the one who’s telling you

You’re sick

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head and you need help.

I sit here, staring at my phone with such intensity I expect it to burst into flames, waiting, willing the little green light to blink, signaling I have a text message.  Hour after hour it stays dark. The help I reached out for, screamed for, cried and begged for was never there as I fell apart, lost myself, gave up.  Even now, as I am trying to put it all back together, find myself, and find my way through the shame and disgust at my words and actions, the help, the support, the person I need is nowhere to be found.  All because they believe

I’m sick.

I’m crazy.

I’m fucked up in the head, and I need help.

It is times like this, when I am trying to find… something, anything redeemable in me, when I question everything, when I have spent the entire day on the couch because I can’t get up and face any more of the world beyond my laptop, that I need to know that I am not alone.  I need to know that I have not been abandoned, and they can still find something, anything, within me that is worth loving. Because as I struggle to free myself from the voices, their words echo in my head.  It’s times like this that the voices inside my head scream the loudest, because there are so few voices outside my head to drown them out. I have to save myself because when it gets ugly, when it sucks me in and steals my rationality, my logic, my reasoning and my sanity, nobody wants to help, or knows how to help, and so they run.  I am left alone and abandoned, and faced with the cold hard truth the isn’t enough in me for them to love.  And I’m jealous of their freedom, their ability to run away. Because I can’t. 

If Telling My Story Helps One Person, I Will Tell It Again and Again

First of all, let me say thank you to everyone across the web for the outpouring of support from my earlier post.  I was touched beyond words, and as I sat at the basketball game Tuesday night shooting cheerleaders I was also fighting tears of gratitude as the messages poured in and blew up my phone.  Thank god for auto focus.  Also, let me be clear, that I do have health insurance and doctors who are working with me to figure out the medications.  Unfortunately, the tweaking of the drugs is just another fun part of BPD.  So, I know that there is hope, and that there is a way out of this.  It’s just when I’m in the midst of it it’s hard to find the hope.   One last thing, there is still the worry that all that I revealed yesterday will have some serious repercussions in regards to some people in my life.  While I know “If they bail on you b/c of this they didn’t really care about you in the first place” I don’t necessarily believe that. It is possible that they care very much but the ugliness of this disorder is just way too much for them to handle.  But I will deal with that fallout if/when it ever comes.

Carolyn from This Talk Ain’t Cheap left me a comment on that blog post that I tried to reply to, but I felt it I didn’t reply adequately enough.  So, please indulge me, while I try to do it justice here.

I was diagnosed in 2007.  I had been treated off and on for depression in the years since my divorce from the girls’ dad in 2005.  I can now look back and see bipolar behaviors in my childhood that we sort of just wrote off.

We totally missed all the signs

It’s hard to determine exactly when my bipolar disorder manifested itself.  My parents and I ignored it, wrote it off, explained it away, for so very long.  My childhood was not your typical childhood.  My father was a minister, so we lived a pseudo nomadic life, moving every three years.  Making friends and maintaining friendships has never been easy for me. Never.  I have often wondered if that is because of the moving so often, or if it is because of the BPD.  One of the characteristics of BPD is lack of impulse control.  I remember screaming and throwing my hair brush at the mirror because my hair wouldn’t curl the right way.  I remember my mother being concerned about me because I was so overly involved in my friends’ drama, everything was life or death.  Bipolar is about extremes, and so was my life.  I could go days, or weeks without cleaning my room, and then, for whatever reason feel this overwhelming NEED to have everything in it’s place.  I would spend an entire day tearing my room apart only to put it back together again.

I was a sophomore in high school when I had my first go ‘round with anorexia.  BPD does not partly alone.  While the thoughts in my head would sometimes rage out of control, I found that the one thing I could absolutely control was the amount of food I ate, or didn’t eat. And I was very good at controlling that.  Control though was part of why I went undiagnosed for so long.  I was afraid to let go of control.  I maintained a B+ average in high school.  I always did what was expected of me, I never broke a rule, I was a good girl.  I had to be normal, and perfect.  We as a family of the minister had an image to maintain.  Crazy was not part of that image.

Until my father’s job demanded we move to a new church.  In January.  Of my senior year.  The middle of my senior year I left all my friends, the guy I was dating, and moved to a town where the only people I knew was my family.  My brother and sister would be starting school and meeting new people making new friends when we got there.  I would be graduating when we moved, and wouldn’t have any way to meet anyone.  Hello first depression.

I can point out other episodes throughout my life that should have been huge Ah-ha moments for us.  The day I was pissed at my English Lit professor for calling out me and my boyfriend for passing notes in class.  After class as my boyfriend and I were finishing our “discussion” I put my hand through a glass door.   I drank entirely too much in college and had sex with too many people.  Impulse control, I didn’t have it.

Those signs might have been explained away as a rebellious teen pissed at her father for ruining her senior year.  The years to come would not be any easier.

One of the biggest signs of lack of impulse control was my first marriage.  Chris and I dated off and on (mostly off, only on when nobody else was available) during high school.  My father hated him.  I can see why now.  I graduated from college in the spring of ‘91, that December I looked Chris up.  We hadn’t talked in years.  He was single, I was single.  I always had a huge crush on him, and he was always the one I could never catch.  30 days later we decided to get married.  We I told my parents the night before.  They were not pleased.  I couldn’t stop to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head, I could only hear the mania squeeing inside “I’m going to marry him!  I win!!!”.

The manic episodes I experienced during that marriage were epic.  I remember Chris calling my father to come get me, he was giving me back.  I was crazy.  The broken door in college? Just the beginning of things I would break in the midst of a manic rage.  Then I had my son, Ian and the postpartum depression hit.  We came home from the hospital to a disaster.  Dirty dishes all over the kitchen and living room, dog hair on every single surface, and fleas… I took one look at that mess, took Ian, walked right back out the door and told Chris either clean this house up and get rid of that damn dog or you and the dog both will be on the streets tonight. I will be at my mother’s”.  I was serious.  I never saw a doctor about my depression. I just sucked it up, like I had done most of my life.  I just thought this was normal.  It had always been normal for me.

I divorced him, married the girls’ dad, got pregnant, twice, and went through two more horrific bouts of postpartum depression, lather, rinse, repeat.  The manic rages and the fights that ensued were epic.  There were slashed tires, shattered windshields, holes in walls, slammed doors.  In the midst of a rage, I took the girls to his mother’s house and, convinced she was trying to steal them away from me and chase me out of her son’s and our daughters’ life handed them over to her saying, “Here, you want them? Take them.”  I was screaming out for help and nobody heard, nobody listened, nobody offered to help.

Getting an answer.  It was only half an answer, but it was a step in the right direction.

My 37th birthday was a turning point of sorts.  A disagreement with the guy I was dating at the time led me to my first breakdown.  That was the first time I was completely consumed with hopelessness and despair. I stopped at a gas station to get gas, and for whatever reason my car wouldn’t start.  I called my mother and step-dad to come help.  I was already well on my way spiraling out of control deeper and deeper into a hopelessness I couldn’t, didn’t want to fight.  By the time they got there 20 minutes later, I was curled up in the driver’s seat in a fetal position barely able to speak.  They followed me home that night.  I asked them to leave my son with me, knowing his presence would be just enough to keep me from giving up completely.  I spent 36 hours crying, writing, calling family and friends to ‘say goodbye’ and not sleeping.  I still have the notebook I wrote in that night.  “Isn’t 37 years long enough to hurt?”  I don’t know if anyone really knew I was calling to say goodbye that night, but my dad called the next morning to check on me.  When I told him I couldn’t even get out of bed, he told me to call my mother and get to the hospital.  They gave me some meds, the name of a therapist and a pat on the back.

Depression.  Clearly.  Anti depressants. Yay!  Wonderful for the depressed. Not exactly great for the manic depressed.  The meds treated the depression, and swung me head on into a manic mood.  Mania is awesome, until it isn’t.  You feel great, all kinds of creative and energetic and fucking fabulous.  Until you take it way too far, and you get creepy and scary.  Once I was swinging away from the depression my doc stopped the anti depressants.  I would have repeated cycles of this… depression, three months on anti depressant and viola! Cured!

Naming the demon that lives inside my head.

I have written about that night here once or twice.  The night I finally allowed myself to admit to myself that there was something very seriously wrong with me and I needed some very serious help.  I was dating Brian at the time, living 2 hours apart.  I had taken the day off to spend the day with him.  In the course of the day I saw a message on his MySpace page (it was before we really knew or cared about Facebook) from a girl I didn’t know.  I couldn’t let it go.  The words of that message, “Nice pictures Brian”, echoed in my head, the my manic brain blowing that message clear out of proportion into a full-blown affair.  By the time we got to his house that night, I was convinced he was going to marry her, and I seriously considered just going home.  But I didn’t.  I stayed.  He knew something was wrong, he asked about it.  I denied it.  He pushed, I’m sure, out of concern.  I snapped.  I threw accusations and hurled hateful horrible vile verbal garbage at him.  The more my mouth vomited this poison, the louder I screamed inside to shut the fuck up.  He sat there that night, and took it.  He never raised his voice.  He tried to deny it but honestly there was nothing for him to deny.  He tried logic and reason, but those are ineffective against a manic rage.  He said “I was going to tell you I love you tonight.”  and my mania raged at him “Well, now you don’t have to lie.”  and inside, I curled up in a ball and died.

Just a quickly and violently as it started, it stopped.  As loud and passionate as I had hurled those vile hateful words at him, I just as quickly shut up.  The one thing I had screamed so loudly and wanted so desperately inside and finally happened; too fucking late.  I not only didn’t say another word that night, I couldn’t.  The shame and disgust from my actions washed over me.  I saw the hurt and the pain and the damage I had caused and I hated myself.  I wanted to disappear.

The next morning I drove home, called Pathways, made an appointment with a psychiatrist and a therapist and started to find the answers.  The damage was done, and couldn’t be undone.  But I could finally see that there was something very seriously wrong with me and I needed help.  I walked out of that appointment with a name for the demon that lived in my head, Bipolar disorder.  A scary disorder.  I was scared that people would hear Bipolar and think CRAZY or asylum.   I was afraid that if this information got into the hands of either of my ex husbands they would use it against me and take the kids away from me.  I bought into the ‘mental illness’ stigma myself.

Naming a demon is not taming a demon

Now I knew what I was living with. But that doesn’t mean things magically turned up unicorns, rainbows and glitter.  At first I used bipolar disorder as an excuse/explanation for bad choices.  I refused to take responsibility for anything. I was a real hawt mess.  It wasn’t until I ended up in out-patient therapy after another breakdown (this one involved tequila and vicodin) the first time that I finally got it, I was going to have to step up and take responsibility for my actions and my life.  I was not my disorder, I could live a fairly normal life if I worked at it.

And worked at it I did.  And I have, and I continue to work at it. Bipolar disorder can not be treated like an ear infection, there is no set course of treatment.  The only thing the medical field can agree on is that it takes medication and therapy to be most effective.  It’s not fun, and it’s not easy, but ‘normal’ is better than not.  I have done two stints in outpatient therapy, the latest one, just last summer, after yet another huge trigger and spiral into nothingness.  I have never been committed.  I lost my son along the way, his father took my disorder and used it to poison my son against me.  The girls dad gets it, he knows that the girls being here is what keeps me fighting and trying.  I am lucky in that regard.

My disorder still fucks up a lot of things in my life.  My sister and I are no longer speaking to each other because of an episode at Thanksgiving.  The longer I am unemployed the harder it gets for me to step outside of my routine.  This weekend the despair and hopelessness came to visit again in much the same way it came that night in 2007.  And I fight every day to get up and go on.

I am hyper aware of my girls behavior, moods, reactions.  I watch for any signs my parents and I missed in me.  At 12 and 14 I know that we could very well be on the brink of… something.

I am determined to live with it.  I am determined to find something close to normal.  I am determined that this disorder not destroy me, or my daughters.  I am determined to fight this fight and win.  And I know that I will fight every day for the rest of my life.

Putting into Words the Unspeakable Things about Bipolar Disorder

I don’t know that I can begin to find the words to adequately describe to you what BPD is like for me.  And for me to not be able to find the words for something, that’s saying a lot.

Everyone knows that bipolar disorder is best described as extremes.  Extreme highs, extreme lows.  We take the good and make if fucking fabulous, and we take the bad and we make it apocalyptically  horrible.  It’s a talent.

Everyone experiences BPD differently.  I can’t speak for everyone else out there, but I can try to put into words what life is like for me recently.

Right now, I am spiraling. And fuck, it’s ugly. I know it, I’m taking steps to control it, but those steps take time.  I know what triggers it, I have coping methods.  I am intelligently able to head this off.  I am not, however emotionally or mentally strong enough to fight it.  My brain knows what to do, my heart and emotions and core just can’t.

I know to ‘normal’ well adjusted healthy mentally stable people none of that makes any sense.

I go about my day as if I am a small tiny insignificant soul hiding in an intelligent functioning adult body.  I feel as if there is a physical mask/costume I am wearing.

That weighs a fuckton.

There are days I feel as if I am forced to function submerged physically and mentally in jello.  Where you can see all around you but it’s cloudy and difficult to maneuver.

Even these simple sentences are not doing it justice.

I live in fear, that the ugly little troll person who is actually controlling the Awesome Me puppet everyone sees, will break free, and people will see how ugly I am on the inside. They will hear the voices in my head constantly berating me with hateful things that are all too easy to believe.

I’ve been through enough therapy to know the language.  I can parrot it back to them, verbatim, right along with them.  I know I am intelligent, I know I can write, I know I am a good photographer, I know I am a great mom.  I know that I have worth, and I am know I am more than the vagina between my legs.

And yet? I don’t know any of that at all, for sure.

Or maybe I do know all that but I have allowed people around me to not know it.  And now, convincing them otherwise is proving impossible.

*ahem* bipolar disorder.

I am a rapid cycling bipolar.  Which means my moods swings can happen at lightening speed with little to zero warning. “From Zero to Bitch in 0.03 seconds?”  That’s me.  I can send you a text that says “I love you” and if you don’t respond in the predetermined by me, but not shared with you amount of time I text “Fuck you then”.  I’m sexy like that.  Is it any wonder I’m fucking single?

I hate my disorder.  I hate my life when it’s controlled by my disorder.  I hate me when I’m in a spiral.  And that hate, feed the spiral and the spiral intensifies the hate and do you see what kind of fun this shit is?

I fight a very difficult very valiant war inside my head every single day.  I pray my disorder does not harm or destroy my daughters.  I pray that the fight I fight is strong and worthy enough to allow me to overcome the demons inside so that I can be a good mom to my girls.  I also live with the fear that if anyone truly knew how horrible it is inside my head I wouldn’t have my girls another day.  What the girls don’t know, and can never know, is that they are the single solitary reason I get up every day and fight this fight as hard as I do.

I worry now, that putting this out there will somehow make people view me differently.  That those who know me in real life will shudder and shy away.  That now, instead of Becky, they will just see Crazy.  Or worse, they will think I’m too much drama.  They have the luxury of walking away.  I can’t walk away from my life.

I am swimming against a tide determined to drown me.  Afraid to reach out because what if they turn away? Or worse, lend a hand and save me only to walk away once they know I am no longer in danger.  I have so little faith in so many people, and really, it’s because I have so little belief in myself.

I am swimming.  Harder than I ever have.  I will get to safe ground. I’ve traveled these waters before.  Please just promise you’ll all be standing on the shore waiting when I get there??

Also, have margaritas. Lots of margaritas.

When I'm Okay means Inside I'm a Dying Wasteland of Nothingness

I’ve been pretty quiet around here lately.  I would like to say that it was because I’ve been incredibly busy with the girls.  Friday was Homecoming and that means Spirit Week and cheer practice and clothes, and shoes, and hair and make up and tears and texts and everything teenage girl. Times infinity.

I could say that it’s because I’ve been busy and that would be the truth.

But it wouldn’t be the whole truth.  It would only be the easy truth.  I’ve been busy.

Busy pretending that I’m ok.

When in fact, I haven’t been.

I have been ok on the outside, smiles and laughter when needed.  I’ve been a great supportive mom, I spent the entire day Friday with my ex husband who came to watch our daughter cheer.  I provided sandwiches and sodas and a place to relax and freshen up after school, before the big game, to the cheerleaders.  I took over 800 pictures of high school students exploding with school spirit.

And inside I was dying.

I spent a couple of days hanging with a friend, laughing, talking, enjoying each other’s company.  I spent a whole day painting a bathroom and washing doors and drawer fronts with same friend.  I put on the happy face, I laughed, I helped, and hoped, I hugged and kissed and flirted and smiled, and talked as if there was a future beyond that day.

And inside, I tore it all apart.  Inside I doubted every word said, every sign of affection.

On Sunday, I couldn’t keep inside inside any more.  It exploded all over the place, as is wont to do with me.  It was ugly and loud and hateful and truthful and honest and raw.  I said things I had promised myself I would never say.  I told secrets I swore to myself I’d take to my grave.  I opened my heart and bared my soul.

And in the end I was left with large raw gaping empty wounds on my heart and soul.

My truths, which I thought would open doors to better communications, turned out to the poison to end it all.

Today the girls are back, the games and the cheering continue.  I will sit in the stands tonight and cheer on my daughter I birthed and the 9 others I’ve adopted this cheer season.  I will smile and laugh.  I will get their inside jokes.  I will thank them for all they did for Meredith on Friday, I will thank them for standing behind her ready to fight for her.  I will love them for their protectiveness of my daughter.  Tonight I will be The Awesome Cheer Mom.

And inside I will be trying to heal the ugliness of my weekend.

So, while I say I’m fine, while I smile and laugh, while I look like the image of Awesome Cheer Mom, inside?  I’m a wasteland of spent emotions, shattered dreams, broken heart, crushed hopes.

I won’t be that empty wasteland inside forever.  I will heal.  I will write again, the smile will eventually reach my eyes.  I will come through this.  But for right now, when I say I’m ok, just know, I’m lying through my teeth.

Living With Bipolar Disorder isn't as Glamorous as Hollywood wants you to think.

For a while it seemed that bipolar disorder was the “It Disorder” for Hollywood.  Catherine Zeta Jones came out about her stay in a hospital for it.  Carrie Fischer wrote about her struggle with bipolar disorder.  One of the most famous celebrities-with-bipolar-disorder would be Patty Duke.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in May of 2007, barely two weeks before I packed up my girls and moved here. Where here is 2 hours away from all the family they ever knew and my entire support system.  Believe me it sounds so much worse than it has turned out to be.

I am just a few short months away from my five year diagnosis anniversary.  I would love to be able to tell you that my life is so much better, in fact more normal, than it was then.  But I don’t like to lie.  The truth is, while I know a lot about my disorder, and I am hyper aware of mood swings, and I know that no matter how much I love tequila shots, my mood swings don’t.  I know enough to make an appointment with my p-doc to change the strength of the medications I’m on.  I know enough to take my medications every day. I know enough that some situations and people and places and foods and drinks are all triggers and I’m better off avoiding them.

I know all of this stuff, but I don’t always manage to follow through.  Like a smoker knows cigarettes are bad for them, and they light up another one.  Or someone on a diet knows donuts are off limits, but they look so good, so they sneak one, just one.

And so it was with the holidays.  I knew they would be difficult this year, I just didn’t realize how difficult.  I knew Christmas and New Year’s Eve were the big ones, they were looming huge and dark and foreboding on the horizon, and I needed to do something to get through them.  I called my p-doc, he tweaked my meds, offered some coping skills that did not include bottles of tequila or Captain Morgan, and some phone numbers, you know, just in case.

I did everything right.

And the holidays? Went all wrong.

I spent Christmas day, at home, alone.  I had heard from everyone I was going to hear from by 10:00.  The girls were dropped off safely with their dad for the week, and I was home with two in heat very obnoxious attention whore cats.  By 6:30 I was feeling incredibly sorry for myself and hating the world outside. And the damn cats.  New Year’s Eve, lather, rinse, repeat, with the exception of the addition of sleeping pills and I was in bed by 8:30.

But that week, bookended by those two holidays spent alone, coupled with tweaked meds which always take time to adjust to, triggered a major spiral in moods.  I have been all over the place for the past two weeks.  Finally the horrors of my holidays are fading, the meds are leveling out and I feel like I’m coming out of a fog.  The problem is, there is a lot of debris in my rear view mirror.  A lot of things said and done that were less than stellar but felt right and justified at the time.

Welcome to bipolar disorder. When a bad mood is more than a bad mood.  When a good day is an epic day, and living in the extreme highs and lows makes it hard to determine what is a reasonable reaction and expectation.  So, when you come back down to level ground, you see the mountains were actually molehills, and the epic great day was actually just Tuesday.

I will live with the shame and embarrassment of my extreme actions over the past couple of weeks.  I will make apologies for angry texts fired off in the heat of the moment and accusations leveled from jumping to conclusions.

And I will try harder next time.