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.

I live with Bert and Ernie only with vaginas.

People? This is the best Bert and Ernie book. Ever. It was one of my sister’s favorites when she was a child.  Ok, I don’t know that for a fact. It was one of MY favorites when she was a child.

If you haven’t read it, (and clearly most of you probably haven’t) it’s the story of how Ernie bought some cookies but broke the cookie jar, so he has to put the cookies in the sugar bowl, and the sugar in a flower-pot, and one thing leads to another ending with the fish in Bert’s cowboy hat.  So Bert has to wear a pot on his head when he wants to play “Ride ’em cowboy.”   People? That is a direct quote, do not laugh at me.

This weekend, the girls and I stopped at Sonic on our way back from The Lake. (who we were with is a blog post for another day).  A few miles down the road,  the following conversation took place in the back seat of the car.

Newt: Here, Tate, Hold your Sonic food.

Tate:  Why should I hold my Sonic food?

Newt: Because I have to put my food in your Sonic Bag.

Tate:  Why can’t you put your food in your bag?

Newt: Because mine has a soda in it.

Tate: Why does your bag have a soda in it?

Newt: Because the cup holder is full.

Tate: The cup holder is full?  Of what?

Newt: Books.

Tate: What?  Why are their books in the cup holder?

Newt: Because I don’t want them on the floor on my feet.

Tate: So what I supposed to do with my Sonic food if you’re using my bag?

Newt: Hold it on your lap?

People?  I can not make this shit up.

My full-on bipolar weekend

I had a bipolar weekend. It was horrible, terrible, angry, sad, mad, awesome, fantastic, party all night, laugh till it hurts, cry till there are no more tears, scream until I have no voice, and everything in between kind of weekend. Actually, it was exactly that weekend.

I ran the full gamut of emotions this weekend. I have been so frustrated for so long about so many things by so many people. And putting voice to those frustrations was getting me nowhere. Nobody was listening or paying attention. I had asked of them, over and over, and still… crickets.

I reached my breaking point. My boiling point. My I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-the-consequences-I-just-want-to-be-heard point. And so I spewed forth all the frustration and anger and exasperation I have been feeling for weeks now.

And once you let that genie out of the bottle? That bitch don’t know when to quit and get back in the damn bottle.

I was so tired, and frustrated and angry, and feeling unheard, and unimportant, and overwhelmed, and stress, and… and…. Yeah.

Then, after spending an entire day blowing up time after time, I dressed up and went to a party. I got the hell out of dodge, out of my house, away from the anger, the frustration, the fear, the stress, the edge, and I partied. (Thank you company I work for but will not name here, because I do have some small degree of a life that is not spewed all over the internet. But if you live in/around/close to/have driven though St. Louis it’s a name you’d recognize).

I laughed, and ate, and drank, and laughed, and danced, and drank, and laughed, and partied.

All. Night.

And it was fun. I had a blast. And it felt good.

To blow off steam. To leave all the ugly at home, far behind me, for a night, and just hang out with friends. All the ugly would be there when I got home, I could pick it up and carry the stress and the weight and the drama around later. For one night, I was going to let loose, and have fun.

And I did.

The next morning. When I woke up? The drama of the day before was there but the anger wasn’t. The I’m sorry was.

I just needed to blow out the pipes. I needed to left off some steam.  I needed to at least put a voice to all that I had been feeling and all that I was sure was going unheard. The yelling, crying, talking, begging, screaming, stomping day, followed by the drinking, dancing, laughing, partying, having a great time night was just like resetting my emotions, so that I could start over from a fresh place.

No, really, this time it is you. Clearly.

Dear Best Buy,

I never thought I’d set down and put fingers to keyboard to write this letter.  It really hurts me to have to tell you that, you, my friend, have lost the Christmas spirit.   You and I (and Brian.  Especially Brian) have had a long and wonderful relationship these past few years.

It was tyou we turned to when Brian the kids were bored one Saturday night. A few clicks of a mouse, and a 30-minute road trip later, we were a newly formed band destined for greatness and world fame.

When it became frustrating to help our youngest daughters stay afloat financially while Slum Lord Brian kicked everyone’s ass in Monopoly, it was you who provided the easy to play Xbox 360 version.  Now Brian can take over the neighborhood in record time leaving us all in the poor house or on the streets.

When I went in search of my own laptop, I turned to you, my trusted friend because you offered the best warranty.  And since Murphy’s Law seems to start and end with me, I felt safe and protected. It’s turns out I was right to turn to you.  I had my laptop less than a year when the monitor when out.  You were there to fix it and keep my DT’s to a minimum.

Every time Brian has felt the need to increase the size of his HDTV (because, believe me, size does matter) he went to you.  When he added his surround sound stereo system to complete his in home theater bedroom, it was you who provided him the most bang for his buck.

We have given you thousands of dollars over the past several years, and you in return have given us endless hours of family entertainment.  So, this holiday season, when I went in search of laptops for my daughters, you were the first I turned to.  Sure I could have found what I was looking for a little cheaper, but I knew that should something happen to the laptops (and with Drama Tweens and laptops, you know something is going to happen) you would have my back.

Brian and I went Monday night to get the laptops.  We found the one we wanted right away. Sure it was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it was something I could live with.  There were two left, so we picked them up and headed to check out when one of your helpful sales associates stopped us to ask if we had found everything ok.

It was at this point that he pointed out the orange sticker on the boxes, “Do you know what those stickers mean? They mean that these laptops are Geek Squad Certified.”  He went on to explain that they anti-virus protection installed good for 2 years, and that all the trials of the any programs installed by default had been removed, blah, blah blah.  And all of this wonderful certification was going to increase the price of these laptops by $200.  Each.

When I looked at the display model and the pricing card by it, there was no mention of Geek Squad Certification, or any additional expense.  When I looked at the orange sticker on the laptop, there was no mention of the increase in price for having software removed before I even had the opportunity to try it out.  In fact, if your salesman hadn’t stopped us and explained that to us, we would have had no way of knowing that until we got to the register to check out.

I think it is pretty underhanded to load an additional $200 expense onto a laptop and make no mention of it anywhere on or around the display or the laptop itself.  Also? It’s kind of presumptuous of you to just assume people don’t want the trial version of the software that comes on the laptops by default.

We walked out of there that night empty handed and with a very bad taste in our mouths.  I went out and found my daughters their laptops at another store, for a significant savings, and without any hidden costs or assumptions on their part.

I’m sorry it has come to this Best Buy.  Up until this past week, I would sing your praises, but after this little stunt of yours?  I’m not sure I’ll be giving you the attention and support I have in the past.

I thought we were beyond witch hunts.

Last night I was reading some blogs from my Read-It-Later. I love that I can click on a website/blog post in my reader and it downloads and I can read it at home that night off line.  The problem then becomes when I want to leave a comment I can’t.

I read this blog post yesterday and I didn’t think too much about it. I mean, everyone is entitled to their opinion.  But this?

It’s kind of funny to me how these holier than thou ultra conservative Christian racists Tea Baggers rush to embrace anything or anyone that fits their idea of what people representing the real America should be.

is a bit much.

But still I let it go.  Last night.  This morning, on my way to work, I was thinking about it and the more I thought about it the more it got under my skin.  I was going to just quietly leave a comment there, but as I composed that comment in my mind, it grew longer and longer and turned itself into a damn blog post.  So, here we are.

I don’t claim to be a Tea Partier. I have never been to a tea party event.  I don’t claim either political party.  I see both sides of a lot of issues.  I’m a little bit left of right and right of left.  I fall somewhere in the vast 80% middle ground.  And just where I fall on that spectrum varies by the issue.

I don’t believe in calling a whole group of people out to be racist when it hasn’t been proven one way or the other.  That’s just name calling and mud slinging.  But that’s not what I started to write about.  I wanted to comment on the people who have their panties all in a bunch because Christine O’Donnell said that she ‘dabbled in witchcraft in high school.”

OMFG! Seriously?  Have you been out of high school so long that you have forgotten all the stupid shit you did at that age?  All the stupid weird strange people you hung out and the stupid crazy shit you did?  We ALL did stupid shit in high school and college.  I’d be willing to bet that damn near every small town in America has some haunted house/barn/farm/field/road whatever and we ALL ‘dabbled’ around there on a weekend night after a few beers.  So. Fucking. What.

Once upon a time I was interested in the Wiccan religion.  And frankly, it’s just another world religion much like Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Muslim.  I read a bunch of books about Wicca.  I have a spell book from the days I was interested in it.  In all the books I read, there was never mention of alters, blood, human or animal sacrifices.  Now, I’m not saying there isn’t black magic and maybe, just maybe there are sacrifices used with black magic, but what I read?  No sacrifices.  And they sure as shit didn’t build alters out of milk crates.

I honestly thought we had grown beyond witch hunts.  Even if she did more than dabble in witch craft, even if she was a practicing witch and a wiccan, who cares?  Don’t we have freedom of religion in this country?  It doesn’t make her crazy or ‘another nut to add to the mix’.