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.