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.

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.

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.