Aiming Low Does Good Spotlight: Mental Illness. This is My Story

The ladies (and Gent) over at Aiming Low are spotlighting mental Illness in their Aiming Low Does Good series. According to Britt, they have had an overwhelming response to their spotlight this month, and have decided to post links to other blog posts about personal experience with mental illness.

The truth is, mental illness still has a stigma attached to it, and due to that stigma, many people go untreated.  There is no shame in having a disease.  And mental illness is just that, a disease.

This is my story.

Back in May 2007, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  My then boyfriend and I were having a huge fight.  Let me rephrase that.  I was having a huge fight.  He was sitting there listening to me say these horrible, ugly, mean, vile things to him, about him, and he never fought back.  He never said anything ugly to me, he never raised his voice, he never got mad.  It had all started because I had seen a message from a girl I didn’t know to him, on his MySpace page. (Don’t judge, nobody knew about Facebook back then).  And as quickly and unexpectedly as it started, I stopped. (The fight. Not the MySpace page. He kept that? Far longer than he should have.)  I literally sat on the floor, knees drawn up to my chin, and couldn’t say another word.  Not wouldn’t.  I couldn’t.

The next day I called a therapist and made an appointment to get help.  I sat in the doctor’s office that afternoon telling her “I distinctly remember hearing all these vile, horrible, hateful words coming out of my mouth, crying inside, and my head screaming SHUT UP! But I couldn’t. And then? That was ALL I could do.”  It made no sense to me.  I didn’t want to say those things,and yet, I couldn’t stop them.

Bipolar disorder is a chemical imbalance in my brain, and means some of the things in my brain don’t fire just right. But because it is a chemical imbalance that means that there isn’t a set course of treatment. Medicating bipolar disorder is a guessing game.  What works for me for 4 months, may stop working.  The dosage may have to be changed. Often.  I can be on as many as 5 different medications at a time, or as few as 2.  My brother says it’s like riding the roller coasters at Six Flags without the price of admission.  Also? He’s jealous I get to experiment with so many different kinds of drugs.  (None of them the “good” kind).

The problem with bipolar disorder is I never know exactly what is going to trigger a mood swing.  I can cycle from manic (very hyper, very active, agitated, easily distracted, full of energy) to depressed and back to manic again in as little as a couple of hours, or as long as months.  When I’m manic? I can clean a house, I *love* to shop (and my girls? Love to beg me to go to Target.  It doesn’t take much begging) and I can write a novel (albeit not a very good novel because it very seldom makes any sense. My thoughts are all over the place.  It’s like ADHD on crack.) If I am too far on the manic end of the spectrum, I am bitchy, cranky, ready to rip people’s heads off for looking at me wrong.  When I swing to the depression end of things… I want nothing more than to sit around in my sweats and watch movies and avoid the rest of the world.  Unfortunately for me, neither of those options work for me as a single parent.  I have to function, no matter where I am on the bipolar spectrum.

Bipolar disorder is hard to diagnose.  The depression mood swings are easy to see, easy to diagnose, easy to treat the symptoms.  Most people and doctors can easily recognize the depression signs.  It when you start to move out of the depression into a manic phase things get tricky.  See, manic?  It always fun and exciting and better than depression.  So when I start to go manic it’s like the depression is lifting.  I don’t realize there’s a problem, that I’ve gone too far, until I am very manic and that means not sleeping, and talking all the time, and can’t focus, and snapping at people.

What can you do if someone you love is bipolar? When someone hasn’t slept in days, or hasn’t been able to get out of bed for weeks, they aren’t in any place to be able to help themselves.  Encourage them to get help, offer to call their doctor, go with them to their appointments, help them be aware of their behavior and their mood swings.  Learn all that you can about the disorder.  Knowledge is power, and the more you know, the more you can understand and the more you can help.

Days of Truth, Day 3, Forgiveness

Day 3 of the 30 days is Something you need to forgive yourself for. Great jumping-elmo-on-a-pogo-stick how long do we have here people?

I can start off with the obvious… there is this, or shall we include this?  (sorry if the links in those posts don’t work, I’m still rebuilding my archives). Believe me I have a laundry list as long as War and Peace of things I ‘should’ forgive myself for.

That’s the thing about me, I can forgive a whole lot of people a whole lot of things, a whole lot of times, but when it comes to me? Yeah, not so easily, not so often, not so much..

It’s easy to say “I was a total card carrying member of the fucked up freak show because I have BPD”.  It was easy to blame all the shit going wrong in my life on my BPD because in doing that I didn’t have to take any sort of responsibility for anything I did in my life.

TOTAL FAIL.

I am not proud to admit that it took me entirely too long to finally get a clue and figure out that well, I am ultimately responsible for my own decisions and I am *not* my disease and I have to take responsibility for my life.

I am on medication now.  That helps.  It also eliminates my ‘excuse’.

But I still have to learn to forgive myself for my past.  I am not the perfect mother, I am not the perfect girlfriend. I was not the perfect wife (clearly).  But I can find a way to forgive myself.

Eventually.