• Exhaustion

    My mom thinks I push myself too hard. She thinks that I’m trying to replicate the childhood she gave me with my own son. I try to explain… “Mom, I get up at 5:50, take a half hour for myself, then get in the shower, get ready for work, wake up my son, fix him breakfast, make sure the pets are fed and the dog is let out, fix him lunch, make sure everything is ready to go, drop him off at school, go to work,  work 8 hours, get out at 4:30, pick him up at 5, come home, take care of the dog, help my son with his homework, read over the ton of paperwork that comes home with him from school, make dinner, eat, get him in the shower, put him to bed, read to him, go and clean up the kitchen, start the dishwasher, make coffee for the morning, it’s now 9:30 pm, take an hour to myself, pass out and start it all over again tomorrow.”

    The biggest challenge is keeping my cool. Before I had medication and didn’t understand my bipolar, I would be consoling myself with a bottle of wine and junk food, which is now why I’m 10 pounds overweight. I often got absolutely overwhelmed and would start sobbing in the kitchen around 10 pm, trying not to make too much of a racket and wake my son. Yes, I keep my cool much better now… and when I want to throw some little piece of electronic bullshit across the room (like my iPad) when it won’t connect to the internet, so I can watch one measly T.V. show for a half hour, I don’t. I can stop myself now. That’s a little bit of a relief. I can feel the rage coming on and chill out before disaster strikes.

    I still wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and don’t recognize myself. I think, “What in the hell has happened to you? You look like shit on a stick!” So, I apply a ton of makeup only to discover at work under the harsh florescent lighting that I still have the black rings under my eyes. I still have the furrowed brow and the now ever present downturn of the mouth. No need to worry about laugh lines.

    All in all I have one job – keep my son sheltered from all this. He doesn’t deserve to take on these burdens and thankfully I am still able to do this for him. Will there come a day when my stamina runs out? Am I headed for an inevitable crash and burn? I need to figure out how to have one hour to myself when I come home in the evening. I think it might be vital for my mental health. I’ll continue to try and figure out what that would look like. Until then, I look forward to the small moments of peace that do grace me. My dog who welcomes me home, my mom who unexpectedly makes me a wonderful meal, my son’s pride… It’s enough.

     

  • Trashed Relationships

    My relationship of 5 years has dissolved. I can’t help but think that my bipolar has something to do with it. I understand that this illness has affected all of my relationships in the past. I’ve lost countless friends. Moved every two years; ran away from everyone after creating a scene. The question is, how do I examine what my bipolar brings to the table, without creating self-doubt?

    I was trying to explain it to someone a couple weeks ago. Aside from the brain being totally different in someone without bipolar disorder (more on that later), there is a filter through which I see the world. We all have them. A mothers view of things is completely different from a single woman. The rich businessman can’t possibly see the same view of the world as some homeless guy sleeping under a bridge. We all have a filter. The only difference is mine is not a completely healthy one.

  • The Beginning

    I’m writing this for my son. He’s nine. Super smart. Gifted they say, but I’m not sure this is the time to explain to him that his mom has bipolar disorder.

    When I was diagnosed last May at 41 years old I felt a mixture of things. A part of me thought “Well, I really am crazy”, a part of me was absolutely horrified, and the other part was just laughing at the fact that I was seeing a psychiatrist. For the most part though, I was relieved… I had suspected something was wrong with me for a very long time.

    Being a teenager was hell. My parents probably wanted to strangle me and burry me out back in a shallow grave most of the time. My 20’s and 30’s seemed to coast right along though. I pursued a creative field of work and as a graphic designer. My highs were encouraged. I would stay up for days, birthing a new idea that would turn into a masterpiece (or so I thought). It would continue on for another week as I finished the work and then finally collapsed in exhaustion… I never had an unhappy client. They paid me good money for my work. I was rewarded for my hypomanic state.

    I never seemed to experience a serious depression until my divorce. Insomnia came for a visit. I still struggle with it today. I was awake for about three weeks. There was no mania, no feeling on-top-of-the-world, and no great creations, I just didn’t sleep. When I did finally drift off I was plagued by horrible nightmares, so I finally called my doctor. She prescribed Ambien for sleep and Valuim for anxiety, telling me that other than a death in the family, I was dealing with two of the three most stressful events we can experience, divorce and moving.

    Things seemed to straighten out rather quickly with these two medications, so I falsely assumed I suffered from mild anxiety and continued to refill the Valium until my doctor told me no more. I tried that for a while, then decided to order it online and take things into my own hands, just like we all do when undiagnosed. I was once again trying to mange my moods that were forever trying to manage me.

    Then something different happened. Something shocking and awful. I was driving down the interstate and I thought, If I just drift over the median, I could be hit by an oncoming semi, and I wondered if I would die instantly. I wondered if it would hurt, or if my brain would just stop thinking, if I would just cease to exist. The thought persisted. I found my reality slipping like a hallucination as I drove at 80mph down the highway. I started to cry, hyperventilate, scream at the top of my lungs. I was in some sort of distorted Alice in Wonderland world of terror.

    I had the sense to get off the freeway, but then experienced a lot of confusion. Where do I go? Should I call someone? I should call someone!… This is Bad. This is really, really bad. A part of me knew I should go to the hospital, but then what? Do I just walk into the ER and say, “I think I’m losing my mind?” I sat in a parking lot and tried to wait it out. I knew what town I was in, and that it was daytime, but that was the extent of my grip. I knew I didn’t want to lose my son by being locked up. So I just sat there and didn’t tell anyone about anything.

    Ahhh……. psychotic breaks. That was the first of several.