Check out for your weekend viewing pleasure my new You Tube channel, “Julie Whitehead’s Day by Day”. An introductory video is up–I’m just learning how all this cool stuff works on my computer so be patient as I figure it all out! Thanks for reading and now viewing available once a week.
Posted in Read Along
I’m eating Salmon right now for breakfast and i love it on bagels and just on a fork..
Go eat some. If you don’t like fish or will die, don’t do it but now at least you have some brain knowledge for someone else. 
Well I am happy because we are at the “official” start of summer and I have gorgeous purple toenails and I have lost thirty pounds. YES you can be on Bipolar meds and still lose weight!! It takes hard work and determination and perseverance but you can do it!! This LoseIt! app has really helped me stay on track, as well as my fake FitBit watch, which makes me so encouraged when I see how far I have walked in a day. It makes me want to walk MORE.
Yesterday I hit 10,000 steps for the first time and I was really proud. That has been my daily goal all along and I only just achieved it yesterday. 10,000 steps is about 4 1/2 miles. So YAY. My watch started buzzing while I was in Target and I saw the numbers. It’s the little things that get me excited, people! Then after buying three kinds of sunscreen (face, body, and spray for my scalp) I went and got my first pedicure of the season and MY GOD DID IT FEEL GOOD!!!!
I am trying to conserve money but dang it once in awhile you just have to splurge. This job I have only goes until the end of June but I prayyyyyy that they extend the contract. BUT I have already gotten them caught up on so much of their work, I’m worried I’m going to work myself out of a job! I’m just that good!! I don’t mean to sound stuck on myself but I am a very hard worker and super-efficient.
My mood has been steady and good, it’s easy to be grateful and happy when my weight is down and the weather is beautiful and the days are long. The only thing that threatens me is the thought of the job ending and moving out of my apartment at the end of June. I probably will have to move in with my parents and that is a depressing thought. I really hope that something comes through job-wise so that doesn’t happen. I need to get to searching even harder than I am, which is not very hard.
Today I’m going to a huge party for my oldest sister’s retirement. She is only 54 but she has retired from being a teacher. I am quite envious, as I have no retirement savings whatsoever and no hope of retiring, ever. I don’t know what in the actual fuck I’m going to do as I get older. It’s a scary thought. I have not been the most responsible person with money obviously and there’s no Bipolar Retirement Association that I know of.
Well people I hope you are all well. WELCOME to all my new followers, thank you for following me!!! Take care everybody and let me know how you are in the Comments!! Hugs and kisses, BPOF!
People are so easy to share (with me, because my superpower is communication) that they were (KEYWORD!) on antidepressants but the got off of them.
I don’t know if I should complain that you told me and then quickly told me that you got off them OR be happy that you told me you were on antidepressants..
This all coming after I confessed that I’m feeling really depressed and that’s probably why I lost 30 pounds..
Does and has everyone taken antidepressants? And if so WHY ISN’T mental illnesses widely talked about and understand…ed?!
I’m not on antidepressants.
I should be.
I’m not on anything..(well)..but who am I to judge her anyway? Mental illness, whatever face and shape it takes, is real.
Maybe I’m just jealous she got OFF them when some people can never stop taking them, or can’t get them in he first place.
Posted in Read Along
Tagged anger, anxiety, bipolar, Depression, life, mania, mental health
My first kid free weekend in who knows how long. After a tumultuous year of unexpected change after change, a crippling months long depression, and overloaded anxiety circuits…I should be fast asleep at 4:19 a.m. Instead, I am sitting up watching Major Crimes, drowning in sinus drainage, thoroghly disgusted by just how extreme my disrupted sleep pattern has become.
I fell asleep sometime before 11 p.m….And I woke at 12:30, then 1:30, and again a little after 2 a.m. So I got up for a bit, turned on some news thing on PBS about foreign news stories and I moved to lay at the foot of the bed. More toss and turn, more racing mind and thudding heart in spite of a second 6 mg dose of melatonin, so in went more Xanax. And I nodded off.
Only to wake at ten til 4, wide awake, misrable in my drainage, and said, oh screw this.
I’ve always had sleep disorders-insomnia, somnolence, trouble falling asleep, oversleeping, not sleeping enough…But this disrupted cycle since my child was born 9 years ago…it’s insane. It’s exhausting. And everything I am hearing and reading says that this lack of rejuvenating rest could be making my depression and anxiety worse. Oddly, it’s the aspect of my disorders the professionals seem least concerned with. Probably because I refuse to take their old school sleeping pills like Trazadone because hey, I have a kid and need to be alert, not bombed out, and I can’t sleep 12 hours a day and spent two hours shaking off the damn headache hangover those sleeping pills give me.
So I try the ‘lights out, calming sounds only’method. Counting backwards, visualizing the STOP signing, deep breathing, relaxation techniques, no food or caffeinated drinks after 7 p.m. take my Xanax to calm my brain an hour before my melatonin…I am getting more exercise, more fresh air, more sunlight. I AM DOING EVERYTHING TO HELP MYSELF EXCEPT TAKING THEIR DAMN COMA PILLS and nothing helps, nothing works.
I tried the hypnotic sleep med route back when I had a decent doc who gave me samples. I’d wake up on the bathroom floor with no memory of walking there so thankfully, insurance wouldn’t pay for that crap and the samples ran out.
I tried their weak ass Vistaril and Restoril hoping if nothing else it’d help with my plethora of allergies and rioting histamines. Both took forever to kick in and didn’t keep me asleep but did give me headaches.
I’ve had a golden day or two this week. The days where nothing great happens but my mind feels steadier and even when something sucky does happen, my steady mind is able to cope with a modicum of lucidity and dignity. Golden days.
The nights, though, the start and stop sleep, over and over and over…Is is any wonder I am always on edge, always tired, never feel revived enough to leap out of bed, happy to face the day?
If you told someone your phone only charges to 40% and goes dead after a couple hours of use, they’d say buy a new battery so it’d charge fully and work better.
But if you’re a lowly person who can never recharge properly to work optimally…meh, no biggie. Your fault for not wanting to take pills that make you bombed out and hungover.
And by the way, even with those coma drugs and sleeping 12 hours a day, I was still always tired because even taking them for years, that morning hangover never would lessen or go away. That’s no way to live any more than this sleep/wake cycle.
I am frustrated. I should be elated, I have another entire day and night knowing my kid is safe and having fun with her grandma and aunt. My time. I was going to do this and that around the house, and hey, if I can’t sleep, I can day nap without a kid to watch. Except dad and stepmonster are going out of town and my brother is staying home to babysit their neighor’s dog…and dad and stepmonster, assholes they are, said, “Your brother is going to be home alone with (husky pup) so he’s probably going to bring him over to your house so you can help out.”
My brother turns 23 in July. How hard is it to go without mommy and daddy for 3 or 4 hours and take care of a damned puppy? Infringing on me quiet time without regard to my feelings is one more reason I have so much resentment for them. They give zero fucks about what I might have planned. Or even I have no plans, hey, I’d like ONE bloody day without another living soul aside from my cats in my proximity.
But hey, I’m 45, paying to live here without their help, and apparently, I’m still a child whom they can inform has to hang around to help her little brother. With a dog. And hey, that dog is awesome, but 15 days in a row those people have been in my face…enough is fucking enough. I say so, they laugh, snort, and ignore me. Were I a wealthy sociopath, I’d hire someone to kneecap them just so they couldn’t get around as easily and bug the fuck out of me.
I am disappointed in myself sometimes for not being a sociopath. Those are some of the happiest most successful people on the planet. Damn having a soul and conscience all to hell.
That concludes my early morning rant. MAYBE if I were ever able to sleep for more than 3 solid hours I wouldn’t be so rant-y. Don’t think I’m ever gonna be able to mythbust that one since it’s more likely I’ll win Publisher’s Clearing House money than get 6 solid hours sleep in my lifetime.
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