Daily Archives: May 27, 2015

Mental illness is a lot like looking into a mirror and seeing what you want to be. You look away for a moment, then reality is looking back at you. That kitten may view himself as a fierce lion, king of the jungle, but…Best he can hope for is to grow into a good sized domestic cat. WE ARE WHAT WE ARE.

Do I cede that mental illness has to define and limit us? Absolutely not.

When I am manic, I see that lion in the mirror and forget I am but a kitten. I feel fierce and powerful and unstoppable. Intrepid.

When depressed…I see this hollowed out husk with no light left behind the eyes and lines of a tortured existence etched into what used to be a lively pretty face.

What we are and what we want to be are two very different things. And to liken the mentally ill to someone without mental illness who likely *can* become whatever they put their mind to…is insulting. A sick mind cannot become a well mind by willpower and effort. We can manage, we can improve, we can just maintain and keep going…But the part of us that is responsible for every function is ill and to deny this is a hindrance is asinine.

As a manic teenager, I had so many dreams and goals and flights of fancy. My dad told me to get a job schlupping coffee in an office, people like us didn’t become anything else. I told him I was going to be a star. Never mind I can’t sing or dance or well, do anything with any consistency. I’m a good writer, but even that hinges on my clarity at the time. Mental illness does not bring consistent clarity so even that which I am good at and enjoy is affected. At that time, I rebelled even against my own self doubt and especially against my gloom and doom father. I told myself I was going to be the one in a million, I’d beat the odds, I would become more than my station in life declared I could be. I certainly wanted it desperately enough.

Then would come the depressive bouts. Months and months in a dark place feeling no hope, no joy, being beaten down by my own mind. I’d come to terms with my limitations and decide maybe schlupping coffee’s not so bad. Except, I tried that in the form of waiting tables, and my longest period of stability was about seven months. FYI, you make great tips when manic. Depressives who force smiles and look ready to bolt…Not so much. Still…I tried.

Come manic phase…Lather, rinse, repeat.

I thought I was just a flake until the mental health diagnosis. Of course, it was the wrong one, I was given the wrong meds, and never did get better for more than a couple of months at a time. Least then I knew I wasn’t stupid or immature.  Notions of grandeur are a hallmark of mania as much as hopelessness is a hallmark of depression.

If you had asked me twenty years ago what I’d be doing now…I’d have said I’d be a published author, maybe still broke, but I’d have at least pursued the one dream I know I stand a chance at fulfilling. I could not have seen all that would come my way to hinder that dream. (One of the biggest hurdles being stuck in a small town and of course, literary agents charging seventy five bucks an hour just to read a chapter or two.) Then my husband at the time had two brain surgeries in a six month space. My needs took second place. I was still struggling with my own issues. There was never a point where I said, “I can’t do this, I won’t even try.” No. There was just the reality of life reminding me I had other priorities, other responsibilities. I was okay with that. I could do my writing thing later on.

It was all so clear in my manic mind. I could see myself, wearing the nicer clothes I can’t afford, well groomed and made up, my house clean, my car new, my life a balance of personal and professional. Until the mania wore off and the depression swooped in. Even then, I never admitted defeat. It was just another bump in the road, I could postpone until my mind was in a better place.

Once I had that bad reaction to Nardil and spent a week in the hospital with the doctors unsure if I’d ever come to…That was when everything changed, for the worse. Almost like my will to live was sucked out of me during that week I was out of it. I started getting numbers mixed up, saying the wrong words, forgetting where something was when I’d been there a dozen times. I was different.

The mental illness, however, was not. The cycles came and went. Except the manic episodes were briefer and the depressions were longer, deeper, darker. I was no longer my smart sunny self even in the manic episodes. There was something different about me, about how I was able to feel. It was always like joy was covered in layers of gauze and it wasn’t simply the depression. I wasn’t the same person anymore, which gave credence to the shrink’s flippant remark about, “There may have been brain damage.”

I kept writing. Unfortunately, it was all tainted by my depressed mind state or if I was manic, it was run on sentences even I couldn’t tolerate. I kept TRYING. I even wrote poems that got published. No pay, though. Truthfully, I am not a poetry person. Writing it makes me feel like a hypocrite. Novels have always been my goal. And I have at least ten full manuscripts I’ve written over the years, including a couple a New York literary agent was interested in. IF I could pay for her time, which I couldn’t.

In 2006 I found the most amazing doctor. She diagnosed me bipolar and gave me mood stabilizers. I thought, finally, I can have my life back, or start living one for a change.

Mood stabilizers helped immensely. Except the depressions remained the same. Doctors don’t like to give anti depressants to bipolar patients so my doctor saddled me with enough sleeping pills to put an elephant down on a nightly basis. Still, for the ten hours I was awake, I was minimally functional and not suicidal. It was something.

The bottom line is…Life requires consistency. It’s the one thing I can’t seem to manage. I try. I envision where I want to be in life, how I can make changes, what I can do to ward off the depressions…Nothing works. I had a plan four years ago. I really thought that time it was going to stick. I was determined, the meds seemed to be working…And all it took was one seasonal affect depression to put me back into the gutter, back on the medi go round. Side effects, failures, brief periods of functionality. My best intentions count for nothing.

I never wanted to be a 42 year old woman who struggles just to bathe and put on clothes or clean the house. I never wanted to be on disability, I always worked from the time I was sixteen, even if it was only during the manic episodes for a couple of months. I tried. I had dreams. In my current months long depression and its anhedonia, I currently can’t focus on anything but daily survival. You want me to make a five year plan of goals to aim for? That’s not gonna happen. I can barely make a plan for five minutes from now.

Oddly back in February when my prozac was increased, I went absolutely manic for three weeks and thought I was cured and could kick the world’s ass.

This disorder is cruel. It is a hindrance. It is the bane of my existence. Yet it’s the only hand of cards I was dealt.

But make no mistake…Who I wanted to be has nothing to do with what I am now. I can make some changes, adjust my attitude. I cannot, however, cure the bipolar. It is what it is.

I never wanted to be this husk of a human being. Yet here I am and much as I loathe it, I keep doing battle.  Maybe focusing less on what I once wanted to be,or what others think I should or could be…I need to  focus on the fact that no matter how many times life and mental illness have beaten me down…

I have the fortitude to get back up. I keep trying. That takes strength the non mentally ill will never ever possess or grasp.

I did a semi positive post yesterday and realized…I may have fewer followers now because they could have died from shock. Okay, I am being sarcastic (it’s my super power) but I’ve been inspired to explain why I am “so negative”. Now,if you are an optimist, kudos to you, that is your right, your identity, your coping mechanism. I salute. At the same time, my cautious optimism and “expect the worst, get surprised by the best” attitude is who I am and how I cope. I’m not encouraging anyone else to assume this attitude. I mean, my purpose in life is to be a bad example and all, but that was just because my parents told me to set a goal in life…

Sarcasm really IS my super power and has been since age 12.

The thing is..I am bipolar two. Which means I spend 3/4 of my life in a depressed “let me shrivel up and die” state of mind. That itself is negative and that is also called depression. If I were puking rainbows then I wouldn’t be depressed so much, would I? Throw in a dysfunction overly critical family, being bullied for years, and a neverending struggle with my mental issues…Was there really much chance I was going to be an optimist anyway?

Once upon a time, even in the heyday of being bullied as a preteen and into my teen years, no matter how bad it go, at least during manic episodes, I could dismiss it all and spew sunshine and puke rainbows. I felt anything was possible and all the bad shit was irrelevant. Those of course, were the manic episodes. Notions of grandeur, feeling ten feet tall and bulletproof. I was doomed to a rude awakening. It happens again and again, your attitude takes a beating. (I’m 42 now which means I’ve spent a quarter of that in a manic state thinking the sky is the limit, only to crash land into reality.) You do become negative. And maybe it’s not a bad thing. Optimists kind of irk me, truthfully. Sometimes a pile of shit is just a pile of stinky icky shit, even if you paint it gold and spray it with Glade so it reeks of vomited pine trees. Realistic is not negative.

We, as a society, are taught otherwise. I see it everyday. One church in town had a sign that said, “Attitude is the crayon that colors the world.” And ya know, from a church, that’s rich. “If we deny that priests molest little boys, our good attitude will make it go away.” (Not all are like that, but denial is a hallmark of many religions, just is.) R has been telling me for four years, “There will be better days.” Yeah, got an ETA on that? (Oddly enough, when he had five weeks straight of little work, nothing going right, death of a friend- then it was okay for him to be depressed an stressed and be a bit negative.) It is okay to have an attitude where you don’t get easily defeated and deterred. (I love the character Sue from The Middle…Much as I’d like to stab her with her own rays of sunshine, she is just so upbeat and tenacious, I wish I had those qualities.)

Voicing when things are bad, and expressing that, is not the same as a negative attitude. I started this blog as an outlet for all my battles, good and bad. As bipolar two, the lows are just the primary state which is negative. And while I don’t even pretend to fake it’s all good, by acknowledging the bad I am purging so it doesn’t poison me. Also, I’ve gotten so many comments from people who are thankful that I put it the way I see it, political correctness and social views be damned. Because many people feel exactly as I do but don’t feel able to voice it for whatever reason. I say what they can’t and it resonates and I think, rather than turning them into pessimists, it validates their right to feel negative things because, well, sometimes thing just are.

This one I got from Diane.

I think it’s appropriate, though I don’t remember if I posted it before. Who knows. It can be reposted cos it’s just that succinct.

So attitude is less a luxury bipolar patients have and more a lottery of, who will be influencing my mind frame today.

I don’t feel obligated to spew sunshine and puke rainbows. I’ve told it like I see it since I was 12, even when they told me I was Debbie Downer. (I won that young author’s contest, negative story or not, and I changed NOTHING.)  This is me.

Ya know what else is me? The days when I truly do feel like I could puke up a rainbow. They’re just few and far between and truth be told, when I am in a good mind frame like that, I’m not sitting here blogging. I am out living life before I’m back in the mood gutter. It’s not that all I feel is negative. It’s just that I write about that part to avoid overdosing on it. Then when the good stuff comes…I live it. I see nothing unhealthy about it.

Whether you puke rainbows or ooze gloom…You should just be true to yourself.

In closing, I am going to allow my Lord And Master, Foamy The Squirrel, to sum it up in his foul mouthed angrily eloquent manner.

Twas not a stellar day but also…Twas not living hell. Miracle of miracles, I’m not gonna bitch and moan for ten pages.

Aside from the humidity and the oompa loopas squeezing my ovaries at random moments to cause me doubling over pain…I have managed to survive fairly unscathed today. I’m not doing cartwheels. My scumbag brain is telling me it’s time to take to my crypt…I did not find the fountain of cure, nor am I gonna puke up any rainbows. At the same time…I am also not gonna spew any venom.

I hazarded a trip to three different places in the dish today. Aldi, Family Dollar, and the library. Nothing too traumatic except I had no quarter to get a cart at Aldi and was standing in line ten minutes with my arms full. Oh, and again at Family Dollar while some oblivious geriatric had to dig out exact coins from her bag while I juggled apple juice, canned veggies, a bottle of cola and a partridge in a pear tree. For one person who’d barely waited ten seconds and had a cart, they opened a second register while still I stood there. Not life altering but it never ceases to be annoying how rude people can be. Still, it didn’t send me into a swearing tailspin.

I was just going to return my library books. Then I said, no, get one, at least. Instead, I walk out with four even though my focus on reading these days leaves much to be desired. What can I say, I am a book floozy. I suppose of all the hobbies one could overindulge in, reading’s a pretty good one.

Had to brave the big school to fetch my kid. Not pleasant but I took a book, parked a block away, and sat on a bench. Since getting home, she has been minimally fussy (Thank you, Neopets!) and I do make her alternate between playing outside and the computer. (JINX, no sooner than I commend her behaving well, I tell her it’s jamma time and she starts throwing a fit and mouthing off.)

All in all…Not an awful day. I still can’t muster up any enthusiasm to listen to music (I might infect it with my debbie downer thing) nor can I do much around the house except in bits and pieces. Still…I managed to run some errands, the kid’s been good-ish, I even cooked myself a decent supper.

I think some of it has to do with FOUR days of not being nagged within an inch of my life by hours of dish time and oh, yeah, R. Ya know, the guy who only calls me when he needs something or is bored and all the other people are busy. Yeah, well, I think to some extent, he’s a bit toxic. Necessary evil sometimes. Less evil than my family, at least. But four days to regroup, three of them pretty much sans kid…It makes sense I’d pipe down a bit. The hormonal thing seems to be dying down. I think the worst of the Latuda aftermath is fading out.

One thing I’ve noticed since starting the Trileptal is I am grinding my teeth unconsciously. To the point my gums hurt.  I catch myself, correct it, and bam, right back to it without even realizing it. This is a side effect from this med, though it seems I developed it rather fast according to the normal onset the literature talks about. Oh, well. Compared to Latuda, this is puppies and sunshine and orgasmic chocolate.

For now…The madness in Morgueland is at a tolerable volume. I wish it’d stay that way. I also wish pegacorns were real but hey…Dreams aren’t a bad thing.

(Thanks to Diane for that one! Too funny.)