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Hello my dear Blog fellows, my friends, my family, my readers! Yes it’s a miracle! A Seroquel miracle! Increased my dose from 100 mg to 150 mg and it did the trick. I do feel almost back to my normal cheery self. The gloom and doom is gone. Whew! I am breathing a sigh of relief and gratefulness!
Posted in Read Along
Now I’m really out of stories, etc. to send to publications. I sent one to my professor this morning about my runaway experience for a nonfiction contest. He asked all of us MFA students to send in our best work and he would choose one nonfiction, one fiction, and three poems to send into the contest. SO I won’t know anything about whether I’m even in that group until after December 1.
I did have a great idea last night–I tried to write a novel years before I started freelance writing. I started on it after the Lewinsky scandal. It was a political novel about a newspaper reporter covering politics for a major metropolitan newspaper and the presidential campaign he covered.
Well, I got 150 pages into it and gave up. But I laid in bed last night and thought, why don’t I take the story of the campaign and write it as fiction short story AS IF IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Set the election in 2024 and have the story itself told from the point of view of the reporter looking back on his life and talking about this incredible political campaign. Write a fiction story as if it were a nonfiction memoir. I think ti would likely be novella length but oh so good.
A lot that I had happen in the story has happened in the intervening years–elements of the Bush Vs. Gore court case in the 2000 election , the events of 9/11, election of the first black president, etc. SO I will have to update and explain the story a little bit. But I found my original notes for the novel, a synopsis I had written, and the first 150 pages this morning after searching my desk. SO I’m excited about the possibilities.
Hope everyone has a great weekend! Bob is going off on his trip Friday; please pray that it will go well for him and that me and the girls can make it fine on our end.
Posted in Read Along
It’s 3 a.m. and I’ve been awake an hour now, waiting for the second dose of melatonin to kick in so I might catch my next three hour jaunt of sleep. Thus far I’ve had two cats try to eat my face while I curled up another vanilla blankie and relished in the warmth. All the while my scumbag brain spins and whirls and harps on that one inane tidbit of the day that I should blow off and yet…It pisses me off.
When I picked Spook up from mom’s yesterday (grandma was worn out by the yappy kid, she needed a nap, wahhh, welcome to my life 24-7 with the chihuahua of children)…we were driving home and Spook pointed at this big two story house and said, “I’m gonna have a big house like that someday.” And ever pragmatic and dream crushing mommy the realist asked, “How are you gonna buy the house and afford to heat it?”
“I’m gonna marry a rich man.”
AND SPLAT. Vintage momster. My mom is teaching this shit to my kid because it’s always been her fondest dream to marry a rich man. So not only is she setting back feminism fifty years, she’s infecting my child with this “you need money to be happy” bullshit. I suggested, “How about instead you go to college and get a career where you can make your own money and buy stuff for yourself? Men can leave you, then what do you have?”
Yes, I know she’s only six. Yes, I know, she has years to mature and choose not to let my mother’s insidious inanity seep into her brain. But I can remember my entire childhood being riddled with blow ups between my parents over money and my mom ranting about how dad didn’t make enough money and she should have married a rich man to “take care” of her. This isn’t some quirk my mother has, not some running joke. This is her mentality.
She is quite certain she can only be happy when spending money. Not simply when she has money. No, she’ll go rent to own stuff just to spend money and boost her mood even if it’s gonna bite her on the ass later on. And she’s taught this same thing to my sister, who absolutely thinks life is shit…until payday and spending time.
To my asshole father’s credit…At least he managed to instill in me, in spite of my mother’s influence, is to appreciate what you have rather than be made miserable fretting over all you don’t have. Having to have hand me downs or buy used stuff…Not the end of the world. Can’t get the pricey shampoo? Oh, well, your hair won’t smell like newborn baby souls and vanilla bean. Boo fuckin hoo.
My moods are not tied directly to have money/don’t have money. I’ve been manic and had a penny to my name yet bounced off walls with joy. I’ve had hundreds of mad money in the bank and been too depressed to spend a cent. This is simply not an aspect of bipolar disorder.
Money plays an enormous role in anxiety disorders. The steeliest of nerves will be rattled when there’s not enough to cover basic necessities and needs. If you have an anxiety disorder, there’s simply no such thing as having enough money to breathe comfortably.
The bottom line is…Feeling depressed or happy based on whether you have money to spend is NOT a facet of bipolar disorder or clinical depression. It is a personality trait.
Put away the tar and feathers if you feel this is aimed at you personally because it is not. I am talking about my ass trash family.
Money. will.not.make.you.happy.
And if you are bipolar/depressive…it will not cure you.
What money can do to benefit mood disorders is lessen anxiety. It can give you room to breathe. It can pay for better mental healthcare (ha ha ha, can’t even write it with a straight face cos we all know, money or not, it’s all barely competent.) Money can relocate you to a better locale. Money can give you ways to keep distracted by going out and spending on social outings.
Now, you may ask, Dr. Morgue, what makes you such a fucking expert?
I live it.
“But MY bipolar is not your bipolar. I need money to be happy, it makes my mood go up.”
While I fully support the fact that everyone’s bipolar, for all its grouping of symptoms to form the disorder, is different…I maintain that money does not cause nor cure bipolar/depression.
Does money stress give/worsen anxiety disorders? Absofuckinglutely.
But if your moods can be controlled by simply having money to spend…It’s not a chemical imbalance, it’s a personality imbalance. I am not judging anyone outside my own little corner of the world and that’s because…I don’t want my child programmed to believe she can only be happy if she has money. It’s a fallacy. Most people with money are just as miserable as those of us without it. They can just afford drugs to delude themselves and live in denial.
So if you’re waiting for that magical time in your life where you have money and it will “make the bipolar/depression 80% better….”
Knock it off. It doesn’t work that way. View it that way as far as anxiety goes. Money gives security, and even non bipolar/depressive brains yearn for that. That’s normal, logical.
Having the latest igadget will not make you less bipolar or less depressed. You may see it that way but once that intial flood of happy brain chemicals fades…You’ll be living for the next igadget to boost your mood. Rather than blame being broke or being bipolar/depressive…
You have to take a look at why you only feel happier when spending money. For my mom, it’s spoiled brat syndrome. She was the youngest of ten kids, most of her siblings ten plus years older than her. Her parents spoiled her rotten as they had the money with the other kids grown. She was not used to the word “no”. She still has no concept of budgeting, of prioritizing. And it’s for this reason she’s “depressed” when there’s no money but happy when she has it to spend and buy stuff.
The mentality she passed onto my sister who thinks not being able to buy Aussie shampoo means you should take to your bed for a week cos yeah, that dollar V05 is going to result in your death. Very tragic.
THIS is what I want to arm my daughter against. Because whether I’ve passed this wonky chemical thing onto her or not…I want her to learn to be happy with what she has. You lose so much of your life worrying about not having this or that. It’s bullshit and a total waste. Because money really doesn’t solve all, does not make you happy.
About the only aspect of bipolar in which money plays a significant role might be manic shopping sprees. Oh, yes, happy fun ball times. That drove me to bankruptcy. Which sort of makes me relieved I don’t have excess to blow and credit to abuse. It didn’t ward off the winter depressions. It didn’t make me content, or calmer, or happy. A bandage on a gaping gunshot wound, that’s all.
Now please don’t flood me with comments about how I expect too much out of my six year old. I know the new school parenting says we should shield our children from the reality of parents having money problems and teach budgeting instead. Which I have enacted. At the same time…
A large percentage of adults who are under the false impression that money will make everything so much better…were taught that as a children and it stuck.
I see nothing wrong with a preemptive strike to teach my kid money isn’t necessary to being content and happy.
Maybe that way, if the chemical curse does strike her, she will be better prepared. I blamed all my problems on money for so many years because it was what my parents taught me. Money, money, money, it’s all about money.
Actually…it’s about making do with what you’ve got, learning to live without the bells and whistles and baby soul scented hair…
Because when you are truly bipolar and not simply misdiagnosed by an incompetent doctor…You become painfully aware that the money you once thought would cure you…is as helpful as half the medications that “manage” the disorder.
That’s my two cents worth. Watch my follower number drop.
Good. Can’t be arsed with people who can’t handle the truth.
Money can’t buy you happiness. It can only enable to denial of the real issue.
And if my daughter’s goal in life is to marry a rich man in this middle class rural armpit town…
I’ve got some comedy in my future. These guys can’t put the X-Box away long enough to work, let alone get rich. My poor girl is gonna be so disappointed…Thank you, Grandma.
Today, I went to visit Dr. Drugs, and I had to get one of my big guns out of the arsenal: THE WATERWORKS! I think I may have mentioned that at my last appointment, with no explanation, Dr. Drugs cut me off at the knees by cutting my Wellbutrin dose from 450 mg down to 150 mg. It was at the end of the appointment and he kinda bum-rushed me with a fucked up prescription and rushed me out the door. Well, the combination of cutting my antidepressant down to nearly fuckin’ nothing, plus the time change, plus the days getting shorter, plus the weather getting colder has led me to having some pretty good blah-don’t-wanna-do-nuthin’s, plus some medium-level sads. I’m not on my way to the mental hospital just yet, but goddammit I’m determined to stay away from that place. So today, I sat down in the chair in Dr. Drugs’ office, and I fuckin’ turned it on. I thought about mental hospitals, and letting my family down, and drowning puppies, and fuck if the boo-hoo’s didn’t come on just in time! I swear, I couldn’t have done better if I’d called 1-800-WAA-WAAH! Dr. Drugs sat back in his chair and said “I believe you have a severe case of Seasonal Depression.” <—- (understatement of the year, Dr. Drugs). Many of you may say, Bipolaronfire, you manipulated him with your tears! To that I respond, FUCK NO! I am a TIGER for my mental health!!! I will do whatever the FUCK it takes (aside from blowing Dr. Drugs) to get me through the dark days of winter and stay out of the mental hospital! And so should you! In fact, if your drugs are not working for you, I suggest that you try channeling a little Bipolaronfire Tiger energy in your next session with your PDoc. If that doesn’t work, I will gladly refund you your misery :). Now get out there and FIGHT! Fight for your right to BE WELL! Hell to the YEAH! Peaches, homies!
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