I have Bipolar Disorder and ADHD. You will see them both in today’s post. This post will not be edited by anyone. I suspect that the door in my brain is going to try to say things a beta reader would catch. If you would like to see the bullet main points, if there are any, read on. The full story will follow that.  

Why should YOU read further? 

Reason: I hope from all the bits of my heart that you might see something of me in you and know that you really aren’t alone. You’re not. Please, LOOK at me. 

Now, here I am…. this is my version of transparency.  

Today started pretty slowly, but good. And then I left my room. Sigh, sometimes the spaghetti hits the wall early in the day. Normally, I would say that the old spaghetti trick isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Spaghetti good: encourages and stimulates my ability to see more ideas and options. Spaghetti not so good: other stuff out of my control. 

I wouldn’t normally share the specifics of a particular day with you because, well, this isn’t that sort of place for that. However, today, I think that when I talk about stress I’d like to share with you some of my own stresses. I’m going to limit it to this morning and stop right now (1:47 p.m. PST). 

Stress is a constant ANXIETY feeder in my brain all the time. Constantly. It never stops. I never feel “at peace.” What has been happening today demonstrates exactly what happens when it passes over an imaginary thresh-hold beyond which I flounder and may crash and bury my head someplace where the world stops for a moment. 

I clicked on the Word icon and waited for it to launch. I was planning on writing to you. Then Office said it was updating Office. Then it said I was dumb and that it wouldn’t play and was taking its ball and locking me out. This was the last straw. It was the “break the camel’s back” sort of straw. (What does that mean anyway?) 

I became aware that my breathing was very shallow and quick. My throat tightened and my forehead and eyes scrunched up in emotional pain. I began to cry… So, I texted my support team which includes my kids Jessica and Kyle whom I share a home with. We have a group text for things like who is going to making dinner, where we are, grocery list items, giving voice (expressing) to great things and crappy things in our days. Oh, and loads of funny pictures of our pets. 

This is the text I sent them: 

I followed that up later with:

I’m struggling

What brought me to this state, besides the obvious? I’ll bet you may have experienced this yourself. (Wait. How can I “bet you may have”? Anyway, on with the.. Uh… show.)

Bailey and I escape the house to walk around the block walking as fast as we can to beat the wind and rain. And… home dry!! That was fun.

I take multiple mood stabilizers. I have Bipolar Disorder Type 1 and run manic most of the time. I experience mixed states and enjoyably also cycle rapidly. Fun! Additionally, (sounds like a speech) I also have the stimulating ADHD. Yippie! We’ve elected not to treat the ADHD with medication. Who needs a stimulant to stimulate an already over-stimulated brain? Not me, thank you very much. 

FYI: I’ve recently, after years of refusing to do it, switched over to having a pharmacy send my medications to me in bubble packs. One of the major reasons I wouldn’t do it is because brain meds can be changed fairly frequently when we are trying to find the right combination that works for me and keeps me from driving everyone around me to the point where they want to duct tape me to a chair in my room and shut the door. 

Anxiety. Remember that? Unless a person has Bipolar Disorder they simply cannot understand what having it is like. They just can’t. I’ll try to sprinkle in a few things to help explain what’s so important about this stuff.

That’s the setup. 

I take:

1. Mood stabilizer in the morning (A)

2.The same mood stabilizer in the evening only double the dose (A)

3. I take another mood stabilizer in the morning (B)

4. I take the same mood stabilizer in the evening (B)

5. I take a “chill pill” (one in the “benzine” family) ( C) 

6. I take one before bed (D)

Fine. I do that. Only at the moment, I’m completely out of

1. A in the evening

2. B morning and evening

3. C (OMG)

4. D

These are ALL MOOD STABILIZERS! I don’t have any of them. 

Remember my mentioning my thumb. The next day I fell on that thumb and while it saved my face from planting itself in the garden at the Vet’s office. ALL my weight landed on that hand. I weigh over 50 lbs. I’m sure 50 lbs would have hurt a lot. I weigh over 100 lbs above that. My thumb/hand has been hurting, but only when I use it, touch it, or put pressure on it – think ice pack or heating pad. 

I called the bubble pack pharmacy again (did it yesterday as well) and practically begged the poor lady to tell me that my missing FOUR brain meds would be here yesterday. She couldn’t. 28 minutes later I came away with a USPS tracking number and the medications that should be in it. ALL of the medications [A, B, C, D] are in that box. 

Of course, I jumped on Jessica’s computer (now not trusting my own) and looked it up. [Insert creative bad words developed while growing up on a ranch. Use your imagination.] They appear to all be in the same package. The package took 24 hours to leave OH. (Uh…) 

See – things progress. I don’t pop on Facebook to visit friends. Rarely. It is now 4:08. While I sent myself that text message from my phone (SMS) to FB messenger, copied it, and pasted it here I saw an ad that indicated it might lower our energy costs. Stupidly, I clicked it. Ten minutes this sales guy calls me. Seriously. I had just been trying to find out if they were legit (I couldn’t) when this name pops up on my phone, “Blah Blah Solar Company.” Oh hell no. No, no, no, no. Nuh-uh. Having been in businesses I and my family have owned I can tell you that this ad clearly misrepresented themselves and what they were offering.  

I am known in my family as the one to go to if you need someone to kick-back. Meaning since I think I know more than they do I will explain to them what exactly I think about whatever-it-is and how it’s going to be. I shot of pic of the ad from the monitor and was getting ready to send it to my city utility company to see what they knew (and probably to show them something possibly fraudulent – no, I have no idea what I’m talking about. 

Remember how things are going today and that those precious lost medications for anxiety, that’s part of mood stabilization, are completely out of my system. Blotto. 

Blotto. I don’t know what that means, but I like to say it. [Use Google Mom!] Google says I was spelling it wrong, but it essentially means “extremely drunk. ‘we got blotto.’”)

When I use the word “blotto,” which I do, I mean something like “the shit hit the fan.” Yes, I think that works. Or maybe more gently, “Crap.” But sometimes I just say “blotto” just because I like the way it feels when I speak it. Weird. Right. 

Can you see anything? Yes, of course, you can. Bipolar mania. ADHD. 

How is my day? Blotto. But, it’s getting better. 

4:35 p.m. Kyle get’s home from work. He asks me how I’m doing. I say, “Fine.” (More abbreviated chit-chat. I hate it when I talk like that.) “I’m not making dinner. Can you two deal with it?” He says they will. I make licorice tea (decaf). Set a five minute because I always forget it. Put on headphones. Stop writing this for a few minutes while I get ready for music. The playlist I made to help me hold on has been “misplaced,” so I’m making a new one. Bluetooth. Headphones. Volume is very high. Kyle comes back in and gets my attention. He didn’t know I’d plugged my head in. My tea, it was done. Oh yeah. Yeah! Headphones die. Kyle sets them to charge. He loves me. “Mind if I play music, uh, loud?” Sure. :0)  

YouTube playing. Right now. Breath… out. Imagine with me just that. Breath… out as the music draws me in. Eyes close. Head embraces the sounds. Nods. Taylor Swift. Gretch Wilson. What??? 

5:00 p.m. “Redneck Woman.” I sigh and begin to relax. “Fight Song.” (“…. cause I still gotta lot of fight in me.”) 

Hours remain before bedtime and I’ve lost focus. I’ve written all this down (thankfully skipping all the interruptions like talking for 28 minutes to the new pharmacy and all that stuff) for just two reasons. 

Reason 1: In some crazy way I hope you focused a little on my day and not your own. Maybe this you were entertained? ;0)

Reason 2: I hope from all the bits of my heart that you might see something of me in you and know that you really aren’t alone. You’re not. Please, LOOK at me. 

5:15 p.m. Pink “Just Like Fire.” The music helps. First deep breath. Thank goodness. 

…… And now the med provider has called to try to rescue me!!! I’m talking to you while I listen to him type out “emergency” orders for my local pharmacy. So funny.  ADDENDUM: The pharmacy received the orders. Insurance denied. The pharmacy says  I can pay cash. No, I can’t. Called the med provider and left another message as he asked me to do if there was a problem. There is indeed a problem. Further TRANSPARENCY: Thankfully my kids kept bugging me to try cannabis (legal here) just like my MD has been trying to get me to do for over ten years. 

Alright. I think that covers the majority of my day. I hope I haven’t bored you or convinced you to head for the hills. This, this post, is me being “transparent.” I’ve wondered what a day in the life of a “stable and normal” person is like. I see them posting about how I can conquer my anxiety and depression and they know because they’ve done it too. I’m sure some have and are doing great. The problem is that I’m reading what they say from a bunch of clean whiteness with sharp letters that make up clean looking lines containing words. What? It looks, with the eyes, clean. Life isn’t clean. It is so messy. I’m messy. I’m guessing you can see that. I just always want to know something of their story. What were they like before they were able to write this logically layed article with bullet points? 

Robin, STOP. FULL and or HARD STOP. 

Okay, geeze. 

Always honest. Always trying to be better. Always here, even when I’m stuck inside my head. Please reach out or feel free to leave comments. How are you as we head into more stressful days. I don’t know about you, but this Thanksgiving especially is going to be more stressful than the normal stressful. We don’t want to give or get the covid. (That’s what we call it now. Just, “the covid.”) It gets complicated. 

I’ll be back. 

A question I was asked today: 

Do you have any desire to harm yourself?   [something like that]

No. No, I do not. 

(This is what transparency looks like from me.)