Mental Illness

Bipolar on the Lawn

/ Robin

As it happens with so many “normal” events in life, I made certain that I was taking all my meds on time and the correct way during the week before and the days of… the nasty garage sale. I say nasty because we had maybe a dozen people stop by. Most of them bought something. Most spent about $2, which I’m thankful for. I think I have $270 more to save up before I can go see my eldest daughter in the Air Force over in Florida. I’ve not had a vacation in… um… I dunno. Doesn’t matter really. I want one really bad. I miss her and want to go see her. She’s having trouble swinging time to come home right now so it seems like it will be easier if one of us go to her. Me!!

I do wish the sale had actually SOLD more STUFF. Well, books mostly actually. Yes, like many other folks who dance the Bipolar dance I have my manic bits about me and inevitably one tenant of my mania tends to extend to …….. BOOKS. It has always been so hard to part with my books.

The weather today and yesterday was pretty perfect. So far this summer each time we tried to have the infamous sale either the weather thought it was in Washington (which it is, the state) or my other two kids were off doing things. There was no way in Liverpool that I was going to do this all myself.

So we get it all out there after I tolerate their not being able to wake up “hitting the ground running” and they’re enduring my lack of silence and immense energy. Yes. We are polar opposites. We annoy the heck out of each other. Since I talk the most I am the most likely to announce that I’m irritated that they seem dead for the first 3 hours they’re “up” on any given morning. Their faces silently curse me out. I know they’re thinking something like that. I know I would if I were they.

We got on each other’s nerves all morning. Till sometime around the 11 o’clock hour I think. I had a free mocha coming from one of the dozens of coffee shops, so I left them to their silence for 15 minutes while I went and got one. The pain meds I was going to have to take so I could work the garage sale would kick my butt soon after I took them. Best to have caffeine now and be prepared.  I picked up a blueberry muffin and had it warmed for Sydney, hoping it would cheer her sleeping psyche up. Nah. It’s her “time of the month”. Nothing is going to help a sleepy teenager when that second blow of the double whammy hits. Said it was good. Made her feel sick. Yeah.

To add to the excitement my service doggie in training, Bailey, who isn’t used to people coming and going so fast nor her humans being outside and her being inside all day. We closed the curtains and put the TV on a country music station and turned it up a bit. This way she couldn’t see us and hopefully, not hear us too much either. She calmed down pretty quickly. But indeed, she did need to come out to do her business. And then she took the opportunity to bark and whine and do somersaults and tie her leash around me and Kyle letting her trip me after hog tieing me.

Bailey has finally devoured every toy we’ve bought for her and even all the ones we’ve invented, like empty “Simply Lemonade” containers. They’re nice and sturdy and …. she eats them now. I used to put treats in them after she’d smashed them up good and stand them up in a group in the living room. She’d sit quietly by (after I told her to). Then I say, “Go!” and she’d leap into action. Oh all kinds of inventive ways to empty those treats out would then come forth. Let me tell you… she’s one smart cookie. I swear she’s ADHD just like me.

The kids’ grandmother on their father’s side came today and brought Bailey a new toy. Everything we’d tried the last few weeks has seen the inside of her stomach far too much for our liking so when she arrived with a potentially workable toy we were overjoyed.

At the time of this writing, Bailey and I are on the back deck. She’s going from one lawn chair to the other. Back and forth. Her toy tags along. It’s a rope with … I mean a ball with a rope toy going through the center. The ball is just hard enough for her to only pierce it a bit. The rope makes it easy to handle, sort of. That’s the fun of sitting in the camping folding chairs on the deck. She keeps bringing it up with her – and losing it as soon as her feet let go of their death grip on it. Yes, feet. How they use them like hands I’ll never know.

It’s all very funny.

We’re out here alone… nope. She’s gone in to eat. Anyway, reflecting over the day. Okay, maybe I’m just wanting to be outside a little longer and listen to all the strange birds and frogs. And airplanes. And cars. And rabbits.

Kyle torqued Sydney and I off by bugging out at 2 o’clock to go babysit my parents dog. Not puppy. Dog. This i find always annoys me. It’s usually when I need whatever child they steal from me when they snag them. Like today. A huge table full of books is still outside waiting for Kyle to come home (maybe around 9 o’clock) and cart them all in. Sydney’s knee and girl parts ran out of gas and into the pain danger zone and my back (degenerative disk disease from the top to the bottom) shot past said zone and into the “I’m going to throw up soon” level of pain. Yeah. Does wonders for my state of mind.

I started my day off making sure that I ate breakfast and took a chill pill before anyone else got up. And I took another one mid day. And another one when we came back in afterwards.

Sydney fell asleep on her bed wrapped in a pile of blankets hours ago. I’m finally able to rise from my ice chair with minimal pain levels (ice and pain meds make a nice kick) and I don’t want to puke now.

Bailey hasn’t stayed still in either of the two camping chairs nor the deck nor her very own large cardboard box for more than perhaps two minutes at a time thus far. I think two minutes might be generous. She’s finally left her new toy on the deck. She’s trying to keep her eyes open and listen to all the sounds around us. She’s fading. Me too. Been a long weekend.

I met my goal of not losing my mind and hollering at the kids. Yeeeaaahhhh!!! Ah, but now I’m slapping bugs. Time to go in. Oh man. Bailey just settled down in a chair next to me and is asle… nope. She’s just pretending to be asleep. Oh little bark. Sydney just popped her head out and startled Bailey. Time to go in. I think a bug went down my shirt. Little bugger. Now that, will piss me off.

Thanks for the meds doc. I’m feeling better.

Drop me a line! I answer all msgs. Let’s kick things around a bit.

And… Tell your friends!

Robin

I Am a Bipolar Parent – Pissy

/ Robin

Hi everyone.

I chose the title “I am a Bipolar Parent – Pissy” because while BP is what I am, who I am, what I have, whatever, I am a parent first.

I am a divorced and still single BP woman. I am Type 1 (the messy type) and I exist in the mixed state perpetually. When not being a good and balanced mom, I’m super pissy. When I’m depressed and throwing things or want to get off the world and I’m manic and talk forever and shout a lot.

I’ve raised my children (I’ve counted them… there are three) alone and unemployed. I’ve stay unemployed because I simply couldn’t handle working. I’ve never lasted more than a year in any job. I did have my own company for a while. It was wonderful and I loved it. I was more manic than depressed at that time so I was able to crush all adversity into dust.

People around me kept telling mi I was a great parent. Now, years later, I look back and am broken hearted. I see that I wasn’t an amazing parent. I see what damage I’ve done to my babies who are now 22, 19 and 17. My youngest especially has explained to me through who she believes she is and remembers from her childhood, that I pulled them into my emotional and mental poverty with her especially being damaged.

Damaged. I suppose I wasn’t such a great parent. I was relatively stable (I’m lying) during the first two kids’ early years. When it came to my youngest I see that I was consumed by my business. It made me feel alive for the first time in years. Unfortunately, I left her in the dust of my being consumed. She’s had a hard time.

My baby says she’s been raised in a shit hole and feels like others have “families” while she did not. Their father has been out of the picture for most of her life. That, has been his choice. It gave her a primary target for her anger, her hatred.

Now I am learning so many things about her and what she remembers. She doesn’t remember any good times.

I remember the good times. So do the older too. She feels . . . cheated I think.

I’ll tell you more about this soon. Instead of lamenting all my woes of being a crappy mom, I’m going to tell you how I became a good mom. Maybe even a great mom. I became a “weird parent”. Check back soon to see what I mean.

I Am . . . Afraid

/ Robin

I’m still depressed. My Lamictal dosage is rising steadily and is currently at 350 mg daily. Maybe it’s starting to work because I already was taking 200 mg daily. Maybe I realized how afraid I really am. Oh sure, I go to see my med provider every two weeks again (back up from once monthly) and my counselor weekly, but somehow I “feel” worse off. It’s almost as if having my mental/emotional needs addressed again with such intensity tripped me up really hard. I’m at a place in life where I am so afraid… it’s the kind of fear that sucks your brain out and leaves you stunned and unable to think straight. The depression, anxiety and anger seem like they are swarming about me. They suck at my soul. They lap at the fallen corner stone of my very being…

I’ve lost my purpose and I’m so afraid.

I was trying to think of an image that would demonstrate how I feel. It’s pretty hard to Google “afraid, depressed, anxious, without purpose” and expect anything helpful to pop up. I thought of Leonardo de Vinci  and some of they dramatic faces he drew. I looked at a few and this one seems to come kind of near to what I want you to see… my fear. The man is shouting. The setting is the Battle of Anghiari.

 

da_vinci_shouting_man

da Vinci’s “Shouting Man”

Let me try to explain to you my friend, what I mean. During some of my very dark periods I was able to hold on to one thing, one certainty, that kept me going and gave me purpose… a reason to live. That purpose was to be the best mom that I could be and raise my kids to be the best people they could be. Growth them strong.

Now, they are old enough to not need me to keep my hand locked firmly on the tiller of their lives. They steer themselves. They are moving on and I am lost. From the time my eldest was born in 1992 my passion, my calling, my purpose, was to be “Mom”. I’ve thought that I have had other purposes along the trail of my life, but somehow being “Mom” over shadowed them all and now I am fighting myself just to remember what I believed I needed and wanted passionately to do… to be.

I am afraid that I’m a failure. No one needs me any longer. I keep to myself mostly. My family and I are not particularly close. I don’t work or volunteer. Putting it short: I don’t feel that I have anything to contribute to the world.

My fear has driven me off my path. I allowed bushes and hedges to crowd my chosen path and completely obscure it from my vision. I know, well, I think I knew what my “vocation”, that is what my passion was. I feel empty and bruised. I don’t want life to touch me. I seem to think it will injure me by exposing my worthlessness to me.

I’m trying to pull together my wits and engage in the monumental fight with myself to reclaim who I am and what I’m about, my purpose.

And, my pain meds for chronic back pain (degenerating disks all up/down my spine have kicked my butt and I just nodded off. Tomorrow I’ll attempt to pull myself together enough to begin discussing with myself how to deal with myself this time. I’ve already worked it out in advanced, but this lack of purpose, this is new and frighting.

I’m letting the drug induced sleep take me away from the fear for a time. Starting physical therapy this last week had kicked up my pain, as I knew it would. It makes the whole of me even more difficult to deal with. At this particular moment I feel like in the morning I can begin to pull my will back together. That is, unless I conveniently forget what I intend on doing with myself, again.

Time to sleep.

Not Feeling Especially Smart

/ Robin

I’m moving all my calendar stuff to my smartphone to make things easier to keep track of. My kids can add their stuff to it which is good because we have one car, two drivers, another driver in training and life 25 minutes and are from civilized town. An hour appointment takes at least a two hour commitment. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

At one o’clock today (well, now its much later. That appointment was June 18th) I had my first meeting with my new counselor. This will be my third counselor at this facility. No, I’m not knocking them off (though the last one was starting to torque my screws an awful lot of the time). Their lives have given them cause to move on. And thus, out of this auspicious place I frequent. Sigh… I don’t know what I’m talking about now…

I was going over in my head how I wanted to approach Julia (my new counselor). I’ve had probably over a dozen through the years. I’ve had lots of practice breaking them in and then hoping they’ll go away. I have found that the first few visits tend to set the stage for the life of the professional relationship. Unless, I’m mostly off my rocker at the start. They seem able to adjust when I get my footing again.

Today I talked over with what I wanted to talk Julia about with myself all the way there (remember the drive? 30 min. plus today) and decided I needed to explore anger and anxiety. These were to be my platforms upon which I would begining a hopefully fruitful relationship.

I’d chosen these two topics because of the study I’ve been make of myself, of my mind and who I am. How I am. I always hunger to learn more. I hope that I change myself and my behavior because of understanding, knowledge, wisdom that I gain in my studies. I cannot correct my behavior or change my thoughts or emotions if I have drugs… but no understanding. Focus. Wisdom. Contemplation in the light of … well, light.

TRANSLATION: Anxiety and anger are smackin’ me across the face!

I’ve thought for some time now that my mental health people and I need to re-focus and add to my nice and untidy Bipolar mix the delectable… anxiety.

Anger. It seems do go hand in hand with anxiety. Hand in hand with depression and pretty much every facet of Bipolar. At least that’s my experience.

I was very excited and full of dread. I was right on time leaving the house. Ran into very heavy traffic half way there and before I ever got to the highway. Finally, slipping around and going faster. My brain started to rattle around and I knew something was amiss. Yep. I parked when I arrived and opened my calendar…

… and saw I was exactly on time… PLUS 60 MINUTES.

Damn, damn, damn!!! I missed my appointment.

Yes, I was angry. I stopped and thought about it. I decided I was going to be angry till I calmed down… If you get my mesning. I had been thinking on my way that being late or not having something be the way I thought it should be was a serious problem for me. I suspect it probably is for everyone. It is one of the major starting places for/of anger with me. One of my difficulties, being Bipolar, is that I very much do not/cannot control my reaction when I irritated. All too often … damn. I just nodded off.

Think of it like this. 1. Get angry. 2. Refuse to accept that I am angry. 3. Refuse to think about it. 4. Refuse to acknowledge that I’m angry and I’m the one making myself angry. 5. Blood boils. 6. Voice raises. 7. Things fly.

Ok, I exaggerated, but you get the picture?

I’ve been pretty drugged up for years. I’m on the light side of a consistent state of medication right now. Meaning: I’m more or less stable and I asked for my Lamictal dosage to be lowered or stopped (to try something else) because of the serious and sever sunburns I was getting. Get this… I was getting sunburned through my cloths. Add this additional annoyance and I’m beginning the feel itch of those disruptive emotions.

I’m aware I’m playing with fire. My watercolor drip is starbursting more than I’d like it to. I’m trying to say that “bad” bits of my Bipolar are quietly disrupting the steadiness.

I messed up. I wanted to see this woman and talk about anxiety and anger. I got angry, which is my habit, when I made this stupid mistake I at least was punctually.

However, I realize I’m unused to trying to squish my anger. I’ve been medicated into being mostly under control for long enough that my “self” was having difficulties keeping me from popping out the seams. I’ve been getting irritated. Annoyed. Angry. Lots of things.

My youngest daughter especially doesn’t understand. I didn’t realize what was happening between us until I’d yelled at her recently… more than once. Ok, not exactly “at” her. I just yelled. I’m noisy at the best of times. When I’m angry . . . I’m loud and ugly and scary.

See what happens when I write to you and I boil my brain?

Time for sleep actually laying on my bed with my head on my pillow.

Now what was I talking about?