“Mom, sit down!”

Now that’s not something I want to hear from my youngest kid, but the truth is I’ve heard it more than twice. In fact it is usually accompanied with the traditional, “stop talking!”  clause. Also, not something I want my kid to say to me. I bristle and mutter and growl back at her… but mostly in my head and mostly silently. Sometimes.  She’s usually right. There are times when I need to sit down and shhhh….  I do so unwillingly. You see an unusually large segment of my BP list of weird and wonderful “symptoms” includes what I call the irresistible urge to pontificate.

It isn’t that I find myself pontificating atop a table at McDonalds or greeting the stereotypical greeters at Wal-mart with my typical cheerful and wanting go make them feel good self. Okay, it is. Maybe. I do pontificate. Usually at home or in the car.

My home and my car is tremendously beneficial and handy if I need to pontificate. Pontificate. I love that word. Say it with me: pon-TIF-i-kate.

I…  am a number one. Number 1.  That is I am Bipolar Disorder type 1.  I refer to it as “the really nasty one.” One of the fun things about BP type 1 is that if I can keep my doo doo together I can be amazing! I can move mountains with my words and inspire people to strive for more, to be greater. I can make them laugh and induce not always unwanted tears. Course I can also a be charismatic cult leader. Could be. Yes, religious or social or political leaders of any flavor. I can be a tremendous coach leading my athletes to greatness. I can make the regular sort of CEO seem inadequate and humdrum. I am MORE.  More.  So much more.

I have so much more going on in my brain that I… hardly know what to do with it all.

I’m at home alone most of the day and then the kids come home. I try to find out how their days were at school (one in an art high school and one at university) but they seem to forget what the preceding hours contained. Perhaps it’s the 70 minute bus ride home. I dunno. I think riding a public transit bus to the very end of the route at rush hour would suck my brain dry too.

Words. Words. Words. I have many. They try to get out and drain some of the pressure off of my grey matter. It matters, believe me. So I’m safe in my car and at my home with my loved ones. They can’t run. They can’t hide. I, can pontificate. And I sometimes do. Often do. I try hard not to. Truth is, I take medications designed to give me the ability to stop the leak of pontification. It is always still there though, in my brain. Rattling around. Waiting.Watching for a chance to make it’s presence known again.

The thing is my pontificating affects and effects my kids. I am simply overwhelming. Oh I’m not yelling about stupid people or retarded news casters (usually not). I like to try to teach my captive audience. I want to know about their day so I can somehow take part in it and offer helpful advice. I feel like I’m so detached from them some days. They are growing up you know. And they are my kids. So sometimes, yes, I pontificate very loudly and make very pointed points.  I try not to.

But sometimes… mom has gotta really pontificate to the max. I just have to.

Sometimes they just have to listen and let me finish. And then I feel better.

Then they want dinner.

Pontificate.

I think this word ought to be added to the official “diagnosis” of BP. It would become more realistic and read like this: having delusions of grandeur and frequent pontifications. 

I haven’t pontificated for a while. I’m too tired to I think. I think my pontificate is all popped. Oh… I wonder…  Afterwhile, after I’ve been cooler and gentler in my conversation it tends to pop off. I’d better watch out for it because frequent and sometimes negative pontification at children can drive them past distraction and right away from me. The emotions they may feel can rival the conflicting massive emotions I feel.

It has been my mission to raise awesome and well balanced adults who are ready to contribute to our society. However, the BP parent, that would be me, can very easily and very often squish that very same child. Ceaseless pontification don’t help. Meds, counseling and a lot of learning and trying to train my brain help me not pontificate as much as I used to. There used to be times of anger and rage being dumped on my captive audience as I pontificated to the limit.

The urge, the itch, the push to pontificate must be channeled and controlled. It can be harnessed and be a force for good and encourage my children. It must be controlled. You see, uncontrolled pontification… yes including yelling like a moron and thinking like I know all is an excellent way to add to the many ways that can be utilized to destroy my babies.

Uncontrolled negative pontification is destructive to my children. And to ourselves. The truth is that as I destroy them bit by bit and day by day as I destroy myself as well.

Watch that pontification my friends.

Pontificate wisely.

Or don’t pontificate at all.

Focus on the words:  realistic, reality, humility, loving kindness….

pon-TIF-i-kate

It always surprises me. I don’t know why. But it does.

What is it?

The human brain, specifically my brain.

Here I am deprived of adequate sleep night after night. Finally it seems that perhaps I’m not sleeping because I’m in more pain than I realize. I had prescribed medications taken as directed at bedtime. About an hour passed I suppose when I felt my breathing changing, growing slower and slower. Finally sleep seemed to over take my manic brain.

I panicked. One eye opened. Then the other. What the hell!? I want to sleep. I have to sleep. I really really need to sleep. Yet here I was relaxed and falling asleep… and I kept waking myself up apparently on purpose. Oh not consciously on purpose, but as I lay there reopening each eye as they slid closed time after time it became clear that I was beginning to panic.

I don’t allow health care givers to give me morphine. The reason is simple, or so I thought. I have asthma and when I feel like I can’t breath I panic. Morphine slows breathing. It is a normal response to the drug. It causes me to panic.

Enter tonight’s medication regiment designed to relieve my physical pain and put my busy brain and body into a good night’s rest. Unfortunately it is this very response to the medications, the expected response, that freaks me out. I don’t have sleep apnea if you’re wondering. I snore quite a lot sometimes and I’ve had the sleep study just last summer. I’m completely normal. At least, when I sleep. Strangely I feel right asleep when they told me to even though I was hooked up to all sorts of wires and sensors.

Tonight I finally fell asleep. Somehow, for some reason I don’t really understand, I wake myself up…. I think I’m dying.

I don’t know why. Perhaps it relates to the experiences I’ve had with morphine. I can’t control my breathing. It slows way beyond my normal rate. I feel myself sliding out of control. It seems to me to be too deep. Too final. I don’t understand.

After keeping myself awake and feeling rather foolish and yet stubborn and determined to stay awake lest I sleep to death, I decided that instead of assuming that my breathing was slowing to a stop and my pulse was probably doing the same thing that I would get up and look it up on my Chrome. It would only take a few minutes and then I could be reasonable and sleep or stay awake.

Although I can’t very well take either while sleeping, which if you remember I’m not letting myself do anyway, so I tried to breath as shallowly and slowly as I thought I was fighting. I also looked up the popper rate for a sleeping adult. As expected they were normal for someone completely asleep. Very asleep. Oh they are both on the lower side of the counts, but not abnormal I think.

That’s the problem, at least part of it. “I think.” And I’m afraid.

My body and brain are so out of control that losing control of myself while simply sleeping is freaking my subconscious out. Then it wakes me up so I can panic properly.

Writing always helps me relax. Blogging or writing in my diary especially. I hope that by putting pen to paper as it were that I have convinced myself that it’s okay to sleep. That all is normal. All is well. I will not die in my sleep tonight.

Still… I am afraid and I don’t understand.

I see my counselor in the morning and my med provider after that. You can bet that this will be the first thing I’ll mention after the Fibromyalgia. Adding the new diagnosis of Fibromyalgia and Osteoarthritis to my alphabet soup of BP, ADHD and PTSD and I’m a bit whacked out. I’m going to put this down now and sleep. It is okay to sleep. I will sleep like a normal person. I suspect too that the Tramadol makes me a bit dizzy and makes me feel like I have a slight headache which is ironic since it’s a painkiller. I seem to recall that I’ve responded to it like that in the past but I’m not certain.

Add it all up and I have this terrifying feeling that if I sleep when I feel this precise way… I’ll die.

And that, isn’t something I want to do. Yet, round and round my head is still arguing with itself about the whole thing. Besides writing about it my other solution is to have a glass of milk. And I wonder that since I’m panicking maybe I should take my prescribed Diazepam.  Or, maybe it will also make me freak out that I’ve relaxed too much.

This is ridiculous.

I’m going to close my eyes now and try again. I really gotta sleep. . .