RealMental

It’s funny, how we can talk ourselves into how MUCH we want something, and do too good a job of it… so that the attainment of it can be anticlimactic. “Is this all there is to it? Isn’t there more? Why isn’t there fanfare?” At least, that’s what I’ve been thinking, going back to work. Why yes, I did want a friggin’ parade, apparently, though sane coworkers and interesting work ought to be enough. So it took me a few days to figure out I was unnecessarily bummed, and feeling sorry for myself because I was being let alone to just do my work– like they let everyone just do their work. It’ll take some getting used to. I’m used to working someplace dysfunctional where I was needed by folks without anyone else to turn to. It was ego-gratifying even as the dysfunction drove me nuts. Guess I will have to learn again the joys of a job well-done, and a workload that doesn’t have me waking up in the middle of the night– something that should be exciting and energy-boosting, not a feeling of being let down. This savior complex has got to go– because you know what? It gets exhausting every day, and I knew that before I stopped working there. But old habits are hard to break. I’ve got to work harder at working easier.

In personal injury, aka “tort” law, there is such a thing as an “eggshell plaintiff.” (In most places, maybe not all.) What this means, in a nutshell, is that if someone gets hurt and it’s your fault, you don’t get to knock down your damages because your particular plaintiff is more prone to injury than the “normal person.” It could be that they suffer from a preexisting condition that makes them more prone to injury, or less quick to heal. They could be more likely to suffer emotional injury than the “average” person. It doesn’t matter– you “take the plaintiff as you find them.”

I was thinking about this the other day as I was lamenting, internally, my emotional energy levels. I am in many ways an outgoing person, but when my energy is gone, boy, is it ever gone. And when it’s gone? I need to play the hermit for a bit– to recover from the “normal” whirl of social interactions that wouldn’t bother other people. I try not to beat myself up too much about it, but my cabin fever often sets in long before my stamina has returned to a point where I feel up to the demands of society, much less friends who can fairly lay claim to more of my emotional energy, to a right to be given to, than the normal day-to-day interactions. Which is a problem, when your work is also intensely social and interactive.

Having recently gone back to work full time, I’m trying to remind myself to walk on eggshells around my eggshell self. I am not a steel-girdered lawyer. Most of the time, I do ok. But if I am not careful to conserve my shell, someone could whack into me and make me spill all over, spoilt, and hard to put back together again. Living my life as Humpty Dumpty? Not what I would have chosen. But if I keep my surrounding carapace in mind, and stay off walls I should know better than to scale in the first place? Perhaps I have finally learned some skills to keep me from falling to extra-ordinary harm, harder to recover from, slower to return from, less likely to fully heal. If I could come work at being more hard-boiled, and not scrambled or bedeviled, then that’d be nice.

The last time I did it consciously was in college, after a week in school where all my friendships seemed to fall apart, after a poorly-done hookup/getting together with someone who was a dear friend– and then an even more poorly-managed “umm, wait” on my part. I was exhausted from thinking about it, and couldn’t stop. So I went away for the weekend, to visit a friend spending her junior year elsewhere. We went out and painted the town red, and on the way home, I filled the gutter with all my shame and sorrow, in a purge that felt like a tidal wave.

My forehead was numb cold hot tingling all the way back to her dorm, as the cab slid around corners in defiance of natural laws. We were at the bottom of her hill, not far, when I said, “stop.” Just that, but the cabbie did. I slid off the leather bench seat, and somehow did it butt-first, landing right on the curb. And I sat there and vomited, one heave after another, until all the emotion came out, was purged, and was carried away by the water, by gravity, by time.

I don’t like that there is something in me that is sometimes so unable to handle a situation that I have to get drunk in order to literally spill my guts about it. I would rather spew words, knowing the history of alcohol in our family. But sometimes? It’s necessary, the only release valve I have that is less destructive than the alternatives.

My usually Better Half and I had a problem recently, one that came up suddenly (at least to me) and which infuriated and wounded me. I was boiling over, and didn’t know what to do. I was too angry to say anything constructive, too wounded to hear anything that might make sense. I talked to a friend or two about it, and it did clear a little perspective for me, but I was still circling, feeling like both a bleeding swimmer and the sharks surrounding her.

So I got wasted, slowly, methodically, at a small gathering at a friends’ house– friends who I knew wouldn’t mind. He was there– he was driving. And unlike other times when he’s said hey, maybe you should slow down a little, he didn’t this time, for which I’m glad. Because I needed not the drunkenness, but the release from it that came on the ride home. Without spewing my guts on the highway, on my shirt sleeve, on the side of my car? I don’t know how I would have been able to respond to the situation.

When I wrote this, it was less than twelve hours after disgorging that anger and confusion, that humiliation and almost-hate.  (I have a disproportionate, awful temper at the best of times.) I am still a little angry, and still a little sad, but they’re of manageable proportions, and we’ll be fine. But I don’t know if I could have said that and felt that I meant it unless I’d gone and drunk a bottle and a half of red wine, just so I could throw it back up, four hours later. The physical purge acted as an emotional memory dump, and I’ve never been so glad to lose a set of feelings. At least since the last time, thirteen years ago. May it be at least that long before I need to again.

I hate taking pills. I am sick of it. Sick of being sick. Coming off this most recent toxic/allergic/withdrawal bout, I am even more tired that usual of the being tired of it all, the exhausting vigilance Belinda so eloquently described. The clatter of particular pills into the containers changes; the raucous reminder I’m sick, and will continue to be, doesn’t. B vitamin, multivitamin, Omega 3. Lamictal, minocycline. Who knows what anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, anti-inflammatory, anti-anti-anti will be added to the mix? Sometimes my regimen has included so many pills that these little rounds overflowed, and the plain old, boring M-F strip came out of hiding for the lunchtime doses.

Small wonder I forget to take my pills some days, even though I am usually a pretty med-compliant patient. If one little thing disrupts my ritual of morning preparation– wake up late, skip the shower until later, then the pill-taking is shot. I had an alarm on my cell phone for the mid-day pills, back when I was taking them, which I’ve now disabled. Maybe I need to set one for after my weekday wake-up alarm– a “hey, idiot, did you take your pills before you leave the house?” alarm. Because the one in the middle of the day won’t do me any good if the pills are at home, and sure as sh*t, I’ll forget to take them by the time I get home, even when they’re sitting there in plain view on the bathroom shelf, in their rattly, musical lucite rainbow stack. I bought it in those pretty colors so I wouldn’t mind the medical boring reality of it all so much– as if I could make pill-taking HAPPY. Hah. But it does come with extra lids, so I can unscrew one, pop it into my bag for taking after fasting blood draws– or more likely, forget until my alarm goes off. I could take them at lunch, setting my alarm to do so, and carrying my rattling stack in my bag, my very own rhythm section, but I don’t want my maracas reminding me I’m sick every step of my day, and I know I will forget to unscrew and recap just one section every single day. I want to take my pills at home, and spend the rest of the day trying to be functional, to work around, to get over, to move beyond the “did I remember” that I ask myself at least a dozen times a day.

The problem with alarms? You have to live by them, yield the flexibility, the freedwom of ignoring them, or precipitate a real alarm. There’s no sleeping late on weekends, if that means I can’t remember to take my damned pills two days in a row, and then end up a weepy angry mess on Monday morning. The other problem with alarms? You have to remember to turn them back on after you disable them, in time, or learn to tolerate them when they are unnecessary. “Yes, yes,” you say, as you shut that damned buzzer off, “it’s OK right now, thanks for asking.” I could note a little “meds” on my handwritten calendar. I could update my symptoms and mood calendar. (Don’t even get me started on procratinating on refilling the damned pill minder on the same day every week, so that I can be confident Red Means Monday… or Sunday?) Hell, I could start a little gold and silver pectoral or clutch and scratch a tick mark in it every day, wearing my medication memorialization as adornment. (Hmm. Are there any jewelry makers in the house?)

But the best I feel like I can do right now is fill my rainbow maracas every week and leave it on the table, a constant reminder, in the hope I’ll be caught by color as I walk by. That I’ll someday cease to resent the ritual, the attempts to render it habitual, so I don’t think about it, don’t resent it, don’t forget it. Don’t sit for a moment, every single day from May 13, 2005 on out, looking at the palm of my hand, and ruing the ritual, despite the welcome surcease of death-defying heights and bottomless lows.

It’s been a rough spring around our house. But at the same time, it’s been better than each one before it. So I feel like I should be grateful, and I feel guilty for feeling emotionally exhausted all the time, but there you have it. I feel what I feel, and it is what it is.

I belong to some support groups for “significant others” of people with bipolar disorder, and I can tell you from years of observation and experience that, among our ranks, May is a rough, rough month. In a bit of black humor, someone somewhere began referring to this month as “May-NIA,” and that stuck. Even my own spouse, who is faithful and dedicated to his mental wellness, and takes his meds and tries to stick to healthy routines, has periods of “breakthrough” hypomania in the spring. Do what we will, the force of springtime will not be denied. Every year I’m struck with jealousy over other people’s rejoicing in the coming of spring…they’re planning their flowerbeds, washing their windows, de-winterizing their mowers, while I’m monitoring the bank account, trying to keep things quiet, and generally just scattering a fresh layer of eggshells across the floor for us to walk on. I dread spring. And to be honest, I resent having to feel that way.

In the beginning of our journey with this illness, post-diagnosis, I lived in a state of wary watchfulness. In the first year, there was a significant relapse, so after that I was pretty much in constant readiness, watching for that sign that would indicate that everything was about to go south again. If he was 5 minutes late, or didn’t answer his cell phone one time, I just knew that “it was happening again;” that he’d disappeared, he’d “run,” and that, since that was the line I drew in the sand when we decided to stick this thing out together, that our marriage would, consequently, be over. I literally went through this entire thought process on a regular basis. It was a long, long time before I could make myself continue to breathe normally in the face of even a small unknown. But I learned, as time went on, how to focus on myself, to trust myself, and to breathe.

As more time went by with no full-blown episodes, something odd happened. I did manage to stop living mentally perched on the precipice of disaster. I remembered who I was before I ever tangled with bipolar disorder. I realized that I’m smart (enough), capable (enough), and tough (enough) to handle whatever it could throw at me. And with that knowledge, I relaxed. A lot. But I didn’t anticipate what came next–what has been happening for the last couple of years.

My husband has expressed to me, often, the irony of managing a mental illness well–that is, that since he stays on top of his medication regimen, sees his doctor regularly, performs well at a regular job, etc., that people tend to “forget” that he has bipolar disorder. Then, when there is an episode of breakthrough depression or hypomania, the reaction is one of disappointment, like, “I thought you had this thing beat.” No one understands that it’s an ongoing, daily battle, and that there is no magic pill that’s going to work all the time. We “tweak” his med cocktail once or twice a year, at the very minimum.

I have caught myself falling victim to this same phenomenon, in a way, and I’m not sure it’s any better than the way I used to live. Instead of being constantly on edge, expecting things to fall apart any second, I now let even a couple of weeks of good times lull me into near-total complacency, so that, when there is a bump in the road, as there most assuredly always will be, I’m left gobsmacked, the rug pulled entirely out from under my happy little world. Every time this happens, I feel so stupid, because, of course, I knew better. But it is so altogether soul-wearying to live in that watchtower, that sometimes I just desperately want to come down for a while. To stay up there, watching, watching, watching, is to admit defeat, in a way…but more than that, that sort of life is really no life to have. It’s not just emotionally tiring; I can feel it chipping away at my physical health, with all sorts of symptoms I never knew before I met bipolar disorder, like anxiety, panic, depression, irritable bowel, nausea…this disease that I don’t even have is shortening my life.

But the alternative–life without my husband? No, that’s no life for me, either. Somewhere, somehow, there must be a way to find balance. I wish this post were more about answers.

I’ve been having allergic reactions to lithium and abilify recently, the abilify added after I had to quit lithium, cold turkey. The abilify was even worse, and made me feel really crazy for the first time ever– manic, mixed, unable to concentrate, on the verge of rage. Even my worst depressions never left me doubting myself so much. Fortunately, yet again, my great doctors spotted what was going on at an early stage, and now I am off both drugs and going through withdrawal. The withdrawal’s been more of the same, just only slightly less severe each day, and slightly better after each nap, each liter of water, each massage, as the poisons slowly leach there way out.

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Mornings are better/a mostly full night’s sleep/or at least two or three chunks of several hours at a time.
When the antsiness is replaced by weird dreams if you’re lucky/bad ones if the ativan and tylenol and benadryl name brand saviors fall behind the poisons.

With your nocturnal naps under the belt of your bathrobe and some light reading from three to five a.m./and a good liter of water to wash down more name brand saviors/I can mostly function well/well/except I have to pee constantly/pace like a tiger in the zoo/clench dystonic jaw and neck and shoulders and hands into claws of rage and rictus of anxiety/I feel like an animal/in a bad way./To talk wildly/drum fingers constantly/shift and squirm in my seat like a kindergartener/to want to run around the table until it’s time to take an early lunch and walk around the building eight times/more pills/more water.

All day stretching your poor sore stiff self as poisons leach through your pores your pee your sweat/I swear I smell like salt all day/all muscles poisoned, protesting, screaming for relief, especially when you are so distracted you miss the next dose signaled by that cell phone alarm you forgot to answer.

Sitting still is bad enough/talking to someone is worse/keeping in the hypomanic bursts of speech/words burbling like water over stony brooks at icemelt’s bursting./It’s worse after lunch because six hours is really all you’ve got before the name brand saviors cease to be so effective and you need a three hour nap interrupted by a ten minute pee and more nap to feel human again and keep your thoughts from running together like hot caramel overflowing the pot, sticking to everything burning hard to peel away taking forever to cool.

Touch your tightened jaw/your knotted neck/use the sensory trick of touch to tame the tensioned parts momentarily/petting/stroking/pressing/smoothing/soreness frantic when will this stop when will I feel better/maybe I should take just half of the dog that mauled me? to ease it?/but you know that will slow it down, stop it, reverse it, increase it, make it longer harder even worse/unimaginable, unendurable.

You know it can be worse/you know you’re not that bad/you’re home, not at hospital/and while you’re hyped stressed bummed exhausted hurting talking and oh it’s all too much at once/but still you see the light at the end of the tunnel/can say, with reason, that mornings are better/tomorrow will be better than today/and you hope pray wish cry weep for tomorrow to come sooner/soonest for those who don’t know can’t know/deny/relapse/refuse to see/to feel/to believe each morning can be a little better.

Mornings are better, at least for me.

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There was a thought-provoking article in the NYT about the “Mad Pride” movement— about proclaiming our craziness publicly, about being examples of adaptation and function despite it all. Like any movement, any blanket platform, there are lots of threads, some of which are more provocative of thought and agreement and disagreement than others. I’ll try to assemble some thoughts on it next week.

A story from my local paper about a teenaged girl suffering from bipolar and the push in Massachusetts for better funding for youth mental illness treatment.