RealMental

By CP

There comes a point when you have to forgive yourself.

I spend so much time dwelling on the things I have done wrong in this life. I spent the first 40 years of my life being cruel, calculating and deceitful. I didn’t know any other way to be. No one taught me to be this way…it just was. I never questioned why I was so different than everyone else. I assumed I was one big character flaw. I was a continuous disappointment to my parents. They read my diary and were shocked by the things I revealed there. To be perfectly honest, I almost wanted them to read it. It would save me the trouble of lying. They grounded me. I climbed out of my window and continued to live my life. I was reckless as a child and more reckless as an adult. I have done some very cruel things to people I care(d) about. It is only now, while well medicated, that I can see the forest for the trees.

How many times do I have to try to
tell you that Im sorry for the things I’ve done.
And when I start to try to tell you that’s when
you have to tell me Hey, this kind of trouble
has only just begun.
I tell myself too many times why don’t you
ever learn to keep your big mouth shut.
That’s why it hurts so bad to hear the words
that keep falling from your mouth…
tell me…why?

I embraced my kind of crazy. I never thought of it that way. I just thought that I was an extraordinary kind of human being with little emotion, or sometimes, way too much emotion. I spent most of my days turned inside out because I never knew what I could expect next from myself. Everyday was a new show, like flipping channels. Hundreds of channels, but nothing is ever on. And no one understood me. I preferred it that way. There was no one to have to answer to that way. I could be diabolical one day, sweet and loving the next and never would I have to explain myself. It was just me, take it or leave it.

Yet, during those times, I said and did a lot of things that were hurtful. And, it is only now, now that the medication has given me some clarity, that I want to go back to each of those people and fix my mistakes. I care now, which is a very large burden to bear. Sometimes I think it is easier to be manic and just not care…or be so depressed that no one else exists but you. You could care less about anyone else, because in your own mind…you are three quarters of the way to dead inside.

I can’t go back and fix all the wrong I have done. Therein lies the problem.

I have to start to forgive myself. This is a nearly impossible task because I am my own worst critic. No one is harder on me than I am. And if I was to leave the crimes of my mania to the jury of my depression, I’d be swinging from the gallows without hesitation.

When can you start to forgive yourself for transgressions gone by?

I take my medications like a good girl, every night, without fail. The thought of not taking them scares me. Then again, the thought of taking them daily makes me feel defeated. Why can other people function daily without pills to pull them through but I cannot? Again, I put myself on trial and submit to a life sentence on a daily basis. I hate swallowing those pills, but I also know that I am scared to death of the woman I am when I don’t take them. I never used to be afraid of her, but that was because she was cloaked in the disguise of me. When I looked in the mirror back then, I saw only one person…one very damaged person. Now when I look in the mirror, I see all the pieces of me, all the very different individuals. So many facets to one person and yet, I couldn’t bring them all together to make them whole without the help of these pills.

Two white ones. One white capsule. Four blue capsules.

How am I ever gonna get through this,
back to myself again.
Say it isn’t so.
Watch me falling, see me falling
through the vortex of a sky.
Darkness and light,
that’s what’s in side.

I rely so heavily on these pills to make me right, whole and complete that I never actually give myself credit for my own accomplishments. I mean, are my accomplishments my own, or are they a product of the manufacturer of my drugs? Tiny little pieces of me that come in a bottle. The finished product comes when I swallow them. I drain the life force out of these pills for 24 hours til it comes time to take more. I hurt myself over and again, batter myself emotionally for having to be so reliant on these mass produced pharmaceuticals. But I remember the girl I was before them and frankly, she scares me still. The person I owe the most apologies to is myself, for all the times I let myself down. All the bad choices that I made. And sure, you don’t need to be bipolar to make bad choices. That’s not exclusive to those with mental illness. I supposed in some ways, we are all sick. We all need help.

The problem is when you cannot recognize yourself in the mirror. The problem is when you are standing with glass in your hands, blood dripping from your fingers and you have no idea how or why…or even whose blood is on your hands. The same girl that I love so much is the very same girl I despise so. It is so hard to love yourself when you scarcely know who you are. And the times that I would love myself? They were more frightening than the times I thought I didn’t. Manic. I would show my love for myself in the most dangerous of ways. What I want, when I wanted it…no thought of consequence.

And sometimes, I ache for that. I pine for it like a long lost lover.

So I am undertaking the task of apologizing to myself in lieu of all the others that I can never say I am sorry to. The people I hurt physically. The people I hurt emotionally. The people who tried to help me whose hand I closed in a door, both figuratively and literally. I want to send all of them notes…forgive me, for she knows not what she hath done. But I can’t and I add this to my list of failures.

Again, I am harder on myself than anyone else could possibly be. When I strive for perfection, I succeed in the eyes of others and fail miserably by my own decree. So where is the happy medium for someone who is used to doing everything in excess? How does someone who has been bipolar for their entire life suddenly go about putting out the fires that she caused?

Maybe I’m still searching,
but I don’t know what it means.
All the fires and destruction are
still burning in my dreams.
There is no water that can wash away
this longing to come clean.

I hate nights like this. I hate when I analyze myself right before swallowing these pills. My Lamictal. My Prozac. My Geodon. My life. I can’t live without them and they can’t live without me. They want me to be their walking, talking demonstration of how well they work. I am a disappointment to them as well.

What I ache for the most is something that I will never have. Peace. Pure and simple peace. A life lived. Not just existing, but living, understanding and realizing that we are all just pieces on a gameboard. I want to be set free and fly away from myself, but I cannot. I am stuck here, on permanent hold. I can’t be me, because I no longer know who “me” is. Am I the girl I was before the medicine or am I the creation of these pills? Was this me all along, trying to get out of a reckless body and mind? Or am I just fooling myself right now?

I don’t want the answer to that. I don’t want to know.

I can almost hear the rain falling.
Don’t you know it feels so good.
So lets go out into the rain again.
Just like we said we always would.

I want to get well. I want to stay well. I feel like I am backsliding though. I know the levels of my medicine need to be increased, but I am reticent to go back to a psychiatrist and let them know that what is saving me is now failing me. I see the symptoms, the signs. They are all laid bare before me yet I choose to ignore them because, quite frankly, mania feel so good. There is no drug high quite like it. It is a free falling feeling, like a roller coaster that just keeps diving and dipping and speeding and flying. It puts stars in your eyes and makes everything else just go away. You don’t care. Tomorrow doesn’t matter. You could die right here, right now and fear it not. You will die happy and content in your mania. It blinds you to what is real. It makes it all go away. A temporary fix, like a shot of heroin in your arm.

Or, a bandaid on a bullet hole.

And the more I miss the mania, the more swiftly it comes back for me. I yearn for it and it calls out to me. It tempts me and teases me. It is almost erotic in its persistance, like a outcast lover. It’s alluring, like silvery waters. It’s soothing like the wind.

And deadly. As deadly as anything else that can render you lifeless.

A depression is always sure to follow. A deep depression, one that feels like you are stuck in a grave. After coming off such a lofty high, any depression is going to feel like a death sentence. And again, like with mania, you could care less.

I am on the fast track backwards, so I want to get my apologies out of the way. I am sorry to the ex-husband that I had the affair on. Yet, I am not sorry, because it paved the way for me to be with the man I am now married to. I am sorry for all the times I made my children have to learn to live by themselves because I was holed up in my bed, rocking myself into a deeper state. Either that, or they had a mother with scissors who ran so eratically that she would never slow down long enough to help with homework. I apologize to the man I met online and hurt so deeply that his life was literally shattered by my actions. I apologize to my mother for the hell I put her through. She needed compassion because she was sick as well, but I didn’t know that…and if I had, I probably wouldn’t have cared anyway. I am sorry to my present husband for making him live with me for the first seven years without my pills. Sorry for yelling at him. Sorry for breaking things. Sorry for anger that came unexpectedly and without warning.

Sorry for so many things…but mostly for myself.

I swore I would never live a life of regret, but since these pills, it is all I can manage now.

I walk along the city streets so dark,
with rage and fear.
And I wish I could be that bird
and fly away from here.
I wish I had the wings to fly away from here.

In this aspect, I am burdened. The pills force me to take a long hard look at myself and the picture is not so pretty. Sure, a beautiful face stares back at me. 41 years old and barely a trace of time on this canvas. My face is truly a work of art. It lies without speaking. It’s a farce and a truth all at the same time, it depends on how you turn it and which side is facing the light. I was blessed with the good genes of my mother and her mother before her. Our faces are barely touched by time…but if you look long enough into our eyes, you will see something cold and insincere. I am trying so hard to soften my eyes, to bring out the warmth in them. It has proven a nearly impossible task, though my husband swears my eyes are warm and beautiful.

In many ways, I think he is more delusional than I.

Cold. It is how I have spent my whole life. And I am tired of it. Exhausted by it, in fact. I am so over it. So over the pain of my tears and the pain of my sidesplitting laughter. I am so tired of the extremes. My body is weary from trying to keep up with my mind. I am trying to hard to be a good person, like my husband is, that I am exhausted by it. It comes so naturally to him. With ease, with grace…he sails through his days with nary a worry to furrow his brow. I want to be that person. I yearn to be that person. I want to be someone’s rock.

Dying is easy,
it’s living that scares me to death.
I could be so content hearing
the sound of your breath.
Cold is the color of crystal,
the snow light that falls from the
heavenly sky.
Catch me and let me dive under
for I want to swim in the
pools of your eyes.

Since I am apologizing, let me add one more. I am sorry for trying to make myself into something I am not nor will I ever be. I am sick. I am diseased and I am only fooling myself.

Originally published here.

Raise your hand if you’re struggling to function right now.

I’ve suffered some occasional migraines, ne’er suffered before bipolar, since starting my Effexor XR.  Fortunately, they’re not so bad, pain-wise, compared to other folks I’ve known– they usually resolve with a nap and my meds.  But lately, they’ve been worse, not so much with the pain, but in frequency and in new manifestations– smell sensitivity, dizziness, nausea, hot flashes, generally unbearable wooziness.  I want them to stop, because if they don’t, I’ll have to stop taking the Effexor, and that means another round of trial and error on a new antidepressant, and feeling depressed and anxious in the meantime.  I’m too exhausted right now to start a new trial of meds, and to bring the necessary vigilance to bear.

If it’s a temporary side effect of titrating my new dose, and/or a withdrawal from going up one dose too high, hopefully it’ll go away.  But if this is the trade off for less craziness?  I need to try something else.  I can’t work when I feel like barfing whenever my secretary walks into my office, because her perfume is too smelly that day.  I can’t work when I get a hot flash and the whole room moves in front of me, so badly that it’s noticeable to colleagues (fortunately so far, only those already in the know and on my side).  I can’t work if the smell and taste of food makes me gag, so that I don’t eat anything, and then get low blood sugar.  And I can’t drive home if I am feeling like I am going to pass out, because what if I do?  I couldn’t bear hurting someone.  And I am not ready to give up on work.  Only if I can’t handle the stress of continuing private practice will I give up, and do something less stressful.  But that’s not a tradeoff I am willing to make.  Yet.

I’ve been having a hard time at work, and debating leaving, and some things that occurred recently confirmed that it just isn’t the place for me.  I’ve actually been debating leaving for a long time, just based on salary issues, but recently had the crazy waved over my head for no (to my mind) justifiable reason.  So I was describing this to my therapist last night, as being the final straw, and she said, “Oh good.  You needed a kick in the ass to get out the door.”  I so heart her.  After I told her not to hold back, tell me how she really feels, we got down to brass tacks.  But I love having someone who is frank, who challenges me, and who doesn’t just sit there nodding, or saying “that must have been hard for you.”

That is basically what I’m doing. I’ve immersed myself in so many projects that I don’t have much time to think about anything at all. Next week I’m going to see my parents. I want to make plans to visit everyone in the entire world so I don’t have to sit still. But I don’t actually want to go anywhere. My house is littered with half-done activities and it’s like walking through a field of bombs. If anyone came over they would be appalled. But it’s working for me, so nothing is likely to change. Except it will. On the downswing.

They upped my meds yesterday. I’m now at 6mg once per evening. And twice the Trazodone so I can sleep. Instead of mixing in new drugs (anit-depressants and mood-stabilizers) they decided just upping the Invega, giving it the ol’ college try, would be a better next step. I’m not sure I agree. But I’m not sure I don’t, either.

She kept raising her arms high above her head and then bringing her arms in close and clasping her hands together while saying, ‘Do you see what I’m trying to do here? Do you? Like glue? Do you see? I’m bringing you together.’ I thought she looked ridiculous but I didn’t laugh since it wasn’t funny. I just looked at her and kept nodding. And then, about the 6th time she did it, I said out loud, ‘Yes. I see. I get it.’ and then she stopped.

I talk to people on the phone, people that care about me, and they keep asking, ‘So, you’re better? You’re fine now?’ And I want to reassure them and say, Yes! I’m fine now! Thanks so much for asking! Whoop-de-doop! But the best I can do is a mumbled I’m doing a little better, thanks. I don’t add in the rest of how I feel. I think it might scare them too much.

Sometimes my voice sounds wrong to me when I hear myself talk. I’m trying my best to not split in my mind but I’m a little afraid that it’s happening anyway. Dissociating is what my mind has to fall back on so I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibility. But it disappoints me. I doubt it would go as far as creating another personality like when I was young but I’m definitely doing something.

I’d upped my Effexor XR recently, and was achieving nice results at 112.5, but went up to 150 at the recommendation of my shrink. Two weeks in, I was feeling even bouncier. And then … anxiety in whole-body washes of hot, and cold, and tingles. Hyper-focused attention, impatience, inattention to idle conversation, and spaciness–verging on what I associate with my hypomania. Nausea and acid stomach if I ate more than 1/2 cup of food at a time. Nightmares. Ugh. No thank you. I called my shrink and left a voice mail with my symptoms and that I was going to knock it back down to 112.5 and see how I did. 12 hours in, I am feeling less verge-of-hypomanic, not so nauseous, and able to eat 3/4 cup of food at a time. Whoopee! I need a plateau, I really do.

Republished from BipolarLawyerCook.

You know, I ain’t right. And I don’t really know where first to turn to try and find out why not. All I know for sure is that the last several years (let’s review: Got married, new husband went into full-blown manic episodes, no one knew what was going on, but he was disappearing for days on end, engaging in substance abuse, and emptying our bank account. Then I got pregnant, and Husband went floridly manic again, got hospitalized against his will, was released to rehab, got ninny psychiatrist who totally mismanaged his treatment for bipolar disorder, stayed a month in a rehab facility then moved into an apartment, because I could not have him come home just then. Later, he moved back home, we had our beautiful daughter, and before you could say “relapse,” he disappeared when she was just 4 days old. Manic episodes continued until spring when he finally went off the deep end and wound up forcibly hospitalized again, this time landing in a GOOD psychiatric facility and securing a GOOD doctor who prescribed a GOOD treatment and had him participate in a GOOD outpatient rehab program, the result of which has been sobriety and relative stability with NO manic episodes since May of 2004) have been hard, emotionally, and then the last three years (let’s review: My father suddenly and tragically died, ripping a hole out of my very heart and changing the fabric of WHO I AM, I miraculously got pregnant for the second time, and then seven weeks later lost that precious baby to a miscarriage…grief compounded by grief) have been…tragic, desperate, and then this past year since the hysterectomy has just been bizarre. I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety, grief over the definitive end of my childbearing potential, which seem to come and go whimsically, and catch me off-guard. I took one anti-depressant after another over these years, and suffered side effects galore without ever really feeling significantly better. Anti-anxiety meds (read: benzos) helped me through some tough spots, and then I’d go several months without any before needing them again.

The only sure thing is that my moods and anxiety/panic attacks always corresponded with something going on externally. You know, like lying awake at 4:00 AM wondering where my husband was, or lying awake sobbing for my lost child, or lying awake crying into my pillow because I NEED MY DADDY BACK. In other words, if things were going okay, I was fine. But somewhere along the line, especially since Dad died, something had gone KABLOOEY with the coping mechanisms that had served me for the first 35 years of my life. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this, that some external event(s) could occur that could trigger a weakness, a malfunction, in my brain.

One day this spring, while I was discussing this with a wonderful friend–a friend who just happens to have been, for the last few years, a MUCH better friend to me than I’ve been to her, or to anyone else–who happens to be a doctor of pharmacy, not to mention having much personal experience with clinical depression and the meds that go along with it. I listed to her all the anti-depressants I’d tried, told her how none of them had worked, and asked her, “What (meaning what drug) can I try next?” She looked at me, and after just a moment’s consideration, said, “You know, Belinda, even though you’re depressed, you may not have an actual chemical imbalance. I mean, you’ve been through some pretty horrible, awful stuff, just year after year recently, and you have every right to feel despondent without it meaning that your brain is all wonky…like mine.” And then she laughed. And I saw a light. And I loved her like she was part of me, because she got it. And then she told me the hard part.

She said, “Sometimes, you can’t even live life ‘one day at a time.’ Sometimes, you have to live it in 30-minute increments. You can do almost anything for half an hour, no matter how badly you don’t want to. So on days when I just want to stay in bed with the blinds drawn, I make a deal with myself to go out to the barn and groom one horse. By the time that’s done, I might look over at YOUR horse” (she’s been keeping Misha for me for way longer than I meant for her to) “and decide that his mane needs detangling, so I brush Misha’s mane. Then I might want to clip his bridle path, and before you know it, I’ve spent half the day out in the sunshine, DOING something, instead of wallowing.”

Just when I had decided that Kerri was the most brilliant, insightful woman on the face of the planet, she confessed to having developed this coping mechanism after hearing a version of it in the film, “About A Boy.” She said, “Yep. 10 years of therapy and I finally learn something useful from a Hugh Grant monologue in a movie. Not the book–the MOVIE.”

She IS brilliant, my friend, and she’s definitely onto something. I can’t help but think that, since no AD has helped me feel better–not really–that whatever is wrong with my brain, it’s not something that an AD can “fix.” I’ve been off the most recent AD, Wellbutrin, since early March, with no noticeable effect at all. I don’t feel better, I don’t feel worse. Just the same. The anxiety symptoms have abated (I’m not having falling-down panic-attacks in Wal-Mart any more), but are still present to some degree, in proportion to what’s going on in my life. Every once in a while, I suddenly get HOT all over, start sweating from head to toe, my nose runs like a faucet, my heart pounds, and I just need to be HOME.

Something is particularly difficult about mornings, about just getting out the door. Once I’m out, I’m pretty good for a few hours, but my calm seems to have a shelf-life, and I need to get back home in the afternoon. I like to plan things pretty far in advance, but I have trouble committing to things in advance. Anti-anxiety meds help. I’m not wild about how they make me feel, i.e. slightly dopey, but I do use them when I need them.

And then there’s the hormone angle, which I don’t even know for sure how to approach. Something has GOT to be going on there, since the weirdness has escalated by, um, a bunch, since my hysterectomy last fall. When I first came out of surgery, on estrogen deprivation, I literally felt, for the first and only time in my life, that I had lost my mind. It’s like nothing I can describe–the misery, despair, agony, anxiety–the certainty that it’s never going to be better, ever. After a couple of weeks, I was able to start estrogen replacement therapy, and it was like a miracle…at least to a point. It made the extreme crazy go away, but like I said at the beginning of this post, I still ain’t quite right. But then, I’ve never had the dosage checked or adjusted, so there’s a thought…

And I can’t help but think that a large part of what keeps me “down” and anxious is the disarray of my lifestyle–I keep Bella clean, fed, loved, dressed well, entertained, cared for…and that’s almost (but not quite) the limit of my motivation…and THAT is my motivation for this effort. I don’t know yet if it will work, but I know that to have peace and calm, I must first have order. I need it, Bella needs it, Alex needs it. And I need to provide it. I’m on my way, I hope…the house is still a mess, but I’ve done certain chores more regularly this week, and my family has had a hot, homemade, nutritious meal on the table every night this week, with NO takeout. That’s got to be a start. And Alex, bless his ever-loving-heart, cleaned the living room today, which lifted my mood unbelievably.

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been through, or is going through anything similar, especially from the hysterectomy angle. Or not. Just whatever. Can you just have bad things happen to you and suffer a shift in actual brain function? (Yes, these are questions for my shrink, but my next appointment’s a couple weeks off. Humor me.)

Adapted and significantly augmented from a nearly simultaneous post at www.ninjapoodles.com