RealMental

I spent half the night crisscrossing the line between sleep and wakefulness as I was plagued by stupid dreams with stupid plot lines.

Actually, the irritating dream thing started not last night but the night before when I dreamt that I was holding a friend’s baby. It had an abnormally small head covered in dark hair with pinhole eyes and one gargantuan tooth jutting out of its lower jaw. It started nuzzle at my breast, and I said No, little guy, that won’t do, and then he latched on through my shirt anyway and bit my nipple really hard with that abomination of a tooth of his. I spent the rest of that dream annoyed and embarrassed about the wet circle of baby spit on my shirt over my left nipple.

I will give you a short synopsis of last night’s dream’s adventures in a list, because this bitch just goes on and on:
• I visited a friend in another city, and she threw this huge, obnoxious party the first night I was there.
• Her mother built me a remarkable free-standing tower out of potato chips much like a house of cards, and then it collapsed, and I had to spend a bunch of time cleaning the mess of crumbs out of the carpet.
I woke up alone in the morning, looking around at a dingy living room, and I said I feel like I’m in a Harold Pinter play, and no one’s excited to see me. I have no idea what that means. I have never even read any Pinter.
• A man told me that he could help me to makeover my image, and then he proceeded to tell me that although I have young face, my neck looks ten years older.
• Someone put on an outdoor breakfast potluck buffet in honour of my visit, but I hate eating outside, did not know anyone, and was too hung over to enjoy it.
• I went back to my friend’s house to clean up, but the main floor had been cleared of all its contents. I looked out the back door, and some friends had loaded all the furniture, ornaments, and whatnot, including my clothing, into the back of a truck. They were going to take it all away and clean it as a surprise. When I freaked out about my clothing, they laughed at how uptight I was and drove away, but I knew that the expensive items I had brought along would be destroyed. Jerks.

Last night’s dreams completely confounded me until That Girl figured out what was going on. Apparently, each time something annoying or fucked up happened, it was because someone was trying to be nice or helpful to me. That Girl said, It sounds like you really need to hermit yourself away for awhile. No freaking kidding.

I have really enjoyed the things I have gone out of the apartment to do with people lately, but I find every excursion exhausting. The February Crazy is upon me.

What is the February Crazy, you ask? Well, it is a lovely period of time that occurs annually each February. Its symptoms vary but may include any or all of the following:
• Irritability. Did you say something to me? Because that would be wrong. Are you standing anywhere in my vicinity without obvious purpose? Because that would be wrong, too. Have you walked by me a hundred times rather than turning whatever you are doing into one trip? Because that would be very, very wrong. Did you ask me how I am doing? Seething, thank you.
• Strong urges to run away and join the circus. These urges may also be experienced as desires to become a hippie or ride the rails or do a stint in a nunnery. It is best to avoid these urges by crawling under a blanket and drinking an entire bottle of wine.
• Feelings of guilt. In this case, another symptom, irritability, can often be used to overcome the sense that one has fallen terribly short of others’ expectations, as irritability is usually quite strong during the February Crazy.
• Sudden weeping. When irritability cannot overcome feelings of guilt, sudden emotional outbursts are common. Do not be alarmed. Enjoy wine liberally and hide in a warm bath.
• Vivid dreams that are emotionally upsetting. See above.
• Actions contradict emotions. An individual suffering from the February Crazy may make broad statements about the futility of life and the need to hermit and then will be seen out in public yucking it up. In public, treat an individual with the February Crazy with a gentle hand lest they fall to irritability or weeping. They do not know why they are out in the world, either, and are likely to be easily confused.

Tonight, I am choosing a blanket and a bottle of beer to curl up with while I watch hours of “Law & Order” to divert my attention away from the fact that my system is still trying to deal with the loaf of garlic bread I ate on Sunday. Yes, I said LOAF. The February Crazy also has some slightly less common symptoms, such as the overconsumption of underbaked, white flour products slathered in cheap margarine and garlic powder.

(This entry is also posted at Schmutzie’s Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come)

As my handle states, I’m a lawyer. Even worse, I’m a litigator– I go to court a lot, file lawsuits, get high on the charge of arguing my case before a judge or a jury. I handle a blend of straightforward and more complex cases, and it’s the complicated ones that I really love. It’s how I get to show my smarts, prove my abilities, and feel recognized, acknowledged for my talents. I aspire to be a well-known, scary smart litigator on the cover of SuperLawyers and reported in the Top Verdicts and Settlements report every year. I want to be queen of my corner of the legal world.Actually, that’s not true. Or more accurately, I should say that this whole paragraph should have been written in the past tense, except for the “I’m a lawyer” part. And maybe not even that. Because I am realizing that the way I chose my online handle, BipolarLawyerCook, has more meaning in the order of the words than I could have thought.

See, Bipolar comes first. It’s taken me a while to realize this, despite the fact that I type my online handle nearly every day. Let me repeat that. Bipolar comes first. It doesn’t mean that I walk around with a big scarlet B attached to my coat. What it does mean is that I need to take my bipolar into consideration when I am making decisions about what will keep me healthy, and therefore happy. If I ignore my hard-acquired self-knowledge about my triggers, my mental knee-jerk habits, if I fail to avoid people, places, and situations that back me into a corner where I curl up into a little ball, and just give up, then all I am is bipolar, and worse, a crazy bipolar. If I remember, and adapt, then there is plenty of room for any other descriptors I want to tag on after bipolar– so long as the terms can all coexist with bipolar, and take turns as need be.

When I was first diagnosed, eons ago in 2005, I was relieved– finally, an explanation, and one that did not implicate some moral weakness on my part. I started taking my meds, went religiously to therapy, worked on my triggers, was a model patient. But not really– because I made the mistake of believing that I would now be able to do all the things I’d wanted to, but couldn’t. Despite knowing better, I assumed that the meds and the therapy would cure me, and that I could do whatever I set my now-stable mind to.

Not so– the meds control, don’t cure. If I overtax myself, then all my crazy predispositions come roaring back. But more importantly, and fortunately without quite the same variety of mental ups and downs, I am finally coming to realize that litigation as a practice is mostly insane. Whether or not you’re officially crazy, the pace, the hours, the adversarial climate and lack of civility are all enough to drive the sanest person nuts. And I’m realizing that it does drive everyone crazy, eventually. Maybe you become a screamer, or a drunk, or you cheat on your spouse, or your kids hate you because you were never home, or your colleagues and opponents will never give you a break because you never give them one– there are a thousand different ways to fail as a person, if not so obviously as a litigator.

I recently took some time off, since I needed to switch mood stabilizers, was exhausted and depressed, and was therefore on the brink of messing something up again at work. The time off has been a revelation in more than one way. First, I’ve had even more ideas to write, and took the leap to start pitching ideas for freelance assignments. Second, I realized that the charge that I get from the ritualized combat of litigation comes with a price, and that I was ignoring the law of mental gravity: what comes up must come down. Add to that the slow dawning acceptance that my energy reserves are shallow, and I’ve come to accept that my flame burns bright, but burns out quickly. I need to find work that is more sustainable, less full press– and to do that, I need to give up my Queen Litigator dreams. This became less difficult when I had my third realization, while lunching with a coworker, who was stressed beyond belief. I didn’t want to go back– and not just to that office. Worries about the future aside, I was happy.

I was sharing this with my therapist, and she asked me who I was proving myself to with my SuperLawyer fantasy. When I realized that I was trying to get approval from those who will never give it, it because so much easier to step to the side, and understand that my dreams of worldly success would not make me happy, even if I had the mental resources to achieve them. I also realized that setting aside the fantasy isn’t failure, no matter what other litigators might think.

Having realized this, it becomes easier to think about walking away from the practice of litigation, or to at least think in a more clear-eyed manner about what will make me happy, and how I can best sustain that happiness. In compiling my list of things that make me happy, I’ve come up with: cooking, taking pictures, being with friends, writing for writing’s sake, having quiet time to myself, blogging for sharing’s sake, having quiet time with my husband, reading everything in sight, learning new things, and helping other people learn new things. I’m looking forward to adding more things to that list– and maybe more and different things to my handle.

Republished from BipolarLawyerCook.

I’ve suffered from severe clinical depression with bouts of psychosis since I was 18. In the past 20 years I’ve dealt with it on my own, no meds and no doctors. Recently, about 5 weeks ago, I finally had to go find some help and due to financial reasons I had to go to my county’s MHMR Dept. I’m grateful to them for getting me in so fast without having to wait. I’m taking Paxil, Trazodone, and now Cymbalta as well. Recently they added Abilify to the mix. My case manager and my doctor tell me to be patient, and I’m trying to. Despite having no hope I’m waiting. Waiting for the meds to work. Waiting to come out of this awful black hole I’m in. I feel like I’m waiting for death. I’m being patient, but it’s so very hard when the pain and suffering is so deep. There’s a vivid image I have of me taking a gun and shooting myself. I have it more and more lately. It plays on a loop in my mind, over and over, and I can’t stop it. I can’t control my own thoughts, my own mind, my own self. It’s such a helpless feeling and it scares me beyond words. The thoughts are sometimes loud, not mine, external. Voices telling me to harm myself.

I’m trying to be patient, to hold on, but it’s unbelievably hard and I’m confused and scared. I’m waiting, but the perch I’m on is precarious and I feel like I’m close to falling off of it to my death. If I had a broken bone would I be told to wait, to be patient? Wouldn’t I be given something for pain immediately? Wouldn’t they set my broken bone ASAP? Surely I wouldn’t have to wait weeks and weeks for relief. People I thought were my friend say “why don’t you snap out of it” or “I won’t let anything destroy my happiness”. That sort of lack of understanding and lack of compassion hurts, but hearing things like that isn’t new to me. Lots of people don’t understand clinical depression or mental illness. They haven’t a clue how awful it is. I’m not “letting” it destroy me. I can’t help or stop it, and I can’t just “snap out of it”. I can’t control it right now, I wish I could. I don’t voluntarily feel this way or intentionally put myself through this. People can’t imagine how awful it is unless they’ve experienced it themselves. If I had a broken bone protruding through my bloody skin they could then see how awful it is and how it must hurt. They could see something is desperately wrong. Then they’d understand and then they’d show some compassion. You can’t just snap out of a broken bone. So here I sit with a broken mind, terribly scared, shaking and panicked, sick, waiting, being patient. People with broken bones are lucky.

Signed,
Anonymous

If you knew me you would know that from the outside i used to seem like i had it all together.

If you know me now you know that in the past year i look like a disheveled mess. That my life has fallen apart over and over again. That i nearly died. That i lost my marriage. That i nearly lost everything.

And now.

And now i am slowly crawling my way back to a real life.

This week i started going off my medication. I have been unhappy and medicated for a long time. Now? Now i have all my ducks in a row to try and be normal. Happy and sad. I just want to know who i am in an un-pressured situation.

I have that now. A home to myself. No husband breathing down my back. Wanting everything to be fine. When fine was not possible.

I am scared. I am woobly in my head. My body is rejecting me. Stomach pain. Intestinal distress. But i am eager to know me again. Happy. Sedated. Unmedicated.

By Coolbeans

The beginning of January is nice. The holidays are behind us, we get back into our routines, and my husband and I celebrate our anniversary. Then something bad happens. After the start of the new year, something in my brain goes haywire. I have fits of rage, tears, self-loathing, and an inability to hold my shit together before we can say “February.”

Things have been okay for the last few months. I’ve felt good. I like my job, my kids are normal enough, my marriage isn’t spiraling down the drain. We faced some tough stuff in December and just before Christmas it occurred to me that maybe the medication I take for depression isn’t working like it should. I was moody, weepy, angry, and tired. I decided to look at the issue after the holidays, hoping that after Christmas madness was over, I’d feel better again. I took a deep breath and held it.

Yesterday, I had a fit. I could call it an attack, but I think “fit” is better. I was angry, I was sad. I wanted to scream, cry, break something. Nobody could do anything right and I hate everything. Hopelessness, sadness, despair, rot. Where does this come from? Why won’t it stop fucking with me? I’m doing the stuff I’m supposed to, for fuck’s sake. I just want to be NORMAL. Normal, la-dee-dah BORING. Sane. Stupidly, ignorantly happy, even.

I thought that I’d be fine this year. I’m taking medicine, life is alright. But no. The inside of my head feels pulled and twisted and right now, throwing things doesn’t feel optional.

2005
At the beginning of January, I had some little panic attacks and struggled with insomnia. The space inside my head where I hear all the voices was really loud and I couldn’t hear one voice over another. I tried to focus on one thing at a time and just couldn’t. It was all a jumbled mess in my brain.

2006
The Funk that lurks in the dark corners of my mental state has stretched its long and sticky arms and is presently trying to suffocate my pysche. For some reason, my marbles get lost this time of year. I decided I’m not going to order medication this time. I called my therapist today instead. Of course, she’s out of the office until Tuesday. Until then, I might be laying low.

2007
Someone I know: “Hi, I know you!”
Me: “You can’t see me. I’m invisible now!”
Someone I know: “You are one crazy bitch.”
Me: *cries*

2008
What is going on here? What is it about January that makes me batshit crazy even when things seem fine, good, great?

I was talking to my therapist about various things during our last session, and one of them was how much better I feel for having started writing again.  She knows that I blog and that I keep my journal.  I’m not sure if she reads my personal blog or this one– I suppose telling her about them keeps me honest.  I was also showing her a poetry series that I was working on, since some of it had to do with other things we were talking about.  She handed my journal back to me and said something simple but perspective-altering– “what a relief to recover something you used to do for pleasure.”

When I think of how many pink cloth diaries and wire-bound notebooks and scratch pads I used to fill with bad poetry, stories, rantings to myself, and every other musing, prosaic and poetic when I was an adolescent and teen… all I can say is I did it because I enjoyed it.  It gave me relief.  I wasn’t sharing what I wrote (and it was before the internet, anyway) or expecting criticism– I just wrote for my Self.  And I just . . . stopped, lost that part of myself with my first really bad depression in college.  I didn’t recover my writing in any consistent fashion until after my diagnosis in 2005.

I’ve always let peter out things I really enjoyed when I entered a bad depression.  As depression’s lead blanket would descend, causing me to lose my joy in life, and as my insecurities would foster a deeper depression, I would become convinced I didn’t deserve happiness, and would withdraw from life.  I would withdraw from, or even sabotage friendships.  I would stay in my dark bedroom all day.  I would let the phone ring and ring and ring.  And I would let the thoughts circle around, in ever-tightening spirals in my mind, until it was impossible to break out of the vortex until my brain chemistry righted itself.  But now, I know more about the whys and hows of my depression, and am slowly getting better about seeing the black cloud on the horizon.  I know now that if I allow myself to back away from all the things I enjoy, then it’ll be worse than if I just grit my teeth and at least go through the motions. The activity itself is therapeutic.  So now, I resolve to do the things I used to do for pleasure, whether I feel like it or not.  I think that “practice makes perfect” has especial meaning when depression is keeping you pinned to your bed.

Write every day, for the release, for getting the circling thoughts out of my head.  Get out in the sunshine every day, because the secret to bipolars is that we are all part plant and part cat, and need sunshine to stay sane.  Meditate every day and do yoga three times a week, so I can let go of some of the circling thoughts that don’t really require writing out.  Call a far-away friend once a week, and ask them about what’s going on with them.  Have lunch or dinner with a friend at least once, preferably twice a week, because I have good friends, who care, who make me laugh, who deserve my attention.  And try not to forget the things I like to do for fun, because the only thing better than the relief of recovering that joy is never really having lost it.

People often confuse boredom with depression.

We are overstimulated to excess; by that, I do not mean merely that we are too stimulated, but that we are too overstimulated. There are televisions and computers and radios in the morning, often accompanied by traffic and children and alarm clocks, microwaves that beep, drive-thru coffee shops and gas stations. We meet an onslaught of people and things in the world that demand our attention often before the sun has even risen.

This bores us. Our minds need to wander a little. They need to remember our pasts, imagine things, look ahead, concentrate on problems, but they are squeezed down the narrow funnel of schedules and maintenance. There is so much to do simply to maintain the pattern of our lives that most of our energy becomes devoted to that pattern. We are bored, because we spend so much of our time performing the equivalent of pushing punch cards into slots.

I am often guilty of mistaking the structure for my life. I can trip along in this blindness for days, weeks, and months until I stub my toe on something that moves me, like Utah Phillips telling stories or the right string of poetic phrases, and then it is as though I remember myself. The structure – meetings, my morning muffin, the city bus trips, grocery shopping, feeding the cats – becomes just that: a construct. Then, I feel flailing and hurt, because if I am not these things, what am I? I am a vulnerable thing. I am a small thing. I am a turtle without a shell.

In those soft moments between the hard particulars, I want to run like hell, light out of whatever place I am in as though my hair is on fire. I imagine that I will be a land-loving hippie with sticks in my hair. Or I will be an outsider artist on a llama farm. Or I will become an ascetic poet who still drinks whiskey. I will take up guitar. I will make art films. I will publish books. I will take thousands of photographs. I will build furniture. I will collect clockwork toys and open a museum.

But then it is time to catch the bus again, and I head home to make supper, watch television, bring the clothes up from the dryer, and ready the alarm clock for another day.

(The entry is also posted at Schmutzie’s Milkmone Or Not, Here I Come.)