RealMental

By Heather

A few weeks ago after a rousing nine holes of golf, my father and I were having a heart to heart over some wine and in my less completely lucid state, I casually mentioned to him that I have a Bipolar disorder after he commented on my improved behavior over the past few months. I said “Oh, I’ve been on medication for my bipolar disorder” with a causal wave of the hand like I said “Oh, I’ve been on some Sudafed for this cold” like it was a perfectly normal thing to say to a parent.

His reaction was at first dubious and then of anger. Not towards me, of that I’m sure, but that anger and sadness of a parent for their child when they perceive that their child is hurting. He pounded his fist on the deck and then looked away and started speaking of a man on the putting green in front of us, while I said that it was really Ok.

My feeling ‘ok’ with being diagnosed with a bipolar disorder has been a long time coming. Though at first it was if someone had simultaneously pulled the carpeting from beneath my feet while clearing up so much of my oft-atrocious behavior for years. Things made sense while not making sense at all because, as I so lovingly announced to my psychiatrist, I’m fucking crazy. But at the same time, everything for the past five years made perfect fucking sense and eerily so.

The other night someone in a recently made group of friends told me how ‘normal’ and ‘un-dramatic’ and ‘bitchy’ I am. I laughed it off and said that my normalcy is only by way of a Lithium and Klonopin cocktail and even then I don’t feel normal. I’m conflicted as one can obviously tell. On the one hand, I’m ok with telling people that I have a bipolar disorder and don’t feel it’s that big of a deal on the other hand, I fear how certain people will react when I tell them that it is impossible for me to function without medication. I’ve yet to tell my mother because of this.

Though for the most part the reaction of others – which probably shouldn’t matter and yet it does – has been fine. Because in their words I’m just so “normal”. I’m still ‘normal’ but am in desperate need of something extra to keep me as rational and ‘normal’ as possible. Then again, who really is ‘normal’ anyway?

By Dad Gone Mad

I’ve been reticent to post anything on this site, but that’s nothing new. Reticence is the soundtrack of my life.

“Be careful, Danny. Better safe than sorry. Better to make a joke out of everything than to risk getting hurt by exposing something raw or real or controversial. Stay funny. Funny is safe. Safe is good.”

Safe can kiss my skinny Jewish ass.

I lived safely for 37 years. Never took risks. Never pushed it. Never let myself be exposed to anything brash or unconventional. Never really EARNED anything. Worked in a cubicle. Always wore an undershirt. Was content with my reliable paycheck and good benefits even though the job was empty and boring and spirit-crushing.

Here’s what that lifestyle got me (in chronological order): Zoloft, Lexapro, Cymbalta, Zoloft again, Prozac (for two days), Zoloft again and Wellbutrin.

Quite a prize, no?

I once wrote this about myself:

“I had done my best to hide my depression from view. I was embarrassed by it and scared of dropping several notches in the eyes of those who do not understand. But the incessant game of hide-and-seek becomes exhausting and stressful, and it only serves to fuel the self-doubt. Whenever I told people that I have this disease, I would watch as they wondered what it means. Perhaps I’m a threat or untrustworthy or liable to do something they’d rather not have their children see because they wouldn’t be able to explain it away with a roll of their eyes. I’ve wondered those same things myself.”

When I read that back now, I’m appalled by how pitiful it sounds. Fortunately, it’s not me anymore. I murdered safe. Killed its accomplice, fear, too. The murder weapon was the revelation that there is a difference between safe and responsible. There is a difference between risk and endangerment. I had no idea.

We’re big Dave Mathews Band fans at our house, and I’ve chosen one of their songs as my personal anthem. I like it because it challenges me. It teases me for having been who I was. And it reminds me to keep going.

If you close your eyes,
Cause the house is on fire.
And think you couldn’t move,
Until the fire dies.
The things you never did,
Oh, cause you might die trying,
Cause you might die trying.
You’d be as good as dead,
Cause you might die trying,
Cause you might die trying.

Well, Dave, I tried, and I didn’t die.

In fact, I feel very much alive

By Deezee

The phone rings, the olive green push button phone sitting upon the antique dark wood corner table in the room we call ‘library,’ and I reach to answer it with ten-year-old hands.

“Hello?” I say. At the other end of the line is my grandmother, my mother’s mother. She tells me that my mom is coming home that day.

“Be good for your mother,” she injects somewhere in the conversation.

Essentially, I’m to take care of my mom, to not cause any trouble, to not be ten. I hang up the phone and call my father. I tell him about the phone call, and he gets angry. He steps in to intercede, to put my grandmother in her place, but I’ve already been given my role. I may resent it, I may note that something is off, but life has been off for a few years. I imagine my mom back at home, my mom who’s been off mending for two months, my mom who had to disappear into a mental hospital and not be a mom.

Now that she’s coming home, she’s not really coming home as a mom. I am the sole person living with her. My siblings are away at school. My dad will return to the apartment he’s had since their separation. My grandparents live down the road. At ten I become a parent.

Don’t make waves. Others can’t handle what you can. Everyone else is fragile, on the brink, at risk. I become a rock needing nothing, demanding nothing, voicing nothing. My path in the world is set. I can handle more so I become nursemaid to the wounded. And suddenly I see everyone as wounded or at least I see everyone’s wounds. And they see me as protector, as trouble free, as caregiver. My own vulnerability disappears beneath my layers of iron. I proudly wear the label of self-sufficient, low maintenance, non-neurotic. In a land of neuroses I beam. That is until I realize that I tell no one anything. I am such a tight and tough fortress that no one would ever know if I hurt. I barely acknowledge my own ailments, for I still see myself as tougher, more solid.

My mother arrives home. She is bone thin. She speaks softly. She looks glazed. I don’t know how to navigate around this shell of a person, but I do as I was told. I don’t make waves.

By Heather

The other afternoon, I’m in my office with the door mostly shut, singing along to Biggie’s greatest hits “I love it when you call me Big Poppa …” when a colleague/friend knocks on my door to rehash some gossip. It was the type of gossip that makes my blood boil because it’s childish stuff being done by a woman in her 50’s. Though practically routine with this woman, I can’t help but become offended at her lack of class and blatant rudeness, all of which are a manifestation of being jilted ages beforehand. But I suppose you can take the mean girl out of high school but can’t take high school out of the mean girl. Par for the course.

As the story is being relayed and I’m feeling more and more offended, my coworker mentions the mean girl’s craziness. She points her index finger at her head and circles it around while rolling her eyes; the international sign. As she says this, I remember the time and rummage around in my bag for medication. She laughs and continues the story while I try to get to some happy place in my mind. I feel my anxiety coupled with anger rising which won’t lead to intelligent discourse or the ability to roll my eyes back and scoff at some hag who didn’t get what she wanted thus taking it out on everyone else. Anxiety and anger will lead to me losing my shit. I’ve been there and done that more than enough times. It was my rather ‘capricious’ (to put it nicely) behavior that led to the medication.

As the story continues, I use the ‘c’ word and pop a klonopin. It’s that time of day and I’ve been instructed to take my benzodiazepine consumption seriously. I relax and sit back in my chair to hear the rest of tale; while smiling inwardly, for after four months, I’m still amazed at what medication can do. I was once incredibly dubious to the thought of medication and those who took it. What an embarrassing thing, to be forced into drugs because of erratic – nay psychotic – behavior, I would scoff. Why couldn’t people just control themselves? I’m one of ‘those people’. One who just can’t control herself at times, because I just wasn’t built that way.

So I smile inwardly and finally am composed to the point where I’m not on the verge of tears but just blasé as to the mean girl’s behavior and particular cruelty towards me.S Suddenly rational enough to realize that I can only control my reactions to her garish behavior and just do my job. Because I may have my issues, which, by the grace of God, can be helped by medication and therapy, but she’s just a bitch and there ain’t shit that can be done to help that.