RealMental

By CP

I am listening to The Cult and some other Post Punk Era bullshit music. I love this shit. I can wallow in it’s inane banality all night long if allowed. It brings back some amazing memories for me.

It brings back the mania that I love so much.

I remember being 18 years old and going out to Club Spanky or to Spize and dancing my fucking ass off while shoving mountains of cocaine up my Jewish nose. I was all over Long Island back then, running around to “New Wave” clubs with my half shaven blue hair and my Madonna rubber bracelets. I wore fishnets and combat boots back then. Everything I owned was black. My nails and my lipstick were black. I wasn’t “goth” or anything like that. I was a kid that was desperate to find where she fit in. I loved the post punk era music like The Cure, The Cult, New Order, the Smiths, The Ramones, etc. I wanted to emulate those bands and pay homage to them through my manner of attire. I wrote poetry, deep poetry as I always have, but didn’t share them with anyone. I kept all of that for myself, lest I become a “poser” and be known as someone who was chronically depressed and on the verge of suicide. I wasn’t. I was extremely happy being miserable, taking chances, doing spontaneous things that were definite no no’s for college kids like me.

And there lies the difference. College kid. In school, you would never know about the other life I was leading. Designer jeans, trendy blouses, high heels, pink nail polish and my hair in a ponytail so you couldn’t tell that it was shaved on one side. Yes, the blue streak still showed, but it was the 80’s and no one questioned colorful hair.

It was around this time I think I realized something was wrong with me.

All kids go through phases. I know that. I respect that about youth. I know most of them experiment with drugs, alcohol, sex and that sort of shit. I took everything to the extreme. I was entirely too promiscuous. I slept with more men back then than most women do in a lifetime. Actually, probably more than 10 women have in a lifetime. It wasn’t the sex, it was the control. I said when. I said where. I said how. I said why. And it was never “normal” sex. It always involved some sort of knife play, asphyxiation or blood letting. This is why it pleased me so much to live amongst the night creatures at the punk clubs. I scared the shit out of most of the men I had been with. Eventually it circulated that if you were into insane practices during sex, I was the person to see. I cut myself during sex to watch myself bleed. If the man or woman I was with joined me in doing this, I was all the more thrilled.

During the day, I was chaste, pristine and untouched. I listened to Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson because it was the thing to do. It was what the “normal” kids did. I listened to Great White and Poison too, lest the rockers I hung out with thought I wasn’t cool either. I hated every second of it. It was lies, all lies and that is what my life amounts to. I kept this charade up for years, even after the birth of my first child. Mommy by day, vampire by night. The two lives never met. Never. My daughter didn’t know of my antics and my psychos never knew I had a daughter. I did mescaline, quaaludes, acid…everything but smoke pot, because somehow, I associated smoking weed with being a loser.

Can you imagine? Like I had room to judge someone else.

There were days/nights when I felt too mentally exhausted to keep up with this dual lifestyle and I started to fray at the edges. Eventually, the two worlds did collide and I realized what I had been all along.

I was bipolar, living my mania and my depression in two completely separate and individual lifestyles. My psychiatrist agrees that it is a passive form of schizophrenia. I hear things. I hallucinate sometimes, but I am forever hearing things that aren’t there. Sometimes, they are in the form of whispers. They tell me what to do and I do them. The logic is fallible of course, but to me, it always made sense. Do what the whispers say and no one gets hurt…

at least not right away.

I never felt as happy as I did when I was cutting myself, abusing myself or allowing others to abuse me. It made me feel alive. Even years later, when I was in a relationship that was drowned in domestic violence, there was a certain safety factor there. Everytime he beat me, everytime I saw blood flow from some orifice, I was okay. I was alive and when I didn’t die, I was invincible…a very bad frame of mind for the manic depressive. No one is invincible, but don’t expect me to have believed that.

I think, in a lot of ways, I still live my life this way…the black and the white. Even my blogs are very different. One blog is all white, pretty, shiny and full of silly thoughts and amiable rants. It’s extremely public. The other? Dark, dreary, private and I could give two shits less about what anyone who reads this one thinks of me. On the other one, I do care…because I want the world to see the changes I have made in myself.

Have I changed? I don’t know.

I know a part of me still yearns to break free of the Mommy/Wife/Nurse life. It’s not that I don’t love my family. I do, probably moreso than most. I love being a nurse. I love my children with every fiber of my being and I couldn’t breathe without my husband. But, there are times when I just want to walk away from it all because I feel like I don’t belong. I don’t fit in. I am not ordinary. I am extraordinary and I know this. I am a walking contradiction and it breaks my heart that I can’t be completely content like other people are. I try to count my blessings like a good girl should, but I can’t see them sometimes. I know this makes me sound like an ingrate. I resemble that remark. There are people in the world that would kill for my life.

And still, there is the side of me that needs to bleed.

I hurt myself all the time, just to make sure that I am still in existance. I don’t take a razor to my arms anymore. I don’t gash myself with knives any longer. What I do, I do passively. I rip the cuticles from my nails in one swift move, knowing it is going to hurt like crazy and bleed. I leave my hair dye on a little too long so my scalp burns. I take showers in water that would make other people blister. I make myself sick, physically…like a sick form of Münchhausen Syndrome. I will do things that make me suffer because it is the only way I can feel. I hurt myself emotionally too, setting myself up for disappointment over and over again. I betray myself constantly. I set myself up to be fired from jobs I love because I don’t feel worthy of keeping them. I keep very high expectations of people and then, knowing full well they couldn’t possibly measure up to them…I allow it to disappoint and discourage me. It gives me a reason to be angry at someone…

someone other than myself.

If you met me on the street, you wouldn’t have a clue about this girl. Not one iota. You would think I am the most well adjusted human being on the planet. I am funny. I have a great sense of humor and sense of self when put in all sorts of situations. I am full of grandiosity. I am humble and nice. I am polite and respectful of others.

And I am suppressing the beast inside.

As I get older, it gets a little easier, but not much. The medications have helped a lot. I don’t feel as angry all the time. I don’t want to hurt myself too much anymore…but I still have moments, like this one, right now where I wish I didn’t have to answer to anyone. I wish I could cut myself or someone else. My husband, my beautiful and perfect husband doesn’t understand this part of me. He accepts it, but he doesn’t understand it. It’s not part of who he is. He suffers in a different way…a more logical and realistic way. He will throw himself into his work or do a chore that helps him to let off some steam. Sometimes, he will smoke a joint to relax. Whatever works for you. Me? I’d rather engage in painful activities. I want to have sex often, hard and brutally. My husband slaps me on my ass when we fuck. I enjoy that, but if he knew how hard I wished he would hit me, I think it would sicken him. I told him once to grab me around the neck when he is behind me. He will, but only for a moment or so before letting go. The man is not capable of hurting me, not physically or emotionally. That’s probably a good thing, because I tend to do that all on my own.

“You shut your mouth
how can you say,
I go about things the wrong way.
I am human and I need to be loved,
just like everybody else does.”

There is salvation in being alone sometimes. I have the house to myself tonight. I want to take some valium, percocet or vicodin, have a drink or two and then come back and re-read this article. I will dare myself not to erase it. Just another form of hurting myself without cutting into my forearms or my thighs. I need the pain of knowing that I wrote all this down and someone will be disgusted or disappointed by what I have to say. But, I will wake up in the morning, throw on my dress attire for work, pick up my child from school and make dinner at night. No one will be the wiser. It will keep me the perfectly pristine housewife and mother that way and the PTA will never know my dirty little secrets.

I wish my husband was home. I miss who I am when he is around.

Originally posted here.

I’ve been so anxious at work, so depressed at home, that I haven’t had time to think through what I’ve been going through beyond, “gotta get outta here” and “gotta try something different with the meds.” Both are right, but I’ve been feeling like I’ve been living in tunnel vision for weeks.

I had a brief talk with my immediate boss about the crazy and abusive behavior of the big boss, which has been the cause of my sleepless nights and anxious, teary days, and when posed the either/or of “should I take a leave, or just quit?” he was strongly in the leave camp, but added, “I have enough bad karma to be mad at you if you left. You have to decide what’s healthy, what you can put up with.” So that was a bit of a relief, because other things aside, I’d hate to never speak with him again if I left.

I also had some “progress” on the headache/dizziness/depression front, in that I had a head CT (negative) and a long talk with my lovely shrink about my past month & a half. She thinks it’s a metabolic reaction of the lamictal with the increased effexor. Since I’d had occasional migraines on the lamictal before this recent dose increase, she thinks I need to come off it. I’m not happy about that– because within four days of starting the lamictal last June, when I was in the depths of despair, it had kicked in, and literally was a lifesaver. I hate to let go of something to which I owe so much gratitude, sanity, creativity, and joy. But at the same time, it’s not working anymore. The headaches and dizziness are getting worse, not better, and I can’t tolerate them and try to work, or figure out what to do about work, at the same time. So we talked about other options, and she wants me to consider lithium or Depakote.

I’m frightened of both. Lithium, because my father had a girlfriend who was manic-depressive, on lithium, and still not controlled. I know I’m a different case, and that it’s the gold standard for a reason, but that past experience continues to taint me. At the same time, though? The weight gain effects of Depakote terrify me. I’m a former bulimic, have a huge comfort-eating problem, and a massive oral fixation to boot. No pen cap is safe around me. I will always have issues with my weight, even though I’ve been pretty ok the last 10 years. At the same time, though, my mother and my aunt, who if you saw us all together in a photo, you would automatically know we’re related? Both over 250 lbs. And that’s without Depakote. I’m terrified of what would happen, even with trying my best.

Also, a really whiny, self-indulgent part of me does not want to give up my nightly glass of wine. Alchohol is a lot more contraindicated with these two drugs than with the lamictal, and I just don’t want to give my wine up. But if I have to, I have to. I actually defended a doctor years ago in a case where a bipolar on lithium ended up with tardive dyskinesia, a parkinson’s like neurological deterioration, because she was an alcoholic and continued drinking all the years she took the lithium. She was pretty much wheelchair-bound by the time the case made it to trial.

And the last part? I am terrified about what will happen to my mood during the taper down. I have a lot of work scheduled in the next month– I don’t want to hand it off, because these are my personal clients, not the firm’s, and at this point, I sort of feel like they’re all that I’ve got. But at the same time, it’s going to suck, to put it mildly, decreasing the lamictal to zero, then starting the lithium. (She doesn’t want to do a “close taper,” because there isn’t a lot of research on it since lamictal is still new in the bipolar formulary.) My husband asked me if I was going to take the end of the lamictal taper off, and it tells you how tunnel-visioned I am that it simply didn’t occur to me to reschedule stuff that week, rather than hand it off. It’s true that “I will be out that week for medical reasons, and need to reschedule.” No one else needs to know more.

It’s all too much, or almost too much, but it’s got to be done anyway, and I am scared shitless. I just hope that in response to all the resumes I am sending out, I don’t get a crucial interview on what might turn out to be a dream job, the week I’m off my mood stabilizer, and starting another. That would be a little too interesting.

I have a psychological disorder with symptoms of anxiety, depression, and a touch of paranoia. Do I know distinctly what I have? No, I do not. Three psychiatrists gave me three different diagnoses – paranoid schizophrenia, manic depression, and schizoid affective disorder – and so I lost faith in the solidity of labels.

So, I have a disordered brain for which I take a particular pill, which I will call Fabulon. I love Fabulon. It has done wonders for me. Last January it dug me out of a particularly nasty spell of anxiety that had me hiding under blankets on the couch for a week and spiking fevers every time I even thought about leaving the apartment, and since then, it has managed to keep me pretty even keel without any nasty side effects. Every other drug I have tried has dried out my mouth, turned my pee green, made me too nervous, made me too tired, given me migraines, caused sexual dysfunction, and generally has not alleviated my poor self of the burden of The Crazy. Fabulon does, though, and I love it.

Of course, my love of Fabulon comes from its effects once I have already adjusted to a new dosage and am on the sanity straightaway. Starting a new dosage is a strange, dreamy journey in which nothing seems to stick to me. Time fritters away from me, seeming both long and short, while I float in a permanent present. I lose track of the quantity of things, so it is easy to drink too much, completely overestimate how much money I have, and talk so loudly to the Palinode that his head hurts.

I am now in the midst of my third such trip. I experienced this at my first 10 mg dose, and then again at 20 mg, and now again at 30 mg, so it is familiar territory for me at this point, but it has not stopped me from behaving a little dottier than usual.

On Saturday afternoon, the Palinode explained to me something that he was going to do. What? I said. He went over it again. I have no idea what you are talking about, I said. He looked at me like I must be kidding him, and I could tell that whatever he had been talking about was not difficult to comprehend. That thing you are talking about? I said. You just go ahead with whatever it is, because I can’t understand a thing you’re saying. I still do not know what he was talking about. My brain recalls him sounding like the adults in animated Peanuts cartoons: wah wah wah wah wah, like a muffled trumpet.

On Sunday morning, I looked high and low for my purse and became convinced that I had lost it at the pub the night before. It wasn’t in the car we rode home in, it had not been turned in to the pub staff, and it was nowhere to be found in our apartment. I looked in the closet, behind the furniture, and even under the bathroom sink. Just when I was sure that my favourite bag of all time was lost forever, I pulled open the bottom drawer of my night table, and there it was jammed tightly in between balls of yarn, some bandaids, and an old cat toy. It was obvious that I had used some force to wedge it in there, but I have no recollection of doing so.

Last night, the Palinode put me in charge of ordering in some asian food for supper. I remember feeling quite confused in between consulting the menu in the yellow pages and talking to the lady on the telephone. I even had her read my order back to me, because something just seemed terribly off with what I was doing. I could not figure out what might be wrong, so I just went with it and hoped for the best. When the food arrived, I was stunned. I had ordered twice as much food as we ever order to the tune of $56. FIFTY-SIX DOLLARS OF ASIAN FOOD FOR TWO PEOPLE. It was ridiculous. By the end of the week, we will be so sick of noodles and bean sauces that baked potatoes are going to look pretty terrific.

The past two times that I have had to deal with a Fabulon dosage change, the more major effects lasted about a week, so I only have to contend with another three days of this brainless wonderment at the world’s turning. Until then, I plan on doing nothing more difficult than watching the world go by while I chug coffee to maintain wakefulness and work at remembering that one thing at a time that I can manage to hold in my head.

Of course, now that I have mentioned that I am supposed to remember one thing, I have lost it. Hopefully, it was not something important like having to pee or feed our cats. I guess I will find out soon enough if my chair suddenly becomes too warm or the cats are dragging their spindly bodies across the floor when I get home.

Wish me luck with the whole not wandering out into traffic thing.

(Originally posted at Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come)

Courtney sent this is the other day: Report questions generic antidepressant

I found this to be true with Wellbutrin and now the Synthroid I take for hormone replacement. I’m completely self-pay, so without nice doctors who give me samples now and then, I’m paying a ton of money per month for drugs. But I’ve found for myself that if I at least start out taking the name-brand drug for a few months and then try switching to a generic, I have a much better idea if it’s actually working the same, much like the example in the article. It’s worth the expense if it’s at all possible.

What have you all found?

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.

By Heather

Last week there was a segment on a round the clock news station. I was only half listening while typing away with the dog in my lap. I looked up quickly and noticed the caption at the bottom. It referenced the correlation between some medications and weight gain. I stopped nuzzling the dog and stared at the screen, not necessarily absorbing what was being said but instead furrowing my brown and nodding my head in agreement.

There warnings on the back of my medication all proclaim insomnia and drowsiness. Use caution when operating heavy machinery is written in bold. Before starting on my medications – given the rarity that I took anything stronger than midol for years – I looked them up. Thank God for Google, because it’s through there I found a number of warnings that not only included how Lithium might affect my ability to drive but how it also might cause weight gain. In fact all but one medication that I’m currently on for my bipolar disorder all claim to cause a change in weight as well as a possible change in appetite.

I’m almost ashamed to admit that at one point I wavered upon whether or not to take these medications because I am just slightly obsessed with the size of my ass, mostly in reference to it one day requiring its own zip code. Obviously it would have been irrational and irresponsible to base my need to fit into cute jeans over my need to not want to become violent towards someone who made the mistake of cutting me off. And yet for a moment I thought about those words “Weight Gain” and how it would be impossible to stave off the gain.

Of course in three months, the only weight gain there has been is due to my patetened combination of burritos and zero time at the gym, not because of a little bit of Lexapro.

It just keeps me thinking that even though I feel fine and better, sometimes it’s the side effects that get you. The weight gain, the complete relaxation turned exhaustion in the middle of the day, feeling like a camel and needing to drink 14 glasses of water a day, the way I sometimes speak very slowly and deliberately while walking around in a complete fog because of an anti-anxiety drug.

Today, I walked through the office immediately after taking something. Someone said hi to me and I said a quiet hi back. She then stopped me again and said Hello more forcefully. I apologized for my unintentional rudeness and mumbled something about being on meds.

“Do you have allergies?” She asked. “They always put me in a complete fog.”

I smiled. “Yes”, I replied “something like that.”

I feel like I cannot go to work or see people out in public. Over the last several days, every time I think of work or meetings that I have to go to, a burning sensation crawls up through my neck and behind my ears. Shortly after, the nausea starts. It is happening now just writing about it.

If I read for too long, the informations swarms behind my face, and I feel that I will drown in the too-muchness of it all. I turn to television, but it only seems to speak of heartbreak and violence with the occasional laugh track to tell us when the heartbreak or violence is funny. Food does not fill the holes it once did, and so I find myself craving hybrid foods that do not exist: fudge brownies that are like chocolate ice cream but do not hurt my teeth, donuts that are more like vegetarian spring rolls but still sweet, baklava that is more like mango chutney.

I like the things that I do outside of the house. There is no reason to be made so ill at the thought of them, but here I am, burning and nauseous. The same thing started happening to me late last January. I stayed at home for a week from work, battling my body’s stress signals just to make it to the bathroom. Since then, I take a medication at a low dose, and it worked well until I had a total laparoscopic hysterectomy in early July. It has proved less and less effective as time goes on, and now I feel that I am almost back where I started in January.

This week, I am going to make an appointment with my doctor to discuss an increase in my medication. Until early last week, when asked how I was, my reply was the usual Fine, and yourself?. Only a week later, it hurts to be asked that question. It makes me reflect on myself, which I sincerely do not want to do right now. I want to sleep or watch television. I do not want to know how I am feeling. It only complicates what would otherwise be a perfectly good flatline.

This is the reality of my illness that I have avoided confronting. Medications are not always perfect. I am not always perfect. If a treatment does seem perfect at first, that does not mean that it will always be perfect. This is the nature of life and change, but I do not want to fit this illness into human reality like that. I want it to be a tidy package, like a chair or a stop sign. I want it to be one unchangeable thing that I can rearrange when necessary.

I prefer to look at myself through a false lens, one that sees me as someone recovering, but it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that that is not the case. I am not recovering. This thing, this illness, is a part of my life, and going back to my doctor to alter the dose of my medication is a big step for me in admitting this to myself. I usually throw up my hands and run away when treatment does not succeed the way I had hoped. By staying the course, I am saying Yes to something to which I do not want to say yes.

I do not want to say yes, and yet I must do it.

There should be a place
where all the undesireds are winnowed out,
and we are pared down to our best essentials,
like naked babies before their first poop,
wholes before they fall to their first chaos.

I do not want to say yes.

(Originally published at Schmutzie’s Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come)