RealMental

Walking the hallowed halls of my son’s school, I am faced with awkward sensations and feelings. As a human, I tend to project my “issues” outward. Therefore, it is no surprise that a much younger version of me comes out and walks simultaneously with the grown up part of me, clomping through the halls together looking like only one person.

In the beginning of the school year, I was angry that I had to experience these sensations and feelings, thinking it was unfair that I could not just walk into the school and enjoy it.

Why do I always have to look for “the dirty“? Why am I always on alert, afraid to miss a “sign”?

An old belief, built within my psyche was that, as a child if I could’ve “seen it coming” I could’ve stopped it from happening. (Or so that belief would like for me to believe).

If we just stay on alert for the rest of our lives, it’ll never happen again. Not to me, not to you, not to anybody. As most survivors know, this sets up some very stringent mental puzzles and maneuvering that make you weary from lack of rest, and close relationships almost impossible to have.

One of my favorite things when walking the halls to my son’s classroom is scanning the pictures/poems/projects that the teachers hang outside of their classrooms on the cold cemented walls. The kids’ artwork, projects, lists of things they love to do, and what they would do if they were president.

Very rarely do I ever see other “grown ups” reading them with the fervor of being at the Guggenheim as I “think” I do. Then I wonder if that means there is something wrong with me, since I don’t see other parents doing it. The voice that tries to tell me once again, I am not measuring up.

Hey voice, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Sometimes, the kids in his class tell me things that make me want to grab them up and save them from their futures. I watch them with wonderment, and I know I am not looking at them through my adult eyes, but rather the younger version of me that didn’t have the freedom to be a child when I was a child (due to being “on guard”).

I love observing children, it’s like the feeling of awe you get when you see the ocean for the first time.

Some times, the kids in my son’s class tell me things. One child recently told me that he is trying to stay out of trouble because he loses private time with his mom when he gets into trouble. One told me that they couldn’t afford napkins, she is also the one that always grabs me desperate for a hug. These things make my heart break a little, knowing it isn’t up to me to rescue every one.

This is vastly different than what I would have written a few years ago, back then I thought I could rescue them all. Each time I go, it gets better. It is a slow process, right in line with the work I am doing in therapy for this stage.

And, I do know that each one that I hug, praise, smile with or laugh with has the same chance that I did. I still remember those people in my life from my youth that made a point to stand out and listen to me. While they couldn’t save me, they certainly left their mark of kindness on my heart.

Who’s to say that wasn’t rescue enough for me? I am one of the lucky ones, I will keep surviving. Anything less would make it seem that the bad people have won. I can’t live with that.

It scares me that I, the crazy one, seem to understand best what’s going on in my mother’s head.  It also scares me that despite all the harm that she’s caused me over the course of my life, that I am also the most diligent at spanning the 3000 physical miles and 3 million mental and emotional miles in order to check in with her.  How scary that I, the one who hates and loathes her with much of my being, am the one who’s the most responsible.

My aunt, an older sister, has no insight into the mania/paranoia/delusions, and still takes it personally when my mother lashes out at her during an episode.  Almost a year from mom’s first diagnosis, she’s only now beginning to understand that distancing isn’t just necessary, it’s a lifesaver.  Granted, she’s got her own issues going on, and isn’t yet properly medicated and/or in a working therapeutic relationship, but you’d think that a lifetime of sisterhood would lend her better insight, better tolerance, than I.

My younger brother, the summa cum laude biochemistry graduate from an Ivy League school, perfect-scorer on his MCATs, decade-long pharmaceutical reasearcher who’s practically his own controlled experiment in SSRI’s, MAOI’s and tricyclics, tends to treat it all as pathological.  He doesn’t think, or doesn’t want to think, about the problems of underlying personality (narcissistic to the point of delusion) and the way they factor in to the difficulty to date in managing her disease.  He doesn’t yet get how the lack of a proper med combo to control her manic swings isn’t just the mania itself, but is further fed by her narcissistic insistence that she knows best when it comes to discontinuing her antipsychotics– she’s no longer feeling paranoid, and the voices aren’t so loud, so why shouldn’t she, she knows herself best– and so he thinks that it should be enough just to tinker with the meds until she’s on a better mood stabilizer and an antipsychotic that work.

And her psychiatrist, who seems to know what he’s doing, but he only sees her every two months and not usually during her worst manias, because she’s become a clever liar and because she cycles every six weeks?  Well, he just doesn’t see her when she’s bad, when she’s calling in the middle of the night, wanting me to do something from 3000 miles away, when she can’t even write down the phone numbers that I look up for her because she says she can’t find a pen or can’t make her hands form the numbers, or more usually, that “God says I can’t call them, you have to,” or that “God made the phone stop working, except for the speeddial.”  He doesn’t see that.  He also doesn’t see the narcissism at work, erasing the memories of those episodes in the aftermath, so that she says “oh, no” when I remind her what happened and tell her to update her speeddial.

Someone has to put the fear of God into her, and my attempts have failed.  I can’t make her stay on her antipsychotic.  I can’t jolt her from her narcissism, provoke the rock-bottoming that is sometimes necessary to break through that lying self-regard.  But if I can threaten her independence with the assistance of the county mental health social workers, and threaten to lock up her bank accounts against her spendthrift tendencies, make it so that someone out there is checking in on her every two weeks?  That might do it.  The concern of people who she ought to love enough to listen to isn’t doing it.  And frankly, if she never spoke to me again because of it?  I’d be happy, so long as she took her damned meds and went to therapy and did the stuff she’s supposed to do to manage her disease.

The problem is, she’s never acted like a grownup my entire life.  And I’ve been too much of a grownup since I was barely out of toddlerhood.  It doesn’t so much scare me that I, who still struggle with managing my own bipolar, know best what she’s going through.  It scares me that I will have to continue to mother a mother who never mothered her daughter, and that I will always know best, that no one else will step in to fill the gap.  It scares me that I will always be her mother.  I don’t want to be her daughter, or anyone’s daughter.  I don’t want to be her mother, her anything.  I want a chance to find a “just me” that doesn’t require those roles.  I want relief.

Sometimes, I think our partners have the patience of saints. Is it just me, or do we Real Mental types tend to find the most supportive, understanding, kind partners, ever? From what I’ve read on others’ blogs, it’s not just me. Our mates, they are pretty awesome. I’m so very happy I finally found someone who understands me and accepts me for who I am.

Here’s an example:

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that my jaw is currently wired shut because of a recent jaw surgery. Because of this, I’ve had to find alternate ways of taking my meds. The Celexa can be crushed and sucked back with some juice, but the Wellbutrin is a slow-release tablet and can’t be crushed. It has to be swallowed whole, which is a bit of a problem when your jaw is wired shut.

While I was in the hospital following the surgery, I devised a clever way to take my pill. I pushed it along my top gums until it reached the very back of my mouth, and then I finessed it into the small crack behind my back molars. I poked and prodded and sucked at it until it popped through the other side. To help it along, I also doused the thing in juice from a syringe.

I was pretty proud of myself, and my surgeon was most impressed. I just knew that I had to find a way to take it, because there was no way in hell I was missing a single pill. It had taken me so long to get to a place where my meds were in the proper balance and I felt like a human being again. I couldn’t take the chance of jeopardizing that.

Late last week, I noticed that my mouth tasted funny. Bitter like crushed pills. All day. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe one of the fragments of Celexa had caught in my wires and left a lingering taste? I put it out of my head. Then, on Saturday, Superstar and I were out and I noticed something caught behind one of my back molars. I coaxed it with my tongue until it came free and lolled it around my mouth, trying to figure out what it was.

It dawned on me that it was the casing for one of the Wellbutrin tablets. Instead of slow-releasing in my stomach, it had done so in my mouth. I wasn’t sure how long it had been there. I didn’t think much of it and swallowed the casing.

On Sunday, we went out to the movie Juno. At the end, I cried my head off. Not just cried. Bawled. Lost it. I mean, I controlled myself in the movie theatre pretty well, but if there had been no one else around, I would have had a big sob fest for a few hours, at least. It was a good movie, and every woman I know has cried at the end, but my reaction surprised me. I passed it off as mid-30s ticking biological clock hormones, and Superstar and I went for coffee.

For some reason, I decided this was a good time to talk about the future of our relationship (since minutes after seeing the movie, I decided I wanted to pop out babies, and soon – huh?) and we end up getting into this big, emotional discussion where I sobbed my head off almost the entire time and said ridiculous things like “I don’t respect you.” Yes, it was over a specific issue that is a bone of contention for us, but I have no idea why I said that. I certainly didn’t mean it. I will never be able to erase the memory of the hurt look on his face after I said those words. It aches just to think about it.

We got through the discussion and I managed to convince him that I had said the wrong words and he misunderstood me. We made peace and left the coffee shop. As we were walking out, I became aware of all the people around us and wondered if I had made a spectacle. Then, we went home and lay in bed while I cried for a few more hours about nothing in particular, and he stroked my back and tried to make me feel better.

The thing is, I’m usually not a drama queen. I certainly don’t cry in public, and Superstar and I rarely argue or have upsetting discussions. But this day, he got a big dose of The Crazy. And then some.

It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized the emotional rollercoaster was a result of the wonky dosage of Wellbutrin from the stuck pill. It was then that I resolved never to go off my meds. I don’t want to know what it feels like to be that out of control and out of touch again.

And as for Superstar, I thank my lucky stars that I found him. I’m not sure I could be so patient if the tables were turned.

I was at dinner last night over at my father’s house, and a friend of his was also in attendance. This friend is a well-intentioned person, but he never shuts up, he talks out of his ass, and he never listens. He’s irritating as all get out, and I often feel badly about not being able to really engage much with him in conversation, but he’s just too much stimulation for my misfiring neurotransmitters.

I forgot how we got on the subject, but at some point during dinner, he started going on about how he was sure that most depression diagnoses these days were over-medicalized and over-medicated, and that most of it was stuff that people “just had to deal with” as part of one’s life experiences. That simple proposition? It’s possible. There are probably some people who don’t need antidepressants, and just need some cognitive/behavioral therapy to learn some coping skills or change their conduct. But I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Whatever works, really. If medication gets you through a hard spot? Go for it.

But of course, it didn’t stop there. He started going on about how all mental illnesses were so subjectively diagnosed, and that a lot of things could be just gotten over. He started talking about how he would just talk himself out of funks as a teen, or make a change of scenery– as if his experiences settled the question. My dad tried to push him off with a subtle “what the hell are you talking about?” but that didn’t work. He continued, acting as if his personal experiences were sufficient empirical evidence to solve the human condition. That, and the experiences of one or two people he’d known. At that point, he started questioning biochemical and hormonal imbalances, which got my brother, the pharmaceutical researcher, into the fray. My brother was trying to explain the science of the SSRI’s, the dopamine inhibitors, the MAOIs, the typical and atypical antipsychotics. I chimed in with facts about how the brain electricity is sufficiently different in bipolars and schizophrenics to be detectable on MRI. You can see it, I said.

Neither my brother’s objective expertise nor my own hard-won knowledge could cause this person to admit his lack of foundation, set aside his skepticism, or admit he needed to learn more before issuing blanket statements. I shut the argument down, finally, by saying “I don’t care what you say, lithium rocks.” Everyone else laughed, he finally realized he needed to shut up, and we moved the conversation to another topic.

As we were driving home, my husband asked me if I was upset by this man’s know-nothing bloviating. I told him I was and I wasn’t, in part because I knew he didn’t mean any personal harm, and in part because I was so used to this dolt’s utterances on any topic that I knew there was no use in really engaging with him about it, because he’d continue as he always did until something happened personally to him to change his mind. What I am more upset by is the general reductionist attitude that far too many live by—“if it’s never happened to me or anyone I know, then I don’t believe it.”

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The problem with this attitude is not just the impact on the people around them who do have different experiences—although that’s bad enough, since it affects the way they vote, the way they educate their children, and the way they affect the general level of human happiness. Denying someone else’s experience just because it’s never happened to you is reckless cruelty of the highest order. The insistence on personal experience not only connotes a lack of imagination and empathy– it also connotes a lack of preparation.

When these blinders-on pragmatists are faced with something never dreamt of in their philosophy, they deny it, ignore it, misname it, suppress it, and otherwise completely fall apart. Having never experienced real depression, or mania, or delusion, there is shame, fear, anxiety—because their unwillingness to be curious about and open to other experiences than their own impairs their ability to deal with something new when it comes along. It draws the process out longer than it needs to be— all us believers end up having to take care of them in the meantime, and then listen to them preach to the choir when they do come around to their real condition.

There’s a Buddhist principle called “beginner’s mind.” Essentially, the idea is that you should always be open and accepting of new ideas, new possibilities—to close your mind, and consider yourself an expert, is to fail to be open to all the experiences life can show you—if you’re willing to look for them. I try to practice beginner’s mind, and it’s hard, because it means I have to re-think previous opinions, and even discard things I thought I believed. The temptation to be a never-believer is thus understandable—it’s much easier. But I’d rather be open, and uncomfortable, and evolving, than closed, negating, and nullifying.

What would you rather be? A blue sky, or a black hole?

You know how in action movies, when there’s a bomb set to detonate any minute, and they call in the bomb squad, there’s always that tension-heavy scene with the guy defusing the bomb? You know the one I mean. He’s got all these wires, and he has to cut one to de-activate the explosive device, but there always seems to be some doubt as to which wire it is. He hovers his snippers over one, then the other, having a debate with himself: “Is it the red one? No, I think it’s the blue one. No, definitely red.” He looks like he’s on the edge of a heart-attack, and rightfully so, because if he snips the wrong wire, then KABLOOEY.

Well, I feel like a bomb squad guy sometimes. Only I seem to have MUCH less information about the construction of the bomb, and even if I do manage to snip the right wire, it may stop the immediate threat, while merely re-setting the bomb to go off at another time. And here’s the Big Stupid: Sometimes I see the right wire, know what I can do to at least make the clock stop ticking…and I don’t do it. Because it would hurt my pride, or my feelings, in some way. Most usually it would require me to, you know, SHUT UP. And I’m not such an expert at the shutting up.

We’ve recently had a bomb squad incident in our life. Everything’s OK now, crisis averted, no one went off the rails, nothing exploded (well, maybe some small explosions, but nothing nuclear). But while it was going on, it was miserable. We were both miserable. And I couldn’t help, which is frustrating. I could keep from making it worse, but that was about all that was in my power. Part of the reason that I couldn’t help is because I was faced with thought processes that, to me, just did not make any sense. There were questions I couldn’t answer, because I simply could not view them in a rational light. Most frustrating of all, things kept going in circles–there was no logic which could prevail that would lead, in a linear fashion, to a CONCLUSION. For someone like me, this is crazy-hard.

I like to think I learned a little from our recent difficulty, and I hope that I can utilize it in the future. But, MAN, is it ever not easy. I have long known that there are certain “symptoms” of what I think of as “bipolar logic,” and also that there is no use in trying to circumvent that thought process in my husband. It won’t last long, and if I can just SHUT UP and ride it out, and not feed into it or make it worse, it will be over even faster. Have I mentioned how difficult that last part is for me? The shutting up part? Because it is. Particularly suppressing the impulse to say, “You are acting like a CHILD,” which, as you can imagine, really helps things get resolved. /sarcasm.

For me, dealing with a problem goes something like this: See problem. Recognize source of problem. Evaluate whether anything can be done toward solving problem. Take what steps I can to actively accomplish those things, including engaging the assistance of others who might be able to help with problem. Move on. Admittedly, with me, there’s a lot of anxiety and stress wrapped up in this process, but I don’t waste a lot of energy on things I can’t control–I concentrate my anxiety on the things I can do something about.

This is not far from my bipolar husband’s approach to problem-solving, either…eventually. But first, for him, a stressor is a “trigger.” It puts his brain into a fight-or-flight mode that is counter-productive to the problem-solving process. He stalls after that first stage, and gets caught in a loop of arguing with the problem, usually about how unfair it is. He gets combative, first railing against the upsetting thing itself, then eventually at me, because, you know, I’m THERE. I’ve gotten better at not taking this personally, though I won’t lie and say it doesn’t hurt. In my mind, I’m his ally, his supporter, his #1 fan, me and him against the world, but for a little while in his mind, I am “other,” and I am, like everyone and everything, “against” him. I really hate that part.

After this last storm passed (and you know, I should mention here that TREMENDOUS progress has been made by my husband in the last few years, and that things that would have previously sent him into weeks-long tailspins now maybe just partially derail him for a day or two), and Alex was apologizing to me for his misplaced anger and hostility (he doesn’t call me names or abuse me in any way–he just directs some of his anger at the only other person around: me), I took the opportunity to ask him, “When this was going on, and you were going around and around in circles with your thinking, and lashing out about things–like the weather–that no one could control, what would have been a response from me that would have helped in any way?” He didn’t have an answer for me. I asked, because, when a storm in brewing in his brain, there really seems to be no “correct” response that I can make–no matter which wire I snip, something’s gonna get asploded.

I’d like to think that I’ve at least gotten better about not making the explosions BIGGER, which I used to do with no small frequency, pushing buttons that I should have been mature enough not to push, especially since I was supposed to be the “rational” one, whatever that means.

Support groups, online forums, and written resources everywhere are full of advice about how not to escalate irrational behavior, or at least how to remove yourself from the equation. I’m pretty much all set there. I know all the buzzwords and phrases: Detach, Do Not Engage, Take Care of Yourself. That’s all fine and good. But–and here is where I expose my inner co-dependent who never really goes away–when someone I love is in pain, and is suffering due to non-productive anger and frustration…isn’t there something, anything that I can do to alleviate that at the time, instead of just retreating to an emotional storm shelter and waiting it out?

Ironically, these questions have only just begun plaguing me since the “bad times” have become far less frequent, less lengthy, and with less lingering aftereffect. Maybe I’m fooling myself into thinking, since things are so much better, that if I just had a better bomb squad, we could avoid this kind of tension altogether.

Does any of this make any sense at all?

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.

There was a postcard on last Sunday’s Post Secret that hit me very close to home. It was of a picture of a wedding ring with “I don’t paint as much anymore” in text above the ring.

There were two comments below the postcard; “i don’t dance anymore”, and “I left my husband this weekend because I realized I didn’t laugh anymore.”

An old and familiar twinge danced within me. The twinge that draws a line from commitment, creating a shape that eventually equals death. I never dreamed of getting married when I was a little girl, I could not understand what would drive a person to tether himself or herself to one person for the rest of their life. Only I knew the truth, which was that wedding ceremonies were really a funeral in secret.

Every relationship I’ve been in, I’ve ended. Some of those relationships made it to the four year mark most did not. Rather than being “in” the partnership, I would spend a lot of time looking for their flaws, persuading myself into believing they were not the one for me. I would find something that stuck and I would begin to plan my escape.

Planning my escape is just something that I do, something that I’ve always done. Eating in a restaurant, if it’s suddenly taken over by aliens you’ll want to follow me as I’ve already come up with the escape plan. Driving in a car over a bridge and somehow the car veers towards the side and ends up in the water? I have a plan. In a relationship and having second thoughts, look no further I can create an escape plan for you.

To be honest, I have a few escape plans in the back of my mind now. It’s some kind of mental exercise, very much like my compulsive need to count.

Where am I going with this? Well, I’ll tell you. Despite what you’ve just read, I am married and I have children. I struggle with the idea of being married to the same person for the rest of my life. The reason is not due to the man I married, but because I am who I am. I still have that fear of losing myself, and I can tell you that I *have* lost some parts of me. I’m not so happy about it, but I’m learning to live with it.

I like to believe that my marriage will be a lasting commitment, one in which we both will continue to grow as individuals. I’m not a believer in “two halves make a whole” theory.

I believe your relationships should enhance who you are as a person and support you on the road to being that person (and vice versa). In turn, this will make both people better peoples.

I guess only time will tell and as with everything, it really is all about the journey.