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Married To It

December 21st, 2007

Jon Armstrong wrote a particularly open and informative piece at his blog, Blurbomat, regarding being married and a partner to a person who suffers with mental illness. I highly recommend it.

My Friend Named John

December 18th, 2007

Many years ago, I was a Shoney’s restaurant soldier. You had 90 seconds or less to the table, pick up dishes, food out in another predetermined measurement of time, and OMG it could be a shopper!

The mere thought of all of these rules frightened me, and being the shit test taker that I was, it only served to make me nervous and mess up.

John, our hunch-backed manager said of me one night, “she’s dropped everything but her drawers.”

John despised me when I first started waiting tables at HIS restaurant. I dropped things; I was rough around the edges, and without culture.

He was polished, he was smooth, he was at least 9 feet tall, and he made me nervous. This type of a person had always made me nervous; causing me to act like an idiot and asking very stupid questions. John wore a Christian Dior pin on his tie. One night, I asked him if that was his girlfriend. You can imagine his disdain.

Oddly, John and I became good friends after he got to know me better. He was an Aquarian too, so it was only a matter of time before he fell for my silliness and we became good friends. This friendship was never based in anything sexual or romantic, just a deep respect and admiration for one another.

It helped that I would scratch his hump back after the restaurant closed, while he counted money and did paperwork.

I followed him to another store in the same restaurant chain to work for him part time. The only reason I worked there was because he claimed he needed me. And golly, if you needed me then I was there.

There was one New Years Eve night that he begged me to work for him. I explained that I would definitely be under the influence of many substances, and if that were acceptable to him, I’d be there.

He agreed it was fine and added that maybe I’d even be a little more cheerful under the influence. We made a deal, and I showed up around midnight and as promised, and I was loaded.

He loved me and seemed to feel better when I was near. This is a common issue with Aquarian people; they are often misunderstood and looked upon as an alien subject. It didn’t help that John was at least 9 feet tall with a huge hump back.

He helped me to become a more polished person over our time together and I like to think I helped him be more humble. If I have support and admiration from those I respect, I can achieve great things. He was one of many along my journey that helped me to become a better person through friendship.

I lost contact with John somehow; perhaps my journey into addiction could be blamed. I’ve often thought of him and how much I really loved him and the friendship he gave me.

We were an odd couple, his height/my shortness, his being a polished Northerner, me being not polished and from the South.

I miss him. I just bet he’d be quite surprised with my life now, or surprised that I am still alive. I had heard through the grapevine that he may not be alive due to his condition; I’ve tried to look him up in Google but no luck.

I like to believe that he can hear my heart words. It offers him thanks and admiration for his friendship and care. It would like for him to know that I am sober, a mom with a beautiful family, and that I am no longer lost. Because of him, I became a better person.

Wobble and Spin

December 15th, 2007

I think about that cutesy image used to explain codependency from in the early 1990s that was so popular; the family as a mobile. We’re all strung by bits of thin white thread, dangling from bent wires. One of us moves and we all move, wobbling, swaying, affected. Spinning, spinning.

I make the mobile spin all the time these days, because I’m the one who says things out loud. I’m the complainer, the party pooper, the black sheep. I’m the crazy one. And that’s something I’m trying to embrace.

Losing my thin veneer of sanity and working with my therapist has given me a voice, and that’s scary. It’s scary for me and it’s scary for my family. I’m the one who says “Are you drunk? Don’t call me when you’re drunk. Don’t accuse me of things, because you’re in blackout mode.” And then I pretend saying it out loud didn’t scare the hell out of me. I’m the one who says, “You’re not going to throw a tantrum. You’re not going to scare the children. You need to be in control or you need to leave.” And then I pretend to not look for the best exit.

Pretending that things weren’t happening was their way of dealing with the madness, and witnessing – acknowledging – that things ARE happening is my way of dealing with the madness. It’s different this time, because I’m an adult and can and do protect myself. I can and do protect my children. Let them label me a bitch, a grump, an over-reactor. It’s different this time.

I like the mobile image, and I also dismiss it. If you are part of the mobile, you have no choice in when and how you move. Are moved. And while the others do affect me, still, I have decided they no longer will make me wobble and spin.

In the afterglow of pain and progress

December 11th, 2007

I can try all day long to explain to you what it is like. You would have some thoughts or opinions on the subject that you think would be helpful. I really wanted your thoughts and opinions to be helpful.

Yet, you would not completely understand unless you have walked the same path. The reason I know this is that I have been trying to explain it for a long time and I’ve been trying to find a logical solution to the drama.

I foolishly thought that other people could help solve the case. I really wanted these other people to help; I wanted it more than any one thing.

Pain is the greatest motivator, it forces you do something. That something isn’t always a positive action but it’s an action.

Sometimes you have to walk a long way in the other direction in order to see your true path. This could cause you to believe you’re previous steps were a mistake. Steps are never a mistake, they are like emotional foreplay for you to get where you need to go.

Time has been the only thing that gives me solace and answers. You know, “time”. How I despise that option sometimes. It doesn’t even feel like an option at all.

Something that I have learned is that my heart and my gut always know the truth. Despite this amazing ability to have truth reside within, the emotions always try and mask the answers. Emotions; we have them for a reason.

I know in my heart of hearts that she loves me. I know in my heart of hearts that no matter how hard you try and change that with your lies, contempt, and jealousy, she will still love me.

This relationship is not something you can control and it only serves to create a bigger wedge. Raising children is a big finger pointing back at ourselves. We must grow inside in order to provide all that we need to our children. We must overcome our petty jealousy, our animal like needs for immediate response.

I am a better person because of you. I would not have expected to ever utter those words, much less write them. You, my mortal enemy in a never ending battle. I wish you peace; love and whatever you need in order to bring you joy. By letting this go, I become free and I wish you the same.

The downside of healthy

December 4th, 2007

There many positive side effects to getting healthy minded and being present in your own life.

I think back on all those appointments I canceled because I would think I was “all better now!” and no longer needed any help. Or, the times as I was actually driving TO therapy wishing I were on my way to somewhere else, anywhere else but there.

My personal favorite, that creepy scratchy high pitched voice in my head that would mimic and taunt me with things like, “look at so and so, she doesn’t have to do therapy and SHE’S JUST FINE!”, or “why can’t you just let this stuff go and quit whining already!” “You are so fat; maybe if you just lost weight you’d be cured!”

Somehow, I got to therapy and somehow it worked. Without a doubt, it saved my life and it was worth all the hell in getting through it. I must say that the only reason that I even began digging around is that it affected my life and all my personal relationships. If it had not affected my daily living, why else would I have bothered? Truth is, I wouldn’t have.

With Thanksgiving down and Christmas and New Years just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about the down side of becoming healthy minded. One of those is trying to be around family members that are highly toxic and painfully poisonous to me.

Much like when I began dating again after my first leg of “serious therapy” was complete, my dating pool got smaller and smaller. I could see the “bad boy” and think lustful thoughts but I would think it through, and realize that it just wasn’t worth it to go down that road. I cared enough about myself not to even bother.

I figured I had no problem being single because for the first time in my life, I was having fun. And, not only fun but also I was sober. I got the job of my dreams, I could pay all my own bills, I came and went as I pleased and my life was mine.

All mine for the first time.

This leg of mental health work is more about other issues, more about the relationship I had with my mother and more about my codependency.

Holidays are just another word for codependency.

I wanted to ask the real mental community for some suggestions. How you handle being around people that you know are toxic and will bring you down if you just give them a moment of your time.

How do you handle this, and what are your escape plans?

Namaste,

Moonflower

I can’t explain what you won’t understand

December 3rd, 2007

The problem of mental illness is its invisibility– no wheelchair, no boils, no external signal that proves the existence of the condition.  Like a pain syndrome, or a dormant allergy, mental illness exists to the beholder only to the extent that they are willing to behold it—to believe it exists.  The other part of the problem with mental illness is its very mentalness—meaning that mental illness manifests itself it through words and deeds.  Trying to explain what’s going on in your head, to someone who’s not inside with you, makes no sense– literally.  There’s an underlying assumption that our thoughts and actions are under our control—such that the products of our thoughts, our words, our deeds, are intended.  From the beholder’s end, the crazy person had to have meant what she said, what she did, because why else would she have done it, unless she was trying to be cruel/mean/whatever? 

“Because I am crazy” ends up sounding like a lame excuse, but it’s true–  unless you are inside the crazy person’s head, you can’t understand that there is a lack of control, a lack of connection between what you intended, and what manifests itself externally.  When the crazy person is expressing thoughts, and acting on thoughts and feelings that are what she felt and meant at the moment, but which are based on a misperception of reality—psychosis, delusion, disassociation—how to explain it away when the episode is past, and say “I meant it, but it wasn’t real?”  How to explain that your lies, your accusations, your hurtful behavior, were based on an unreal paranoid perception, or an anger so overwhelming that the whole world is colored red—but again, that it wasn’t real, you didn’t mean it in the sense of intending to hurt, now that the episode is past?  Add into it the denial, the shame, the fear that we feel when we realize it’s happening again,  and we lie about what were are thinking, what we are feeling before the episode really begins, because we know you won’t understand.  It’s easier to pretend like your feelings and thoughts are connected to your words and deeds, and to not try to express, to in fact suppress, the swirl of emotions, the cycling thoughts, than to try to make you explain what you can’t.  Which can only lead to more explanations of words and deeds to untangle when the world is right side up again.  There’s an enormous leap of faith, of trust, that the outside observer is being asked to take—to believe what the crazy person is saying, afterward, even though the crazy person sometimes can’t trust their own mind.

I wish there were a flash animation online to show how increasing and decreasing hormone levels affect the map of the brain—your insight and memory, speech centers, emotions.  Likewise with neurotransmitters, the electrical impulses that misfire when the crazy brain isn’t working properly.  The analogy of serotonin to insulin works a little bit, and I’ve tried likening the misfiring impulses of the brain to a downed, live electrical line—who would go near it?  No one.  But the crazy person can sometimes lack the low blood sugar signals or the caution tape of the downed wire—making the “I can’t explain what you won’t understand” into a problem of “I can’t warn you about what I lack the insight to perceive.”  Therapy can help, but it can take years to identify the warning signals, to become self-vigilant enough to seek help at the critical point.  It’s better if you believe, and you watch with me, and you tell me I’m getting crazy again.  That is, if I am lucky enough not to have ruined our relationship last time.

The Cost of Crazy

November 28th, 2007

By jb

Being crazy is not a cheap endeavor. In fact, it is such a complicated endeavor that my health insurance provider has a separate branch for psychological care. So complicated, so expensive that every visit has to be pre-approved.

And apparently, even things that have been pre-approved can be denied.

I am currently in a rough-and-tumble battle with my health insurance provider over my psych testing. You know, the psych testing that led to be being diagnosed with, and promptly treated for, bipolar II. The psych testing that helped me answer some important questions in my life, although it was no quick fix, and never any excuse. It just gave a start.

In any case, this is the psych testing that made my year so much more healthy, so much happier, so much better. The psych testing that helped me uncrack my mind, that helped me start to pull together the pieces.

I take my Lamictal like communion bread, knowing that something was broken in me, doing this in remembrance and preservation of my real self.

When I talk about the cost of crazy, I’m talking about the monetary cost, the thing that can be most easily fixed. Crazy can cost a lot more than that: I lost friends, sleep, grades, my own morals, and I almost lost the person that means most to me. All of those things were hard–and in some cases–impossible to regain. Those are the things that should hurt, that should be hard to get together, that should take a concerted effort on my part to put back together because they are worth that time, that effort.

But the actual payment of my fifteen hundred dollar testing psych bill? The one I got pre-approved? The one that is constantly being denied for a whole host of contrived reasons, from “billed from facility instead of provider” to “not approved for outpatient care”?

That should be the easy part. And yet, it’s the one that has proved, somehow, the most difficult.

Originally posted here.