my journey through life with mental illness
The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.
— Robert Lowell.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
I am currently in a Klonopin haze after having a slight freak out this morning, so this may be incoherent.
Last night there was a huge ice storm where I live. People are literally ice skating in the street. I am taking the day to sit in silence and watch Big Little Lies, a year or two too late.
Christmas was, well, ok I guess. I got a lot of Amazon money, but my gift from the name drawing with my family hasn’t shown up yet. I’m pretty sure it’s an alarm clock that mimics sunrise, though. Sunrise is something we don’t have in Minnesota this time of year.
Everyone seemed to have a good time. I ate and pushed down the urge to scream. I hate the unnecessary pressure, the expectations to prove your love with thoughtfulness and money, the darkness, and the forced joy. I could do without the whole holiday season. Why does Thanksgiving have to be so close to Christmas? Why is New Year’s January 1st? It could be any time of year!
I haven’t had a drink in two years. Not because I’m an alcoholic, but because I get depressed when I’m hungover (I call it a shameover), and because it doesn’t mix well with my medication. But this year I’ve decided to be what I used to call an Amateur and drink champagne to the point of ridiculousness on NYE. I’m looking forward to it. And the subsequent day of rest, and then normalcy. Although normalcy in MN means dropping temperatures and 4 months stuck indoors.
My favorite artist is Edvard Munch. His paintings express things I can’t and his art changes with the seasons. Norway and MN have a lot in common. Summer is the only habitable time, for one. Also both are filled with gray haired Scandinavians with RBF, and sensible cars.
Anyway, I feel the emptiness that comes after days and days of sensory overload and I just want to lay down and watch reruns of the Office. So, today I will. And then maybe join the land of the living when the ice melts.
Happy Holidays, one and all.
Things have been hectic so I’m just going to do a brain dump.
I started this blog in a manic state and now I’m having trouble even looking at it. I’m so mad at myself for the things I did while manic, and humiliated that I have to deal with this.
My doctor prescribed 10mg more of abilify for me and it made me so tired I could barely stay awake for the drive to work, and I ended up sleeping 30 hours over the weekend. So, after complaining, they got me back down to my original dose and I feel like I can function. Sort of.
In the midst of all this I started a new job, which is always stressful. This job seems really repetitive and easy, which is probably exactly what I need right now, but for the moment seems overwhelming.
I’m a serial job-switcher. I blame bipolar. I haven’t stayed anywhere longer than a year and a half in the last 10 years. I wish I could freelance doing something, but I have nothing to offer, my great skill is data entry. I can 10-key like a son of a bitch.
In summation, my brain is chaotic, my life is chaotic, and we have Christmas to get through. I can’t wait for January 2nd.
During my recent manic episode my husband was so kind as to tell me I’m not bipolar, I just have really bad PMS. This made me feel both terrible and totally invalidated in a matter of seconds.
But, it made me think about the things people have told me over the years about my mental illness (or lack thereof), and how to ‘cure’ myself. Here are just a handful of misguided suggestions:
While I know people are well meaning when they recommend these things, they are ignorant of treatment, spreading dangerous information, and stigmatizing medication.
Also, please never buy me an “I hate being bipolar, it’s awesome!” t-shirt if you want to keep your thumbs.
I was wrong. Pretty much about everything I’ve written here. Maybe everything I’ve ever written. Or thought. Or said.
No mixed state for me. No reduction in Abilify. Instead, I got a full on manic episode and didn’t sleep for 4-5 days that I don’t remember very well.
I do know that in those 4 or 5 days I applied for countless jobs I don’t really want, signed up for every legitimate freelance writing service I could find, and started about 10 projects. I also planned Christmas for my family at 3 am one night. I hate Christmas.
It’s so disorienting not to remember things. It feels like getting blackout drunk and waking up with a shameover. I am humiliated and humbled.
Traditionally, I don’t get manic. I fall on the depressive side of the spectrum. I’ve heard people say that after a manic episode you have to have a depressive episode to balance things out. I hope that’s not true.
I finally was able to get an appointment yesterday with someone who I thought was a psychiatrist, but was actually a grad student who can’t prescribe meds. She told me to go to the emergency room and beg for Ambien and to sleep all weekend if possible. I can’t afford/didn’t want to go to the emergency room so I called my regular doctor. She refused sleeping pills but doubled my dose of Abilify.
So here I am, foggy, sitting in the wreckage of an episode. As soon as I start to feel like I’m better I get a setback. I distrust my brain and I resent it. We’re going through a rough patch, but we’ll get back together.
Time to pick up the pieces. Again.
I haven’t slept in two days and I’m currently not tired. Time is not real when you’re not sleeping. It could be today, it could be yesterday, it could be 5 am. How would I know?
All day I was crying. I guess a more accurate description is that all day water was coming out of my eyes. It seemed to come from nowhere and I didn’t know when it would start or end. I’m not depressed or sad, so that brings me to my conclusion:
MIXED STATE!!!!!
This is very bad timing for me. I start a new job on Monday and I can’t get in to see a doctor until Friday. I’m mostly stable, but when something big is about to happen I seem to lose it.
Before my brother’s wedding I had panic attacks and showed up to the rehearsal dinner with Ativan eyes. He got married the day after the royal wedding, and my insomnia was so bad even on Ativan that I stayed up until 6 am watching that stupid wedding I didn’t care about. Being cooped up in a hotel when you have insomnia is the first circle of hell.
Before my own wedding I just blocked everything out. I wasn’t really there, I was watching it all from above. Then I skipped dinner and spent the whole night smoking in my pretty white dress. I learned I hate weddings, even my own.
Other life events have had the same effect. Moving 5 times in 13 years definitely took its toll. When we moved overseas I had bizarre panic attacks where I would freeze completely and be positive someone was in the house. I’d get my knife and my heavy dictionary next to me and sit with my back to the wall until the sun came up. Because you can’t get murdered during the day, dummy.
This was all before I was diagnosed. I lived in denial for many, many years. When I finally decided to get help I went in for panic attacks because that seemed somehow less shameful than self harm and severe mood swings. I was living in England at the time and they gave me exactly five valium, which lasted about 2 days.
Now I find myself once again after a big move, with a new big job, and winter setting in, and my mood is changing.
I have only had one really big manic episode, generally for me it’s hypomania and severe depression. But this lack of sleep has me worried. I don’t have time to nurse myself back to health. I don’t think I’ll go in to full blown mania, I’m on too many mood stabilizers for that, but just about anything can send me in to a mixed state or depression when I feel this way.
I’ve read that mixed states are the most dangerous, when you are most likely to hurt yourself or worse. I can understand it. My legs are restless, I’m full of energy yet tied to the sofa, and, as Fight Club taught us, insomnia is just generally bad.
So I am seeing a new doctor Friday. I just need to sleep before then. I think I’ll try that now, even though I sit here wide awake, yet full of sleeping pills. Which seems appropriate for bipolar.
P.S. Keep anything that can burn me on a shelf I can’t reach.
EDIT: I got 4 hours of sleep before akathisia set in. I can’t stop moving my legs. Antipsychotics are fun!
I can’t sleep so I thought I would post some photos that remind me of being an undiagnosed, miserable human being who desperately needed help. And yet, I could put on a brave face and no one knew.
Here I am in Rome. I loved those jeans. That’s about all I loved. I didn’t want to be on the trip because my house had just been burgled and my anxiety was at an all time high. I didn’t sleep at all during our 4 day trip, except the night I drank so much I probably should’ve died. I didn’t want to be around my husband, either, so all the pictures he has of me I’m at least at arm’s length. Metaphor?
Still in Rome. Still angry and exhausted. Feeling guilty for not enjoying this amazing trip we were on, and feeling guilty for ruining it for my husband.
This was my favorite Edvard Munch painting in Norway. I fell in love with him immediately when I saw his winter paintings. I think we are kindred spirits, only he got the talent.
The Munch museum was a hard day. Once again I felt guilty for not having enough energy and not wanting to be around my husband. What I didn’t know is I was in the middle of a mixed state and an inch away from ending it all.
This is how I spent at least a month of my life when we lived overseas. I couldn’t move or speak. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but the idea that I wasn’t like everyone else was beginning to solidify.
My memories of this time are my husband screaming in my face for me to stop being a bitch and speak to him, feel something, do something. I couldn’t do any of those things, so I’d just roll over and go back to sleep for another week.
Here I am in Rhodes, Greece, on the trip of a lifetime. I love the beach and Greek food so I was excited. I had just completed my first half marathon and felt better than I had in a while.
Then my husband and I got in to yet another fight and he left me at the bar in the hotel. I didn’t have a room key or a cell phone, so when I finally figured out where he was I screamed my head off and we didn’t speak for a couple of days. I look happy enough in these pictures, but there was a storm going on inside.
Once again, I had ruined the trip of a lifetime.
I’ve been all over the world. I’ve had insomnia in at least 10 countries, full on manic freak outs in two, and at least one fight with my husband per trip.
I am grateful for my travels, they have made me who I am. But, once again, now and always, I’m ruining the trip of a lifetime.
I quit smoking yesterday.
Smoking has been a crutch of mine since I was 16. I always knew I would smoke, and after my first one that knowledge was solidified.
And I’m good at it. I can blow smoke rings. I look like a pro. I come from a long line of smokers and believe it’s in my genes.
But, I also come from a long line of quitters, and I have always known exactly what I was doing to my body and my lungs, which gave me anxiety (because what doesn’t give me anxiety?).
I’ve quit before. I think my longest time smoke free was a year. I don’t remember missing it or why I started again. But sometimes I go in to a fugue-like state and my car winds up at the gas station and I find I just dropped $30 on cigarettes when I technically “don’t smoke”.
So I’m giving it another try. So far I haven’t had any nicotine withdrawals, just an uncontrollable urge to go outside every hour. I expect the next two days to be full of anger and jonesin’, and many, many, hours of talking myself out of walking up to the Speedway.
I can do this. I’ve done it as many times as I’ve started again.
One thing I like to do to make life a little more tolerable is crafts. I’ve got heaps of crafty crap in my house. But it helps me forget my problems and makes my mind go blank. Like coloring. So here are a few of my favorite creations.
I need a new project.
My regular dinner a few years back.
I’m thinking of switching my meds. I’ve been mostly stable for about 6 years, since I went to McLean hospital in Boston and they got my meds right for the first time.
But I feel like things aren’t working anymore. As I said before I can’t read or understand things, I’m gaining weight at an incredible rate, and Abilify is making my blood sugar skyrocket.
The only thing is, I’m afraid of all other meds. I’ve had some bad experiences. When I took Lamotrigine I blacked out completely, fell on my coffee table, and bruised the inside of my leg so bad I could barely walk. Wellbutrin made me hallucinate and throw up, which is a fun experience. Seroquel made me eat myself out of house and home. Lithium did nothing but make my skin bad. And none of them made me stable.
I’m going to make an appointment tomorrow to talk to a doctor about it, but if anyone knows of any miracle drugs I’d be happy to hear.
I have a degree in English. I know, I know, that’s why I’m unemployed.
Reading used to be my life. I read everything. I love Haruki Murakami and Richard Yates more than I love myself.
But lately, because of Abilify I believe, I can’t read. It’s like a mental block. My mind wanders, the words blur, I read and can’t remember the last sentence and finally either fall asleep or get so upset I throw the book.
When I was hospitalized for bipolar I had the same thing happen. They told me to read something I was familiar with to ease back in to it. So I chose the Bell Jar, my favorite book. Not the best decision. I made the doctors nervous when I said I didn’t really think there was anything wrong with Esther and didn’t know why she made such a fuss.
But now, I can’t even read something I like. The words jump off the pages. It’s so frustrating. I want to read, everyone I know reads and wants to discuss books, and it leaves me with knitting and cross stitch to keep my mind busy. My brain is getting soft. Reality TV could have something to do with it. How will I find a job if I can’t understand process documentation?
So, I’m giving it a chance. I’ve got my new Beats on that I got for my birthday and I’m going to try to listen to a book. It feels wrong, like I’m not using the right part of my brain. But I’ve got to start somewhere.
Thanks, anti-psychotics.
Bipolar Bajillionaire