#mybipolar

”I am worried about you, I just need to know you are safe,” he said.

“I am safe.  I am not suicidal,”  I said from behind a locked door because I don’t want him in my space.

“You just said you were!  You were not answering the phone,” he said.

“I did NOT say I am suicidal and I did block your calls and you didn’t call the house phone, so not actually worried, this is the same game you play, crisis time to pause real life because NOW it’s uncomfortable for you.”

I am not suicidal.  I rarely have that feeling, and that has been an enormous relief over the past year.  If this was a year ago, that feeling would be paramount right now.

I make tough choices every day.  

There have been many more good, consistent days than not and that’s been for awhile.

The last month may have been the best I’ve had since I can remember.  When I get upset I have time to process it before I decide if it’s worth a reaction.  My reactions are not as big as they used to be.  In fact, I find myself watching other people and thinking, “boy, maybe they should have just had one cup of coffee because their nerves seem shot and it’s only 10am!”

That doesn’t mean I won’t say when I feel something is not okay.  It doesn’t mean my feelings don’t get hurt.  It means that “although I am a spiritual person, I don’t accept bullshit.”

There is a mountain of financial insecurity and stress on my shoulders every day.  Yes, it’s on his too, but he has no changes to make.  His answer is, has always been, and will always be to just keeping going in the same direction.

So although I have never individually felt better it doesn’t mean there are no problems.  It doesn’t mean it’s an ideal or perfect life and I recognize there are only so many solutions.

A year ago the anxiety and stress were so extreme I couldn’t function.  They were technically less extreme a year ago when it was difficult to mentally and physically function.  I would be paralyzed in the back room at work, crying uncontrollably or having to leave all together.

Today was a big fight.  And the pattern was there, except I am different.  I am not suicidal, I am not hoping to die, but I am bawling and miserable because he can’t see me outside of that, for all the growth I have had in a year, it’s still just his crisis to avoid real life.

Wouldn’t that be convenient right now if I was handcuffed and taken to the hospital?  No doubt who’s at fault then right?  For two weeks everyone can be in crisis mode and then everyone is sensitive for a bit after and you can pretend real life isn’t going on.  But even if I am yelling, even if I am angry, it doesn’t make me crazy or unreasonable.

There is a reason I can feel this bad in spite of the work I do to be well.  And feeling that bad doesn’t necessarily consume me, what consumes me is this. What can I do about it?

And the projection from him, about who I am?  That’s a lie.  And I wonder how long it has been a lie?  How long was I taken advantage of because my mental state was so damn easy to manipulate.

I know the truth.  I know me inside, so whatever anyone else thinks or says, wether correct or not, isn’t any of my business.  

I have worked too hard not to make more major changes, several of which are enormous losses to me.

There are some things about me that have not changed, thankfully, I feel deeply, my intuition is deep, my passion~negative and positive~are bigger than the average brown bears, that will always make a normal uncomfortable.

Todays post to the group at www.patientslikeme.com

I began individual therapy at age 13 for anorexia.  I generally felt like an alien, like this wasn't the planet I belonged on.  My first intentional overdose was at age 19 with an imipramine prescription; prescribed in my sophomore year of college for anxiety (I'd transferred mid freshman year to Canada, was married that summer and we began our sophomore year at the same university I'd left as a freshman).

It was on a vacation with my ex-husband and his sisters in Holland that I O.D.'d.  I was shipped back to the United States and within a few weeks was trying to jump out of a car my mom was driving.  I turned 20 in the psychiatric ward at St. Josephs in Bellingham, Washington.

I was best at running.  To University of Alaska Anchorage, then to Mankato, Minnesota, then back to the university I attended as a Freshman to finally graduate.  At graduation my first son was 6 months old and a year later his dad and I would be separated.

When I found out my high school sweetheart had divorced I called him immediately and returned to Petersburg, Alaska~the town I was born, had graduated high school and considered home.  "I don't know what is wrong with me," I told him, "but there IS something wrong with me.  I won't be normal."  

He loved me anyway and we've been together 20 years this June.  We have five children and it's a miracle I am here to tell the story.  I wasn't diagnosed until I was 30, the same year I had our twins.  At first it was a relief to have an answer to "what is wrong?"  

Unfortunately for the next 8 years it was a miserable cycle of prescription cocktails, which I abused and soon began drinking as well (I'd abstained from alcohol for most of my life, aside from one year of experimenting at age 13.  I have never been a fan of pot nor tried anything stronger than that recreationally).  I spent years in weekly counseling and monthly psychiatric therapy appointments.  At age 32 I was back in the psychiatric ward for a few weeks.  For all the treatment I certainly wasn't better.

But I was told it was a chemical imbalance, that it wasn't my fault, and I really didn't take responsibility for my actions, my behavior or the destructive variables I added to my life.  

My rock bottom was at age 38.  I was drinking on a daily basis combined with propranolol, lithium and and anti-depressant (which one doesn't matter, I'd taken them all).  I often added Lunesta or Ambien to the mix because, you know, sleep is important.

This was the third time I was admitted to a psychiatric ward.  My husband said, "I don't know if I love you anymore," my baby sister said, "I will take care of your kids, but I won't give them back to you if I take them it's for good."  I'd lost my job with a school district the year before.  I knew this was the point to end or begin.  I choose an outpatient treatment center in Washington State and lived seconds, minutes and a day at a time.

It was excruciating.  I learned that I am wholly and completely responsible for myself.  I learned to forgive myself all the evil I did to myself and to those I love.  It's been a six year process, each baby step leading to another one to take.  

I learned about aspartame poisoning (I'd drank at least 4 cans of diet coke a day since age 13) and quit using products with artificial sweeteners in them.

I quit drinking alcohol.  Eventually I quit all medications, the last straw was Lithium, which was wrecking havoc on my system and even at barely therapeutic levels made me ill.  I would gag every time I had to take one.

I learned about trans-fats and the harm they inflict on our bodies.  I worked diligently to buy food that would heal not harm me.

But, this is bipolar, and as over-diagnosed as it is, it's the best description of my struggle.  Last April my struggle was so daily, and this was a very healthy person in general, that I was making appointments for EST or TCS.  "Please," my husband begged, "just take something, anything, just to get through the summer."  I own a retail shop now, he is a commercial fisherman, he just needed me to get through a few months until he was home.  I didn't want to, but look at everything he'd stuck with me through.  I went to the Dr.

"Wellbutrin," he said.  

"No. Way." I responded.

"You could try LDN, it's not like other pharmaceuticals," he suggested.

I cried.  It took me days of researching to agree to the prescription.  I felt defeated.  All the work I had done to get everything out of my system and it was back to the pharmacy.

But it's been different.  The first day taking LDN I got ready for work without a meltdown.  I began being able to wake up in the morning, I slept better at night.  I had a buffer I'd never felt before, that TINY bit of time most people seem to have before reacting to stimuli, it existed for me.

It's been 10 months taking LDN and it's been an enormous increase in quality of life for me.  It was such an improvement to be able to function between 6am and 4pm that I accepted petering out at 4pm as a natural limiting factor, keeping me from overdoing it.  

Within the past month I quit drinking caffeine and began taking a probiotic.  I believe those two changes are what gave me a new normal between 4pm and 8pm, which is pretty incredible!  I also am not craving sugar like crazy since beginning the probiotic.

It's a daily thing.  Every single day I have to make choices to fuel my body with real food, not garbage, to rest when I am tired (fibromyalgia became my secondary complaint and compounded all other symptoms), and my mental health tool box is massive.

There IS something different about me, but it's not the story I was told at age 13, 19, 30, 32 or 38.  The best resources in my opinion are found at www.madinamerica.com and through organizations like www.LDNresearchtrust.org and doctors who are waking up and working to assist in patients healing themselves, like http://kellybroganmd.com/a-psychiatrists-perspective-on-antidepressants/ .  

A friend used the word HOPE recently and I told her, "I need to adopt that mindset when it comes to the mental health industry.  It's a broken model, a broken system, which has helped very few patients, and harmed the majority." 

I spent the first 22 years of my life doing all sorts of things. At first, they were mostly things that I was told or expected to do. Up until 18 I had a lot of responsibility for my siblings, and after I graduated high school I moved in with my boyfriend/fiance (whom I had been with at that point for a year), and his parents. I was to stay there for around 2 months and then enter into the military. I wasn't particularly fond of the idea save for travelling, but my ASVAB score and parents' military histories were a point of pride for my parents. I left, and came back exactly 3 weeks later with an inability to adjust to a military lifestyle. I had been placed in the psych ward overnight because I had a little bit of a breakdown over torn abdominal muscles and being all alone for the first time in my life. (My now-husband and I both have large families.) The doctors there suggested I see someone about post traumatic stress disorder, for some unpleasant things that happened to me when I was young. I never really followed up on that front.

Then, a lot of things started happening to me. Physical pain in my head, neck and abdomen that seemed to puzzle my doctors. In October of 2010, I got yet another diagnosis that was to be the last straw of any good feelings I still had about myself. I began hurting myself. I felt like my body was just so full of feeling and emotion, and it didn't ever work the way I wanted it to. Everything I did was tinged with pain or inability because of pain. I would use a knife to cut my skin just enough to see blood. I felt that that blood carried all of the emotion and pain I couldn't understand out of my body. I knew what I was doing was unhealthy; I would only cut places that were already bruised or scraped so no one would notice (I am clumsy by nature, so I had plenty of space, ha). Ironically enough, knowing that I treat myself this way made me feel even worse. I felt like, between my randomly hurting body, and my weird mind I was useless and hopeless. I wasn't good for anything or to anyone. I was also having trouble sleeping, which I had always had. It just seemed to be worse because of everything else going on, I suppose. 

Things progressed further and further, until around Christmastime, when I decided to leave my husband for a friend I grew up with and had been talking to for a while. This should have been a huge warning sign but even now, I can't tell you why I did it. I love my husband more than anything and he is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Why the hell would I do this? I went to stay with my mother, about 20 minutes away from our apartment.

I had had to work Christmas morning at 6 am, so on Christmas Eve I laid on my mom's couch trying like hell to get even a little bit of sleep. The last thing I remembered was it being 4 am and I was so exhausted. The next thing I know, I was in my mom's car, in the parking lot of my workplace. I had no idea how I had gotten there, although of course I must have driven. I started to panic and shake and cry. My memory is a little fuzzy here, but I remember calling my friends and husband and asking for help. They of course couldn't help me, but two of my friends (who worked with me) told me that I should call our supervisor. That turned out to be a horrible idea. While my boss isn't the worst person in the world, she is one of the least understanding, especially in this situation. She just kept interrogating me with the same questions, "Why are you crying? What are you so upset about? What's wrong with you?" I just kept crying and stammering and eventually just half-yelled, "I TOLD YOU I DON'T KNOW." 

After that, it was deemed unsafe for me to drive, so my husband took me back to my mother's, where I was to try to sleep while my family went about their Christmas activities. I think I might have gotten a little sleep off and on; I really can't remember. But around 2 am that night, I was on the phone with my husband in tears. I kept saying, "I just want to sleep, why can't I just sleep?"

Now, my husband was no stranger to bipolar. His mother's partner, who had lived with them since he was 7, was diagnosed bipolar and she and I had talked before in passing about how sometimes I knew exactly what she felt like. In fact, we had talked about me seeing someone when I was 18 - 19. I just never got around to doing it, until Christmas of 2010. I asked my husband to take me to the local public clinic. That all was an incredibly harrowing experience in and of itself, but eventually I got a psychiatrist and the best therapist I could hope for.

Every day is very different, sometimes even from one minute to the next. It's hard to explain to people sometimes, They don't understand how I can just feel something so intensely and so quickly, and how that same feeling can be replaced by another just as fast. They don't understand how I can't simply not feel something because I don't want to. I don't want to feel depression or immense anger, but there's only so much I can do about it,

Today is about being aware and informed about bipolar. Around 2% of the world's population lives with bipolar, and it's not just the afflicted who have to live with it. It can and does cause problems with family members and friends, which I like to think is mostly just from misunderstanding. The best thing you can do for someone who is bipolar (or if you are bipolar yourself) is to have good support and communication. Be patient and kind. Pay attention to the signs of depression, anger, or even mania.