bipolar? isn't that something I learned in poli sci?
I started writing this with one goal in mind, but as per usual that kinda got away from me. Instead is a long, but still abbreviated history of Me and My Bipolarness. You shouldn't judge once experience by another, so consider mine just another voice in the crowd.
I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 14, in 1993. I had been seeing a family therapist for years by that time, and she had been tracking my mood swings for some time. Finally tests were ordered (including one hell of a hilarious EKG) and poof we suddenly had an answer to a life-long question.
And when I say life-long, I mean it. Shortly before I moved out of my mother's house I ran across a box of old report cards, etc. I sat down and read through them. From pre-school onward, every single teacher (with one exception) noted my mood swings and/or brought up the possibility that I might be manic-depressive. I personally find this a mark in my teachers' credit since, hello, this was the early 80s and mental health issues weren't as widely talked about back then as they are now.
Anyway, this all means that 1) I started dealing with this at a young age and 2) I (or my mother) had already instituted behavioural controls that helped me function as a semi-normal little girl. Looking at it from my present perspective I was very lucky to have things happen as they did. No, really. When we found out I was manic-depressive my mother went and did research; she brought back books, articles and NPR pieces detailing the life experiences of all these famously creative and brilliant individuals that were "afflicted" with the same chemical imbalance that regularly reduced me to tears and a spot on the kitchen floor. I came to believe that my own special gifts, whatever they may be, were somehow bestowed upon me and regulated by my disorder. Instead of that being a damning realisation, it was a positive one. I was special, just like van Gogh, but with both ears still intact. The other part of the equation - the behavioural controls - have ended up being a huge blessing in my life. My mother, learning from her mistakes with my sister, set routines down for me: school, swim practice, dinner w/ news, homework, tv, bed at the same time every night. Of course this has been modified over the years, but god help me if I miss my bedtime - I am not a pretty picture if not in bed by 10 pm on a regular basis. Bless her heart, because mamacita ended up knowing just how to do things...She'd push, but most of the time just so far as to get me to actually try something. If I wanted to quit after that, it was all good.
Okay, so that's the background of my little tale.
I entered high school the year after I was diagnosed. My meds were finally under control (yay lithium!) but my personal life was in upheaval. I had to quit swimming, and that ended up being like trying to get out of a very evil sorority. Then I had horrible shoulder and back problems. On top of all that mom and I were going at it like gangbusters and I was the whistle blower on a cheating scandal at school, virtually assuring that I had no friends in my class to speak of. Things were very, very bad. That summer I tried getting into the gifted program, but lo and behold, they found out that I was, like, half gifted/half learning disabled. Nice little blow to the ego there! Mom didn't handle it in the best way -- I blew up at her, she blew up at me, knives were drawn and twenty-four hours later I was living with my father.
For the next two years I happily bumbled along: taking my meds, not really caring about my grades, trying to keep my head above water. Early during my senior year I realized that wait a sec, when I missed my meds I was this snarky dynamo, a creative force to be recokened with. And I could dream. So in the middle of October 1996, I went off my lithium for the first time. Everything was great - I had highs and lows, but my particular version of the disorder wasn't that severe.
I continued on like this until the fall of 1999. That's when things started to get interesting, especially as finals approached. I noticed that my mind was racing all the time. I couldn't slow my thoughts down enough to process, but at the same time I was kicking ass at school and at work. The only problem was that, well, I was getting a little delusional, with sides of hallucinations just for shits and giggles. I spent Finals Week running around thinking I was going to fail, almost taking up smoking to help with my stress. If I ever need to think back to how manic I was, all I have to do is remember my poli sci final -- I had been kicking ass in that class and my professor loved me. The morning of the final I was obsessively pouring over my notes outside the room and my prof. comes up, looks up at me queerly and firmly tells me to stop studying, "You know this. Now get in there!" His tests are horrible, very detailed and essay based. I was so manic by that point that I not only finshed the test in 30 min, but I wrote my answers verbatim from my notes, which were virtually verbatim from his lectures.
A week later and I was hiding under my mother's desk at work (we worked in the same department), crying and shaking and just wishing to all and sundry that my mind would just STOP. My mother called my old shrink, but as I was over 18, she couldn't do anything for me. My only option was to go to the Emergency Room. So my mother smuggled me out of the office as everyone else enjoyed Christmas dinner, and drove me across town. We had to sit in the waiting room for two hours I didn't stop talking the entire time. Once, I got up to use the restroom and I looked into that mirror and I could just picture my fist flying, breaking the glass, grabbing onto a piece and slashing my wrists - and I took great pleasure in knowing exactly the right way to do it. All I wanted was for my mind to stop, to be a peace for two seconds. In the end I started crying again because I didn't want to leave my poor mother alone in that waiting room with all those scary people, only to find her daughter dead in the bathroom in a pool of her own blood.
I had another chance to run away before I finally saw a nurse, a full six hours after we arrived. She was a horrid little thing, but she listend to what I was saying, to how bad my home life was with my father and sister and she said to me, "You're a terribly unhappy little thing, aren't you?" A-freaking-men. I was given some Ativan (bless) and packed up to the Psych Ward around the corner from the hospital proper. There, Will the Cute Orderly, took down my vitals and indexed my belongings and snapped my picture. They carted me off to funky smelling double room and I was out like a light. Mama came in at some point, bringing me cheap fuzzy blankets, underthings that were too big, a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide (note: NOT the book to read when you're in a psychotic state, same for Crying of Lot 49), and a Scooby-Doo lunchbox.
The next morning I was awakened at six by calls of "Frauelein Roper!" Ah, my favourite non-Will orderly. The took my temp (elevated b/c I had a cold, but alas, no cold meds for me!) and tried to take my pulse. Turns out I'm the undead. They couldn't find one the entire time I was there, heh. The days were long and boring, but I was happy b/c even though I was on suicide watch (no razors, shoelaces, etc.) I got to keep my shoes b/c they were my slip-on clod hoppers. I made friends with a few people, flirted with Will, and tried to stay out of the way of Mr. B the Mad Biter and Rose the Crack Whore.
Mostly though, I felt really bad because I had put my mother through this again. Now both of her daughters had a stint in the same psych ward. To this day, that's what haunts me the most.
The funniest bits to my three day stay: 1) I ended up smuggling the lighter around for my smoking friends and 2) There was a Christmas tree in the cafeteria. It had blinking lights. Not a good move to have that around with people in our state. I would stare at it for a full half hour just making sure it really were the lights that were blinking and not my mind making them blink.
Don't get me wrong, the psych ward was not all wine and roses, but I quickly figured out how to seperate the wacky good from the scary bad. From this side of things at least I get to laugh.
After the hospital I got very...hard. It was almost like I stopped caring, except that I just stopped letting things get to me. 'Fuck off and die' is probably a pretty good approximation of that period. It mellowed into one of the best times of my life. Things were no doubt helped along by the close group of friends I gained through the Farscape-Shipper's List. I had friends in real life and online, my job was going well and so was school...my love life, well, from this perspective it's fucking hilarious. I found a doctor I liked and stayed on my meds like a good little girl.
Fast forward several years. For some reason I went off my lithium, and after consulting with my doc, we decided to see if I could handle things just by controlling the ADHD. Silly us. Around September of 2003 I started to slip into a depressive state, my first ever. I had all the classic symptoms, plus night terrors and daily anxiety attacks. I felt worthless and ugly, like all my friends had forgotten or turned against me, and I was terrified of ending up back in the hospital. I finally got an appointment with my doctor, and after freaking him the hell out (as I had always been relatively stable), he got me back on my lithium and bless him, got me my Ativan for the crippling anxiety attacks.
Somehow I made it through that semester in one piece only to emerge on the other side. Come 2004 I was an angry, hard, annoyed little person. It was like the after effect of the depression somehow. Just like after my manic episode, I needed to close down and take care of myself for a while - fucking graduate before worrying one bit about anything else. It's weird, because it was during this time that I discovered not only due South (which was about the *only* thing making me happy), but Hard Core Logo and The Headstones. I have never found a more perfect fit to my state of mind. It felt all right to be angry and conflicted and apathetic. I listened to "Picture of Health" at least three times a week for two months, and when I say that Hugh Dillon helped me graduate university, I don't mean it lightly.
I started writing this because I've had this notion, thanks in large part to Headstones lyrics, that my "affliction" is very much like an additction. It's my best friend, my worst enemy, but it's ALWAYS there. It will be with me till the day I die and I've accepted that. Even if I control it with drugs (which themselves take on addictive colors) things will always be a bit off. I can choose to go off my meds again - to get the brilliant manias and the crushing depressive episodes - just like falling off the wagon. I won't do it without good reason, but in the back of my mind I know that one day I might have to shake things up. I live in fear of an accidental pregnancy because of what the lithium would do to the baby. And if I did decide to become pregnant I would have to switch drugs or go off them completely for the duration, and that scares me just as much. Granted, that's not really part of the addiction issue, but it's something I'll have to worry about for years to come.
At the end of everything, I'm proud of where I am, who I am, and what disorders I have. It's all a part of me and I've never been anything different.
I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 14, in 1993. I had been seeing a family therapist for years by that time, and she had been tracking my mood swings for some time. Finally tests were ordered (including one hell of a hilarious EKG) and poof we suddenly had an answer to a life-long question.
And when I say life-long, I mean it. Shortly before I moved out of my mother's house I ran across a box of old report cards, etc. I sat down and read through them. From pre-school onward, every single teacher (with one exception) noted my mood swings and/or brought up the possibility that I might be manic-depressive. I personally find this a mark in my teachers' credit since, hello, this was the early 80s and mental health issues weren't as widely talked about back then as they are now.
Anyway, this all means that 1) I started dealing with this at a young age and 2) I (or my mother) had already instituted behavioural controls that helped me function as a semi-normal little girl. Looking at it from my present perspective I was very lucky to have things happen as they did. No, really. When we found out I was manic-depressive my mother went and did research; she brought back books, articles and NPR pieces detailing the life experiences of all these famously creative and brilliant individuals that were "afflicted" with the same chemical imbalance that regularly reduced me to tears and a spot on the kitchen floor. I came to believe that my own special gifts, whatever they may be, were somehow bestowed upon me and regulated by my disorder. Instead of that being a damning realisation, it was a positive one. I was special, just like van Gogh, but with both ears still intact. The other part of the equation - the behavioural controls - have ended up being a huge blessing in my life. My mother, learning from her mistakes with my sister, set routines down for me: school, swim practice, dinner w/ news, homework, tv, bed at the same time every night. Of course this has been modified over the years, but god help me if I miss my bedtime - I am not a pretty picture if not in bed by 10 pm on a regular basis. Bless her heart, because mamacita ended up knowing just how to do things...She'd push, but most of the time just so far as to get me to actually try something. If I wanted to quit after that, it was all good.
Okay, so that's the background of my little tale.
I entered high school the year after I was diagnosed. My meds were finally under control (yay lithium!) but my personal life was in upheaval. I had to quit swimming, and that ended up being like trying to get out of a very evil sorority. Then I had horrible shoulder and back problems. On top of all that mom and I were going at it like gangbusters and I was the whistle blower on a cheating scandal at school, virtually assuring that I had no friends in my class to speak of. Things were very, very bad. That summer I tried getting into the gifted program, but lo and behold, they found out that I was, like, half gifted/half learning disabled. Nice little blow to the ego there! Mom didn't handle it in the best way -- I blew up at her, she blew up at me, knives were drawn and twenty-four hours later I was living with my father.
For the next two years I happily bumbled along: taking my meds, not really caring about my grades, trying to keep my head above water. Early during my senior year I realized that wait a sec, when I missed my meds I was this snarky dynamo, a creative force to be recokened with. And I could dream. So in the middle of October 1996, I went off my lithium for the first time. Everything was great - I had highs and lows, but my particular version of the disorder wasn't that severe.
I continued on like this until the fall of 1999. That's when things started to get interesting, especially as finals approached. I noticed that my mind was racing all the time. I couldn't slow my thoughts down enough to process, but at the same time I was kicking ass at school and at work. The only problem was that, well, I was getting a little delusional, with sides of hallucinations just for shits and giggles. I spent Finals Week running around thinking I was going to fail, almost taking up smoking to help with my stress. If I ever need to think back to how manic I was, all I have to do is remember my poli sci final -- I had been kicking ass in that class and my professor loved me. The morning of the final I was obsessively pouring over my notes outside the room and my prof. comes up, looks up at me queerly and firmly tells me to stop studying, "You know this. Now get in there!" His tests are horrible, very detailed and essay based. I was so manic by that point that I not only finshed the test in 30 min, but I wrote my answers verbatim from my notes, which were virtually verbatim from his lectures.
A week later and I was hiding under my mother's desk at work (we worked in the same department), crying and shaking and just wishing to all and sundry that my mind would just STOP. My mother called my old shrink, but as I was over 18, she couldn't do anything for me. My only option was to go to the Emergency Room. So my mother smuggled me out of the office as everyone else enjoyed Christmas dinner, and drove me across town. We had to sit in the waiting room for two hours I didn't stop talking the entire time. Once, I got up to use the restroom and I looked into that mirror and I could just picture my fist flying, breaking the glass, grabbing onto a piece and slashing my wrists - and I took great pleasure in knowing exactly the right way to do it. All I wanted was for my mind to stop, to be a peace for two seconds. In the end I started crying again because I didn't want to leave my poor mother alone in that waiting room with all those scary people, only to find her daughter dead in the bathroom in a pool of her own blood.
I had another chance to run away before I finally saw a nurse, a full six hours after we arrived. She was a horrid little thing, but she listend to what I was saying, to how bad my home life was with my father and sister and she said to me, "You're a terribly unhappy little thing, aren't you?" A-freaking-men. I was given some Ativan (bless) and packed up to the Psych Ward around the corner from the hospital proper. There, Will the Cute Orderly, took down my vitals and indexed my belongings and snapped my picture. They carted me off to funky smelling double room and I was out like a light. Mama came in at some point, bringing me cheap fuzzy blankets, underthings that were too big, a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide (note: NOT the book to read when you're in a psychotic state, same for Crying of Lot 49), and a Scooby-Doo lunchbox.
The next morning I was awakened at six by calls of "Frauelein Roper!" Ah, my favourite non-Will orderly. The took my temp (elevated b/c I had a cold, but alas, no cold meds for me!) and tried to take my pulse. Turns out I'm the undead. They couldn't find one the entire time I was there, heh. The days were long and boring, but I was happy b/c even though I was on suicide watch (no razors, shoelaces, etc.) I got to keep my shoes b/c they were my slip-on clod hoppers. I made friends with a few people, flirted with Will, and tried to stay out of the way of Mr. B the Mad Biter and Rose the Crack Whore.
Mostly though, I felt really bad because I had put my mother through this again. Now both of her daughters had a stint in the same psych ward. To this day, that's what haunts me the most.
The funniest bits to my three day stay: 1) I ended up smuggling the lighter around for my smoking friends and 2) There was a Christmas tree in the cafeteria. It had blinking lights. Not a good move to have that around with people in our state. I would stare at it for a full half hour just making sure it really were the lights that were blinking and not my mind making them blink.
Don't get me wrong, the psych ward was not all wine and roses, but I quickly figured out how to seperate the wacky good from the scary bad. From this side of things at least I get to laugh.
After the hospital I got very...hard. It was almost like I stopped caring, except that I just stopped letting things get to me. 'Fuck off and die' is probably a pretty good approximation of that period. It mellowed into one of the best times of my life. Things were no doubt helped along by the close group of friends I gained through the Farscape-Shipper's List. I had friends in real life and online, my job was going well and so was school...my love life, well, from this perspective it's fucking hilarious. I found a doctor I liked and stayed on my meds like a good little girl.
Fast forward several years. For some reason I went off my lithium, and after consulting with my doc, we decided to see if I could handle things just by controlling the ADHD. Silly us. Around September of 2003 I started to slip into a depressive state, my first ever. I had all the classic symptoms, plus night terrors and daily anxiety attacks. I felt worthless and ugly, like all my friends had forgotten or turned against me, and I was terrified of ending up back in the hospital. I finally got an appointment with my doctor, and after freaking him the hell out (as I had always been relatively stable), he got me back on my lithium and bless him, got me my Ativan for the crippling anxiety attacks.
Somehow I made it through that semester in one piece only to emerge on the other side. Come 2004 I was an angry, hard, annoyed little person. It was like the after effect of the depression somehow. Just like after my manic episode, I needed to close down and take care of myself for a while - fucking graduate before worrying one bit about anything else. It's weird, because it was during this time that I discovered not only due South (which was about the *only* thing making me happy), but Hard Core Logo and The Headstones. I have never found a more perfect fit to my state of mind. It felt all right to be angry and conflicted and apathetic. I listened to "Picture of Health" at least three times a week for two months, and when I say that Hugh Dillon helped me graduate university, I don't mean it lightly.
I started writing this because I've had this notion, thanks in large part to Headstones lyrics, that my "affliction" is very much like an additction. It's my best friend, my worst enemy, but it's ALWAYS there. It will be with me till the day I die and I've accepted that. Even if I control it with drugs (which themselves take on addictive colors) things will always be a bit off. I can choose to go off my meds again - to get the brilliant manias and the crushing depressive episodes - just like falling off the wagon. I won't do it without good reason, but in the back of my mind I know that one day I might have to shake things up. I live in fear of an accidental pregnancy because of what the lithium would do to the baby. And if I did decide to become pregnant I would have to switch drugs or go off them completely for the duration, and that scares me just as much. Granted, that's not really part of the addiction issue, but it's something I'll have to worry about for years to come.
At the end of everything, I'm proud of where I am, who I am, and what disorders I have. It's all a part of me and I've never been anything different.