Frustration

It’s one of those fucking days.  Everyone has them, I know.  This day, though, has lasted for quite a few days.  Sometimes it’s big things.  Sometimes it’s just one small thing after another that leads to a feeling of frustration so profound that I feel that I’m going to explode.  If just one more thing happens…and then it’s one more thing, and then another.

I guess the thing that set this whole thing off is medication and healthcare.  I have been uninsured for the last year since I can’t afford insurance…don’t even get me started on the fucking farce that is Obamacare.  That means my doctor’s appointments are out of pocket, and so are my prescriptions.  My doctors and pharmacies try to work with me, but being on full disability, I have limited resources, so it’s a challenge every day.

I’m at a relatively stable point with my medications, and now one of my prescription patience assistance programs have decided to be assholes and have fucked up my whole medication situation.  I was getting the medication for free, and now I am going to either have to pay the full cost ($400 a month, which of course I can’t afford) or change medications.  Unfortunately, my medication balance is very tenuous.  I have been on pretty much every medication for bipolar that is out there at one point or another, and it has only been in the past year that we have reached a delicate combo of a variety of medications that has seemed to work. 

This medication that is going to have to stop is the key component of this cocktail.  Now I am going to have to plan an unscheduled (and unbudgeted) trip to my doctor to start a whole new plan for a new medicine regime change, and these things are excrutiatingly slow.  You have to wean off of medications then add new medications one at a time in small doses to see what is and is not effective.  In the meantime, you are dealing with some very nasty side effects.  I don’t know where and how to begin, and I feel so fucking defeated already.  I have no idea what this is going to do to me.  I’m already having nightmares of heading back down the rabbit hole of black despair which causes a whole new set of medication problems just to regain some semblance of normalcy.  The cycle never fucking ends.

Then the panic, anxiety, and stress set in, and of course every little thing seems monumental.  Things that, taken individually, may not seem like major stressors, nuisances then aggravations then stress…then the anxiety takes over…then the panic starts.  And these little things keep adding up, and the next thing you know, you’re in full blown panic mode.

And once I’m in full panic mode, everything starts spiraling out of control.  It doesn’t matter how small the situation, it isn’t manageable.  It’s cumulative.  The brain is in overdrive, and focus is impossible.  There is no solution to any of it.  I try to breathe.  I try to remind myself that I’m not dying.  But the thoughts keep racing, and there is no end in sight.

With this type of panic, I can’t even talk.  I can’t talk to family and friends because I can’t even make fucking sense.  Hell, I can’t even sort it out in my own brain.  I just talk incessantly from one topic to another, never finishing a sentence or a thought, and I’m impossible to follow…all the while trying to just breathe.  It really fucking sucks.

In the heightened state of extreme anxiety I need answers and actions.  I need to DO.  I need ANSWERS.  I need the people who are causing the anxiety to help me down from the ledge and work through solutions.  But their time frame is not my time frame.  They are busy, and my meltdown is not their immediate priority.  The longer I sit and wait with no help, the worse I get, the stronger my panic attacks become, and the hopelessness overwhelms.

I try to have some hope that some of these things may start getting resolved, but right now they are jumbled in my brain, running rampant with no logical process, crashing into each other, and my head feels like it will explode.  There are no distractions.  I can’t cope.  It’s one of those times when I just want to say fuck it all.  Fuck the medications.  Fuck the doctors.  Fuck the illness.  But I know what the other side is like, and it’s not pretty.  But guess what?  It’s not fucking pretty right now, either.

Discouragement

What is one of the overall goals of a person with Bipolar II?  To be managed?  To be stable?  To be handled?  To be leveled out?  Some may see these as lofty goals.  Others may view them as achievable steps in coping.  Still others may look at them with disdain.  Maybe it depends on where you are in your treatment plan and your outlook towards the future.  A matter of perspective based on your particular phase of illness, perhaps.

I have led this up and down life for many years.  I have known the intense highs (different from the mania of Bipolar I) where I could focus, participate in life, be social and active and productive, even feel somewhat “normal” for short periods of time…or at least as long as that phase lasted.  And then I have known the debilitating lows.  The horrendous blackness that consumes me and everything around me, where I know that surely I will never rise again. 

In between the two I have known the relative calm, the lackluster, the dreary, the hope, the worry, the anxiety, the isolation, and the discouragement.  On this day I feel that I am relatively stable, thanks to medication and therapy and the support of family and friends.  That is a very positive thing.  What that means today is that I am not experiencing the depression and hopelessness that can come on so quickly.  

On the other hand, while I am stable, I have no feeling of true happiness or joy except for very brief periods.  I am discouraged.  I embrace the hope of no more depressive episodes at the same time that I feel discouraged that I may have exchanged this calm for no longer having the ability to feel the high periods.  I have traded the worry, the anxiety, the isolation, the hopelessness for the dreary, the lackluster, the discouragement, and the possibility of hope.  With no more “downs”, does that mean no more “ups”?  I think it’s a fair trade because I never want to go down that dark path again, but it is so discouraging to think that I may never feel that high period again.  It gives me an understanding into why people who have Bipolar go off of their medications when they feel stable.  They tend to forget about the lows and want desperately to feel the highs again, to feel normal if only for a short time.

I can no more make myself feel “up” than I can make myself feel “down” or just “pull myself out of it” as some people like to think.  It just happens when it happens.  When you have Bipolar you tend to live your life in three stages.  The first stage is in a hypomanic stage – where life is good and productive and happy and you hope things will continue as long as possible while waiting for the inevitable change.  The second stage is depression – where life is horrible, where you feel suicidal, where it feels that you can never recover or be human again.  The third stage is the “stable” – this is the in-between stage.  The calm before the storm, or before the sun.  For me it is not an emotionless time.  I can have happy days or sad days.  But neither are pervasive.  My concentration is elusive as is my motivation.

But the overwhelming feelings during this third stage are hope and discouragement and fear.  Hope that someday I will once again be “up” and enjoying life for as long as I can.  Discouragement that maybe I will never again get to that stage.  And fear that I may return to the “down” stage and this time not be able to pull myself back out.  It’s a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions all in a single day, sometimes all in the same hour, and it’s exhausting.  And as much as I try to hold on to the positive feelings, history plays its part, and today I’m just feeling discouraged.

Plateaus

For people dealing with Bipolar II, what is a plateau?  A plateau is where I am right now.  It’s a combination of being in limbo and purgatory.  While I don’t have manic episodes, I do have periods where I am able to concentrate and focus and be productive.  Unfortunately, these episodes are typically followed by extremely depressive episodes.

Well I’ve been out of the depressive episode right now for a couple of months, but I can’t seem to reach higher…thus the plateau.  It’s a place more of complacency than actual contentment.  My doctors and I try various methods to enhance this plateau and move me higher, but alas, it is not to be right at this time.  But I will continue the work while hoping not to backslide.

I am looking forward to Christmas with the people who mean the most to me in the world…my mom, my son-in-law, and my precious angel face who remains my beacon of hope.  That is the shining hope in my resigned condition.

For those uniformed who think that this condition is a “choice”, let me be clear that no one wants to be in this position.  I could and would never choose to be in this place.  And yet here I am.  I am doing the work and trying to make progress…baby steps though they may be.

And I am so very fortunate to have a wonderful support system of friends and family.  My world sometimes is a very tenuous and virtual existence.  My friends stand by me when I can’t communicate or interact in person.  They understand that if I could change this, I would.  But still they are there for me with love and communication to get me through each day while I try to celebrate the small victories on my road to overcome the plateau.  For these people, my heart is filled with love.

The rabbit hole looms in the distance, and I am determined to not go down.  I know that it is not a choice, but it is a fight I have to fight, nonetheless.  This is for those people in my life who encourage me and support me and love me and share my hopes and continue to walk this path by my side.  I am forever grateful for your patience, laughter, and inspiration that I, too, will make it to the other side.

Motherhood and Bipolar

This story begins like all fairy tales with “Once Upon A Time.”  Once upon a time I was a good, maybe even great, mother.  Once upon a time, I felt it was my greatest accomplishment of my life.  Once upon a time I knew everlasting love.  Once upon I time, I believed in forgiveness, but that fairy tale still weighs heavily on my heart.

I came to bipolar late in life or maybe earlier but wasn’t aware of my own destruction.  My abusive, even destructive, childhood,  even after years of therapy, is still a struggle with those scars.  And, unfortunately those scars, they carried over into my mothering in later years.  I was medicated, dealing with toxic relationships with others that were simply a repeat of my childhood.  But my history is only an explanation, not an excuse.

I have three children, the first two much older than the third.  I think, I hope, that I provided the first two with everything I could.  The support, encouragement, time, and unconditional love with every fiber of my being, to help them become happy adults.  And as they grew into the amazing adults I knew they would, my life changed.  I don’t know the how or the why and may never know, but it did.

My shining stars, the pride of my life, as adults became people I could like as well as love.  My third child, my angel face, bore the brunt of my illness since she was only an adolescent while the older two were, by then, adults carrying their own baggage of my making.  Happy in their own lives, but tired of the pain I brought with me.

My angel face, at a time when she needed me most, did not have me to support or rely on.  It is shameful to admit.  My good mothering became a thing of the past as I sunk deeper into the dark.  And it was so very dark.  But never, never did the love die for them all…it was pushed aside as I fought for my very survival and hoped that I could once again understand and be the mother I so badly needed and wanted to be.  My relationships with my two older children/adults suffered greatly.  I couldn’t explain, couldn’t reach out for support or give it, and retreated even further into my isolation, pushing away the only people who brought light and joy into my life.  I didn’t deserve the light or the joy.

While the older children, adults, felt resentful and even disgust, for how could I explain something that I couldn’t, at that time, even understand myself?  I was rejected, as I had rejected them, though the love was and will always be a part of me.  Their rejection was something I could understand, and the dark overcame me with devastation, misery, and hopelessness.  The guilt was overwhelming, and yet I could do nothing about it.  I could feel it swallowing me whole.

But my baby, my angel face, stood by my side, carrying me through with the weight of the world on her shoulders.  She didn’t waver even though, at her age, I was not able to provide the things she needed from her mommy.  And that love and support is the only thing that pulled me from the abyss and still does to this day.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness.  And I cannot forgive myself for the person I had become, regardless of any reason or justification.  How can you justify these things and the unwitting choices I had made?  You can’t.  I relied on my angel face as my sole beacon in my diminishing world, and it was monumental that, at her young age, she carried me through.  The strength of her character both made me proud and shamed me for needing to borrow on that strength to give me hope.  She refused to believe I was hopeless when I felt despair.  Her beacon of light gave me the will to carry on.  And I still felt so unworthy.

My angel face is now the happy, strong, amazing woman that she is, and I can really take no credit for that, even as I take pride in her and her accomplishments.  Not only did she do it because of me, she did it in spite of my actions.  And she forgave.  Today I would give my life to be worthy of that love…and it is something I strive for every day.  She understands, and she forgives me when I simply cannot forgive myself, at least not yet.  Through her I am navigating the steps toward my own forgiveness.  I am needy, but she says I am her best friend, and I try to provide everything she missed out on in her younger years.

And with my older two?  I said before that I apologize with no chance for forgiveness.  Forgiveness is not something I deserve.  Someday I hope for acceptance within myself to be able to move on.  It is something I think about and regret every day of my life.  But understanding and acceptance and love is not in my future from them.  How to move on without that chance?  I move on with the beacon of love that is by my side, in the darkness and times of light.

Forgiveness and understanding?  Never from the two who will always be a beloved part of me.  Moving on?  Maybe someday.  But my angel face beacon?  She takes my hand and heart and brings me to a place of love and peace, and I am grateful beyond belief for her compassion, love, and true forgiveness.  For now, that is the light for which I am eternally thankful.