Hi everyone. This may be an even longer vent than usual (wow, I just reread it, and it's a freaking novel...sorry) since I'm in a mixed state with my bipolar. For those of you who don't know, being in a mixed state is hell. I get a combination of some good things, some bad things, some irritable things...all at the same time or shifting back and forth continuously. It's impossible to keep up with the mood and try to use coping skills because it can change so fast.
I never used to get mixed states, but I'm basically unmedicated right now until I see my psychiatrist on the 28th to go over my genetic testing and determine what meds to try. Until then I am at a whim. The two most common things that happen to me in this period are that I sleep a lot and I'm really irritable and downright vicious if someone does something to me that hurts or upsets me. I'm talking scorched earth policy. And I never used to be this way.
Take this week for example. Had some good times. Had an old friend reach out to me to invite me to lunch. We keep up with each other on facebook but haven't talked or anything in years. But I've seen from his posts and he's seen from mine that we have a lot of mental health disorders in common, and since we've both lost most of our friends and support system he wanted to know if I wanted to get together. He's actually my daughter's friend, but I took him in at 18 and let him live with us until he could get on his feet. He was always a good kid. That was 7 years ago. It never occurred to me to reach out to him because a)it's really hard for me to reach out to people, and b)I wouldn't have thought he would want to get together with a 53 year old woman who used to look at him (and still does) like a son. I should have reached out when I started realizing he was having problems, but I didn't. And now we are going to get together and probably spend the whole afternoon catching up, and I am really looking forward to it.
I can be ultra sensitive and dramatic, too, at the same time. I can snap at people, pick arguments, or just cop an attitude, even with my daughter who I never want to be on the outs with.
But at the same time, I still feel depression and sadness. It's almost impossible to explain how you can feel all of these things at one time or just cycle through them rapidly. And I know it can cause my family and friends to go crazy. I am not very likable during these times. Sometimes I don't even know I'm in this state till someone (usually my daughter) points out things that I am doing. And I do things really impulsively, especially when I get hurt during this time.
So a few days ago, I had a friend we'll call R. Well, R and I have been friends for about 8 years. He's a pretty good guy, and sometimes he tries to support me, but he doesn't believe much in medicine and really thinks psychiatric problems are nothing but bullshit. We have argued about this many times. We have had our tiffs for a week or two then made up. I usually reach out because I either figure I played a part in it or I just don't want the friendship to end. Well R is very unhappy with his life. I'm sure he is clinically depressed but would never admit it. He also has a few friends (4 or 5) that he talks to me about, and he always talks shit about them. Totally hypocritical. He talks about how shitty they are to him, that they don't treat him well, that they are stupid or whatever. Which makes me think he probably talks to them about me like that, but I've never let that bother me until now.
He also has a son and a transgender daughter. The daughter is nice, but she moved out a couple of years ago, and they don't really talk or see each other. He totally doesn't get her being transgender and doesn't think that him becoming a woman is what he always needed to feel like her authentic self. And his son is a totally arrogant, egotistical, lazy, bastard. He's 22, lives at home with daddy while working and making decent money, but he won't move out, and he doesn't pay any bills at all. R pays for everything. I think he's afraid of his son moving out and being on his own (he's 54). His son calls him names, says he's stupid, won't do any housework or clean up, and R does it all while bitching about it. I tell him that he enables his son not to grow up by doing everything for him, paying for everything, and not teaching him to be responsible. He should be out on his own. I asked R what his son does with all the money he makes, and he said he didn't know, that it's none of my business.
Sometimes when he comes up with his shit about his son I will bring up my daughter who is only 2 years older. She moved out at 19, worked 2 jobs and went to school full time, and never asked me for anything. Now she's a paramedic, making good money, bought and sold her first house (ironically, R bought her old house last month), and is just very mature...and very pregnant at 33 weeks...lol. Can't wait for this grandbaby.
I know I'm rambling so if you are still here, thank you. There is a point to all of this. I'm just being way too detailed and stuff, I know. I do that all the time to everyone's exasperation.
So the other day when my friend reached out to me to take me to lunch next week, I was feeling good, and I shared my feelings with R. Well he met this boy when he moved in with me at 18, and R was very jealous of him and disliked him and said he used me, which he totally didn't. I was telling R about the upcoming lunch, and he got really snappy and said that I need watch out, that he is just trying to use me for something again, that he's nothing but an asshole, and I'm stupid for wanting to get together with him. I tried to explain the situation to him and told him that he knew him at 18 and doesn't know what the last 2 years of his life have been like and I do a little bit and he shouldn't judge. He hasn't seen him or heard anything about him for 7 years. Besides, he can't use me for anything. Back then I made a ton of money and had a huge house. Now I am on disability with little money and no place for him to crash if he needed it unless he wanted my couch. I have no concerns about this boy/man wanting to use me for anything. I know how lonely this disorder can be and what it's like to lose all of your friends since I have lost most of mine.
At this point my good bipolar mood was shifting, and I pointed out to him that he had no right to judge when he has no information, that he was just jealous, and if he wants to talk about people being used and taken advantage of he should start with all of his friends who he talks about using him all the time and even more than that, his son using him. That is what did it. He was yelling at me about how stupid I am and that if I want to bring family into this then "at least my kids still talk to me." I hung up the phone immediately and started to cry and wanted to throw things and break things and wished he would drive his car into a tree.
You see, in 2012, wow 6 years now, I had a series of mental breakdowns. I tried to commit suicide twice, was hospitalized 3 times, and was completely at rock bottom. I was also trying to get myself off of dilaudid, which my orthopedist had been feeding me for 2 years as I had two shoulder surgeries. So during this time I went off the medicine cold turkey which I now know is a big no-no. It was a horrible year for our whole family, and I take pretty much all the blame. I still feel the shame and guilt from that year in my life. It will always stand out as the worst of my life. My 18 year old daughter who was finishing high school had to step up and try with my mom to take control of our lives and keep us going because I was a complete wreck.
The thing is, I also have two older children. They are 6 and 8 years older than my baby, Kassi, who is now 24 and my best friend. Between the other two, I have 5 grandchildren. I don't actually know a reason because they wouldn't talk to me, but the two of them just cut me out of their lives with no reason or explanation or anything. I was, and still am, baffled. It was so abrupt. Not only did they cut me out, they cut out anyone who had anything to do with me, including my mother who helped raise them. The only reason I can guess at is that they were ashamed of my mental health issues and suicide attempts and didn't want to be part of my life anymore. But at least Kassi and her sister still talk sometimes. It's the biggest trigger in the world to me, knowing they are there, knowing how much I love them, knowing I would love to get to know my grandchildren, knowing I would apologize for anything, but I don't know what I did. I tried for years via phone, email, text, etc. to reach out to them with apologies but would not get any response. Except my son actually took my call a few years ago and I got to spend a couple of months seeing my grandbabies before he got pissed off at me for something stupid and stopped all communication. It breaks my heart that I can't have them in my life and that all I can hope for is to maybe find my grandchildren after they turn 18 and try to start a relationship, if I can even find them.
I'm telling this story to explain how it affected me what R said about "at least his children still talk to him." After crying for hours, during this mixed state, I fell asleep, and when I woke up I had gone from just being upset to being absolutely livid. I get very impulsive when I'm in this place. The first thing I did was write a long rambling post about all the shit he says about his "friends" and posted it on his facebook page. My daughter, though, who is my conscience told me I should delete that, that I would regret it. So I did. Instead I copied the post and texted it to R which of course caused a big fight and him telling me to "lose his number." I wanted to go back and post on his wall after all, but by then he had blocked me on his facebook page. But I was still completely crazed with anger. So I wrote individual messages to a few of R's friends. Friends that he talks shit about all the time, about how they use him for these things and treat him like shit, how he stays friends with a couple of these women just trying to get sex from them, things like that. And I sent the messages. I didn't really figure anyone would open them except for one woman I'll call K, because she is my friend, too. I figured the other people wouldn't open the messages from some random person.
Well K did open the message and messaged me back. I told her some of the stuff that R says about her and that I was sorry if what I said was hurtful but that I knew he was probably talking shit about me, too. R and K have been friends for like 15 years. So she and I just talked for a while. She said she was sorry to hear the things he says about her. I don't know what she will do about it.
Then I got a message from D, another friend of R's. He said he was driving and would I mind calling him because he would love to know all the stuff R had been saying. So I did. I told him all this shitty stuff that R had been saying constantly since I had known him. Well D doesn't like R's son anyway, saying that he is a lazy, useless piece of shit, basically the same way I feel about him. D was extremely pissed. I told him he could feel free to reach out and chat or call or message whenever he wanted.
So after taking a nap yesterday, something else I do a lot of when I'm in a mixed state, I woke up and had received a text from R saying "hope your happy". Ha! I called D and asked him if he had confronted R about the stuff I said, and D said, "Damn right I did. I called that fat fuck and told him all the stuff you told me that he had been saying for years." R tried to deny that he said anything. Then he said I was making stuff up because I was mad at him. D told him that he was full of shit because the things I said to D had specific details in them that I could only have gotten from R. It wasn't vague stuff. It was very specific stuff with names, dates, and personal information. So D told him to get the hell out of his life, that he didn't want an asshole like him as a friend and that if he ever wanted to get in touch with him, he would, but not to hold his breath. D told R that whatever R said or did to me, he shouldn't have done it, and that he was now getting what he deserved.
So did I feel bad? Nope. I guess when I'm in a mixed state I'm a very vengeful person when I feel like someone has hurt me. I did something bad to another ex-friend of mine back a few months ago, and I didn't feel bad then, either. In both cases I felt justifiably righteous in my pain and anger. I'll tell my therapist about this at my next appointment and get her opinion.
Thanks for reading this long post. I sure do hope my new psychiatrist, along with the genetic testing, can find some meds that will help get me out of this state. Bipolar depression (my usual state) really sucks, bipolar hypomania (for me at least) is great, but bipolar mixed state is just a whirlwind of craziness where I don't even know or care what I'm doing half the time, sleep too much, act impulsively, get irritable and angry quickly then sometimes regret it. I just want to get to a place where I can finally feel stable. That hasn't happened in a long time, at least not for more than a week or so at a time. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed about this new doctor. Wish me luck.
Here's a link to another blog on bipolar mixed states that is WAY shorter than mine and might help you understand if you want to read it.
https://themighty.com/2016/12/what-a-mixed-episode-in-bipolar-disorder-is-like/
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