No meds

Can't sleep, repetitive thoughts of stupid shit and frustration of trying to remember what the repetitive thought that you had last night that kept you awake but you didn't write down because it was so repetitive you figured there was no was to forget it. Yeah. It just sucks because I was kinda feeling balanced and hopeful of getting my life back together and a week off doesn't seem like a big deal but it is. I will have to fight with my brain to take my meds because manic me won't want to and paranoid me will freak about the side effects. Then I will have to adjust to them again because I will feel doped and brain for and zombie like until I "adapt" and it will take a while before I stabilize again. It's a pain in the ass. 24 hours off and I'm slipping but it takes about 2-3 weeks on to be "stable". It's just frustrating, I just want my life back and control over my brain and emotions and moods.

It's the small things

All at want more than anything else at this moment in time is to be able to sleep. That's all, just sleep, is that to much to ask for? I didn't sleep much the days leading up to Halloween due to stress of preparing my house to be put on the market, after the realtor came last Monday I fell asleep for hours as soon as she left.

I slept okay Tuesday, Wednesday night I had the weird hypnagogic sleep (I need to do more research on it) Thursday 3 hours, Friday 2 hours and last night a whole 45 minutes. This is all with meds that are supposed to make me sleep, it's ridiculous. It try with meds all night and around 7 or 8 am I just give up.

Trazodone doesn't work, Geodon isn't working, Hydroxyzine isn't working, Benadryl isn't working, nothing is working. I would happily take a good thump to the head to knock me out.

I had a job interview yesterday so I thought my insomnia was do to the stress of it and that it would go away and I would sleep like after the realtor came, but that didn't happen. The interview sucked. I had a panic attack getting ready, had to seriously sit in the car and calm myself before I went in and then try not to cry from anxiety and nerves the entire time while I'm sure looking amped like a meth head.

I could feel the adrenaline rushing which makes me shake and fidget and my speech is really fast and my voice trembles, it's a fucking mess. I could tell I was making them uncomfortable. It doesn't matter too much, as much as I need a job this was minimum wage (which I haven't been paid since I was in high school) and the house was disgusting and a roach motel. Roaches are my biggest fear so seeing them all over didn't help the anxiety, I didn't want to touch or sit on anything.

I wish I could just get this shit under control already. No point in stressing over it though, all it will do is make it even harder to sleep which I hope I will do tonight. Wish me luck.

Abort!

So I was talking to a really good friend of mine tonight and I told him I'm slightly worried about being home alone the next few days and he asks why. So I tell him I've had a few back outs and I leave and don't remember where I went or what I did so I've been giving people my keys at night so I can't do that and now that I'm alone the next few days it's going to be interesting.
He was a little in shock, actually is exact response was "say whaaa!!"

Hmmm. Do I go further and explain a little or not? So I simply say it will be interesting since I haven't slept in like 3 days.

His response. "drink some tea and go to bed .. thats what im doin"

My brain simply yells "abort! abort! Come back to the closet, shut the door, quick!"

I simply laugh and tell him good night.

I have to remember not everyone wants to really know what I'm going through, they don't want the truth, they prefer the mask and the lie. It just sucks when it's someone you really WANT to be a person who would let you come out of the closet and be open and honest with and you find out you can't even a little bit. I mean if he can't deal with that, fuuuucck, he would really bolt with the rest.

So far I have 3 people that I can actually be 100% absolutely honest with, one of them being my mom. I still scare the shit out of her but honestly is the only way this (whatever that is) can work, I have to tell her the weird and scary shit. She has to be aware to help keep me "safe", he being in the dark isn't an option if I want to get better.

The other two are people who also have mental illnesses, one being bipolar. I don't scare them and they don't think I'm lying or insane. They may say that's crazy, if I tell them something that happened became they haven't experienced it, but I don't scare them or freak them out. I can take off my mask with them. All have to do is let the littlest bit of true bipolar slip and it's easy to see who can handle it and who can't.

The only other person I've tried sharing with isn't scared but he doesn't get it. He still thinks I can "snap" out of it or if this changes I will be happy or better. He just doesn't get it.

I'm trying to be open with my bipolar, but I don't want to scare every one away either. I don't want people to not want to be in my life because they can't handle it but damn lying and hiding and wearing a mask is exhausting sometimes. Oh well, I guess I will just keep flashing people bits of my bipolar and see what happens.

I hate this.

I've been up for days now with short little 15 minutes of naps but not real sleep. My attempt to knock myself out with meds last night just put me in some weird state between asleep and awake. Really weird thoughts all over the place with an exhausted body and possible hallucinations. I feel like death. Like I want to puke but can't, I want to sleep but can't, I'm super shaky, my whole body hurts but feels numb and tingling, I'm hot but I have the shivers..... this blows. It's like my body wants to do 2 things at once in every possible way and it's fighting with itself. Trying to talk my voice shakes and my lips and tongue feel numb like when you get lidocaine at the dentist. I'm fucking miserable. I'm pretty sure I'm actively dying. The best part is this happens like twice a month but it's becoming more frequent. 

I was having these "episodes" before any medication so I don't think it's that. I think it's just pure physical and mental exhaustion from not sleeping for days besides little light 10 minute cat naps. Even when I "sleep" I'm aware. It's hard to describe, like my body shuts off but my brain keeps going and I still have all of the racing thought and even think to myself thank God my body is asleep for a moment and and I can hear everything around me and still be thinking about other things. Its so hard to explain, it's almost like my mind and body detach, it's not on out of body thing, like I don't see myself or anything but I'm aware my body is "asleep" and if someone was to see me they would think I'm asleep but I'm not, at least my brain is not so when I "wake" I'm still exhausted like I never slept because my mind never shut off.

Drugs are bad McKay.

   So, my mom and I were having brunch on Saturday and as we were eating and laughing she suddenly asked me if I ever take drugs. I’m not sure if this has to do with the video I made that shared the aspect of bipolar where people can be prone to recreational drug use or the fact that the day before I could have easily been mistaken for someone high as a kite on crack or meth. I assure her I’m not but if I was it sure as hell wouldn’t be an upper, I can do that all on my own, and if I was to take a drugs I would smoke some weed to chill my ass out, but unfortunately it makes me paranoid and that’s the last thing I need. (For the record I don’t really consider weed a “drug” but it’s illegal in my state so..)

   As a teen I smoked weed, took LSD and dabbled in pills but I’ve never used cocaine or heroin (despite dating a addict for years) and unlike most people I hate alcohol and have only been drunk maybe 3 times in my life and hated it, the only non-prescription drug I take is high doses Benadryl to force me to sleep and my doctors are aware of that.  So with that said, I find it bizarre that in some manic states, especially if I get in a really self destructive state, I WANT to do drugs and get high. I want to just destroy everything and get completely fucked up and wasted and dance on tables and lose my absolute mind. I crave drugs I’ve never tried and if offered them I’m not sure I would say no because I’m in a “fuck everything” mode. I don’t go out an actually seek them because that would require me to be someone social which I am not and put myself in extremely dangerous situations based in the city that I live in and even though I am in a “fuck everything” mind space, I’m not in a suicidal one and am I at least rational enough to not put my safety at risk. Not yet anyway.

   I’m a bit of a medical geek (I have been since I was little) so I always try to analyze my own behavior and signs and symptoms and I am very self-aware of my thoughts, actions and conditions and that my behavior is not “normal”. This doesn’t mean that I can control or stop my thoughts or behavior it just means usually, if I can, I like to “study” or capture something that is happening in the moment on film or take notes and study it later in a different mind state. Being that I don’t have insurance I rely on government care which means I was evaluated by a few different people, diagnosed and then given meds and I check in every 3 months to see if my meds are working or not. I don’t get actual “care”, I don’t get therapy, just some pills and me to figure out, control, and modify my actions and behaviors to try to improve myself and my current state. I’m lucky that I have a very vast medical background and understanding of mental illness and that for the time being I am self aware, but most don’t and I might not remain self aware.

   So at the time being I am able to refrain from recreational drug use but it’s not for a lack of craving them even if I have never tried them or liked them in the past. I’ve considered if it was the behavior or the actual drugs I have wanted during these times and it’s for sure the drugs, I can act out the behavior without them.  Our brain is such a bizarre and fascinating thing. I plan on writing more on this subject because I have more views but I don't want this post to be like 50 paragraphs long so I will just end it here. 

K 

A Synopsis of my History and Current Battle with Bipolar

   Earlier this month was mental health awareness week, the goal is to fight stigma, provide support, educate the public and advocate for equal care. One of the ways people were participating was opening up and talking about their mental illnesses and not being ashamed of them to help remove the stigma attached to it. Everyone knows someone with a mental illness whether they are aware of it or not. People with diabetes, or fibromyalgia or asthma don’t have to hide, lie about or be ashamed of their illnesses that are out of their control and they are free to advocate and educate without having a stigma attached to them and hopefully one day soon people with mental illness will be able to do the same. To help make that possible people suffering with an illness need to stop hiding and start making it a regular part of the conversation. This is me starting my own conversation and sharing my story. Grab a snack if you plan to actually read all of this.

   I was initially diagnosed with Bipolar (aka Manic Depressive) when I was 23 (I'm now 35). I had been through a lot in the year leading up to my diagnosis, I had lost a lot of loved ones in a short amount of time, ended a serious relationship forcing me to move back home, I entered a very bad relationship, I had left my promising career as a zookeeper on a impulse out of anger (which I now know is very bipolar thing to do), I was homeless for a time and I was a mess. When I was 22 I had starting self harming to deal with the stress and pressures and depression I was going through (That’s a whole different topic I will touch on later) and I kept it hidden for a really long time. When it was finally discovered I was in a really bad place mentally, I was severely depressed and my mind was in a really dark and ugly place so when I was offered help I took it, I needed it.

   When I started therapy I had two people I was seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist and together they diagnosed me as Manic Depressive/Bipolar. When I was given my diagnosis they handed me 2 pamphlets, one on bipolar and one on depression and a handful of prescriptions. That was it. As crazy it seems my family has never been one to have all of the newest technology first so we didn’t have the internet at my house (we didn’t even have cable until I was like 17) so unless I went to the library I really didn’t have much access to find out more information besides what was given to my on the tri-fold given to me. After reading both I decided I was just suffering from depression, I hadn’t been happy in a year I surely hadn’t been manically happy like described in the pamphlet and they were wrong, also the meds me a zombie so I quit talking them all except anti-depressant (without my doctors knowing)

   Fast-forward to the last year and a half or so. I remained on my anti-depressants all of this time, I had tried quitting them but the detox is a bitch so I just kept taking them. In 2013 I left my last stable job with insurance while my other meds were pretty cheap, my anti-depressant were not and to save myself some money I decided that I was going to wean myself off of them. Another thing that had influenced that decision was also that I had been on them so long, how do I know if I even need them anymore? Maybe I “grew” out my depression or something who knows. Bad Choice.

   While anti-depressants are not used to treat bipolar (in fact they can be harmful to take if you are bipolar) I think mine kept my mood swings slightly in check, not completely but enough that I was getting by, I was functioning. Looking back now I was definitely having mood swings and showing all of the classic signs of bipolar, the irritability, tons of sudden burst of creativity and projects started and never finishing them, thinking of all of these great idea and things I was going to do and become and see, sleep issues, spending $80.00 on burts bees chapstick when you don’t even use chapstick, textbook mania. I recently saw a video of me when I was obviously in a manic episode, the fast talking, racing mind, overly happy, I would have slapped me I was so annoying. It was there, it just wasn’t bad enough for it to really fuck up my life or for other people to see it as something wrong. Instead of seeing bipolar, I was considered a bitch, told I was too sensitive, told I was lazy, selfish, unrealistic in my goals, that I never followed through, I was unreliable, antisocial, to talkative, over reactive, dramatic, short tempered etc….I was all of those things, but there was a reason I was all of those things, I’m bipolar.

   I was (and hope to resume studying to be a midwife), about a year ago the midwife I was studying under decided to retire which had kinda left me screwed for lack of a better word. The stress of not knowing how I am going to finish school, along with the thought of having to move across the country to do so and financial worries started me into a tailspin. I was hiding my bipolar pretty well for a while and then in July I had an extremely bad panic attack at the wrong place at the wrong time and I couldn’t hide how bad it had gotten any longer. I had been having small panic attacks for a few months but this one was at a level I didn’t realize was possible. I had no choice but to tell my mom what had been going on and ask for help, I was no longer able to hide it or really function normally. Since I don’t have insurance I had to start looking into public health clinics and such and the soonest available appointment was in 13 weeks, which I was finally able to go to last week.

   It’s been a very trying 13 weeks for everyone, I got a few meds from my regular doctor who decided to take the opportunity of having a crying mess of a woman alone as the last patient to inappropriately touch me, because who will people believe the doctor or the woman on the handful of meds? The medications he gave me made me a zombie and were not very help full.

   My manic episodes have increased and have become much more intense, if you have ever seen the tv show Homeland and the chick goes "crazy"…that’s been me. My brain runs a thousand miles a minute, my thoughts race and jump all over, I can’t focus on one thing, and my speech is really fast at times to match it. I’m very anxious about my things and people touching my things and being in my space, it can really send me almost into a panic attack at times. I don’t do well with change at the moment, painting my room was horrible, I know it’s simply a new paint color but my brain just doesn’t handle things like that well at the moment. Also packing my room so we can sell the house has been a huge ordeal but thankfully my mother is a saint and has been very understanding and tolerant of my madness, she see’s my struggle. I can also be very short tempered and get frustrated easily and have moment of rage, something as simple as not being able to find my comb can set me off big time, again, my mother would be a saint if she was catholic.

  I'm not going to lie, the mania is not always bad, I can become super creative (jewelry making) and super productive, I become goal oriented and get shit done, I have ambition, I’m super happy and want to dance around and be social and everything is rainbows and whales, the world is brighter and music sounds better and it’s amazing and it’s great. That stage of mania can be addictive, that phase of mania is why a lot of people either go off of their meds or refuse to take them, it’s a high without the drugs. When I am in certain stages of mania I won’t sleep for days because my brain won’t turn off or it gets stuck on one idea and won’t let go. When we went to Oregon earlier this month we wanted to get a wind chime as a souvenir and we didn’t so I looked up how to make them (creative spike) and since I did that I can’t sleep at night because all my brain can do is focus on this fucking wind chime, I even went to Lowe's and looked priced supplies and that has helped some but my brain gets stuck on things and won’t let go of them.

   Not all mania is fun and rainbows and whales either, it can extremely dangerous and scary not only for me but for those around me. It’s what I imagine what it would be like being on coke, but it’s just my brain chemistry being off. I will be up for days and even my meds won't help, my brain races really fast and jumps around and I will lost my train of thought, my speech will be so fast it is hard to keep up with and I can't stop moving, I will pace around my house and keep picking things up and setting them down. I've worked in the medical field for a long time now, if I saw me, I wouldn't believe that I wasn't on drugs. 

My depression has also gotten worse. It’s not as frequent and so far it hasn’t lasted as long as my manic phases have but it’s much worse than it was before. I will lock myself in my room for days at a time and won’t do anything but sleep, I barley even eat. The world comes crashing down around me and everything is black and dark and everything hurts, physically hurts. Nothing in the world can pull me out of my bed or room at these times and I will lock my door and not let anyone in. Someday I can even start as one and transition to the other phase or have both at the same time, those are the worse, your mind had rapid and repeated depressing thoughts and it’s bad.

So that is my story as of now, it’s not over and hopefully it improves. This is not to say I don’t have normal days, I do, but right now they are fewer and farther in between but I do have them. I finally got to see a doctor at the free clinic and let me tell you our mental health care system sucks. Really sucks. Thankfully I have family to help me but I now understand how so many people end up on the street. I was evaluated by two people over several hours given a bunch of medications and told to come back in 3 months. I go there once a month for my refills and have a check in every 3 months to see if they need to be adjusted, that’s it. That’s scary.

So that is my back story, I'm not sure what my plans are with this blog as of yet. For me writing is very therapeutic, so a of this might just be like a journal open to the world to see what it's like in my mind and how this all effects me and hopefully to journal my progress back to being more functional and onto being a midwife. Some of it will be informative and to help educate people on bipolar disorder and help other's learn as I learn. I don't know how often I will write, at times it might be several times a day other times it might be once a month we shall see. So welcome to My Jagged Mind.

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