Being a mom is hard. All the time. Every day.
Any one of us can attest to that. (If you happen to disagree and feel that it's a total breeze, please go away and never come back. You can't sit with us.)
Coping with mental illness absolutely makes this job more difficult (There are days I can't manage to take care of myself, much less my girl.), but it absolutely does not make my job any more difficult than anyone else's. Understand this: My issues don't make me any different from any other mom. I have a child. I do the best I can to raise her to be a happy, healthy, functional human being. I love her so much it hurts. I would do anything for her, including laying down my own life. Isn't that the same for all of us?
I was sick enough at one point to believe that my baby would have been better off without me. I was messed up and out of control. I was headed for a collision. And I would be damned if I was going to let her suffer the same fate. I was (and to be honest still am) terrified of permanently damaging her. (That's another one of those worries we all share in the mommy club. Our circumstances may not be the same, but our fears are.) I didn't want her to see her mom self-destructing. So the obvious next thought was that if I was out of her life then she would be able to grow up without being completely ruined by me. Stupid. So very, very stupid.
When I finally realized how sick I was and how desperately I needed help, it hit me like a truck that no matter how bad I thought life was, it was life. I didn't feel like anything would ever get better, but as long as I was still here there was hope. Making any other choice would have robbed my girl of the rest of her life. It would have blown a hole in everything she did for the rest of forever. I gave myself some therapy homework to look up what happens to kids whose parents commit suicide. I have no words. My heart broke to pieces to read about the unending hell I was so close to putting her through because of my own stupidity and selfishness and cowardice. I have forgiven myself for a lot of the damage I did, but I will never forgive myself for that.
I could throw up.
The only thing that allows me to look at myself in the mirror in the mornings is that she never realized what I was so close to doing. I pray she never does. I talk about it now using vague words and general statements because going into anymore detail isn't something I can do. This brutal honesty thing is hard. Joking about being sick and twisted is one thing (I do that a lot. It makes me giggle.), but putting the ugly out there in the open for everyone to judge is another. I want to be a good mom in spite of the ugly. These days I'm finally starting to feel like one.
And lucky for me, my precious girl loves me, ugly or not.
xo.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015
plans.
I'm a planner. I always have been. I love making lists and filling out my (monogrammed - duh) calendar. I love feeling prepared and knowing exactly how things will play out.
Except that's not always how life works.
My world was getting increasingly messy pretty much by the day, and I was getting more out of control by the day as well. I felt like I was hanging on by my fingernails. I couldn't control how I felt, what I thought, or how I behaved. (Let me clarify - those were the days I believed there was nothing that I could do to get better. I felt like a lost cause. I felt weak. I felt like I would never be able to overcome feeling so powerless and isolated. I didn't think I was strong enough to take back my own life. I thought the only answer was taking my own life.) I was obsessed with making plans and finding things I could control. I didn't know how to change the direction of the ride, but I knew I could bring the whole thing to a screeching halt.
So I started making plans.
I spent a lot of time daydreaming (I use that term loosely.) and planning my, ummm, exit - for lack of a better word. As far as I was concerned, daydreaming wasn't dangerous or sick or cause for worry. (I was wrong.) I didn't consider myself to be at real risk for suicide because I didn't feel brave enough to go through with it. (Brave. That was always the word I used. Now it breaks my heart to think about it.) But that didn't stop me from being swallowed up by the thoughts.
Without going into too much gory detail, I'll say that I kept a list. The obvious out was always pills. Being such a wuss, one of my most major concerns was that something would hurt. As in physical pain. (Please don't try rationally comprehend those thoughts. It won't work.) Honestly - it's that fear of pain that I think kept me alive.
I was consumed with reading about suicide - I searched books, blogs, message boards, and social media sites for anything related to the subject. I was obsessed.
I got close to going through with suicide several times. I'm not at a point yet that I can relive those episodes play-by-play; it's still too fresh. And I don't mean fresh as in it's too painful to recount. I mean fresh as in - recovering addicts can't spend their days hanging out with their old dealers, and those death and dying thoughts were my dealer. I'm so much better than I was a few months ago, but I don't think they will ever completely disappear. I don't wake up every day wanting to die. (I haven't always been able to say that.) These days it's very much the opposite. I'm finally happy to wake up in the mornings.
Until I'm not.
I try every day to keep myself from falling back down the rabbit hole, and the thoughts of how I would hurt myself are at best a slippery slope and at worst a one-way ticket back to the days of wishing to die.
That statement is absolutely dramatic and also absolutely true. Part of my disorder means lacking the ability to find or maintain an even keel. I don't know when, where, or how to stop the downward spiral after it starts, so I'm doing everything I can to avoid it. I'm not dumb enough to believe I'll never have another crash, but I'm not inviting it in any sooner either.
My days of obsessive planning are over. I still love to make lists, and I still love to monogram them. I just don't let them revolve around my funeral anymore.
xo.
Except that's not always how life works.
My world was getting increasingly messy pretty much by the day, and I was getting more out of control by the day as well. I felt like I was hanging on by my fingernails. I couldn't control how I felt, what I thought, or how I behaved. (Let me clarify - those were the days I believed there was nothing that I could do to get better. I felt like a lost cause. I felt weak. I felt like I would never be able to overcome feeling so powerless and isolated. I didn't think I was strong enough to take back my own life. I thought the only answer was taking my own life.) I was obsessed with making plans and finding things I could control. I didn't know how to change the direction of the ride, but I knew I could bring the whole thing to a screeching halt.
So I started making plans.
I spent a lot of time daydreaming (I use that term loosely.) and planning my, ummm, exit - for lack of a better word. As far as I was concerned, daydreaming wasn't dangerous or sick or cause for worry. (I was wrong.) I didn't consider myself to be at real risk for suicide because I didn't feel brave enough to go through with it. (Brave. That was always the word I used. Now it breaks my heart to think about it.) But that didn't stop me from being swallowed up by the thoughts.
Without going into too much gory detail, I'll say that I kept a list. The obvious out was always pills. Being such a wuss, one of my most major concerns was that something would hurt. As in physical pain. (Please don't try rationally comprehend those thoughts. It won't work.) Honestly - it's that fear of pain that I think kept me alive.
I was consumed with reading about suicide - I searched books, blogs, message boards, and social media sites for anything related to the subject. I was obsessed.
Part of that obsession included this spot. I drove by here on a particularly bad day, and the only thing I could think was to wonder what would happen if I drove my car full speed into the barrier. I let the scene play out in my head a few different ways - all with the same ending. I always wondered what it would feel like. The scary part is that I found myself driving out of my way almost daily just to pass The Spot. I kept driving by it thinking that one day I would finally have enough nerve to go through with it.
These sick games of chicken never took place when my girl was in the car with me. Ever. I was terrified of hurting or damaging her. I only wanted to hurt myself. I was so sick at the time that I didn't realize any damage I did to myself - whether physical or emotional or both - would have been magnified in its effect on her. A good chunk of the time I spend in therapy these days has to do with how my mental illness has affected (and will continue to affect) my daughter. I learned in treatment that I have to get better for me, but if I'm honest I have to tell you that she is my why. She deserves a mom. She deserves me. It's always in the back of my mind that she may have to fight her own battle with bipolar depression at some point in her life, and it scares the hell out of me. I don't ever want this for her, but I want to know that I can face it if it comes.
Thinking about it all now, it hurts. It breaks my heart to think that I was so close to taking away my little girl's mama. And it makes me angry to think that I was so selfish. My short-sighted thought was that taking my life would mean an end to the misery that was always waiting for me when I opened my eyes in the mornings, but in reality, killing myself would have only created misery for everyone else in my world. And while the misery I felt didn't have to be permanent, theirs would have dragged on forever - along with guilt and anger and resentment and a myriad of other horrible feelings that wouldn't have died along with me.
Until I'm not.
I try every day to keep myself from falling back down the rabbit hole, and the thoughts of how I would hurt myself are at best a slippery slope and at worst a one-way ticket back to the days of wishing to die.
That statement is absolutely dramatic and also absolutely true. Part of my disorder means lacking the ability to find or maintain an even keel. I don't know when, where, or how to stop the downward spiral after it starts, so I'm doing everything I can to avoid it. I'm not dumb enough to believe I'll never have another crash, but I'm not inviting it in any sooner either.
My days of obsessive planning are over. I still love to make lists, and I still love to monogram them. I just don't let them revolve around my funeral anymore.
xo.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
the crazy crutch.
So I said that being bipolar doesn't mean I'm crazy.
And it doesn't.
But I was sure quick to use it as a crutch whenever it was convenient.
Such as ...
I promised to be home by 5 and didn't blow in until 7 with zero explanations or apologies? You can't be mad at me for it. I'm crazy. I can't help it. I shouldn't be held responsible for my actions because it will make my crazy worse. I'll have a meltdown and end up wanting to kill myself.
I spent $300 on various monogrammed goodies (Holla, Etsy. Don't worry - we're still besties. Can't stop, won't stop.) after I promised to chill out on the money for a while because I went on a Target/Etsy/Gap binge during a manic episode? Confronting me isn't fair. I'm crazy. Yelling at me will make me want to kill myself.
I lied about where I was and wouldn't answer calls or texts for hours because I didn't want anyone to question me about how I was behaving? I have psychiatric issues. I should get a pass. If not, I may want to kill myself.
I yelled and screamed at someone and had a meltdown because I didn't want to be honest about my destructive habits? Leave me alone. You don't understand. If I don't get my way and can't continue to take off on irrational fits of rage just because I feel like it, I'll have thoughts of killing myself.
It sounds ridiculous. And it was. I was completely off the rails. I was destructive to myself and to my family. I threw sharp words and hateful barbs at the people who loved me the most, and I left wreckage in my wake wherever I went.
It sounds exaggerated. But it's not. I took complete advantage of the fact that my people were concerned about me and used my depression to demand full immunity from my bad decisions and hatefulness.
I'm not ashamed of mental illness. I'm not ashamed of telling my story. But I am ashamed of the way I treated the people who love me the most. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was so hollow inside that I didn't care. I figured if it got too bad, I would check out. Taking all my pills and leaving it all behind - that was my fallback plan for everything. I knew I was headed full speed toward a day that my recklessness would pass the point of no return and that I could end up doing something so unforgivable that I pushed my family to be done with me. (To be clear - I never got up in the mornings with a previously planned agenda of screwing up. But once something kicked off my downward spiral, there was no stopping it.) I had decided the easiest way to avoid the consequences or the unpleasantness of taking responsibility for myself was to kill myself. I was that sick.
I used my depression and bipolar disorder to justify a sense of entitlement to do whatever I felt like - spending money, flaking out on plans, shirking responsibilities at home and at work, picking fights with anyone I could engage, playing the victim whenever I felt wronged (meaning whenever I didn't get my way), refusing to acknowledge that I was out of control, refusing to let anyone help me. I was that sick.
The days of being sick aren't gone, but gone are the days of using being sick as a crutch. I have a lot of wrongs to make right, and I'm okay with that. I can't fix them overnight, and I'm okay with that too. I'm finally owning all the damage I caused, and if it makes sense, I feel good about it.
It's time to put on my big girl panties, deal with the fallout, and start rebuilding what I tore down. I'm fortunate enough to have a support system so incredible that I don't have the words to do them justice. They haven't wavered. Ever. They kept coming back every day for more abuse (Brutal honesty alert. The way I treated them was emotionally and psychologically abusive. I'm appalled by that and absolutely mortified to admit it here, but burying it under layers of denial won't erase it.) no matter how much I had heaped on them the day before. No one has demanded restitution or apologies, but they all deserve it. Getting help saved my life, and it saved my family too.
I don't care if it takes the rest of forever to show my people that the days of the Crazy Crutch are over; they're so worth it. And so am I.
xo.
And it doesn't.
But I was sure quick to use it as a crutch whenever it was convenient.
Such as ...
I promised to be home by 5 and didn't blow in until 7 with zero explanations or apologies? You can't be mad at me for it. I'm crazy. I can't help it. I shouldn't be held responsible for my actions because it will make my crazy worse. I'll have a meltdown and end up wanting to kill myself.
I spent $300 on various monogrammed goodies (Holla, Etsy. Don't worry - we're still besties. Can't stop, won't stop.) after I promised to chill out on the money for a while because I went on a Target/Etsy/Gap binge during a manic episode? Confronting me isn't fair. I'm crazy. Yelling at me will make me want to kill myself.
I lied about where I was and wouldn't answer calls or texts for hours because I didn't want anyone to question me about how I was behaving? I have psychiatric issues. I should get a pass. If not, I may want to kill myself.
I yelled and screamed at someone and had a meltdown because I didn't want to be honest about my destructive habits? Leave me alone. You don't understand. If I don't get my way and can't continue to take off on irrational fits of rage just because I feel like it, I'll have thoughts of killing myself.
It sounds ridiculous. And it was. I was completely off the rails. I was destructive to myself and to my family. I threw sharp words and hateful barbs at the people who loved me the most, and I left wreckage in my wake wherever I went.
It sounds exaggerated. But it's not. I took complete advantage of the fact that my people were concerned about me and used my depression to demand full immunity from my bad decisions and hatefulness.
I'm not ashamed of mental illness. I'm not ashamed of telling my story. But I am ashamed of the way I treated the people who love me the most. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was so hollow inside that I didn't care. I figured if it got too bad, I would check out. Taking all my pills and leaving it all behind - that was my fallback plan for everything. I knew I was headed full speed toward a day that my recklessness would pass the point of no return and that I could end up doing something so unforgivable that I pushed my family to be done with me. (To be clear - I never got up in the mornings with a previously planned agenda of screwing up. But once something kicked off my downward spiral, there was no stopping it.) I had decided the easiest way to avoid the consequences or the unpleasantness of taking responsibility for myself was to kill myself. I was that sick.
I used my depression and bipolar disorder to justify a sense of entitlement to do whatever I felt like - spending money, flaking out on plans, shirking responsibilities at home and at work, picking fights with anyone I could engage, playing the victim whenever I felt wronged (meaning whenever I didn't get my way), refusing to acknowledge that I was out of control, refusing to let anyone help me. I was that sick.
The days of being sick aren't gone, but gone are the days of using being sick as a crutch. I have a lot of wrongs to make right, and I'm okay with that. I can't fix them overnight, and I'm okay with that too. I'm finally owning all the damage I caused, and if it makes sense, I feel good about it.
It's time to put on my big girl panties, deal with the fallout, and start rebuilding what I tore down. I'm fortunate enough to have a support system so incredible that I don't have the words to do them justice. They haven't wavered. Ever. They kept coming back every day for more abuse (Brutal honesty alert. The way I treated them was emotionally and psychologically abusive. I'm appalled by that and absolutely mortified to admit it here, but burying it under layers of denial won't erase it.) no matter how much I had heaped on them the day before. No one has demanded restitution or apologies, but they all deserve it. Getting help saved my life, and it saved my family too.
I don't care if it takes the rest of forever to show my people that the days of the Crazy Crutch are over; they're so worth it. And so am I.
xo.
Monday, February 2, 2015
i'm not crazy.
I suffered in silence for entirely too long.
A very limited number of people knew I was dealing with The Thing, but no one - including me - really knew what The Thing was. There was so much more to The Thing than just being sad.
I was always sad - even when I was manic. I was angry. I was volatile. I was hateful. I was unreliable. I was reckless. I was selfish. I was invincible. I was withdrawn. I was dishonest. I was hollow.
It didn't matter what I did to try to fill the hole that The Thing left in my chest - nothing worked. I wasn't sleeping, and I was either eating everything in sight or eating nothing at all. (It ran - wait for it - in cycles.) I was spending money like it was going to catch on fire if I left it sitting in our checking account. I was finding reasons to get out of the house because I felt like I would come out of my skin if I sat still. I had anxiety attacks almost daily - sometimes more than once in the same day.
I sat alone in my car at the cemetery where my precious Papa Shu is buried and sobbed so hard that my entire body shook. Sometimes I could name the reason why I was so distraught, but many times I couldn't. I just was.
I got overwhelmed at the thought of getting out of bed every day. By the time I got up, took a shower, and got dressed, I had used every bit of everything I had. To quote basic white girl terminology - I couldn't even.
I've been attached to some kind of antidepressant (I figure that's nicer than saying I've been on drugs.) since I was 19. (I'm 31. And 31-19 is 12. As in years. Trust me. I'm a math teacher.) I honestly couldn't name each one if I tried; there have been that many. Each one ran the same course: I'd start the medicine. I'd have a couple of off weeks while it built up in my system. I'd try to convince myself it was working even a little bit when it obviously wasn't. I'd lie to my family and try to pretend that I wasn't falling farther and farther down the rabbit hole as the days wore on. Then I'd have a crash. A big one. Many of those crashes ended with me crying for days and wishing (sometimes silently, sometimes aloud) that I could go to sleep and never have to wake up. Following those epic meltdowns, I'd go back to the doctor, and we'd go back to the beginning. New drug, same story. It was exhausting. And disheartening.
I felt absolutely broken. Not even chemical alterations to my brain could make me functional. I spent a long time (think several years) believing there was truly nothing that could be done. I survived each day - I wasn't living. I was (barely) surviving. - and looked forward to each one ending. I really believed I would have been better off dead. I remember more than one desperate plea to God that He would just let me go. I couldn't make it anymore. It was too much.
When I finally found the right doctor (I completely adore her. And my nurse is the most fabulous nurse on the planet. I refer to them as the Dream Team. They saved my life. Seriously.) and she finally found the right diagnosis, I finally felt validated. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but being labeled with bipolar disorder meant one thing: I'm not crazy.
The more I learned about my diagnosis, the more I felt relieved to know I wasn't some freak whose life was a lost cause. The antidepressants? They weren't effective at treating my disorder when used alone. (At least this was the case for me according to the expert advice I got from my doctor. Please do not use my experience as a measuring stick for your own. Every brain is different. Every personality is different. This is simply my story.) I needed a mood stabilizer more than I needed a straight antidepressant. (In some cases, the particular antidepressant I was taking at the time I was diagnosed has been known to compound the effects of bipolar disorder. So I had been taking a drug - in large doses - that was working against me and doing more harm than good.) I needed a different antidepressant than the ones I had tried before. It was all about the perfect cocktail. It took several months of trial and error, but thanks again to my Dream Team, we finally found a combination that started to work for me.
There is so much more to treatment than just the meds, but it was a beginning. The right meds helped my head start to clear so I could start to deal with all the junk I had tried to bury. Knowing what we were really dealing with also meant knowing what we could do to start putting my pieces back together.
Being bipolar doesn't mean I'm damaged or defective. It means I'm not crazy.
xo.
I was always sad - even when I was manic. I was angry. I was volatile. I was hateful. I was unreliable. I was reckless. I was selfish. I was invincible. I was withdrawn. I was dishonest. I was hollow.
It didn't matter what I did to try to fill the hole that The Thing left in my chest - nothing worked. I wasn't sleeping, and I was either eating everything in sight or eating nothing at all. (It ran - wait for it - in cycles.) I was spending money like it was going to catch on fire if I left it sitting in our checking account. I was finding reasons to get out of the house because I felt like I would come out of my skin if I sat still. I had anxiety attacks almost daily - sometimes more than once in the same day.
I sat alone in my car at the cemetery where my precious Papa Shu is buried and sobbed so hard that my entire body shook. Sometimes I could name the reason why I was so distraught, but many times I couldn't. I just was.
I got overwhelmed at the thought of getting out of bed every day. By the time I got up, took a shower, and got dressed, I had used every bit of everything I had. To quote basic white girl terminology - I couldn't even.
I've been attached to some kind of antidepressant (I figure that's nicer than saying I've been on drugs.) since I was 19. (I'm 31. And 31-19 is 12. As in years. Trust me. I'm a math teacher.) I honestly couldn't name each one if I tried; there have been that many. Each one ran the same course: I'd start the medicine. I'd have a couple of off weeks while it built up in my system. I'd try to convince myself it was working even a little bit when it obviously wasn't. I'd lie to my family and try to pretend that I wasn't falling farther and farther down the rabbit hole as the days wore on. Then I'd have a crash. A big one. Many of those crashes ended with me crying for days and wishing (sometimes silently, sometimes aloud) that I could go to sleep and never have to wake up. Following those epic meltdowns, I'd go back to the doctor, and we'd go back to the beginning. New drug, same story. It was exhausting. And disheartening.
I felt absolutely broken. Not even chemical alterations to my brain could make me functional. I spent a long time (think several years) believing there was truly nothing that could be done. I survived each day - I wasn't living. I was (barely) surviving. - and looked forward to each one ending. I really believed I would have been better off dead. I remember more than one desperate plea to God that He would just let me go. I couldn't make it anymore. It was too much.
When I finally found the right doctor (I completely adore her. And my nurse is the most fabulous nurse on the planet. I refer to them as the Dream Team. They saved my life. Seriously.) and she finally found the right diagnosis, I finally felt validated. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but being labeled with bipolar disorder meant one thing: I'm not crazy.
The more I learned about my diagnosis, the more I felt relieved to know I wasn't some freak whose life was a lost cause. The antidepressants? They weren't effective at treating my disorder when used alone. (At least this was the case for me according to the expert advice I got from my doctor. Please do not use my experience as a measuring stick for your own. Every brain is different. Every personality is different. This is simply my story.) I needed a mood stabilizer more than I needed a straight antidepressant. (In some cases, the particular antidepressant I was taking at the time I was diagnosed has been known to compound the effects of bipolar disorder. So I had been taking a drug - in large doses - that was working against me and doing more harm than good.) I needed a different antidepressant than the ones I had tried before. It was all about the perfect cocktail. It took several months of trial and error, but thanks again to my Dream Team, we finally found a combination that started to work for me.
There is so much more to treatment than just the meds, but it was a beginning. The right meds helped my head start to clear so I could start to deal with all the junk I had tried to bury. Knowing what we were really dealing with also meant knowing what we could do to start putting my pieces back together.
Being bipolar doesn't mean I'm damaged or defective. It means I'm not crazy.
xo.
monograms & madness.
Once upon a time, I had a blog. And once upon a time, I let that blog die a slow and neglectful death.
I have high hopes that this blog won't suffer the same fate, but I'm not making any promises.
If I'm being brutally honest - and let me warn you now that brutal honesty is one of the foundations on which this blog is being created - then I have to tell you that part of the reason I let the other blog go was that it didn't feel genuine anymore. All of the photos and anecdotes I posted were true, but they were such a small part of my world. Much of what I lived every day was intentionally omitted because I convinced myself that those experiences were things to be ashamed of or kept under wraps lest the world think I was crazy or broken or ungrateful for my life.
I felt fake.
So I quit.
Fast forward about 18 months (and a few trips to hell and back), and here I am.
I can't say exactly what this blog will become, and for now I think that's just fine. (I can, however, say exactly what it won't become, and I think that's even more important.)
My world is a mixture (sometimes equal parts and other times not so much) of monograms and madness, and it's my goal here to include just as much of one as I do the other. To illustrate - I made a list of potential blogging topics I didn't want to forget in the back of my monogrammed planner after I made today's to-do list on a separate monogrammed notepad. That list included getting my bipolar meds refilled and keeping an appointment this afternoon with my counselor.
Some days are funny, and some days are sad. (Isn't that the case for all of us?) Some days I can barely make myself get out of bed, and some days I feel so great I start to think I don't need the meds anymore. There are times when I cycle so rapidly that it makes my own head spin; and there are other times that the highs or lows would stretch out for weeks (or months) on end. Each scenario is equally taxing - mentally and physically. I was deluded enough for a while to think I could manage it on my own, and it nearly killed me.
There came a day that I was one hopeless decision away from a choice that could never be undone. It scared my family (and me - even though I wouldn't admit it) to a point that I couldn't explain my behavior away anymore. I wasn't convinced that anything would help, but I went through the motions and made an appointment (mostly just so they would leave me alone).
I've never been a fan of roller coasters. The sudden drops and feeling so out of control terrify me. I remember sitting in my doctor's office and sobbing the first time she mentioned bipolar disorder. It finally clicked. I don't ride roller coasters because I live on one.
Two years later - I'm still learning to live with it.
xo.
