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 I was withdrawn.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.
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