Semi Suicidal Venting

I hate my pool.  It just sucks time, energy and money away and provides no joy or benefit (we almost never get to swim in it.)

I hate my house.  I can never get it organised.  I’m too ashamed to invite people over.  The kids (and I) always make it messier faster than we can tidy it.

I have no friends.  No-one I really trust.  No-one I can bear to call for help.  On the rare occasion cry for help out of desperation, I always regret it.  Too often it is held against me.

I have no family.  I just have kids who take and give me very little in return.  My father and brother will sometimes help watch one of the kids for a brief period, but that’s about it.  My brother says he’ll visit but never does, my father never visits and expresses no interest in me whatsoever.  He’s happy to spend time with my kids (the ones he likes at least) but not me.  Never me.  Of course, I don’t blame them, but still, I make the efforts to keep in touch with them.

I volunteer.  I support worthy causes.  I donate.  I advocate and lobby.  I think of others.  I help if I can.  And it seems all I get in return is abuse.

No-one gives me any sympathy.  Even if I’m so desperate as to want or need it.  People offer to help, but virtually no-one really means it.

Yet my beloved ex, who hardly does anything for anyone except herself, who doesn’t even look after her own damn children let alone the two step-children we thought she was taking on, well, she’s the bees nees.  Everyone seems to love her.  Even I can’t stop doing that.  She always has dozens of well-wishers and visitors, and more consoling enablers than one sympathy whore can handle.

Probably people hate me too.  I mean, I do try to be pleasant company, but so often no-one wants me around.  In a month my third child will be 6, and I’m not close to being ready.  I get no help, no support, no understanding even.  I wouldn’t even have moved into this house if I’d realised I had to do everything on my own.  Which was pretty much the case before SHE moved out too.  So many things she kept whinging needed doing and yet I’m the only one who’s ever done them.

The worst thing is, I didn’t ask for this.  I never wanted to be a single parent, and yet I’ve spent the majority of my incredibly ill period being just that.  I didn’t ask to be a sole parent, but my previous ex killed herself and left me with sole responsibility for my 17yo and 15yo.  I would never, ever in a million years had more children with my current ex if I’d had any inkling that she would just walk out on the 5 of us a mere 4 years later.  I don’t want to be in this situation.  I want to die rather than live this horrible life.  I want to run away and be by myself and free, but she beat me to it.  I know, I know I’ve got 4 great kids, sure I’m proud of them, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  It just makes me feel guilty because I’m so lonely and empty inside and this just isn’t enough.  Maybe nothing can ever be enough.

My life sucks.  I can’t stand it any more.  I hate it.  I hate having no-one who loves me, or cares about me, or wants me.  People say they do sometimes, but when it comes to the crunch, they just don’t show it.  Why do I have to be at death’s door before anyone considers offering even a little assistance?  Sometimes I envy people with cancer because they receive genuine sympathy and compassion without judgement.  Cancer is never anyone’s fault is it (no matter how many cigarettes they smoked or what their lifestyle was like) but bipolar disorder?  Well, you should have been a little stronger shouldn’t you?  You shouldn’t have let those triggers actually make you ill?  You should have behaved better in spite of the way your brain was tormenting you.  And you should hurry up and manage it now and stop making a fuss.  It’s not like you have a REAL illness after all.

I hate my kids.  I love them, but I hate them.  I hate what’s happened to me.  I hate that I’ll never be free of bipolar disorder.  I hate people who blithely say that it can be managed easily, and that lots of people cope with it, implying “So why can’t I?”  I hate it because bipolar disorder has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness and NO-ONE who actually has it says that it’s easy.  “Just pick yourself up” or “Just take it one day at a time” or whatever.  But my life feels utterly miserable, and I too often lack the ability to work out what to do, to make decisions.  I need to be able to get advice, but I have no-one I can trust or can afford to lean on (not the kids, that never works.)

I guess I’m angry.  I certainly sound it.  I’m angry at the world for treating me this way.  Maybe I’m angry at myself for wasting my life and getting old and living too much for others instead of myself and now having nothing to show for it.  Maybe I’m just angry at myself for being this way.  I wish I’d never been born really.  I wish I could give this life to someone else.  I’ve made such a mess of it, and I don’t even know how.  I don’t know what I did wrong and so I don’t know what to do to fix it or improve it.  I just despair.

My son’s right, I don’t want to go back to work.  But he thinks I can just get another job as if it would be so easy.  But who would want me?  I don’t want me.  I certainly wouldn’t hire me.  I’ll never get to do any of the things I wanted to do in my life.  Hell, I talk about going to the snow with the little ones this year, and taking them to LEGO Land one day.  But I’ve never been there and I probably never will.  Not a failure like me, who no longer has the capacity to make anything happen.

I want to die.  I don’t want to wake up tomorrow.  I just want it all to be over.  I had some energy and goals for a little while there, but it’s evaporated, departed without warning.  Now I’m just overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of getting through a single day, let alone all the stuff which needs to be done but isn’t.  And, as always, it’s HER, or the thought of HER, or the questions the kids ask me about mummy which she just ignores to their faces and I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer that haunt me, upset me and throw a spanner into almost every day.

I dream that she will turn around and forgive me.  That she will take pity on me and see how much I need her support and how lost I am without her.  I don’t want her to do anything for me or look after me or even give me sympathy.  I just want her to be there with me, be a shoulder to cry on and a sounding board.  I want her to accept me as I am, the way I have always accepted her and worked around or overlooked her many failings, the plethora of flaws she acknowledges even though some are not flaws at all.  If I can do that for other people, why can’t they do that for me?  I don’t want a free pass or to be excused, I want to always be called on bad or ill-judged behaviour, but I definitely want to be loved.  If no-one will love me, then I am forced to conclude that my dark thoughts are right, that I’m simply unloveable, whether by myself or another.  In which case, yes, I want to be dead.

It’s not that I like the idea particularly, it’s just I can’t visualize any other solution to the hell which is my lonely existence.

I don’t want to date anyone else, because I don’t want to inflict my misery on yet another person.  It’s not like I have anything to offer anyway.  Unless, I suppose, I could find someone whose even more lonely, miserable and fucked up than I am.  Then I might be a step up for them.  But how (not to mention why) would I find such a person?

Maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.  Unfortunately, even if my brain chemistry takes a turn for the better, my life will still suck.

(And yes, I know it could be worse.  But how exactly does pondering what else might go wrong make me feel better?)

An Opened Door That Can’t Be Closed

I didn’t have much experience of death when I was a child.  For better or worse, my parents though it better to keep me away from funerals or even morbid topics of conversation, reasoning that it would best wait until I’d achieved the right age.  I was the oldest child on my father’s side of the family (third oldest on my mother’s) but most importantly my parent’s first child, so protecting me from the vicissitudes of the outside world for as long as possible (hell, I think I was almost in double digits before I started seriously questioning the various implausibilities of the Father Christmas subterfuge) was the first order of business.  Perfectly understandable really.

Suicide was an even more foreign and taboo subject.  The only reference to suicide in real life I can recall was a rumour that a boy I’d known from primary school had electrocuted himself in the bath with a hair dryer or something, and even then it wasn’t known whether it was really something more than a horrible accident or just a nasty rumour.  But the taboo still exists, and people are still hushing up details of suspicious deaths, not wanting to broach the subject, and even putting about fictitious cover stories.  OK, there are considerations of life insurance eligibility that are not to be sneezed at.  But mainly I think it’s to avoid yet another source of intolerable shame that will supposedly weigh down the surviving members of the poor family for the rest of their days.

Whatever the reasons for refusing to discuss death and suicide – even in age-appropriate terms – the verdict seems to be that we don’t do ourselves or our children any favours by maintaining an artificial silence and suppressing natural dialogue on the topic.  One never fosters acceptance, understanding and resilience toward the less pleasant aspects of life by simply pretending they don’t exist or never happen.

I was surprised to learn that suicide has a “knock on” effect, particularly among the family members – and sometimes close friends – of those who have taken their own life.  Why was I surprised?  The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed.  Suicide shatters blissful ignorance, and causes its shards to rain perilously down on the feet of any bystanders.  The notion that a human being can be experiencing psychological agony so intense and intolerable as to cause them to think – even for a moment – that ceasing to feel anything would be preferable to continuing to feel more pain is not a pleasant one.  It strikes at the heart of all the fictitious “instincts” and “drives” we have clung to for centuries: the survival instinct, the drive to carry on for others, the determination not to give up or surrender, the capacity to overcome tremendous obstacles… And so on.

It’s almost the same situation that confronts us time and again after any large scale tragedy, such as a horrendous war, genocide or a ‘natural’ disaster like fire, famine, flood, etcetera.  Inevitably the same question is asked: How could this happen?  (Or sometimes: How could God let this happen?  But I’m not going there.)  We tend to immediately think or ask “How could this happen?” whenever something very bad happens.  But that’s the wrong question.  Better questions would be: Has this happened before?  How often does this happen?  What stops this happening even more frequently?  And: What can we do to stop this happening so often when tragedy threatens?  Or stop it happening at all?  We ask: How could this possibly happen? and focus on finding reasons to comfort us by creating an illusion that there is some fundamental difference between ourselves and those who are affected which made tragedy inevitable for them but will keep us immune from harm.  Rather, we should be asking how to either prevent a tragedy by understanding its causes and warning signs. How to avoid escalating a tragedy when it strikes. How to cope with tragedies when they inevitably occur.

When someone dies “before their time”, by illness, accident or misadventure, we console ourselves with the thought that although such things could perhaps happen to us, we’ve been lucky enough to escape a similar fate thus far, and we’ll do what we can to ensure it doesn’t happen in future.  But when someone suicides, it forces us to consider the question – however briefly – Could that happen to me?  Could I also someday be feeling so bad, so miserable, so ill, so confused, so pained and so despairing that acting to end my own life seems a rational and desirable option?

Because the better we knew, or the closer we were to the person who suicided, the more we liked them, shared with them and had in common with them, the more we try to understand how this person we thought we knew could do something so abhorrent…  Well, the more we put ourselves in their place.  The door is opened.  We are contemplating the “unthinkable”.  Not actively, on our own behalf perhaps, but because we want to understand how it happened.  Or we want to help those who look to us for explanations – our children especially – understand.

And once the door opens for us, it remains ever slighly ajar.  That which was impossible, is now a demonstrable reality.  And one day when we are feeling tired and disappointed or disillusioned,  one night during our own long dark tea-time of the soul (Vale DNA), as we dismiss for the hundreth time, the unthinkable possibility, we will recall one small hard fact: They were able to do it.  And that tiny little fact, that unwelcome reality, may be enough to tip the balance.  There are families where an initial suicide has led to one, two, or even more following rapidly and in as many years.  When the door is locked and bolted, papered over and invisible, it’s much easier to deny its existence.  But once it’s opened, like Pandora’s box it can never be truly closed for us ever again, no matter how we might wish it could be.

What’s the solution?  This is life: please don’t insult either of us by expecting simple answers.  But, if I were to hazard a guess it would be this.  Life contains many corridors filled with countless doors waiting to be opened.  It would be a mistake to open them all at once – one would be easily overwhelmed.  The trick is proabably to learn to expect doors to open, and to accept them once they do.  Do not crouch with eyes squeezed tightly shut, fingers crossed, slowly rocking back and forth softly chanting “Door, do not open, do not open for me today.”  Do not pretend that doors do not exist and will never hurt you.  And certainly do not cry out in despair, curse the world and declare your life ruined when a door you’d rather have remained closed flies open despite your best efforts to keep it closed.

Accept that doors will open.  Learn to cope when the little ones show you something you weren’t quite ready for.  Maybe then you’ll be able to cope with resilience when the doors none of us can ever fully be prepared for show us things nobody ever wants to see.  Arm yourself with knowledge, and although you’ll never be able to know quite how you’re going to feel until it happens, you’ll at least understand what’s going on, and know that there are things you can do to overcome it.  

Whether for your own good, or that of another.

Suffering Seroquel Sedation

Hi, my moniker’s Inch Label, and I have rapid cycling bipolar disorder. It’s been over a month since my last post.

Why is that? Well, mostly because it would have been too much of a hassle posting while I was in hospital. I voluntarily checked in to a clinic on halloween for a few weeks during which my medications were changed in a safe, stress-free and extremely well-fed environment.

And the result was largely successful. Fluoxetine withdrawal only took a few days, and my daily mood cycling improved markedly as a result. And as it turned out, I’m definitely a quetiapine responder – I began to experience stable moods for the first time in…well an awfully long time. it was quiet a novel and unexpectedly pleasant experience. I was even able to discharge early than expected.

The only snag is that along with the calm and stability comes the undesirable side effects. The persistent dry mouth is irritating, but hardly difficult to deal with. It’s “Seroquel sedation” which is problematic though. If I take my quetiapine at night, I don’t wake up the following morning. Oh, sure I achieve consciousness, get out of bed and get the kids off to school and kindy. But I don’t feel awake. My thoughts are so ponderous and my movements so clumsy and sluggish that I feel like a zombie – the walking dead. And the fog doesn’t really clear until close to midnight, at which point I should be returning to bed and resisting the temptation to do things because I’ve finally got my brain back.

So, after a week or two of this, and two days straight in which I didn’t wake up AT ALL, and a few important things here and there slipped my somnambulic mind, I decided I had to do something. So currently, I’m trying taking my seroquel first thing in the morning. Which means I get to properly wake up in the morning, which is a great start. Now, I do start to fall asleep on my feel by around 2-3 in the afternoon, but it’s a lot easier to apply some stimulants at that point, from fresh air, exercise, sunlight, a hot shower and something fun, to fructose, sucrose and caffeine.

The downside is that the anti-depressive effects of 300mg per day of quetiapine aren’t as strong as they were before. Seems like I can’t lose the sedation (or dry mouth, dizziness, blocked nose, etcetera) without reducing the mood stabilising and antidepressant effects.

I’m still not exactly ecstatic about the prospect of taking a serious antipsychotic like seroquel for the rest of my life (especially since it’s not recommended for use in elderly patients.) Nor do I relish the thought that some of its side effects could turn out to be permanent even if I stop taking it.

But…so far so good. It’s certainly nice to experience fatigue without an attendant drop in mood. And I still get a few flashes of creativity and mental energy here and there when I’m not sedated. I’d just like to be awake more when I’m on my feet.

Here’s hoping.

Marking Time

Every day, my mood wants to lower.  And often I struggle against this inevitability with a variety of strategies so as to be able to get through the day and do all the things that need to be done.

A good day is one in which the struggle doesn’t begin until my head’s already hitting the pillow.  A bad day – or at least a bad start – is one like this morning when I wake up already in the midst of dreaming about things that are producing depression, panic, desperation, anxiety and despair.  It took a bit to recover from that and face the day, getting kids to dental appointments and sports day.  Hey, on the whole the day went well.

But at some point in every day, I get tired, and when I get tired, keeping my mood afloat is pretty difficult.  It’s usually around 3pm in the afternoon.  It was about then today, and I was so tired that I had to lie down and snooze for a bit.  Not long, because an argument over a video game woke me up pretty quickly.  And so I contemplated what to do.

Because kids need to be fed.  And other kids need to be picked up from dance at 8:15pm.  And that means I need to be competent to drive for an hour.  So, I do something which normal people do – something which my ex did only an hour into sports day for example when she up and drove off to get herself a coffee: I consumed some caffeine.  Actually, I’d waited until I was already driving away from the house and then sculled a V.  Because I could feel that I wasn’t able to concentrate and make decisions rationally enough.

And, sure enough, my mood magically elevated all by itself without me having to struggle to think positive thoughts, focus on what I was doing or sing.  It didn’t matter whether I was trying to lift myself up or let my anxieties bring me down – my thought choices were irrelevant – because the stimulants did what was expected of them without me having to lift an eyebrow.

And then it kept on going.  Over the top.  Past the safe level.  Thoughts racing, agitated, confused, unable to slow down or calm down.  Deep breaths, classical music, intense focus, it was all helping, but then I had to deal with the need to reverse in the dark, a black van up my arse, and enduring the return journey home.  I just hate having to drive at night when I’m like this.  It’s an ordeal.

Now, maybe the problem is, that I’m supposed to accept the thoughts and feelings that are distressing me instead of struggling against them.  Maybe I should be “making space for them” and letting them do their thing without being ruled by them.  It all sounds good.  But I don’t know how to do it.  And I certainly don’t know how to even try when I’m supposed to be driving an automobile through traffic instead.

I’d lost really from the moment I woke up in the morning.  Sure, I made it through to afternoon, but then when I woke up feeling worse than I did when I lay down I’d lost again.  And everything since has just been marking time, waiting until I can go to bed again and hope to wake up better tomorrow.

Because I don’t have much of a brain at present.  Which sucks.  And which doesn’t help me.  And which isn’t doing anything to solve my problems.

And another thing: What does “The things that have happened are exactly what needed to happen” really mean?  I mean, I accept that what happened, happened, and here I am, and there’s no point wishing something different had happened.  I accept that I must accept that my life is what it is and that I can only control (or influence) the future, not the past (or present.)  But that doesn’t mean what happened, HAD to happened.  Or SHOULD be happening.  Or HAS to happen again.  And surely sometimes a potential future can be avoided?

I’m marking time until I go to hospital.  I went through a few 2-3 day depressive episodes and now I agree that trying some different medication is worth the risks.  My daily rapid cycling has been changing, or perhaps overlaid with another longer, more environmentally triggered cycle.  It’s got very complicated and unpredictable.  I’m not really happy with my life, but I don’t have the necessary energy or stability to be able to do much about it.  A stable mood is something I only experience one or two days per month.  It’s a bit annoying to have to wait for such a rare event to occur in order to be able to think rationally and sensibly.

So, 2-3 (more?) weeks in a “clinic” to mess with meds.  Still scared.  Still feel guilty leaving my kids for that long.  Still worried it won’t make a difference or will make me worse.  I’d better get that brain scan I’m hoping for.  And they’d better let me out as promised to go on the school zoo excursion.  And the dance show.  And I sure hope I don’t have any problems getting a Kindle to take in with me or I might be mind-numbingly bored too.

Here’s hoping.  Here’s waiting.  Fingers crossed.

Goodnight.

Crazy (the hair proves it)

In the last 50 or so years, there have been at least as many – or more – popular songs with the word “crazy” in their titles.  No doubt many more use the word crazy elsewhere in the lyrics.

I’ve found that frequently it’s other people who object to the use of the word crazy (about me) more than I do.  I’m not saying it’s necessarily been reclaimed as a badge of pride for the mentally ill (as sensitive words like “nigger” or “gay” or “cripple” have for their respective communities.)  But I’m not sure it’s necessarily a prejudiced, abusive or derogatory term the majority of the time it’s used.  Sure, it can be used to cause hurt, injury or exclusion, but I think the distinction here is the same one that should be employed for any use of a word which carries potentially judgemental overtones.  Don’t say “you’re a bad kid” or “he’s a dumb fuck” or “she’s crazy”, but instead target the behaviour which strikes you as undesirable, not the person displaying it.  In other words: “That’s a bad mistake to make kid” or “That was a fucking dumb thing to do!” or “That’s a bit of a crazy thing to say”.

Am I allowed to call myself crazy?  Well, sometimes it’s a useful adjunct to an apology for behaviour which was the product of poor judgement when in a hypomanic or (less commonly) depressed state.  “People who are high can do crazy things.”  “I must be driving you crazy.” “Hey, I thanks for the invite I had a great time. Sorry about the crazy!”

Is it helpful to label oneself (or others) as crazy?  Well, not if that limits their aspirations, participation or inclusion, no.  But as a mental reminder that sometimes my judgement is poor, that I can get over-excited or carried away, or think that a new idea is way better than it seems, or even just overly optimistic or inappropriately talkative, well, thinking to myself “remember the crazy” can twig me that I need to moderate myself and perhaps calm down.  Similarly when I’m irritable, over-reacting, overly sensitive, critical without realising it, etcetera, and people are LOOKING at me as if I’m a bit crazy, then taking the hint, picking up on the cue and thinking “Am I being a bit crazy at the moment?” is probably a good question to be asking myself.

Crazy can be cool, fun, and exhilarating.  Crazy can also be counterproductive, embarrassing and heartbreaking.  Crazy is only really crazy when it’s dysfunctional.  If you want to fit in with the drinks crowd without consuming alcohol, then letting a bit of your uninhibited, confident and witty self out for a spin is generally a pretty harmless and socially acceptable outlet for the crazy.  (Of course, I’ve learned it probably helps to at least pretend you’ve had a drink or two first, because the norms don’t always take kindly to a crazy who can beat them at their own game AND remain sober.)

I’ve come up with some beautiful, elegant, breathtaking ideas, plans, designs and concepts while crazy which I honestly don’t know that I’d ever have had in any other state.  Crazy can be almost useful at time, especially if the ideas can be assessed when one’s in a more stable frame of mind.  I don’t think I might being called crazy in a sympathetic, understanding and non-pejorative fashion.

You dare try to limit, exclude or upset one of my kids by calling them (or their father) crazy however and I’ll be in your face faster than you can take a breath with a load of bricks poised to come down hard should it come to that.

I’d prefer it didn’t come to that.  ‘Cause that’s when you’d stand an excellent change of unleashing way more crazy than you could ever bargain for.

And wouldn’t provoking that outcome be a crazy thing for you to do?

Suffering Self-Absorption

It’s one of the things I dislike about mental illness, especially depression, as well as trauma or grief or loss.  The most self-pitying self-absorption which overcomes one, providing fuel for paranoia, anxiety, defensiveness, reactivity and making one see the world through an overriding filter which constantly asks “How is this unexpected change going to affect me?”  It blinds ones to the feelings, needs, and pain of others.  It is so embarrassingly selfish, so nauseatingly self-indulgent and so repungantly self-centred.  I despise myself when I’m like this.  I, who devote most of my life to considering the needs of others and placing them above my own, detest the foul ingrate I become when all I can see is my own pain and not how unpleasant my company is for other people.  I hate myself when I’m depressed.  I hate the neediness, the clinging, the tunnel-vision which obliterates my compassion for others because everything is horrible and everything is about me.  Even when I ask for help, the looks that I get, the eye rolls, the sighs, the expressions of distaste – which are only a fraction of the loathing I experience for myself – are enough to make me retreat and vow never to ask for assistance again.  Because compassion is almost never offered freely.  And those who care or show concern also seem to have no clue as to what to do to assist me.

Sometimes they shout at me to pull myself together and snap out of it and be a responsible parent.  There is actually a small chance that under the right conditions this would work, that my mood might be only slightly submerged under the surface and that if I grab at the arm proffered with a suitable technique I can rouse myself.  But usually it just makes me feel worse, reminds me that not only do I have voices in my head telling me what a failure I am, but that other people (and, by induction, the entire world) can see it too.  Makes me want to lie down and lose consciousness, find some peace.  Makes me want to give up to the internal urgings to remove the pain once and for all by removing the need to ever think, feel or experience anything ever again.  To admit, once and for all, the failure I’ve become and to solve a lot of people’s problems – especially my own – by exiting stage left.

Usually what I want is to be hugged and to have people talk to me.  So often I try to speak to people and they ignore me, only responding to at most 50% of what I say.  Now, when it’s self-absorbed tripe, this is understandable – I’m not sure how one responds to such stuff either.  But not responding at all makes me feel irrelevant, unimportant, inconsolable and hopeless.  Either the few people remaining in my life don’t care about me, or care, but are too incompetent to help.  Or are unwilling to seek help.  Or they know that it won’t last and that they don’t really need to do anything before my mood swings again.  But even if we both know that the depression won’t last forever, maybe disappearing after I wake, or after another day or two, that doesn’t do anything to make the intervening period more bearable.

I don’t need people around when I’m high.  Sure, I like the company, but I can manage.  I can manage on my own when I’m level/euthymic as well, though that doesn’t mean people, conversation, company and a busy routine isn’t very helpful.  But when I’m depressed, deeply depressed, despairingly, hopelessly, defeatedly depressed, I honestly don’t think I can cope.  It doesn’t happen all that often.  But when it does, I really feel I need help.

And yet, is that realistic?  Do I go out of my way to offer help to other people when I’m stable or level or elevated?  Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do.  I’m a bit of a freak that way.  I enjoy helping other people.  Or at least trying.  Or at the very least, showing I understand and care, if there’s nothing I can really do.  I guess that’s part of why it feels so unfair when it become my turn to be in need that I am offered so little compassion.  When I don’t want to be left alone for fear of what I might do, but everyone wants to leave and have fun without giving me a second thought.  When I ask my son to come along to get some bread because I just don’t want to drive on my own, and he is so annoyed by the 15 minute trip that I wish I’d not brought him.  When I offer to take the kids home from from the shops early because they’re getting bored and they decide they want to and then decide they don’t want to at the last minute and I depart alone.  When my daughter realises how depressed I am, and is frightened enough to consider staying with me rather than going to her party, but after seeing me perk up a little goes all the same.

It just reinforces how alone I am.  Instead of providing a break from the self-absorption, it intensifies it.  Why me?  If only?  I wish…  I can’t…  All sorts of useless, unhelpful bleats and pleadings run around my skull further activating the parts of my brain that I’d really prefer to switch off for a bit if only I could.  Nothing is left in my environment to stimulate the more fun parts of my brain that might trigger a shift to a positive mood.  I am so, so tempted to abuse a stimulant like meds, drugs, alcohol, sugar, sex or caffeine.  Maybe I should?  I know it will only bring short term relief, but maybe that’s sufficient?  I don’t know, I’ve got no-one to discuss it with.  And when something doesn’t work, or doesn’t work quickly enough, I feel further disheartened to the point of despair.  Yes, I know the pain probably won’t last forever.  But I don’t know when it will end, how much I’ll have to endure, how long I’ll have to put up with it.  And what if this does turn out to be the time the mood never breaks?

Threatening to take the kids away – though the opposite of the compassion and understanding my self-absorption was seeking – was probably a good move in the sense that it forced me to react to stop it happening.  And it’s true, sometimes I do need a break from the kids.  But I also need to know what I’m going to do with myself when they’re not around.  How I’m going to keep safe.  How I’m going to deal with decisions when I find them so hard to make.  Sure, it it good to get a break, but that’s not a substitute for having someone who cares look after you for a bit.  I care for four children, as well as an estranged wife – when she lets me.  But who cares for me when I need it?

I know I’m horrible company when I’m depressed.  I abhor inflicting myself on anyone else.  Self-absorption means that I’d be certain to talk about my troubles and bore their tits off.  I simply can’t do that to people, it’s rude as well as unpleasant.  It’s against my stupid moral code of behaviour.  On those few occasions I’ve slipped and reached out to other friends or family members I’ve felt so ashamed and guilty afterwards.  I can hear in their voices that they’d prefer not to have to deal with me, that I represent an unwelcome intrusion into their lives.  It’s not like they’re battering down my door or ringing my phone to catch up with me when I’m doing well, so why on earth would they want a bar of me when I’m struggling?  Maybe, deep down, I know that I wouldn’t want a bar of me either.  However, the logical conclusion to be drawn there is that I, others, the world, would be better off without having to put up with me at all.

Except, it’s only the depressed bits which no-one can bear.  And lately I’ve not been able to predict them with any degree of accuracy.  Even though I’m convinced that it’s only the hypomanic me who will ever amount to anything, or make a novel or creative impression on the world, I’m about ready to give up that bit if I have to.  Yes, after struggling for so long, I’m willing to give up highs if it means I can avoid low.  I’ve no idea how to do that, other than a) resolving my relationship issues so it stops dragging me down every couple of weeks, and b) modifying my drugs so that I’m not a little too high in the morning and crash between 3pm and 6pm in the evening, or c) some alternative I don’t know about yet.  I think both my circumstances (environment) and nature (genetics) are causing me stress, grief and dysfunction.  And I spend too much time at a loss for what to do about it.

Have I bored you too?  Are you rolling your eyes, shaking your head and clicking on something more fun to read?  Can’t say as I blames ya.

Fighting the Fall

I’ve known it was coming since lunchtime.  That’s why I’ve had my caffeinated energy drink never far from hand since.  It didn’t help that I arrived for my psychiatrist appointment 3 hours late – I’d written the wrong time down when I was given the appointment over the phone and so it ended up wrong in my calendar and they don’t do reminders (do ANY psychiatrists do reminders?  I mean, it just seems so obvious – we’re crazies after all.)

So, 3 days hypomanic, this morning woke up early and my mind was exploding with thoughts…hopefully a side effect of taking a wee dram o’ extra fluoxetine a few days prior, plus a deep night’s sleep.  I couldn’t work out whether to stay in bed thinking furiously but at least resting my body, or to get up and distract myself with something so as to get a break mentally.  The very fact that I have such choices to make points to the fact that I’m just not normal am I?

But now, well, for the past 9 hours now, I’ve been struggling against the inevitable mood drop that I can never avoid, only postpone.  And the longer I fight the fall, the more difficult it becomes to stay aloft and keep functioning.

Because it’s exhausting.  You don’t get 3 productive, clear-thinking, idea-filled, insightful, emotionally rich and generally enjoyable days in a row without eventually having to pay the price.  And I know that.  You can’t cheat a mood change any more than you can cheat death.  But that doesn’t stop you trying.  Because you just don’t want it to end.

Because I really like being this person.  I love being High Me, the guy with confidence, self-assurance, snap-decision making abilities, certainty, creativity, insight, innovation and a solid sense of fun.  It feels great to be in control, to have mastery over one’s mind and body, to know one can do anything when one’s like this, the only problem is choosing what to do.  I’m a great father when I’m like this, I’m involved and on-the-ball and perceptive.  I’m also free of self-absorption – instead I can really see the world around me, notice other people, empathise with them instantly and understand their point of view at a glance.  You simply can’t do that sort of thing when you’re obsessing about yourself and your own pain.

Which is why I really don’t want to come down.  Because I hate the person I’ll become.  Low Me is anxious and fearful, self-absorbed and self-obsessed, boring, annoying, complaining, volatile, hypervigilant to the point of overreacting to every slightest surprise and trapped within a tunnel of vision so narrow that other people’s reactions, feelings, needs and desires become virtually invisible.  I hate becoming that sniveling, pathetic loser.  And I hate that he’s already pulling at my hair, clawing at my skin and whispering in my ear.

Because it’s not a case of negative thoughts lowering my mood.  I wish it were, because that would be so much easier to deal with.  It’s a matter of slowly succumbing to fatigue and letting my mood drop and that feeling causing the negative thoughts.  And then, when I’m so tired and vulnerable, and my body is refusing to move, my mouth moving but no sounds coming out, my eyelids drooping as I struggle just to remain conscious, THAT is when the doubts, fears and worries, some in the form of language but many just pure and raw emotions will bombard me and bring me to my knees.

The only way I know to avoid that is to stimulate myself with caffeine or physical arousal – shouting, jumping, etc – or to just keep struggling, forcing myself to continue, focussing on a task like reading aloud or talking to myself or typing furiously.  Because the moment I stop concentrating, the darkness will have me.  And then the only way out is to fall asleep and wait it out.

Some company would be good.  I never used to need it though.  This used to be one of my most productive times, when the kids were finally in bed and I could start cleaning, tidying, washing and clearing up without them being around to get in the way.  Now it’s all I can do to avoid sinking into depression instead, and so I end up going to sleep and losing my nights.

So tired.  Can’t fight it any longer.  Need to sleep.

Could be worse.

Unhappy Anniversary

Well, it’s just over a year now since I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  As the portentous date grew nearer, I contemplated how to mark it.  “Throw a party?” suggested my grandiose, ambitious and unrealistic hypomanic self.  “Contemplate whether anything’s changed for the better in 12 months?” posed my depressive self, baiting a trap into which I would soon fall, despite my awareness of it.  “See what I thought a year ago when I’d just been diagnosed?” was a more practical if more daunting proposition.  Use actual, not fantasised data – a notion worthy of my stable self.

So, what did I have to say?

Very tired. All day.  Scramble to get S to Kindy. Got very annoyed with her for taking too long which she’s been doing a lot past few days – shouted eventually, not happy at all with myself, managed to calm down and cheer her up by the time I left Kindy.  Overwhelmed by diagnosis of yesterday.  Mood dipping constantly until evening, when picked up kids for dinner.  Very agitated, found it hard to look at or talk to anyone.  Very hard to ignore S & C or to keep calm.  Still managed to look after them reasonably well considering.  Got BD Survival Guide but it only made me more upset.  Too much, too soon, overwhelmed.

Now, I’ve peppered that journal entry with links to http://www.bipolardisordersymptoms.info because it gives some great descriptions of various bipolar mood symptoms, which would have been very handy to me a year ago.  I particularly like the examples.  Now, my links are a bit of a stretch, but enough to show me that I was experiencing either mixed mood states, or at least changing mood states even back that far.  Certainly I know I was experiencing hypomania and depression at that time.  Hell, I was all over the place.

I have dilligently taken my meds almost every day for the past year – there were a couple of aberrations here and there which seemed to affect me greatly at the time, but mostly I was trying to do the right thing and remember my meds.

I’ve also been on a few courses, and had a series of rocky relationships with several psychiatrists.  It’s too soon to tell what my current one will be like, but I am terrified that I’ll be put onto strong antipsychotics and expensive mood stabilisers and they’ll screw with my brain even worse that it already is.

But in short: No, while I’ve learned a lot, can identify moods and even manage the milder ones, I’m not cured, and I’m not thriving.

Yes: I’m back at work part time, I’m coping with daily child-raising duties for my 4 kids, I’m being a better father and I’m causing far fewer scenes in public and private.

But: I’ve spent the last 4 days suicidally depressed, my marriage seems ruined beyond repair, and it’s only the faint shred of hope in that left which is keeping me alive.

I’m not doing so well.  Having decided that I didn’t want to hospitalise myself because that would deny the power of my own agency in my recovery and take me away from the things I love, I’m now thinking I made the wrong call.  I don’t think I’m suffering bipolar depression at present.  I think I’m deeply depressed because I’ve been trying for 15 months straight, in a state of hypervigilant paranoia, to save my marriage to the woman I love.

I thought that if I couldn’t do that, then my best bet would be to move on, get over her and fall in love with someone else.  There are a few problems with that though.

1. She still wants to be involved in all of my family, friend, social and other activities as friends.  And seeing her happy self while I’m crying inside is killing me.

2. I still love her.  I don’t want anyone else.  Despite all our respective faults and certain incompatibilities.  She’s the mother of my children and the woman I love.

3. I thought I could deal with losing her and bipolar disorder on my own, but I think I was wrong.  I’m often wrong these days.  I don’t think I can cope with both alone.

4.  I’m bipolar, I’m mentally ill, I’m diseased, I’m broken.  No, it’s not like diabetes or cancer, it’s worse.  Some people beat diabetes, and some cancers are cured, but there’s no escape from bipolar disorder.  No matter how well I manage it, it never seems to be enough.

5. My self-esteem is at an all time low as a result.  I consider it unethical and wrong to risk inflicting myself on another person via another relationship.  I’m too much of a liability.  The only morally acceptable solution would be to hook up with someone who is equally as damaged as I am and who would also face eternal loneliness otherwise.  How does one do that exactly?

So instead, I will try to motivate myself to pick up the pieces and throw my soul to the wolves and attempt to persuade my wife to accept me as I am, willing to pour time, effort and money into whatever treatment options, relationship counselling and domestic duties I need to in order to be able to hold her in my arms, bask in her light and support her while she supports me.

And I know that sounds pathetic.  I know that I should ideally be fixing myself up on my own and presenting her with a realistically rennovated result.

But I can’t.  I have tried.  But without hope, I don’t know I can keep myself alive.  And the plans for my untimely disappearance are becoming multiple and realistically detailed.

Can Quetiapine succeed where Olanzapine failed?

I am indebted to James Claims for inspiring me to get off my lazy (though busy) arse and actually research the differences between these two drugs, rather than just remaining too scared to take an antipsychotic again, in this excellent post.  Do yourself a favour and follow his blog.

Olanzapine (Zyprexa) works great on me, if what you want me to do is lie down and fall asleep within 30 seconds.  Yes, even at small doses.  Yes, half a tablet.  Yes, a quarter of a tablet.  Yes, even at bedtime and then I wake up in the morning feeling like a truck has run over me and I can’t get up and too sluggish to speak let alone get everyone to school and kindy and work.

So you can kind of see why I stopped taking it can’t you?  Even though it does indeed work wonders if I’m manic and spiralling out of control.  However, I’ve found that I can manage that a lot more usefully if not quite as immediately as olanzapine can.

I have some quetiapine (Seroquel) but I’ve never taken it.  I know it’s an atypical antipsychotic, I know that it’s an H1 antagonist, so I know it’s likely to sedate me, and I really don’t want that.  But I’ve promised myself that next time I’m in an agitated hypomanic state which I find too difficult or too exhausting to manage, or in the thrall of some other overweening urge that I can’t shake, I’ll try some quetiapine and see what happens.  If I remember.  (You know how Jekyll and Hyde didn’t have full access to the other one’s memories and intentions?)  And if I can find it.  (Pretty sure I know where it is.)

But I’ve not done a comparison, so putting them side by side, what stands out?  Well, I’ve spent a little while looking around and admit I’m a bit more confused now than I was before.  It’s difficult to find sources which quantify the degree of agonism or antagonism of these drugs at various receptors, and of course dosage will affect that enormously.  I guess it’s the relative degrees of antagonism for different receptors which would be the key to the differences in effect between the two.  But, then again, different people have slightly different neurochemisty at a genetic level, so it may also just be a case of try it and see.

They are both still rather scary drugs.  They both mess with the serotonin receptors, and serotonin is very important to me, but they may do this in a positive way.  I haven’t found a clear or definitive explanation of their action yet.  But I suppose I’m getting a little less worried about what quetiapine might do to me if I try it.  I certainly intend to take it acutely initially rather than nightly as I was recommended to with olanzapine by a previous psychiatrist.

Certainly I’ll have better questions to put to my new psychiatrist about it on my next visit and potential hospital admission for a change in meds.

Hypersexuality

It sounds like fun, but it ultimately isn’t.  The urgent need for sexual release.  The relentless, bestial urge.  The domineering thought that overrides all others in its lust for, well, lust itself.

Anger is a very primitive emotion.  Hunger.  Desire.  These drives lie deep beneath the more evolved and intellectual layers of our brains.  And unless one can see them for what they are, one will be ruled by them.

Still, when you’re hypomanic and thus hypersexual, the feeling is very real and very powerful.  I’ve never forced myself on anyone – the thought revolts and appalls me – and yet I sometimes think I catch a glimpse of how the urge can be so strong that a weaker man might succumb to it.

I’ve been weak myself, but not in violent ways.  I’ve been desperate, conniving, manipulative, obsessed, determined, driven, dogged, persistent and demanding.  When I’ve wanted sex, I’ve been willing to say anything, do anything, and promise anything in order to achieve my goal.  (Though I’ve also been scrupulously honest, and all my offers are genuine.)  And it does seem worth it at the time.  But really what I’ve probably wanted all along, is for the feeling to go away.  Satisfying the desire is the obvious way, and it is indeed a fun way.  And indeed, there’s nothing really wrong with it, if your partner is also feeling similarly lustful.  But if they’re not, then the raw sexual urge tends to make it difficult to be charming but unconcerned, flirty yet detached, interested but not a pushover.  Instead it seeks to turn one into a salacious brute who can barely vocalise more than a grunted sexual demand.  Not the suave and dashing figure employing playful, unpressured yet eloquent seduction techniques who is required, desired, and the only one who maybe deserves to get laid.

The knowledge that all one needs is a relatively simple thing in order to be free of this overriding sexual hunger tends to make one a bit monomaniacal.  Yes my love, sometimes I have a one-track mind, but if you’ll only join me for a duet of that fondly familiar melody, then I assure you that the other tracks will be back on the playlist immediately thereafter.  The hypersexual need that accompanies hypomania can be so uncomfortably demanding a feeling that I sometimes prefer mild depression instead because although I still want to have sex (because, unfortunately, I never seem to not want to have sex at all) then it’s to lift my mood, not to calm it.  Sex really is a mood stabiliser, at least for me.

But that means sex is a drug, and I’m a user. And that’s not really the way I want to be having sex, or the reason I’m seeking it.  I’d rather some more effective alternative which removes the need without necessarily excising the interest, so that sex can be something I want to do unselfishly and share lovingly, not something I desperately need.  Maybe I’m impatient and lazy and weak and that’s why I choose the easy way.  It did seem natural at the time.  One of the few things I wasn’t overanalysing.

Identifying what I’m doing is probably a useful precursor to managing it.  It doesn’t help that stress and mania are going to trigger such feelings for me in ways I can’t always control.  But I can still search for alternative solutions.  Probably the best experiment to conduct would be next time I feel hypersexually driven to try taking an antipsychotic and see what happens.

Another note to self.  I hope I haven’t offended anyone with my candour.