Excess Baggage

If I were to get a divorce (might happen), and heaven for-fend I should meet someone else that I liked (wont happen) should I just get them to read this blog first?

Who can be bothered rehashing all this dross that I carry around in my head, let alone trying to get someone new to understand it and then to accept the person it belongs to?  "You want a date? Here's the dossier. Still interested?"

If I knew all these things about a prospective partner, I would run a mile.

This is not where my life was supposed to go. I was not supposed to get to 8 years of marriage and not want to be here anymore. I certainly wasn't supposed to get to this point and have no freaking options about how this gets played out.  Feeling trapped like this makes me want to puke.

Forty-two

• Its statistically half way through my life.¹
• It is the angle in degrees for which a rainbow appears.²
• It is the height in inches of unicorns.³
• It is the answer to life, the universe and everything.⁴ 

 

Image credit

 

It is also the birthday I celebrate today.

I'm disgusted to discover I am now officially middle-aged. When the fuck did that happen? Its amazing how much I don't want to bound out of bed and greet the world after having that particular thought.  I suppose I could celebrate being 21 again. The first time round it involved the biggest joint I've ever seen as my birthday present. Perfectly sound idea! Yes!

All told, its a Significant Birthday. When you add in recent events - giving up alcohol, getting a diagnosis - then it is even more significant. Today marks the start of the transition from the first half of my life to the second, and - I think, I hope - the transition from traumatised, non-functional Sharon to self-aware, happy and emotionally stable Sharon.  I am only 3 years away from the age both my brothers were when they committed suicide and I feel that acutely. I don't want to still be struggling with my mental health to that extent in three years. There will be struggles, that is a given: Bipolar is a lifelong condition, and there will be lifelong struggles. But what I hope to do in this second phase of my life, is to discover what it is that gives my life meaning.

When I was in second year Philosophy at university, I wrote a paper which stated categorically that the meaning of life for humans is to ask what the meaning of life is. To some extent, I still stand by what I said then, but I have learned enough now to know that we humans can find meaning for our lives in the pursuit of what makes us happy. Happy...happiness. It's a concept foreign to me, that's for sure, but  armed with the right medications, the right diagnosis and the right choices I might just be able to find that spark of happiness. 

It is immeasurably sad that at 42 I don't know what true happiness is. 

What I do know is that now I have a chance to finally figure it out. 

That almost makes up for the "middle-aged" tag.




1. a bunch of statisticians
2. some maths nerds and god
3. me. probably not true
4. bow down and worship Douglas Adams

The One Where I Get A New Label

Psychiatrists suck.

Psychologists suck.

Not all of them, granted.  There are some out there who do their jobs properly.  I met one psychiatrist the other day who seemed quite competent at diagnosing someone.  I also have a great psychologist who does what she is supposed to do, namely challenge thoughts and behaviors and help me live my life better.

But the rest - and there have been many - that I have seen since I was 19, well they can all bite my shiny metal ass. (erm...)  How can that many shrinks of one variety or another and that many GPs (also lots) miss something like Bipolar?

Bipolar 2 Disorder.  Bipolar Lite, if you will, which means I'm not about to spend the family fortune, shag everyone I meet nor will I talk a thousand words per minute and think I am Jeebus. But I will visit the deepest darkest pits of hell of depression and be serious about others being better off if I weren't here. I will also have amazing ideas for projects that take up all of my time every day, that I am not physically capable of doing, and no one else seems quite as enthusiastic about it as me...

My psychologist made me do a test. I love doing test. Love.them.  This one was an hour-long online assessment through the Black Dog Institute. It took an hour to complete, and I didn't need the whole hour to realise into which box my answers would be fitting.

My score:

• 30 out of a possible 30 for Depression (still? really? shit)
• 24 out of a possible 24 for Functional Impairement (that's some fucked up functioning)
• Severe PTSD
• Moderate Anxiety Disorder
• Moderate Social Phobia
• Moderate Panic Disorder

Diagnosis: Bipolar Disorder

When I saw the psychiatrist last Friday for a full assessment, the online assessment was confirmed and I was advised to start taking the mood stabiliser par excellence Lithium and the anti-psychotic Seroquel.

Tonight I have popped my first Lithium, and so begins the new med-go-round. I hope this doesn't play out like the trial and error of getting my pain management right. I don't want to waste another two years of my life trialling meds before I am stable.  I have lost so much time already from not being properly diagnosed when the Bipolar first appeared when I was 14.  I dont want to dwell on how different my life would be had I been treated then.  I want this diagnosis to play a positive role in my life now.

I now have a label on which to hang many things from my past. I have a way of making sense of things that seemed nonsensical. Nothing in me has changed. My behaviour hasn't changed, or not until the Lithium kicks in anyways. I'm still the lovable nutbag I was last Thursday. Its just that now I come with a label attached, one that is valuable and beneficial as far as my treatment, future happiness and understanding of my self goes.

It is unfortunate that with this label comes society's prejudices, assumptions and negative ideas about Bipolar.   And with those comes the likelihood of being discounted or dismissed because I'm manic (even when I'm not) or as just another nutter who doesn't have anything to contribute (when I do), or as someone whose friendship may be too difficult to manage (I'm harmless, promise).

The trick for me now is to concentrate on the benefits of knowing what is wrong with me my condition is.  That's a hard trick for me to learn, since I have spent most of my life being told I am worthless, but it is one I must learn.

Fuck the haters, right?

Image credit

It's my 42nd birthday in two days and I'll be happy about being Bipolar if I want to.

The Ties That Bind

Hope.

It has been my life-raft for the last three years.

After events of this week, it is fair to say that I am now treading water on my own.

I feel physically ill thinking about it. Not by the loss of hope, but by the situation I find myself in once hope has gone.

I am trapped in this dysfunctional mind, trapped in this broken and pain-ridden body, trapped in this relationship and in this house in a volatile situation. I am in a box within a box within a box and it doesn't matter how much I might scream no one can hear me and no one can help. I am suffocating in here and the one person who can do something about it refuses.

Here I am again, powerless.  (Yes, actually powerless, unless I want to lose my kids.)  I'm wondering how I managed to subconsciously see this in someone who was so totally different 9 years ago.  I must have, because I can pick 'em every time. No matter the beginning to the relationship, the ending is always the same. My programming has been impeccable.

I am so well programmed from my childhood to live this situation again and again. To accept it, to see it as normal. Nothing was ever done in my childhood until things had reached boiling point and there was violence. It was even made my responsibility to deal with it. Thanks for that, mum. 

And yet now I do not accept it and I do not see it as normal. I see it as chronically abusive but I know there is no help, there is no way out until we get to the crisis and by then the damage is done. I have been here before.

No two year old should have to hold her mother's tear-stained face in her hands and say "Its alright mummy, don't you listen to him."

image copyright Emmy Ryan

I don't want to know what's next after that. For there will be a "next."

There always is.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

A wonderful friend of mine has been here this week helping me out.

She asked Felix if he thought mummy had changed at all since coming home from hospital.

I immediately stopped what I was doing because it had never occurred to me to ask him, and I desperately wanted to hear what the answer was.

Thank god he chose the correct answer and agreed I was less grouchy and more relaxed. Possibly he thought his pocket money depended on the answer he gave.

For a while I haven't felt any better, any different at all. Just weird, uncomfortable, out of place.

People tell me I look great.  That's nice to hear.

I look in the mirror and my skin looks clearer, less muddied.  That's nice to see.

I hang out with my kids and play board games.  I wouldn't have done that before. Board games? Are you kidding me?  I do stuff in the garden; just weeding but weeding is my zen, my state of peace. There is nothing but me and the weed and the dirt and the sun on my back or the wind in my hair.
 

Gettin' my zen on. Image from here

I do these things and I realise I am getting better.   That is rather wonderful to feel.

I am 50 days sober today.

That is freakin' awesome to know.

The Future is Now

I spent a lot of time while in hospital thinking about the future, being afraid of the future.  My future loomed, like a big scary monster at the foot of the bed.

Raar! We'll eat you up!

That was mostly because being in hospital was like being in god's waiting room, waiting for the next phase of my existence to begin. There was nothing to do, very few visitors to keep me connected to my life and no one to talk to about what would happen next.  It was a total removal from the realities of my life, so much so that I could almost convince myself that there was nothing else for me outside the walls of that room.  Being so distanced from my own reality was what made the prospect of leaving that environment and going home such a traumatic idea.

When I left I didn't want to go, not by a long shot. After the huge panic attack and suicidal thoughts the night before, I knew that the hospital environment was going to break me rather than help me if I stayed any longer.  And lets face it, the only way in which it helped was by giving me room and board so I could be alone with my own thoughts for a while and not kill my kids while I sorted my shit out.  The hospital didn't DO anything.  The psychological benefits I got from it were of my own making, through my own incessant journalling process.

I have been home now 12 days and it seems so much longer than that.  In that time I have holed myself up in my bedroom and refusing to come out except to eat dinner with the family, because the anxiety associated with the living room was too high. I have stopped taking the benzodiazapines the hospital put me on and consequently I am awake until 4.30am most nights.  Felix tells me time and time again that he loves me, wants to be with me all the time, that I am his "beautiful mummy" and that he wants to marry me. I am getting the distinct impression that he wants to make sure I don't leave him again. Ella just wants mummy all the time. For everything. Daddy isn't allowed to do nappy changes, take her to the toilet, brush her hair or get her food. Its mummy or meltdown. From the kids, the pressure is on to perform, to be the perfect mummy that they want to have around all the time. and I am feel like I am failing miserably.

The biggest fear I had about the future is that I had no idea how to be (in the simplest definition of the word) without alcohol in my life.  I didn't know how to parent, how to relax, how to reduce stress, how to talk to friends.  I've had plenty of times in my life where I didn't touch alcohol at all, or very little, and I knew who that person was. I had an identity. But as a mother of two, in this stage of my life, I have no idea who I am without alcohol. I have no idea what I think without alcohol. I have no idea what I want to do without alcohol in my life.

I thought that once I got home something would be revealed to me, like the Big Reveal on Extreme Makeovers: the whole family waiting anxiously for me as I arrive home from hospital and then screams of delight and "Oh my god the transformation is just amaaazing..." "you're a new, better you!"  But there is no big reveal, there is no miraculous transformation just because I stopped drinking. There is no waiting for the big scary Future to start. The Future is here, it is now, it was the day I stopped drinking, it was the day I asked to be admitted to hospital, it was the day I opened my hospital room door to stop my suicidal thoughts. It was the day I decided to come home, and it was the day my son told me he wanted to marry me.

I have come to accept the Future, not as a big scary monster at the foot of my bed but as a succession of tiny moments a continuous string of "nows."  Some are noteworthy, some hard, some beautiful, some distressing, some funny.  There is no need to spend precious time worrying about how I am going to "do" mothering sober: I am already doing it.

My future is now.




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Home Is Where The Pizza Ordered By The Five-Year-Old Is

I decided to check myself out of the hospital yesterday morning, even after the MASSIVE panic attack I had over the AA meeting non-event and the subsequent suicidal ideation. I was alone in the room, with the door shut and the nurse not likely to come around for at least half an hour, and I started having plans...  The fuck???

But I pulled my shit together, I really did. I DID SOMETHING. I realised what was happening, realised it was BAD and I made a change to the situation I was in.  I opened the door, I put the lights up, and I decided I needed Milo from the patient kitchen.  My mood changed. The thoughts went. I calmed down. Lets all hear it for Milo! It potentially saved my life that night.

Packed with B Vitamins and the Will To Live

Despite the alluring option of staying another day and feeling worse because it was more time alone, I chose the Get Out Of Jail Free card.

I do feel strange. Strange to be home, strange to be out of the regulated environment. Strange to have new feelings come up because I am no longer squishing them down with the booze.

Strange to look at my kids with new, clearer, eyes.

Strange to realise that I cannot be left alone at the moment due to intense, out of the blue flashes of aforementioned suicidal thoughts.

The best thing about being home is that Felix decided that as a surprise for Mummy when she comes home, they should order take-out pizza from the store around the corner, because Mummy loves that and it is something everyone is happy with.

I'm sure the kids have changed in the last week. Or maybe I am seeing their behaviour with clear eyes and a clear head? 

Nah, a week ago Felix wouldn't have cared what anyone else wanted for dinner.It would be Macaroni Cheese with Bacon all the way.

Home. There is no place like it, and we'll take it one day at a time to see if that's a good thing or not.

Baby Steps

In 18 minutes in another part of this hospital, an AA Meeting will start. I decided 2 days ago that I would go, so I could get some ideas, some strategies for coping when I go home. Which most likely will be tomorrow.

In 15 minutes now the meeting will start and I am lying on my hospital bed, in an empty room, feeling sick to my stomach, with a racing heart and a devilishly strong desire to flee.

Hello, panic attack. Fancy seeing you here!

In 12 minutes the meeting will start. The meeting that everyone says is a must if you want to have the best chance of staying sober.

In 10 minutes the meeting will start and clearly I wont be attending.

I feel like I am letting myself and my family down, but I just.can't.do.it. 

In 4 minutes I will not attend AA. Despite how I feel right now, I think that's okay.

I've taken the biggest step.

Now its time for baby steps.

This baby step writes a blog post and has some meds and goes to sleep.

The meeting has been going 12 minutes, and I have not had to say "My name is Sharon and I am an alcoholic."


Because I said it here.

One Step Closer To Leaving

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