Alright alright

So I guess I just don't feel like writing about being bipolar lately, maybe because I feel so healthy? What's on my mind lately is just regular stuff, you know, like wishing I was a cowgirl, wishing I was falling in love, wishing I was the type of person who likes to run marathons or cares about being challenged physically, and wishing my hair was longer. Boring.

If it satisfies your craving for neuroses, I HAVE been having panic attacks lately, mostly while driving or as a passenger in a car. But even that is relatively boring, or at least obvious, since there was recently a death in the family due to a terrible car accident. I don't feel manic, although, to be honest, I kinda wish I could, and I don't feel depressed, mostly.

I'm cured! Apparently this is what a lot of bipolar people think when they are feeling normal and then they go off their meds. Not me. When I feel this way, I make an appointment with a new shrink for crisis prevention.

Aren't I clever?

Seriously

Ugh, get over it.

Joldeneye is missing someone terribly.

Ok it just hit me. I'm in the middle of nowhere and I miss my friends and I miss Sunday football parties and I miss leaves and I miss floods and I miss my sister and I miss Erie Street and my crazy strega neighbor, and I miss everything.

And I kinda want to go home. But I can't.

Everything is going to be okay, right?

Blah

I guess you could say I have writer's block. Every day I look at BipolarGirl and I can't face sitting down and writing something. I guess maybe I'm a little depressed. Also I'm working ten hour shifts, working my other job at night, and still in school, so who has time?

I'm adjusting but life is moving pretty fast right now. Not in a manic way, just literally. I'm constantly doing something stressful. When I sleep, I'm dreaming about work. When I'm awake, I'm at work. My brain just spins around and around. And then I'm tired.

I don't know. I just don't know. These past few months have been so crazy, I guess it's normal for me to feel a little depressed and anxious. But I have that thing where you tear up all the time, I'm emotional, and it feels like it's hormonal but it's not.

And I'm going back home next weekend for a wedding and I'm fat and I'm pretty much disgusted by myself.

So much for writer's block.

Unforgettable

I really hate when people say that there are two kinds of people in the world, but in some cases it's true. For instance, personal tragedy, I mean the worst kind of personal tragedy -- losing the person you've just been lucky enough to find to share your life with. In this case, I'm talking about someone extraordinary. Someone who left a deep impression on anyone who was smart enough to get him, someone with a powerful spirit, kind to everyone and loving, even worshipping to the one he loved. I know people always say stuff like this about the dead, but I'm not just trying to be nice or comforting. If you know me, you know I don't do insincere.

So two kinds of people. People who fall apart and need to be taken care of, and people who take the hit and somehow seem to be able to stay standing, hardly betraying how they must feel inside. I don't know which kind I am -- I've never suffered anything like this myself. I really don't know. But I do know that the women in this family are stronger than any metaphor I could think of, and my cousin, whose husband was killed suddenly and horribly on Wednesday night, surrounded by those women, is magnificent in her strength.

Calling her yesterday was one of the hardest things I've ever done. What to say? But of course, she made it, if not easy, then less horrific than I imagined it for the fifteen minutes before I was able to hit send. Even still, I don't know how to tell her how I feel about her pain, or how I feel about her husband. I'm sure those conversations will come, but for now I will just say that I love you and will do anything you need me to do -- anything. And maybe there's a third kind of person, somewhere in the middle. So if you have to fall apart, let me know, cuz I'm pretty good at picking up pieces.

Confessions of a Bipolar Maniac - Part 5 (Crazy McNuts)

John was very large, probably about six foot five and heavy. That coupled with pretty severe schizophrenia and a tendency toward violent outbursts made him terrifying. And he had taken a liking to me. He would shout my name as I walked by, over and over like Rocky Balboa shouting "Adrienne!". He would try to sit next to me, getting up in my face and asking me all kinds of questions that just made my young self uncomfortable. "Do you want to be my girlfriend?"

His attentions were especially troubling when he had had a shot of Thorazine. If you've never seen someone on Thorazine, it's kind of like watching a zombie movie. It makes you walk with your hands out in front of you with a completely blank look on your face, and most people drool. So imagine me, sitting outside the breakfast room, waiting to get my blood drawn and my Lithium levels checked, with this enormous man lurching toward me, shouting something unintelligible.

Then there were they days after he had had ECT. On those days, he wouldn't bother me at all. I felt an enormous sense of guilt from being relieved after he had been through something traumatic. But after all this and being woken up every night in the middle of the night to the sounds of him being restrained after a fit, I was terrified of him, and in the end, I didn't care.

I saw him three years later, at a McDonald's with his parents. He didn't see me. I walked out to my car and just sat there, shaking, for a good ten minutes. Then I went home and got on with my life. Cuz that's what you do.

Confessions of a Bipolar Maniac - Part 4 (Outburst)

Since I had just turned twenty, I found myself in the adult section of the psych ward, which was unfortunate. At least with the teenagers I could have found someone to talk to. As it was, there was only my roommate, who had her own problems, and people who seemed really old to me at the time. Probably most of them were in their thirties or seventy-plus. There were a lot of elderly women whose husbands had died and who were so depressed that they had either tried to commit suicide or their families feared it enough that they had them committed. Oddly enough, these turned out to be the people I was most comfortable with.

When I woke up that first morning, I would have been happy to stay in bed all day. Of course, they wouldn't allow me to do that. They made me get up and eat with everyone else. It was much like you would imagine. People ate off of trays with plastic knives and forks, which absolutely had to be collected before you could leave the room. At first I thought this was to protect us from ourselves, but I think now it was as much to protect us from some of the more violent patients, and to protect the staff from them as well.

Patients could often be heard banging on the tables, shouting things like, "I need my Ativan!". There are exactly four people I remember vividly.

There was Norm, a middle aged man, relatively handsome in retrospect, who was constantly begging to be let out "just for a smoke" and shouting random phrases at the top of his lungs. He was most happy on the day that the staff encouraged us to play a game of Outburst, which is pretty much just what you think it is.

Then there was Hilda, an elderly German woman who didn't say much but was a very comforting presence to me for some reason.

There was Laura, another elderly woman who was so depressed that she had to have ECT (yeah, electro-convulsive therapy, also just what you think it is) just to be able to talk. And then she would sit there at the breakfast table asking, "Do you know my name? Where am I?" This was progress for Laura, because otherwise she would never say anything at all.

And then there was John, who I will never forget because he scared the living shit out of me on a regular basis.