Open — The Daily Post
BiPolar can mean shame. It can mean fabricating reasons why one does not work, or excuses to avoid family obligations. But when it comes to the immediate impact on children or spouses, it can be especially challenging.
One thing that I retained, through all of my ups and downs, was my ability to write. And when it was time for my kids to enroll in college, I was able to channel enough energy and focus to complete scholarship applications. And in the applications, I was honest. Absolutely honest about the impact bipolar has had in affecting my ability to provide for my kids.
My kids are great, and deserved scholarships. Our circumstances were dire, and they were awarded scholarships.
Today was interesting. I had a call from a friend – a parent of an up-and-coming high school senior, about a particular scholarship they are applying for.
And, for the first time, I was open with this person about the challenges we had faced, and I was able to give suggestions for their scholarship process.
It was fantastic to be able to come out of the shadows, and to just be open.
Natural — The Daily Post
Au Naturale
We live in a glossy world. Photoshop, cosmetic surgery, hundreds of thousands of oils and ungents, creams and pills, all marketed to improve beauty and youthfulness.
But how do we display our authentic beauty? When our soul sings and our cheeks dimple with laughter, are we not more beautiful than any falsified image?
I discover a few more grey hairs peeking through in the mirror each day. My laugh lines are absolutely becoming crows feet. A heavy make-up day for me means eyeliner – and that is a rare occurrence. I’ve got a muffin top, and fashion is at the bottom of a list of my three thousand other priorities.
And yet, I am happy. I am confident, prosperous, and content in my achievements. As the years add up, I find the need to dress and primp for others has diminished into nothingness.
Take me as I am, or move along. I am happy as I am.
Au Naturale
We live in a glossy world. Photoshop, cosmetic surgery, hundreds of thousands of oils and ungents, creams and pills, all marketed to improve beauty and youthfulness.
But how do we display our authentic beauty? When our soul sings and our cheeks dimple with laughter, are we not more beautiful than any falsified image?
I discover a few more grey hairs peeking through in the mirror each day. My laugh lines are absolutely becoming crows feet. A heavy make-up day for me means eyeliner – and that is a rare occurrence. I’ve got a muffin top, and fashion is at the bottom of a list of my three thousand other priorities.
And yet, I am happy. I am confident, prosperous, and content in my achievements. As the years add up, I find the need to dress and primp for others has diminished into nothingness.
Take me as I am, or move along. I am happy as I am.
Rebuild — The Daily Post
Healthy Alone?
About 3 months ago, I broke off a six year relationship, including a two-year engagement.
He was a genuinely nice guy, caring, and generous in helping my kids through college. And yet, I was unhappy. We didn’t fight. We didn’t bicker. We lived in separate residences. The problem was, though, that I didn’t exist in the relationship. He liked golf, we played golf. He liked casinos, we went to casinos. He liked certain restaurants, we went to those restaurants. He didn’t want physical intimacy, so we were celibate in 4 of our 6 years together. My interests; bookstores, museums, dancing – nah. He volunteered for many veterans organizations. I tried to be supportive. I attended conventions – where I knew no one. I volunteered for a committee he chaired, got little acknowledgement for my efforts. I visited his elderly mom in a nursing home several times a week (what an amazing lady!), and spent the day with her as she was dying. And yet I was closed out of his grief, could not share mine when she passed.
His every day seemed a self-imposed challenge of micromanagement, routine, and perceived imposition. By the end, I was miserable every time I talked to him.
So, it was time to be healthy and happy – alone.
I will not marry again. I have no interest in getting into another doomed relationship, casual or otherwise. I’ve been divorced three times, followed by two failed 5+ year relationships.
So I will be alone. And I have written before about being “Alone, not lonely”. I have rewarding and fulfilling relationships at work, two fantastic young adult kids (ages 19 & 21). I have a brother, and a semi-relationship with my parents.
And for me, that will have to be enough.
Healthy Alone?
About 3 months ago, I broke off a six year relationship, including a two-year engagement.
He was a genuinely nice guy, caring, and generous in helping my kids through college. And yet, I was unhappy. We didn’t fight. We didn’t bicker. We lived in separate residences. The problem was, though, that I didn’t exist in the relationship. He liked golf, we played golf. He liked casinos, we went to casinos. He liked certain restaurants, we went to those restaurants. He didn’t want physical intimacy, so we were celibate in 4 of our 6 years together. My interests; bookstores, museums, dancing – nah. He volunteered for many veterans organizations. I tried to be supportive. I attended conventions – where I knew no one. I volunteered for a committee he chaired, got little acknowledgement for my efforts. I visited his elderly mom in a nursing home several times a week (what an amazing lady!), and spent the day with her as she was dying. And yet I was closed out of his grief, could not share mine when she passed.
His every day seemed a self-imposed challenge of micromanagement, routine, and perceived imposition. By the end, I was miserable every time I talked to him.
So, it was time to be healthy and happy – alone.
I will not marry again. I have no interest in getting into another doomed relationship, casual or otherwise. I’ve been divorced three times, followed by two failed 5+ year relationships.
So I will be alone. And I have written before about being “Alone, not lonely”. I have rewarding and fulfilling relationships at work, two fantastic young adult kids (ages 19 & 21). I have a brother, and a semi-relationship with my parents.
And for me, that will have to be enough.
Long, Long Time Ago…
It’s hard to believe I have not written in over a year. Time passes quickly, and everyday distractions can seem so important.
I’m inspired to reflect on what I have written, and on my journey overall, by some recent contact with a very old friend, S.
S. is having some significant challenges in his life. Having only recently come back into contact with him, I am trying to be a supportive, non-judgmental listener. Although our journeys originated on different platforms, I understand all too well the process that he is undertaking.
I wish him the very best, and hope that I can be a friend for him as things continue to unfold.
Invisible Illness: BiPolar and Brain Aneurysm combined
I’ve been told that I’m a difficult patient. Hmmm. Not a shock.
Several months ago I suffered a cerebral aneurysm. It began in August with a trip to the emergency room, an excruciating headache and vomiting that made childbirth look like a walk in the park. (I can say that-I’ve got two kids.) It took several months of diagnostics; CT scans, CT scans with contrast, MRI’s, MRA’s, neurological workups, an angioscope, neurologists and neurosurgeons collaborating, to determine what and where the issue was. Part of the complication of diagnosis was the assumption that my bi-polar made me an unreliable reporter of my symptoms. Seriously. I was told more times than I care to remember that it was simply a stress-headache.
But the angioscope was objective enough to get noticed. A bubbled vein below my frontal lobe, sort of between and behind my eyes. Needed to be clipped. A six hour surgery with two operating neurosurgeons to, well, no details. Just know I have a seven inch scar on my scalp and screws in my skull.
What does this have to do with bipolar? Well, the neurosurgeon told my fiancee that they had no idea how lifting the brain to clip the aneurysm was going to affect the bipolar. They didn’t tell me this. Apparently, no one mentioned it to the ICU nursing staff. In the three days I spent there, I was apparently impatient and irritable. I don’t know if it was the surgery or the meds that keep me from remembering those three days.
When I came home after three days, my fiancee stayed with me for a week. I didn’t know how much he felt he was walking on eggshells. He didn’t know how often I was biting off the tip of my tongue to not be snippy.
I just kept hearing “you’re really not a good patient”. I probably wasn’t.
But here’s the invisible dilemma that both aneurysm and bipolar share. They are not visible. My head scar is covered by hair. And though the neurosurgeon explained the impact of surgery on the frontal lobe, the damage to executive function, the inability to plan and complete tasks, the loss of short term memory, and the ongoing fatigue…people forget. It looks like nothing is wrong, ergo everything should be back to normal.
But it’s not. Not only has fall come and gone, the Seasonal Affective Disorder has hit. Christmas is overwhelming. Bipolar depression has set in. And still the fatigue.
So, I push on to be ‘normal’. Forced smiles, accepting invitations through clenched teeth, and hiding the overwhelming exhaustion as much as possible.
Grinding on trying to make the internal behave as the external appears capable of.
Cognitively Bumbling Along…
Do you remember the year in Junior High School that you started to grow? Mine was actually freshman year. In September of that year, I was five feet tall. By April, I was five-foot-seven. Seriously. It was ridiculous. I remember shifting and stretching my legs under the desks in class. The aching leg muscles, and popping joints. But what I remember most was trying to walk.
I did not have a physical disability or limitation that inhibited my ability to walk. But my body no longer made sense to me. I was all legs and elbows. I walked into shelves that hadn’t been a problem the day before. It took all of my concentration to get my body parts moving in the same direction to carry me down the hallways without crashing into an upperclassman. And stairs? Forget it. My particular talent was not falling down the stairs, but rather UP the stairs. The toes of my bigger feet would catch on the tread and upward I sprawled, books, pencil and notebooks flying every which way.
The greatest challenge I faced freshman year was the ‘Freshman Frolic’, our first semi-formal dance. I got my dress, bought my heels, did my hair, and walked into the decorated cafeteria like I was going before a firing squad. And then, it happened. My stylish 3 inch heels hit the polished tile. I was a baby giraffe on an ice rink. Arms windmilling, legs flailing – you get the picture.
These days I can walk with a fair degree of confidence. My brain, however, has reverted to those days of adolescent in-coordination. While I compensate for some of the impacts of bipolar with technical tools (lists, calendars), there are days that I can’t seem to get my brain moving – in any direction. I start, stop, forget what I was doing, rack my addled brain trying to remember some thought, like a word on the tip of the tongue. Foggy days.
Easy solution? Nope. I just try to remind myself that I survived the baby giraffe days, and figure my brain will resume functioning sometime in the future. Meanwhile, I’ll just have another cup of coffee. (Has anyone seen my coffee cup?)
Enforcing Detachment
Somehow, March has turned into August. Days have become weeks, and weeks became months; spring has become summer, and now it is time to order firewood again. A challenging summer for my bipolar symptoms – I’ll leave it at that. But a recent dilemma has brought me back to ‘the blog’, and I am grateful.
I’ve written about toxic people before, in my “Face Value and Zero Expectations” post. I have worked hard to detach from some people, and to limit my expectations from others. With a HUGE Irish Catholic family from South Boston; aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, spouses, children of cousins…. I have no idea. Easily over 100 people. They’re not bad people. Many of them are wonderful people. But with that many, there seems to be a constant stream of reunions, weddings, and funerals. Especially funerals. We Irish Catholics are GREAT at funerals.
Facebook is a great media, but it’s not always beneficial. There are recent studies that people artificially inflate the pleasure and joy in their lives in their posts on facebook, which leads readers to feel discouraged about the lack of pleasure and joy in their own lives. A Gordian knot. So, I check in on facebook from time to time, but not regularly. My mother, however, in her mid-60’s, is an avid fan of facebook. And she feels it necessary to tag me in everything, including photos of people I don’t know, and events I don’t care about. Multiple times. Daily. Ugh.
With all due respect to my mother, we were not ever close. We have never had a warm, loving relationship for a gazillion reasons that don’t really matter here. But, over time, I have learned to detach. I have learned to not need anything from her, especially emotionally. We rarely spend time together for more than a few hours monthly, and I have not traveled to her home in over three years. We speak on the phone rarely, mostly about the weather. And I am quite comfortable with where things stand.
So, to the point. At a cousin’s recent wedding (which I did not attend), a sort-of relative (whom we had not seen in thirty years), commented to my mother that she should spend more time with me. She lost it. Tears, Angst, Drama. She had to leave the wedding early, sent me a long message (on facebook, of course) about all the reasons she is busy and doing her best, and called me to tell me about it and her message on facebook. I read the message. And I was angry. Not that the person said anything wrong. If anything, that person was more right about my mothers and my relationship than they had any idea. I was angry because the person had made an off-the-cuff comment to my mother, and I was being left holding the bag of putting her back together. My main thought was “Dear God, she is going to want to spend the weekend here…” Nope. Not gonna happen.
I said something noncommittal and platonic to my mother, and she seemed to calm down. Then I sent a note to the instigator, telling them that my relationship with her was none of their business, and to keep their opinion to themselves.
Does the instigator deserve to be shut down? Probably not, he was pretty accurate. Am I invested in developing a warm and fuzzy relationship with my mother based on her guilt from being called out? Nope. We’re just going to keep talking about the weather.
Coming to the Table
I have been working harder in being consistent at writing in my journal. My greatest fear is of one of my greatest weaknesses; consistency. I hesitate to take on volunteer opportunities, to engage in ongoing commitments, because of my fear that I will not follow through. This is a fairly new problem, since 2004, my second breakdown. I guess it’s not so new, but it’s still a problem.
One of the traps that I have consistently fallen into is commitment. I begin a simple task, like taking notes for a committee. Suddenly I find myself in a place of perfectionistic over achievement. Obsessing about details, checking, re-checking, and re-checking again. This is my neuro-chemical downfall symptom of bipolar. Or maybe its just a character flaw. I don’t know.
So, I hesitate. I deflect requests to become involved. I lead a fairly solitary life. But now, I have to face the fear. The coping tool of not getting involved, not getting invested, has left me feeling that I no longer have the discipline to complete any ongoing task. Even a recent bathroom remodel took me three times longer than expected, and was much more a mental drain than a physical one.
So I now I find it is time to challenge myself. Am I willing to come to the table? Am I willing to commit to writing? Every single day? EVERY SINGLE DAY? Not to write the great American novel in a month, or a year, or ever. But to show up at the table every day, for five minutes, or an hour. Just to get there, and as the books say, “get [my] butt in the chair.”
Can I let go of the fear of the crash and burns in the past, the fear of failing in the present? Can I try again?
Can I? Will I?
We’ll see.
bipolarcoping 