My Bipolar Journey

I believe that people with bipolar disorder shouldn’t drink.  That being said, I think there are a lot of things that we shouldn’t do.  And if we are honest with ourselves then we already know this.  I do not drink.  I have in the past in brief moments, and all of those times ended with disaster.  But I have more of a history with drinking than that.

My mom and dad are alcoholics.  I didn’t realize that until I was much older and I found out that some parents don’t drink all day and don’t pass out when they go to bed.  That not all mom and dad’s spike their orange juice.  Over the years, even though I no longer live with them, it has been reinforced for me just how much alcohol has a hold on them.  The last time we were together they were drunk every night of the trip.

But my mom is bipolar.  She swings from mania to depression all of the time.  She is not medicated for it and she told me once that she knows she is an alcoholic but that she uses alcohol as a medication.

As a side note, I have found that when I mention to anyone that I think that drinking to excess is devastating to those around them, or that drinking for someone with bipolar can be destructive in their lives, or that I don’t want people to be drunk around me and my children, or that I will not allow alcohol in my home, or that I will not allow someone that has been drinking to drive myself or my children all hell breaks loose.  Apparently that means that I am being judgemental, or that I am trying to control them.  It is great that everyone is allowed to have an opinion as long as it is never different than anyone else.  It is great that I am supposed to simply allow people to do whatever they want to around me and to me.  But who said it has to be that way?

So, back to the story. 

My grandma was an alcoholic.  And she had bipolar disorder.  She became very delusional toward the end.  Psychotic.  She thought that the neighbors were out to get her.  That she was being spied on.  She was collecting license plate numbers.  I confronted her about her drinking so much that she was falling down and ending up in the hospital.  I told her that I wanted to see her well.  My mother did the same thing.  Back then it was called an intervention.  I have so many regrets about what I did.  It wasn’t the right thing to do.  I remember her screaming as I walked away from her hospital room, “But you are supposed to be a Christian.”  I was so ignorant back then.

When Grandma got out of the hospital she went home and got her will and burned it as an act of protest for what we had done.  Only problem was that she burned it in the middle of the living room on the carpet.  So they carted her away to the funny farm.  A place that I became very familiar with a year and a half ago.  After three days they let her out, saying that she wasn’t a harm to herself or others.  She then killed herself.

I hate seeing people drink because of the destruction it can cause in their lives.  I think that mixing alcohol and bipolar is a bomb waiting to go off and igniting the fuse. 

I don’t believe there is anything sadder then a child that has passed away.  I was at church on Sunday and…

Well, let me back up a bit.  Last summer I got pregnant “by accident”.  I was horrified.  I was on a med that you are supposed to quit if you get pregnant.  So I had to decide what to do and of course I was hypomanic through the whole thing, completely freaked out.

And then I had a miscarriage.  Only it wasn’t like I thought it would be.  I thought I would just get my period and have heavier then normal cramps and that would be the end of it.  But no, that was not at all what it was like.  I passed a bunch of tissue and what would have been my baby.  There was a ton of bleeding and it was really scary.  I have had three children and this pain that I had was like a mini labor.

Every time I get my period now I think about that baby and what I lost.  And I wonder often if it was because of my meds.  Because of my bipolar.

So when a child dies I remember.  I remember what happened to my child that I didn’t get to meet.  And I worry about my other three.

So at church on Sunday I was sitting where I buried my miscarried baby and I was thinking about the fragility of life.  There has been some digging and planting on the church property and I started wondering if our baby would be exhumed and I just kind of panicked.

I am afraid to feel.  I have slowly been shutting down.  Because when I feel then I overreact and then I lose control.  My family needs me not to do that.

Who am I if I am shut down?  If I am not flitting from one drama to the next?  If I am calm?  I don’t know that woman.  She seems muted to me.  Quiet. 

I forgot to mention a major trigger - death.

A child at my kids’ school died over the weekend.  I heard about it this morning and I felt so out of control.  I didn’t know the child.  But it didn’t matter.  And I worry about how I will do in the next few weeks because of this news.

When I don’t get sleep everything feels wrong for the rest of the day.  Sleep is often an elusive thing for me.  There are many nights that I lay awake and wonder why.  Either I am thinking too much or my sleep isn’t deep enough or I am awaken too early by a kid or husband or cat or mouse.  A snore or a cry or an alarm.  And then there is nothing that I can do about it.  That is that.  I am up and can’t go back to sleep.

I have found that when I sleep I feel pretty stable, as long as I get around nine hours a night.  When I sleep less I get dysphoric hypomania.  (I turn into a bitch with a mission.)  And when I sleep too long I get depressed, down in the mouth.  And if this happens night after night then those moods get worse and worse.

I don’t know the cure.  I do know that I take a sleep aid and I work at making sure that I follow a routine and I don’t think that I will ever be able to change the fact that I am a light sleep and always have been.  My heavy feather pillow has been the saving grace in it all.  I plop it over my exposed ear and I can hardly hear anything.  That helps a lot.

So this morning it was the alarm that was snoozed twice and I lay there and kept thinking, “Why don’t you just get up?  Or instead, why don’t you set your alarm for later?  Either way, quit waking me up when I could still be sleeping.”  And so I am awake.