I have been having computer issues for a long time and we are just not in a position at the moment to be able to purchase a new laptop for me to be able to do my writing and blog up keep.
I just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know why I have went poof and haven’t been around, yet again.
I apologize.
In the meantime I am interested in hosting a couple of guest blogger posts. If you are interested feel free to email me at bipolarwhispers@gmail.com. The content of the blog post would have to be mental health related and appropriate. It would have to be approved for posting. I will link back to your blog and you can include a brief bio.
Also be sure to leave me a comment letting me know how you all are.
Sometimes I wake up in the dark to the silent screams that my soul emits. And for a split second, that feels like an eternity, I have a sense of spine tingling fear.
Sometimes I wake up in the dark to my heart beating out of my chest. And I remember things that I have spent a lifetime trying to forget.
Sometimes I wake up in the dark with a million thoughts trespassing through my once calm slumber.
And I cringe inside because I know these thoughts, these feelings, this fear, and those memories…..are you.
A Bipolar journey is one of extremes, one of differences, emotions, opposites. To me, in my eyes it is a spectrum. The spectrum of someone with Bipolar Disorder can be so vast that many times I feel like no two of us are alike.
Yet I know we are alike. We have similarities. We follow similar patterns. We do similar things. But at the same time we are different. We do things at different levels, different planes.
Bipolar Disorder consists of so much, it is complex in design. It is not just the adjective that today’s society has made it out to be. It is not the the descriptive word often used in every day speech to describe someone who has a mood swing caused my something small or a remark that made someone angry. It is not just “oh he/she is so bipolar”. It is not just a snappy mood, or getting angry, or teenage rebellion.
For me, it is many different things at many different times. It is flying, soaring like a bird, free. Yet is is Chaos and frustration, destruction and despair.
How can it be all of these things, good and bad, you ask?
Anyone diagnosed with Bipolar disorder understands what I mean when I say that. You know what it is like to feel all of those things at different times and sometimes even at the same time.
I can describe my mania with good and bad words. I can explain the euphoric feelings of the “good” mania and then in the same breath I can describe the chaos enriched mixtures of the “bad” mania.
I can explain how in a mania or hypomania induced state I was able to go weeks on as little as 20 hours of sleep. How I took my cupboard doors off all of my cupboards (I have a very very large kitchen), repainted inside and out, put all new hinges on them, re hung them and changed the color of the doors, and scrubbed the knobs then then replaced everything into my cupboards in 2 days or less, when I had never done anything like that before.
I can tell you I spent hours in a mania writing some of the best writing I have ever created.
I can tell you how I made raised garden beds and planted carrots, peas, beans, potatoes, and pumpkins and I wanted to raise chickens.
I can tell you that during mania I cannot stay still. I clean, I cook and I move around my house doing things at alarming rates.
But I can also tell you that I had to keep shaking my leg and moving my hands just to sit to eat, just to check email, just to write. Because I had to move.
I can tell you that I drove around for hours to keep my kids from seeing how bad the mania was getting, even when I truly should not have been driving. That a friend drove around with me for hours in order to try to keep me focused enough to be able to drive. In order to keep me in check so to speak.
I can tell you I talked so fast that my husband and closest friends were unable to understand me. That I jumped all over the place in my conversation that my conversation was not even able to be followed.
I can tell you that I couldn’t read a book because I couldn’t understand what I was reading…but I could research raising chickens for hours on end, or whatever else I was fixated on during that particular mania.
I can tell you that what starts as the fun life of the party mania always turns into more damaging mania.
The one where the paranoia creeps in, where people on cell phones, even complete strangers are out to get me, they are being devious and are plotting something against me.
The one where those two people sitting at the coffee shop table, whom I do not even know and are sharing a laugh over a memory are really (but of course only in my mind) laughing at me. Making fun of me.
I can tell you about the heightened senses. About the times when colors and lights are super vivid. When my eyes hurt because everything around me is over sharp, over focused. Or about the times when everything is loud, even the thoughts inside my head sound like thunder. I can tell you about the times I am so perceptive I can almost feel the earth turning.
And those…..they are just the bits and pieces of the mania. Just the tip of an iceberg.
I can also tell you about the depression. Not just a passing sadness, but the deep dark hell hole of despair that I am unable to dig myself out of.
I can tell you about the times I want to go to sleep and never wake up, even though I didn’t want to actually die.
I can tell you about the times I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror because I hated, loathed and despised the person looking back.
I can tell you about the times I held blades or hot lighters to my skin just to feel. Just to get a release. About the times I pulled my hair or scratched my arms and legs while hiding because I needed to feel but I was unable to cut or burn at that particular moment in time.
I can tell you about the times I sat contemplating suicide. Just seconds away from downing more meds than I even care to mention, or slicing a knife across my wrists, or jumping in front of a moving transport truck.
I can tell you about the actual suicide attempt, about the hospital stays when the mania or depression gets too bad.
I can tell you about the countless medications I have taken to try to tame the Bipolar Beast.
I can tell you about the times I don’t want to get out of bed and the times I don’t want to even get into bed. About the times I don’t want anyone to touch me and about the times I need someone to hold me tight, to hold me together because I am falling apart.
And these are just some of the things I can tell you.
There are mixed states and manias, depressions, medication changes, hospitalizations, complications to medications (scary ones), times I drink alcohol just to feel, times the anxiety is so bad I feel like I am dying and the times I actually feel crazy.
But even though all of these things are a part of me, a part of my disorder…..they are not all of me. I am so much more.
I have periods of “normal” mood, no mania, no depression. Periods where I work and become a functional part of society.
For me Bipolar Disorder is a spectrum with extreme mania on one end and extreme depression on the other. But in the middle of the two are milder forms of the mania, hypomania, milder forms of depression, mixed episodes and of course the “normal” periods.
Because I am not just made up of the adjective Bipolar that people like to use. Bipolar disorder is so much more. So the next time you say “I am so Bipolar” or “She is so Bipolar” perhaps you should take a moment to read some information on what real Bipolar disorder is all about, because I am fairly certain you won’t use it as an adjective after that.
When all the world goes out like the tide, and you feel like you are standing alone watching and waiting for the water to reach you again, to cleanse you. That is the moment when I feel most alone. Knowing the tide will eventually ebb and flow again, but standing there and waiting.
the depression is so bad you feel like you have failed everyone and everything and as much as you want to go to sleep and not wake up you have to keep on breathing.
Such was me a few weeks ago, me before coming off the Zoloft.
The Zoloft that made life worst. The Zoloft that made me feel crazy. The Zoloft that made me want to harm myself. The Zoloft that made me put the breaks on while driving because I thought someone was crossing the road and when I blinked no one was there (among other stories), The Zoloft that made me dream dreams that I thought were real, absolute. The Zoloft that did not mix well with alcohol. The Zoloft that did not let me sleep but yet made me feel like I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. The Zoloft that made me paranoid. The Zoloft that changed me.
Now I am off the Zoloft, and in just a couple of weeks I already feel a ton better, not ‘normal me’ better, but not Zoloft crazy.
Back one one of my old faithful medications, Tegertol.
Finally built up the nerve to take the first of the Zoloft last night. (Feb 6th) Every since my bad reaction to Lithium I am nervous taking new medications. Even stuff I have taken before makes me a little nervous.
I have only slept for an hour.
I am getting my kids off to school and going to “try” to sleep.
I feel quite a bit of nausea and my body tingles. But nothing major.
I have been blogging here for a year. A whole year.
I started Bipolar Whispers in a manic phase. A time when I was full of possibility. Another grand idea was formed because of mania.
A time when my ability to write came back. Back after years of dealing with horrific writers block.
There were days when I wrote several articles, days when I published more than once. Days when I did not publish at all.
Days when what I was writing made total sense, and days when I wrote in gibberish.
There were days when I was stuck inside my head, days when the words were screaming to be written but I couldn’t form more than a few coherent sentences.
I wrote with passion. I wrote deep truths. I wrote about pasts. I wrote about futures. And I wrote about right now as the words were forming.
I wrote with questions, and I wrote looking for answers.
Sometimes I found the answers, and oftentimes I found many many more questions.
I wrote when I was manic. I wrote when I was hypomanic. I wrote when I was depressed. I wrote when I was flat and I wrote when my mood was ‘normal’.
Sometimes I didn’t write at all. Because whatever I may have been dealing with at that time was bigger. Bigger that I was able to deal with, bigger than I was able to write about, bigger than I was okay with.
But Bipolar Whispers became so much to me. It became a haven. A place to go and not worry about anything to bare it all and let it all out.
I met great friends through blogging. I have read other peoples stories, their life stories and understood. I related to them. I understood them and they understood me.
Even when I disappeared for a bit because the medical issues in our family was more than I was able to deal with, you were all here when I got back. You continued to embrace me and hold me up. You held my hand, and you gripped my heart.
Some of the most understanding people, some of the easiest people to write to, some of the easiest people to relate to have been the blogging friends I have made because of Bipolar Whispers.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here, for reading, for listening, and for hanging on.
I had a dream last night. I woke up feeling like I had been in a long standing cycling nightmare.
In reality it was probably all of 5 minutes long.
It was so vivid, in a weird black and white kind of way. If that makes sense.
I dreamed that myself and another woman ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
I have no idea who this woman was, no recollection of who she was suppose to be in my real life. She had curly hair, was taller than me and skinny.
The hospital was, crisp. Black and white with silver tones. Everything was bright. Vivid.
We were both checked in and put in the same room. (odd I know)
The room was oddly shaped. Instead of the standard rectangle one wall was like the short end of a rectangle with a window on it and a bed going down its side just off from the wall.
Then there were two long walls….the sides of a standard rectangle.
But one wall was shorter than the other. The one on the right entering the room was shortest and it sort of made this diagonal corner space.
This was where my bed was.
I remember a nurse talking to me. And then being in shock because my husband arrives. I remember wondering how he knew where I was and then realization setting in that the hospital staff must have called him.
He walks into the room, he does not hug me, he does not touch me, he does not ask how I am.
He proceeds to take his wedding band off and he holds it out. I put my hand out, palm up and he drops the ring into my hand.
Our eyes lock, and he leaves.
I begin to cry, feeling as if my heart is breaking.
**This is where I wake up**
I felt like I had been dreaming a nightmare of epic proportions.
I have had a yuck day every since. Of course because of the dream I did not sleep well last night. Today I read for a bit and then slept for a bit. I feel more rested now than I did this morning.
Realization for me: I am terribly afraid that my mental illness will eventually push him away. I am afraid of symptoms getting worst, I am afraid of changes in my mood, behavior. I am afraid that eventually it will all be too much for him.
And I am most afraid that at that point he will be….
Bipolar Whispers 