That Fork in the Road

November 23, 2012 By

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth–

Excerpt: Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken

I couldn’t pass up the DP Challenge today. ” Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.“

helping sarah

helping sarah (Photo credit: kat st kat)

Being Manic-Depressive (Bipolar) comes with a lot of perks and not so fun additives. I cannot speak for all and nor would I ever want to as it’s a spectrum disorder so none two Bipolar people are alike. They have the main categories: Bipolar 1, Bipolar 2, Cyclothymia (Also known as Bipolar Lite) and Bipolar Spectrum Disorder-NOS (Not otherwise specified). Not one is better than the other, they are classified by the severity of the symptoms, but that doesn’t mean that it will affect your life any more or less. To be walking out and saying “phew, thank God I don’t have Bipolar 1″ shouldn’t usually cross your mind. Some Bipolars experience their symptoms in longer intervals, some rapid-cycle between mania and depression or hypomania and depression. Some never experience a heavy depression, or one they’d consider to be that much of a hindrance to them. Some people with Bipolar 1 disorder never go from Mania to Psychosis in their lives. Some could, like me.

I go through stages and I think the stages will recycle themselves for the rest of my life. Anger that I am conflicted with this disorder that so many people don’t understand. The stigma that is carried along with Bipolar disorder. The people that claim another person is Bipolar because of a behavior they have like an explosive temper. I don’t think these people went to medical school and obtained their specialty in neuropharmacology and diagnosing of mental illnesses. Just my thoughts. I get sad; the whole “why me?”. What did I do to deserve living on medications for the rest of my life? Medication cocktails that will change time and time again because of your chemical make up and how you absorb a medication changes along with its effectiveness. Am I doing what’s right by me? How are these drugs going to affect me 10, 15, 20 years from now? Side effects like weight gain, possible diabetes, acne, water retention, kidney failure. Acceptance. Studies have shown that those with Bipolar disorder tend to be smarter, having a higher IQ which is only useful if you exercise it. We can be more creative; a lot of artists in music, writing, paint, design, etcetera are or were (if they’re dead by chance) Bipolar. Medication isn’t so bad if it makes me mentally feel like me. This is where we run into trouble.

The book I am using my sentence from was lying on the floor next to my bed from where I like to lounge and type nonsensical words onto the screen and publish them to see who will read them and what they will think. The cover and the back of the book have been ripped off, not because I stole the book, but because I once became enraged (anger stage) not long ago and ripped them off so anyone who came into my room and looked at my bookshelf wouldn’t see this self-help book for Bipolar disorder. It was a tad on the paranoid side because rarely does anyone come into my room. So I cannot produce proper credit, but if they ever run this line through a plagiarism site, may they understand it was me utilizing their help and not trying to steal from them. I’ve already looked, the title is not anywhere in the book unless it’s on some obscure page in the middle of the book.

 “It can feel like taking the medications is a big risk, but not taking them can be risky as well.”

The other night when I was talking to my mom about an upcoming appointment I have with my doctor, I mentioned something about not believing his diagnosis is incorrect, but that I wanted to know with certainty that I needed to be on the medications that I am on. That can be looked at in two different ways. It could be smart to know that these medications are working and they are the answer. It could be dumb because it could be the medications are working well enough to where I don’t think I need them. The latter sounds more on par if you think about it. The first choice could be very logical, but right now it’s not. That talk with my mom was more like a talk with myself trying to convince me as much as her that my disorder could possibly be a misdiagnosis.

This reason right here is the one that makes Bipolar disorder the hardest mental disorder to treat. Not only do the medications have to be right and tweaked for as long as we’re alive, but once we are good and feel stable, that’s when we want to get off the treatment train and live our own lives. We can talk ourselves into believing we are well and don’t need to be medicated when in reality we don’t even realize we are becoming our own worst enemy. We go off the drugs, spiral out, I personally always go up before I go down, fight to not get hospitalized, get heavy doses of whatever they want to give us while in there then they send us on our way when the insurance says no more or the psyche appointed to that hospital feels you aren’t a danger to yourself or society. I don’t want to play Russian roulette with myself or the people who care about me. Yes there could be alternative treatments, I may pursue them in the future, but now is too soon. My brain has broken twice, my psychiatrist tells me if it happens again it could be permanent. I don’t want to lose my family and friends, but I especially do not want to lose myself.

You do it to yourself, you do
And that’s what really hurts
Is that you do it to yourself
Just you, you and no one else
You do it to yourself
You do it to yourself.. yourself.. yourself..

Radiohead – Just

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Crimson & Clover Over & Over

November 10, 2012 By

I went to Plinky because I wanted something thought provoking to write about that made me analyze what something means to me. The prompt that struck me was “What song can you listen to over an over again? Why?”. Three songs came to mind, but I am sure I have several more.

1. ‘Vermillion Pt. 2′ by Slipknot

2. ’3 Libras’ by A Perfect Circle

3. ‘Judith’ by A Perfect Circle

Yes, there is a Pt. 1 to Vermillion, but it’s more lyrically grotesque than I like. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, on to the reasons.

Vermillion Pt. 2

She seemed dressed in all of me, stretched across my shame
All the torment and the pain, leaked through and covered me
I’d do anything to have her to myself, just to have her for myself
Now I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do when she makes me sane.

This first verse of Vermilion Pt. 2 is amazing to me. When it comes on it makes me think of someone I once held too dear to me. “Dressed in all of me” about how I was always caring for her and her needs. “All the torment and the pain leaked through and covered me” I took on all of her troubles, I always wanted to fix her and every time she healed, I hurt. “I’d do anything to have her to myself” sounds creepy as hell, let’s be honest, but when I was hanging out with her I always wanted to build her up and make her feel smart and pretty and protect her from any negativity because to be really honest, she was extremely thin-skinned.

She is everything to me, the unrequited dream
The song that no one sings, the unattainable
She’s a myth that I have to believe in
All I need to make it real is one more reason
I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do when she makes me sad.

The friendship was very one sided where I mostly catered to her and her well-being. Everyone always asked why I was friends with her and didn’t understand our friendship. I cared a lot about her, more than I had really for any of my other friends at the time. I was always there when she needed me and would pick her up in any instance that her and her boyfriend turned husband were arguing. She had some downfalls, but she was my best friend.

But I won’t let this build up inside of me I won’t let this build up inside of me I won’t let this build up inside of me I won’t let this build up inside of me
A catch in my throat, choke, torn into pieces I won’t, no!
I don’t wanna be this…
But I won’t let this build up inside of me I won’t let this build up inside of me I won’t let this build up inside of me I won’t let this build up inside of me
She isn’t real I can’t make her real
She isn’t real I can’t make her real

We had a falling out and it happened to be when I was in the middle of a shit-storm of mania. I don’t remember all the details, but these last pieces of the song help me realize that as much as I put her up on a pedestal, she should have returned the same kind of love and friendship. And when he says, “I don’t wanna be this..” it’s like me saying I don’t want to be so co-dependent. And when sang, “She isn’t real, I can’t make her real” means my friend that I have created to be in my head, she never was and I couldn’t make her.

3 Libras

I threw you the obvious and you flew with it on your back,
A name in your recollection, thrown down among a million same. Difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed and passed over
When I’ve looked right through to see you naked and oblivious
And you don’t. See. Me…

I was sexually abused at 14, but it didn’t involve rape since I was lucky enough to have been menstruating on the day, he did touch and do something else down there, but no penetration thank God. Not even a year later I met Greg. Well I knew him in Middle School, but now he lived 2 doors down from me. We became pretty close friends and I had a mad crush on him because suffice to say he was fucking hot. I liked our friendship, I could go to him with anything and he was just as much as a disturbed teen as I was. Actually maybe more so. He started dating another friend of mine and damn it if I am not territorial. He’d only been dating her like a week or two when Greg and I decided to have sex. Yes, it’s cheating, but we were basically kids I think we deserve a little slack—& I know having sex and being ‘basically’ a kid do not go hand in hand, but that was what it was—it was October 6th, one day after my birthday and 2 days after the chick he was seeing’s birthday.

He’s tall and well endowed so it freaking hurt, but we got accustomed and a whole Orgy album later we were done. I didn’t realize how emotional it would be for me until I got into his shower. I cried. I don’t know if I was crying because I really liked him and I felt cheap now or if I felt as if I indeed lost something. Or if I felt dirty like I did after that creep asshole molested me. Maybe it was all the above. I came back to his room and he asked me if I was OK 15 times and I said I was fine and that I had to go.

But I threw you the obvious
Just to see if there’s more behind the
Eyes of a fallen angel, Eyes of a tragedy
Here I am expecting just a little bit
Too much from the wounded
But I see, see through it all
See through, see you

Greg’s situation was a little much at the time, a little meaning that a girl had trapped (I was her friend so I know for a fact she did since she told me the same story he had) him into having a child with her. Greg changed a lot from that. He harbored more anger than I’ve seen in anyone. Even when he was experiencing different emotions, it was there festering inside. So yes, he was wounded and more so a tragedy.

Cause I threw you the obvious
To see what occurs behind the
Eyes of a fallen angel, Eyes of a tragedy

Oh well, oh well
Apparently nothing,
Apparently nothing at all

You don’t, you don’t
You don’t see me
You don’t, you don’t
You don’t see me at all…

We tried to have a relationship for the first time when we were young adults, before I went off to college and before he moved away. It was oil and water. I drove to see him a couple times when I was back from college and we tried to maintain our friendship. Then he came back here for a visit and for a weird reason wanted to tell me that he had feelings for another girl that had lived on our street and gone to school with us. He was hurt and mad because he had seen her first and she laughed in his face. I tried to explain maybe she was just taken back since when he dated her once when we were young, he cheated on her bad (not with me). He told me not to tell her that he told me this, but her and I hung out and when I was tipsy with a few girlfriends it came out and Greg dropped completely out of my life. He was my first real crush and this song is my song to him because I first heard it when I was hanging out with him in his old room.

Judith

As much as many people say that Maynard is against religion, he sure makes a lot of songs that touch on it, in fact this whole album that ’3 Libras’ and ‘Judith’ is on, each song kind of brushes topics of religion. He could very well be against organized religion, hell he may be anti-Christian. But his songs almost question the ideas of following such faith and you have to have questions in your faith or you are walking blind. This song is the one that challenges the whole idea of Jesus and religion.

You’re such an inspiration
For the ways that I will Never ever choose to be
Oh so many ways for me to show you
How your savior has abandoned you

That beginning, “you’re such an inspiration for the ways that I will never ever choose to be” is strong. I truly love this song when I am pissed off or need to vent through music which I do a lot. My opinion on this song meaning would be he is talking to those devout believers that walk blindly and question nothing. The close minded, the non-seekers.

Fuck your God, your Lord, your Christ
He did this, took all you had and
Left you this way,
Still you pray, never stray, never
Taste of the fruit, never thought to question “Why?”
It’s not like you killed someone
It’s not like you drove a hateful spear into his side
Praise the one who left you broken down and paralyzed

The first testament of the Bible is supposed to give the history of the way it was before Jesus came down to spread the word of God. Well if you focus on the first testament, which a lot of the Christians don’t, God was very different. He seemed more spiteful. His first spiteful deed being The Tree of Knowledge. The garden of Eden was supposed to be lovely and Adam and Eve true followers of God as they were his creation. If the garden is so wonderful, why would God allow a serpent who is supposedly the fallen angel into the garden to seduce Eve. Why would he create the tree of Knowledge and tell Adam and Eve they could not eat from it. He wanted them to do so. It created free will, but then again he punished them for doing so because it went against his word. It pisses me off that as humans today we still get the painful menstruation and labor for something Eve did. All Adam got was hard work in the fields, I don’t see every man now days working in the fields. The Bible is sexist and created by man and this is why Maynard is saying fuck YOUR God, YOUR Lord, YOUR Christ because the God I believe in (more me speaking than him now) would not be this way. In Leviticus alone, we were allowed to have slaves. That sounds more of a man back then than any Creator telling the man that. Another part that matches the Bible like the Tree of Knowledge is Judith and Jesus. Judith turned on Jesus and Jesus knew it was coming all along and he even said at this last supper that one of his disciples was going to turn on him. It is also being studied to see if Mary Magdalen really was a prostitute that Jesus helped or if she was actually one of his disciples. Wouldn’t that throw the Catholic Church through a loop?

Oh so many ways for me to show you
How your dogma has abandoned you
Pray to your Christ, to your God
Never taste of the fruit, never stray, never break,
Never choke on a lie even though he’s the one who
Did this to you, you never thought to question “Why?”

It’s not like you killed someone
It’s not like you drove a spiteful spear into his side
Talk to Jesus Christ as if he knows the reasons why

He did it all for you…

Music is my life. I don’t play it and when I sing I don’t have the best voice but it helps me to feel all my emotions freely without judgment. What’s better than that?

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Antisocial (Media)

November 9, 2012 By

I said back here that I didn’t understand why Bloggers were going all anti-Facebook. I have been thinking about it and I myself am going to pull the plug, I am just scared. When I mentioned before about being acutely curious here, it’s also a nice roundabout way of saying I can be nosey as fuck. I’m not the type to get information out of you to throw in your face later or to talk about you to other people, I just always have to know things. I like to know what makes people tick and why they do what they do and why they think the way they do, maybe it’s because I am a Libra or it’s just a character flaw or a characteristic that gears people toward psychology and the like.

I do need to quit also because the fear I have about quitting is what purpose will I have if I give up on it. Not purpose as in it’s my only way of life, but purpose as in it curves my feeling of boredom and satiates my appetite for being so curious. Is that not what a drug does for somebody, an escapism from boredom filling in the gaps of the lonely. Will I withdrawal or will I feel a sense of calm and relief?

What if, what if, what if? I have always been famous for asking that question. What if I apply for a job and they never call me back? What if I get as far as the interview and they see how nervous I am and mistake it for lack of confidence? What if I relapse from the stress of getting the job or after I have obtained the job and am well into training? Obviously I have a lot more on my mind other than Facebook.

I know these questions are pointless and stalling, but I cannot stop them. They have been apart of me and who I am and what has made me tick since I was a small child. I’m not one to just do, I wish I were at times, but I was born the one to mull over something until I am at the very edge and am forced to take the dive. I don’t just look before I leap, I put everything under a microscope, including myself, until I have to make said leap. Why then must people feel that it is better to be a doer, one who takes action and gets things done? Why is it better? Why is there more acceptance in that? Why do people always feel the need to try and make worriers worry less?

There is no point to worry over the inevitable. Why worry when [insert large most likely made up percentage here] of the stuff that is worried about never happens? Find peace and tranquility. Take small steps or make small goals that are attainable and lead to the main goal. Breathe. Let the small stuff go. Don’t worry about crossing that bridge until it comes. Don’t count the chickens until they’ve hatched.

I know it all. Not just because it has been said to me, but because I have said it to others. It’s always easier to be the one giving the advice, to see how easy you can help someone stuck in a situation and know how you think you would handle it or how it should be handled. Until you are in your own.

If I step away from Facebook, will I have realized it was more of a hinderance than it was a help? Will I miss it’s way of connecting to others so easily? Will I think I’m alone now?

I won’t know until I pull the plug.

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I Caught Myself

October 28, 2012 By

Living with a mental disorder is far from being the tits*. Understanding a mental disorder can feel like learning a foreign language. Explaining it to others is as if you and they speak completely different languages and one needs directions. It’s aggravating, irritating, annoying, frustrating and again far from being the tits.

When you try to gain some perspective on it outside of your psychs highly scientific (it’s actually not all about chemicals–more on that in a bit) explanation, it seems everywhere you turn online whether it be support forums, blogs, what-have-you, it’s all bad and about triggers and trying to talk people out of offing themselves. I get it. It’s shitty. Having any mental disorder is wretched. But why bathe in it? Why so much negativity on something that is inevitable to live with? Why only share the most terrible times your disorder has branded you with?

I also felt so lost because anyone who, having bipolar disorder, shared a story or an update knew about Triggers. What threw them off and caused an episode if overwhelmed by it. At one point I was convinced I didn’t even have this disorder because I didn’t have ANY triggers. What is Bipolar Disorder without triggers? By how much I have seen online and experienced in one support group a few years back, they had triggers and they knew what those were.

I caught myself. Thursday.

Paranoia, anxiety, confusion all swept in and threw me on my ass in an instant. Actually on my knees, who needs specifics. Whether it was being away from people I knew and were apart of my everyday life, being alone in a place that wasn’t mine in a town I had no attachment to, or just being alone—could be one or a myriad of possibilities. My reality was completely slipping and I was sure I was going to fall right through the crack.

I picked my nephew up from school. Called my dad who in turn called my sister’s fiancé who picked us up and took us home. I left my car behind without a care in the world about it. Why? Driving is a trigger. Ding ding! Fast forward to Saturday I finally called my psych who upped my Seroquel from 25 to 300 mg to prevent psychosis. Or if it’s easier to understand, to keep me from going psychotic. Simple terms.

I’ve been used to depression since I was 14—traumatic experience happened—so it’s almost like I’m immune to it and can handle it a bit better than had it came with the Bipolar Disorder. My actual bipolar episodes are a whole different beast. I start connecting dots where dots are not connected. I believe songs on the radio are specifically played for me. If I am driving I feel all the cars around me can hear me through my stereo or that my car is bugged. I believe that I have to have all the blinds open so the cops are not called. I think people are apart of schemes that are completely made up–conspiracy theories. I become very child-like; animated, laughing at inappropriate times, etc.

But before I was completely gone, I was able to reach out for help. Though my episodes may be extreme (who am I fooling, they are duh!) I’m able to catch them before someone throws out the H-word**. Or the C-word**. It’s a good feeling.

More than Chemicals: Two parts/areas/whathaveyous of the brain are affected when it comes to Bipolar Disorder. The gray matter that surrounds your brain is less dense than non-bsds and the membrane (filter) between rational thought and emotional feeling is fragile and thin. So in psychiatry it’s more than just medicating the patient’s symptoms, it has to be about building the brain up. My psych specifically has me on a Lithium and Valproic combo. Lithium works better when you sleep because your brain is in rest mode and that’s when a lot of your information processing happens. Valproic helps get open up the thingies (fuck if I remembered what they were called, picture looked like DNA strands) so that more of the Lithium gets in to start building up your brain. This is all my own words, my psych would tell it better and it’s from a few appointments ago so it’s not that fresh. I know what I knows.

________________________

*figure of speech, not talking about any sexy bits.
**Hospital/Hospitalize, Commit/Committed. 

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Bipolar Disorder & Mortality

October 28, 2012 By
English: Stephen Fry

English: Stephen Fry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve always joked about not wanting to live too long. What’s wrong with a little short and sweet? After all, summer flings are always the best kind. Or that could just be me. Though, to be honest I haven’t had a summer fling in forever, and even then I have only had one. Jokes tend to be 90% (lovely thing about statistics, you can make them up–99% of statistics are false) truth of the person delivering them, meaning that they believe partly to mostly what they are saying.

Anyway…

So I was watching a YouTube video on Stephen Fry talking about living with Bipolar Disorder. Unlike me, he feels the disorder is a disease and an illness. What caught my attention is when he called it a morbid disease, not morbid as used in poetry or other literary works to mean dark or grotesque, but the medical term meaning a disease that, in fact, causes death.

In my head I was thinking, “You’re shittin’ me. This cannot be true unless you are talking about suicide. I could understand if suicide is higher in those who have the disorder than those who don’t…” but I don’t, now, recall him mentioning suicide so it required some Googling.

What I put: Bipolar Morbidity Rate (I’m obsessed with capitalizing most words)

One of the articles I came across: Mortality Among Bipolar

If you aren’t in the mood to click the most beautiful link ever created, I’ll give you some fun facts from the article.

—”Bipolar disorders appear to increase the risk of early death from a medical illness, according to a new literature review study.”

—”Researchers comprehensively reviewed 17 studies involving more than 331,000 patients. Evidence suggested* that people with bipolar disorder have a higher mortality from natural causes compared to people in the general population of similar age and gender but without mental illness.”

—The various studies indicated that the risk was from 35 percent to 200 percent higher. The risk is the same for men and women. The most common conditions leading to premature death were heart disease, respiratory diseases, stroke, and endocrine problems such as diabetes.

—“The review of data gathered from large population studies suggests that having bipolar disorder is similar to being a smoker in terms of increasing a person’s risk of early death,” said Dr. Wayne Katon, a University of Washington (UW) professor of psychiatry.

—More recently, Katon said, researchers are finding that, while rates of suicides and accidents are indeed greater among those with bipolar disorder compared to the general population, they only partly account for the higher premature death rate.

—Biological abnormalities associated with bipolar illness might also be shortening lives, Katon noted. The illness can stress the immune system and the hypothalamic-pituitary axis, a system that controls many body processes. Bipolar disorders also heighten the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which sets off the fight-or-flight response to stress.

That’s almost the whole article. You’re welcome.

Anyhow I find it funny that when I first became a Pharmacy Tech, well that’s not true, I was a Pharmacy Tech for Walgreens for 8 months then went to college for Film & Video then became a Pharmacy Tech again for CVS. I like working in a Pharmacy, obviously. So when I started with CVS I was putting the drugs away and I had a random thought and blurted out to my Pharmacist and Lead Tech that I didn’t ever want to have Bipolar Disorder or Thyroid Disease because you have to take medication for the rest of your life. A couple of years later I end up with both.

Makes me wonder when talking about not wanting a long life, if I’m kind of setting myself up for a premature death. Or maybe I’ll break the world record of living the longest life. I love life, but not that much.

_____________________

*Thank God/Ala/Buddha/Goddess/Zeus/Whatchamacallit the evidence suggested. Had the evidence confirmed I’d be in some bit of trouble. 

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