Three weeks ago I had the closest call to suicide I have ever had. Scared and traumatized from the event, I decided it was time to stop trying to cope alone as I was told by a very close friend, “Just like people with high blood pressure are a heart attack waiting to happen, you are a suicide waiting to happen.” Two weeks ago I went to the doctor because I was out of control and was going to lose my life to a mental health disorder if I didn’t ask for help. Knowing I was going in and was going to be medicated, I was hesitant and reluctant to try any medication. Ten years have passed since my severe anxiety started and I have avoided medication, but now, with everything in my life falling into place and my depression getting worse, I felt that I no longer had the choice to choose if I was going to be medicated or not. I went in knowing I had anxiety and depression, that was a given, what I did not know, was she suspects I have bipolar disorder.
The Mayo Clinic explains the overview of bipolar as follows:
“Bipolar disorder, formerly called manic depression, is a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings that include emotional highs (mania or hypomania) and lows (depression). When you become depressed, you may feel sad or hopeless and lose interest or pleasure in most activities. When your mood shifts to mania or hypomania (less extreme than mania), you may feel euphoric, full of energy or unusually irritable. These mood swings can affect sleep, energy, activity, judgment, behavior and the ability to think clearly. Episodes of mood swings may occur rarely or multiple times a year. While most people will experience some emotional symptoms between episodes, some may not experience any.”
When my doctor talked to me about medication, she asked me did I come in for medication or did I want medication, I told her no, I absolutely did not want medication, I had been avoiding it for years, but now thought it was unavoidable as I was suffering and was going to die if I didn’t get a grasp on the chemical imbalance in my brain. As she talked about different medications with me, I drifted off completely. I can’t believe we are here, I can’t believe that I cannot control my own mind, I am having a hard time understanding how we got here and why when life is turning itself around so beautifully, that I can’t climb out of the pit of darkness. Even harder to grasp is that this may not be the short term help I was looking for, this maybe a lifetime of medication to control the roller coaster my life consists of.
Bipolar sounds scary as the person diagnosed with it and for the outsiders hearing it, it sounds like the person with it is crazy or has serious mental issues. At least that is what the stigma feels like. I am 100% sure that people with bipolar do not go around telling everyone about their disorder…. And that is where I am different. Just like depression and suicide, I refuse to sweep things under the rug, as I find true empowerment and release in talking about the unsaid scary thing that should not be kept a secret, but society says it should.
I feel like bipolar is one of the mental health disorders people automatically put with serial killers (or is that just me and too much youtube crime watch tv LOL). I don’t think people understand what bipolar is so they put a sticker on it that everyone with it is the same, but just like any other disease, disorder, or affliction, everyone is different and how their bodies react and respond are never the same. I can only speak for my disorder, but I do hope that I can speak clearly and freely enough to kind of speak for at least some of us living with this disorder and at least bring more awareness to what bipolar really is instead of what the stigma has made it.
I have always ridden an emotional rollercoaster, at least for most of my teenage and adult years. In my writing I talk about the roller coaster a lot, never knowing that people didn’t feel the way I did. I thought I had a crappy way of handling the roller coaster, I never knew that it was because my roller coaster was more intense than most people. How bipolar was described to me was that normal people’s roller coasters go up and down but always come back to a baseline and only move to either side of it in small little mounds. When you have bipolar your peaks and valleys are huge spikes that fall way to far below the baseline or extremely high above it. Your time at baseline is slim to none, so you are rarely feeling that you aren’t in crisis or on your highest high. There is no maintaining happy medium for bipolar.
In my personal battle, the hardest part has always been waking up and never knowing who I am going to be today. I go to bed knowing today was an excellent or terrible day, tomorrow may be a drag out of today’s feelings or the polar opposite. Will I be able to get out of bed? Will everyone think something is wrong with me because I can barely lift my head up? Will I be a screaming ray of sunshine ready to talk to any and everyone? Will I be ready to die? Will I be my “normal” (what in the hell is that?)? I honestly cannot tell you what a “normal” Priscilla day is. I think I need to start evaluating the end of my days, was today a high, normal, or low. Sounds hilarious I’m sure, but I honestly have no clue! I have been using a mood tracker app for about a month now called Pixels, even before the diagnosis, because I wanted to keep track of what my mood changes were like as they started getting increasingly worse and staying longer in the low spots. It is a good indicator of what my “normal” days are, and sadly, they all include some type of negative connotation in them, whether it is emptiness, sadness, fear, or anxiety, they all include some combo of those descriptors.
I think another aspect of this diagnosis that is hard for me is that I am a believer that depression or bipolar is hereditary. I do believe we can pass on chemical imbalances in the brain as it is something our bodies were lacking when they were made, not something environmentally sucking our chemicals out, though in some cases I believe environment does play a role or intensify the situation. I have always wanted to be a mother. My number one goal in life has always been to have my own family and create and raise my own little humans to rock this world full of awesomeness and love. I have a hard time with the thought of passing on this disorder to them. I am not throwing a pity party here, but there has been some suffering in the past few years. There has been a lot of time wasted that I could have been living my life, while on the contrary, my brain was trying to convince my body to die. I would NEVER intentionally put this disorder into someone else’s path… either of these disorders for that matter. I can’t imagine a fulfilling life without tiny humans, but I also am sincerely fighting the thought of purposefully giving someone a warped brain that makes you think your life isn’t worth living. I am not a lot of things, but strong and resilient is something I am, and I don’t know if that would also be passed down with the disorder or not. I have a will to live that is bigger than my Brain Demon ever will be, or at least I freaking hope so, so I fight a hard fight anytime he decides to take up residence in my brain, but would my child also get that resilience with their disorder? Would my child have to go through all of the feelings of loneliness and complete solitude? Would my tiny human be inconsolable and extremely sad? I don’t know that in my heart of hearts, I can bare the fact that I am the reason my little miracle would be the deepest, darkest sad you can ever be. I’ve been there, and go there often, it is the worst place EVER. I would save my worst enemies from that particular part of brain hell. Can I intentionally send someone, not just anyone but MY baby there?!
(Disclaimer: I know this is totally hypothetical as I am a soon to be divorced, single woman, but at some point I hope not to be. Just a moment in the thoughts of my washing machine of a brain.)
Taking medication has been very hard for me as well. Honestly, I am just scared to death of being addicted to something that I have to have everyday to function normally. I have been addicted to a few things in my life- exercise, food, probably people, but being addicted to a foreign substance changing my body’s composition bothers me. I have always thought that a healthy body should be able to regulate itself and fix it’s own issues. Clearly, that is a false philosophy to live by, as I am probably healthier than I have ever been and actually semi normal, exercise wise and in my eating. The decision to try medication was not an easy one for me. I had a lot of research and debating to do. I was very pleased when my NP took the time to talk through every single one of our options and how they could help and why they were or were not for me. Knowledge is power, and having the knowledge, gave me the power to choose what was going in my body.
It takes 6-8 weeks for the full effects of these medications to be evident, but my body knew immediately I was giving it something different. For 10 days I was sick every morning, had a weird erratic heart rate, and nausea was constant. I had lost interest in food (wish that would have stayed) and was dull as an unsharpened pencil. Finally, I feel that I am starting to semi regulate. I honestly, I have no idea what the medicine is doing for me. I hope it is decreasing the mountains and valleys that I face, but I know now, I am happy to not be sick and to be starting to feel semi back into my schedule. I didn’t want to try a bunch of different medications, I just want to have something to help. The side effects are to extreme to keep tricking my brain into something else every few weeks, but I am trying to keep an open mind, that this may be my only way to have some type of normalcy in my life, though I don’t think I will ever truly be normal.
Time for another confession about the medication, I also hesitated taking it because I was scared I was no longer going to be able to write my blog. I was so scared it was going to steal all my emotions and feelings about depression, suicide, and now bipolar, that I wasn’t going to be able to feel anymore. When you live with suicidal thoughts and feelings, or the Brain Demon, for so long, you don’t even know if you have any other emotions. It is scary to think he may be gone, then what?! What emotions will I have? WIll I no longer be able to talk about this journey? Talking about this journey is my true reason for living, helping others with their own battles or helping others understand people in those battles. What will I do if this is taken from me? Yep, probably the craziest thing you have ever heard, but when you have nothing else you truly can attest to or speak for, you don’t want to lose your identity and cause. I haven’t written in two weeks, I hope this is not a sign that I am losing my ability to write about hard things. Writing about hard things makes me happy and fulfills my empty places that have been created by this disorder.
Our Story ;sn’t Over
P<3