When do you tell someone you’re bipolar?

I haven’t posted lately, probably because I’ve been consumed by a new relationship. Well, I don’t want to ‘jinx’ it by calling it a relationship, but let’s just say I’m dating someone that I really like. Usually I keep all my medication in my night table drawer. Usually, I keep at least a dozen pill bottles around and when I need to, I sit on my bed with some television program in the background to entertain me while I put 5-6 pills in each daily compartment of the plastic cases I use to keep things organized. So my drawer is a mess of orange pill bottles and three plastic old-lady pill cases.

Since the new guy started coming over to my place, I’ve put the pill boxes and the pill bottles in a shoe box. The shoe box is in the bottom drawer of my bureau.  Put simply, I’m hiding the pills just like I’m hiding the bipolar disorder. (Or am I just not revealing information that I shouldn’t reveal at this point anyhow?)  It’s been about a month since we started dating. In the past, I’ve blurted out “I’m bipolar” at the beginning of knowing someone. Once, in a moment of complete and utter madness on my part a few years ago after a terrible break up, I decided to tell a guy I was bipolar on THE FIRST DATE. I’ve now realized that bipolar disorder is something that I deal with and not something that the person I’m dating should have to deal with explicitly, especially at the beginning of a relationship. Yes, it is who I am as a person, but I have things under control.

Still, at a certain point, I feel obligated to tell him. I feel like he has a right to know, but I fear judgment and I fear what I know has happened in the past. Which is that once you tell someone you’re bipolar, suddenly you’re the one who’s really troubled. The one who is judged when she’s in a bad mood. The one who, the other person feels, might be worth leaving because she’s not “stable,” even though, I would argue I’m so obsessively tuned in to maintaining my stability that I’m in fact more stable than most.

 

the devil is caffeine

I am so fucking mad. This morning I woke up in such a good mood. I rode the subway to work and actually had the thought, “wow, I feel like a normal person probably feels–not too high, not too low–just normal.” But I took my full dose of Seroquel last night and slept 10 hours.  So I also felt annoyed that I had to sleep for so long to feel OK.

I mean, on what planet do people sleep for 10 hours?

So when I got to work, I decided to get an iced coffee. And then after I placed the order, I looked up for a second and said, “Wait–I’ll have an iced latte, actually.”  Honestly, drinking espresso in any form at any time, for me, is like injecting the caffeine into my veins. It’s so fucking stupid. But I did it because I felt so calm that I wanted the extra jolt.  In hindsight, this makes no sense. I was well rested. I didn’t need a pick me up.

Now it’s past midnight and I have no Lunesta left because I forgot to pick it up from the pharmacy earlier.  I don’t feel like taking extra Seroquel, but I feel so wound up that all I can do is surf the internet and skate from one thought to the next. I can’t imagine sleeping or calming down. And I’m not even excited in a good way.  I’m just revved up and upset with myself for not going to the pharmacy.

If I hadn’t sucked down the latte I would be fine. I’d be asleep.  I could have ordered a damn Chai. Instead, I succumbed to having that morning high and now I can’t come down from it. Tomorrow I’ll feel like crap as well.

Caffeine, indeed, is the devil.

Sorry for all the whining and carrying on.  I just wish I could sleep.

 

Manic September

I have a million ideas. Everything all at once. I want to be a writer. I want to be a filmmaker. I want to do yoga.  I want to kiss someone. Now.  It’s almost midnight. I did take my medication, but I’m off track. I can’t even focus long enough to write this blog post. I don’t know what it is about September, but this month arrives and suddenly I can’t get grounded. I’m not yet so manic that I’m reckless.  I’m just scattered hypomanic.  My poor bank account.

 

Is overreacting a symptom of mania?

Yesterday I worked with someone whose incompetence was infuriating to me.  Watching him, I felt anger, resentment, and frustration.  Later, I e-mailed some other co-workers to try to deal with the situation, but now today I’m wondering, was I just overreacting because I’m not getting enough sleep/because I’m on the manic side of life right now?

One of the hardest things about bipolar disorder, for me, is that I’m constantly second guessing my emotions. It’s unclear if my behavior yesterday (which no one else I work with would deem strange because I handled the situation well, I think) was “the real me” or the me spiked with mania.

In bed this morning, still bothered by yesterday and also haunted by a terrible dream in which a good friend was jumping in front of a train, I woke up way before my alarm (6:30 a.m.) and couldn’t sleep a minute more.  I’m not someone who wakes up before the alarm.  That’s not me.  But manic me? Yes, that person never sleeps until the alarm.  That person is  abrasive. She’s sending annoyed e-mails. She’s got a bone to pick with someone, and only after the fact does she realize that maybe, just maybe, this problem she’s having with the world is a problem with her head.

 

Sleep the mania away

It annoys me that I need as much sleep as I do. I blame it on the Seroquel, but then when I don’t take the Seroquel, I start to lose it (like I did this weekend).  I ended up taking enough Seroquel Saturday night to launch me into 12 hours of sleep into Sunday, but now today I had to wake up at 7 a.m. and it’s almost 9 p.m. and I’m about to collapse.  Because I’m so tired, I want to skip the Seroquel tonight so I can be sure to not feel groggy tomorrow, but then this viscious cycle starts again.  If I didn’t have bipolar disorder and if I slept less, I could be so much more productive, it seems.  For now, I will get into bed to make sure I sleep the mania away.

 

This is my brain off Seroquel

OK I admit it.  Or maybe I’ve already admitted it on this blog: I’ve skipped the Seroquel these past few nights. It seemed like a fine idea until now, as I sit here with this buzzing in the back of my brain, with a tired body, with heavy lids that want to close over dry eyes if not for these thoughts darting every which way, keeping me up, keeping me open.

At work today that my behavior was a little strung out. I was obsessively creating outlines and feeling competitive with coworkers. I was feeling overconfident. I was over-sharing about my family and speaking when other people were not really interested in hearing from me. The beginnings of hypomania at its finest.

But instead of staying home tonight like I should, I’m going out to a friend’s birthday party.  I’m going to put on a skirt that’s too short because even though I’m exhausted, I’m also elated. I’m charged up, and short skirts were made for nights like this. (Here’s the clinical definition of how I’m feeling.)

p.s. gotta love the irony that this morning I’m offering bipolar tips and this evening i’m admitting to hypomania.  but i’ll have it under control soon.  i will. i will.

 

Bipolar Tip #1

Assuming someone will start reading this blog at some point, I’m going to start offering tips for bipolar folks out there, based on my own experience and research.

Tip #1.

Caffeine fucks with the bipolar brain; avoid it in its most concentrated iterations (coffee) if you can.

This is because caffeine can induce mania.  It interrupts sleep.  It leads to insomnia, and not sleeping in turn leads to mania. I’ve actually switched to Chai tea because I’ve found that I like it as much as coffee, it gives me a morning kick, and it doesn’t keep me up at night.

So embrace tea.  Switch to decaf. Try it.

Your brain will thank you.

[image from nino.modugno via flickr]

 

It would be so fun to stay up all night

Here’s my fantasy.  Finish melting the grilled cheese I have going on the stove. Come back here to my computer and sit, for the next four hours, reading articles online, shopping online, writing e-mails.  My mind is buzzing. I feel pretty happy.  Not manic right now. Just happy.  Though with me, “happy” could be bad.

So instead of indulging in the natural insomnia that would ensue were I to just return to this computer and sit here, I am going to shut it down.  I will go take my medication after I finish this post.  And then I will read a magazine while I eat my grilled cheese and go to sleep.

Work, after all, is in the morning.

And I hear the cheese melting on the stove.  Yum.

 

Dancing With Seroquel

no one drugged their way out of this kind of mania...

When I start to get manic, there are some things I always notice about my changing behavior before it becomes wide-eyed craziness. (I didn’t think I was anywhere close to manic until this morning, but here I am, feeling way way way “up.”) Actually, I haven’t had a full-blown manic episode that’s landed me in the hospital in 10 years; since that 28-day hospitalization in college, I’ve flirted with mania and often become what the professionals term “hypomanic.”

Now that I’ve clarified that. When I’m hypomanic (still able to go to work/school/not completely delusional), it feels like great fun for a little while. What I feel is utterly grateful to be walking around on this beautiful planet. Literally, I will think to myself, “I’m beautiful. I’m great. I’m so lucky to be alive.”  I’ll buy clothes. I’ll flirt with everyone in my path.  I’ll come up with some big project that, in my mind, is the most ingenious idea anyone has ever had.

But then  I do something really stupid. Then the bubble bursts. I send a really inappropriate e-mail to an ex-boyfriend or co-worker. I am at a party, and I find it necessary to monopolize everyone’s attention, but then I can’t remember what the hell I’m saying. Finishing sentences becomes impossible because my thoughts are slippery inside my head. Things start to crumble.

It’s once I get embarrassed and/or scared by the hypomania (and sometimes this is just because the reality of being in a state mental hospital 10 years ago is still so vivid in my mind) that I douse the manic fire with 14 hours of Seroquel-induced sleep followed by a Seroquel hangover that has me in a state where I’ve all but forgotten the unabated bliss I felt before drugging myself the night before.

I only take a very low dose of Seroquel on a nightly basis, but last night I skipped it entirely.

I just felt like I wanted to get up early this morning.

I felt like I was sick of the Seroquel.

That little pink pill was annoying me.

And sadly, maybe I am searching for a little mania, even if I know it’s bad for me.

 

I stopped posting because I was scared

I stopped posting for months and months because I’m still grappling with fear. Fear of someone finding out who I am because I’ve fucked up the anonymity thing. (Someday maybe I’ll decide to use my real name on here, but for now, I’m not ready.) Fear of saying something stupid. Fear of becoming manic, deciding to take ownership of the blog, then coming down from the mania and realizing that was a crazed decision.

It’s been seven months since I last posted but I think I have a handle on how this is going to go now.  Thanks to help from Salted Lithium, I had help figuring out how to set everything up.Coming out of the closet as bipolar really is that: it’s a coming out process, but the difference between bipolar disorder and homosexuality (and this is in no means meant to downplay “coming out”) is that most of us who are bipolar are never fully “out.” We tell our closet friends. We tell our partners. We sometimes tell strangers. But letting the world know you’re bipolar isn’t the way to get ahead in our society, even though there are millions of people who live fruitful, high-functioning lives with bipolar disorder.

As the guy in this video from a new site I just discovered says, people don’t know enough about bipolar disorder.

I want to be one of the voices that changes that.

Still, I doubt myself on an hourly basis.  I doubt my decisions and my job and whether or not I like what I’m doing.  When I wake up in the morning, there’s a part of me that wants to roll over and stay in bed, and I know this is because I am leaning more towards depression these days.  I’ve increased my Depakote dosage to stave off the mania of last spring. So now I’m ten pounds heavier (in the spectrum of weight gain from meds not a ton, but it sucks nonetheless), and I’m pissed off that I can’t squeeze my ass into my  jeans.

I know it’s ridiculous to value thinness over “health;” however, it’s complicated when, in my case, being less healthy feels so great.  I miss the mania.  I miss feeling utterly content because I’ve bought a new lip gloss and it just feels so amazing to be in a world where lip gloss exists. Right now, I don’t know where my lip gloss is. Buried in an old purse somewhere.

Also, does the Depakote actually make me eat more food, I wonder? I just ate a bowl of olives. Now onto my pills, and then, to sleep.