The Blessing of Forgetting

I just walked out of the apartment and ran into my super on the sidewalk. He looked at me, confused, like I was some kind of puzzle he couldn’t figure out.

“Do you remember what happened?”

I nodded because I knew what he was talking about, not because I remembered.

He, like the others, had seen me turn into a different person a few weeks ago. A manic person who, in a state of psychosis, believed I was privy to some kind of governmental conspiracy. A person who got into an ambulance and asked the driver for his gun. A person who, once hospitalized, punched nurses and threw furniture and screamed at everyone.

“I was sick,” I told him. “I have bipolar disorder.”

“Oh,” he said. “You really scared me. I was holding a package and you were grabbing it from me, telling me it was yours.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He shook his head and dismissed the apology as not needed.

“Are you OK now?”

I told him that I was. I thanked him. I turned the corner.

And then, as I was walking down Broadway, I thought about how lucky we are that there are some things our minds won’t let us remember. At least for now, my mind is protecting me by forgetting. It’s called motivated forgetting. Critics say that this kind of repression may not be healthy. I’m not sure I care.

Right now, I am feeling blessed to have an illness that can be treated by Lithium.

And right now, I’m blessed to have forgotten.

Why You Should Stop Focusing on What You Haven’t Done

After I was hospitalized for an acute manic episode my junior year of college, I returned to school with a new medication regimen—Depakote, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Wellbutrin—coursing through my veins. On the Risperdal, my eyes wouldn’t focus. I could hardly read. The Depakote made my hands shake, Parkinsons-like, so that I couldn’t bring a spoonful of soup to my lips without some of it spilling on the table.

In the months prior to my hospitalization, I had enrolled in a Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald course where, sitting next to me in the lecture hall, a guy with curly hair and wire-rim glasses used “maudlin” in a sentence made me swoon. A few weeks passed and, soon, I was manic and not attending any of my classes. The hospitalization lasted 28 days, and then I moved back home—all of my courses incomplete. I never stepped foot in that lecture hall again, and because this was the late 90s, before the sticky web of Facebook and email trapped everyone you knew in the same tangled, social sphere, I never saw the guy with the glasses again.

Back at school the following semester, the Risperdal made reading impossible. I fell behind in all of my courses.

Because of the kindness of a dean I’d met at some point while dealing with the details of coming back to school, my transcript had no ‘incompletes’ to indicate that I’d started courses like the Faulkner course and then dropped out. Instead, my transcript marked a medical leave for a semester.

Now, I had to finish long papers about To the Lighthouse or Lolita, but I was too medicated and beholden to sleep to stay up in the computer lab until dawn to finish essays in the only way I knew how—at the last minute with the adrenaline of sleeplessness coursing through my veins.

My doctor tweaked my medication every few weeks. I got enough done to finish out the semester, but in three of my four classes I had incompletes. Winter break, I tried to finish the essays, but I was too anxious. After another semester, summer arrived, and over a few months, I finally finished the essays to ensure my transcript was not marred by incompletes.

At that time, the unblemished transcript was an accomplishment. It was the document that proved I’d finished something important. But I spent so much time thinking about what life would have been like had I finished the Faulkner course, had I dated that guy, had I finished that semester.

When I am depressed, as I was feeling earlier in the week, this familiar feeling that I’ve not finished anything of substance, that my life is not complete, washes over me. I decide that what I am missing — a boyfriend, a bigger salary, a recently published essay—defines me.

What I try to remember is that it is my responsibility to focus on what I have instead of what I don’t. For me those marks are my meaningful friendships, a healthy lifestyle, a job I can tolerate, a commitment to yoga and spiritual growth, a medication regimen that leaves my hands still and eyes focused. Have I finished a novel? Nope. Will I finish this blog post? Almost there.

Remember that you don’t need to define yourself by what you have not finished.

Remember: you write the transcript of your adult life.

Remember: you are complete.

Feeling bipolar again

I haven’t felt bipolar in many months. So many months that I forgot about this blog. I stopped posting. I wish I hadn’t, because what’s interesting is that I’ve done so much in the past months, but what’s also interesting is that the things that I’ve done have been–potentially–helped and not hindered by this disorder. For that reason, I felt no need to dwell on the bipolar. Instead, I rode the wave of hypomania. I got job promotions. I fell in love. I finished projects so quickly people around me were either amazed or pissed off by my overzealous nature.

All the while, I knew that some of what was happening–some of what I was feeling –was going to end. I knew I was going to crash. But I didn’t care. I just kept going, telling myself that maybe that person who didn’t need a lot of sleep and could work 12 hour days without blinking was just the new me. Maybe I’d found a new confidence and place in the world with this amazing job.

But it turns out that the job wasn’t amazing. It was actually me looking at the world through this lens of I-can-do-anything– that’s what made the job seem like something I wanted to do so wholeheartedly. Now, the hypomania has subsided and I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning. I feel completely lost, and on top of that, worthless.

If I could admit myself to a hospital and stare at a wall for a few weeks until this ends–as I have to believe it will–I would. My brain is telling me awful things. “Life is not worth it.” “You will never be good enough.” “You’re ugly.” But it’s a litany of nonsense I’ve heard before and while I suffer from it, I will not become a victim to it.  I can still ACT as if everything is fine, and I can and will ride this out.  However, inside,  I feel as if I no longer want to participate in my own life, and that’s a tough thing to deal with.

What’s most confusing is that I guess the hypomanic feelings of security and happiness and grandiosity are also an illusion. But that’s an illusion I can live with.

What I think I will read because I am paralyzed to do anything but think about all of this tonight:
http://www.hypomanicedge.com/

Skipping Seroquel

Tonight I’m not taking my Seroquel. My doctor knows that some nights I don’t take it. I take a very low dosage that ranges from 25 mg from 100 mg if I really need to knock myself out of a hypomanic episode. I really need to be able to get out of bed tomorrow morning by 7:45 a.m., and the 25 mg makes me groggy.

Earlier, I had my writing group. I workshopped a scene where I talked about Seroquel and hypersexuality. People were shocked because they knew nothing of mania. One woman in my group started talking about the work as if she really knew where I was coming from because she has gone through depressions. While this is true to a certain extent, depression and bipolar disorder are not the same thing.

She also added that she got through her depression “without medication.”  This kind of comment drives me crazy. What people don’t understand about Bipolar (Bipolar I especially) is that you can’t just get through it without meds. At least 99 percent of people cant.  Yes, I can skip my Seroquel tonight, but I’ve taken Depakote along with a cocktail of other drugs for 10 years, and that’s how I’ve kept myself out of the  hospital.

Medication is not a choice for me.

No one would tell a diabetic: “stop taking insulin.”

People don’t get it.

this is lonely

I feel like I am about to explode.  Last night I kissed a semi-stranger in an art gallery and tonight, with no similar excitement, with no potential for sex or bad decisions really, all I wanted to do was go out and spend hundreds of dollars on clothes.  Stores anesthetize the mania: they’re places where, like a toddler, I can lose myself in shiny objects, in wanting something that’s attainable, that’s right in front of me.

The semi-stranger is also an ex drug addict, and I have noticed that I tend to meet people who are addicts or bipolar themselves when I’m manic. It’s like we just find each other.

I don’t know what to do but I’m going to take extra  Seroquel and try to calm down. I feel happy and sad all at once, as if I could burst into tears or laughter. It’s not good.

seroquel hangover

I doubled my dose of seroquel last night (from 25 mg to 50 mg … I take a very small amount but it has a strong effect on me) and just woke up after 10 hours of deep, dreamless sleep. Last night my thoughts were racing and I couldn’t focus on anything outside the computer. I didn’t want to take the extra seroquel in addition to all my other drugs, but I did. Seroquel has worked wonders for me in comparison with Zyprexa, which made me fat, miserable, and practically comatose.(I’m very happy s now paying up.)

Now I’m awake and getting ready to face the day. After all that seroquel-induced-sleep, I annoyed with the world and somehow still tired. Caffeine will probably perk my brain back into high gear, and even though I should stay away from it, I think I’m going to find some Starbucks after I shower.

Is a symptom of mania talking about mania? Losing my filter…

Normally, I don’t tell people I’m bipolar because I don’t want to be judged, because it’s irrelevant, because I know it’s something they won’t necessarily understand.  But these days, I want to broadcast it to the world. Even though this blog is anonymous, my wanting to start writing it again is, I suppose, an extension of this tendency.

I’ve lost my filter.

Five Hours Sleep

I didn’t take the extra Seroquel like I should have last night. When I’m feeling completely buzzed, I usually increase my dose and it knocks me out for 10 hours. I wake up with no high and a Seroquel-hangover, but, my brain has at least settled down.

Instead, I waited until after three in the morning to go to bed and popped some Lunesta so I could fall asleep for just a few hours. For me, five hours of sleep tacked on to how I’ve been feeling is like snorting more of the manic cocaine.

So I’m about to go out to meet a friend for coffee. (I need to be sure to drink decaf so I can go to sleep tonight.) For now, I’m going to shower and pile on lots of makeup.

The frustrating part of all of this is I know this is not really “happiness,” no matter how good I feel.  It’s a chemical high that will be followed by a crash. The thing is, I don’t know when the crash is coming.