Person with a puzzle

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers, I hope that you are as well as you can be. My husband has travelled to Paris for work. For us it is a fancy place and my children and I imagine that he is doing nothing other than consuming expensive french-baked goods by the minute. Before he left, I tried to hide my dismay, cried quietly before falling asleep in fear for the time he wouldn’t be around. For the very big part he plays in my and our routine that can’t be filled by anything else. He knows to wake me up on time, how I take my coffee to the precise measure and mostly offers calm and peace to a being beset by a storm.

There was a man who also had a poorly wife and he described her illness as a puzzle that could not be solved. Those vexed by the next piece or completion are frustrated and make great show expressing this. Imagine how they feel he said, in the dangerous and urgent pursuit of a puzzle that can only temporarily be eased. Sigh. I am most afraid that he will realise that it’s better to not be with a person with a puzzle. The person whose mind can change on a whim, who forgets, rarely sleeps well and requires ongoing medical care. I wouldn’t want to because then you wouldn’t have a partner or wife, you’d have a patient.

I always try to be happy, I try to hope for the best. I pray, work hard, and try to do right by my family but there are many times when I really can’t and the addition of the puzzle is perplexing with soul-wrenching exhaustion. I want to get up and fight. I want to feel the might for it. I don’t want to feel the washing machine churning inside my being that reminds me of the several reasons why someone like me is a loud and large dead-end. I feel sad and right now alone. But I think I have to find some ways why a person with a puzzle like me is important, especially me, whether you are in Paris or not.

Sanity Sought

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers, I hope that you are as well as you can be. Recently I decided that me and the world would be better off if I were sane, whilst being completely adherent to a handful of daily psychiatric medications. It made better sense to enter into the job market (which I and my family need) with a bit of sanity, mascara and lipgloss. I donned my dress of decorum, my brain of brilliance and even managed to paint my nails. Who knew what would be in store when my arrray of mental illnesses was and are neatly tucked away. The awkward anxiety, palpitating paranoia and deepening depression haven’t ever really been helpful since I’ve been a little girl, so why not give seemless sanity a go.

There’s a problem: at no point in my extended mental health journey (dotted with many, many interesting stops along the way) have I ever been told that your illness will cause you to do the COMPLETE opposite of what you intend. That sanity seeking is compromised when you will tell the truth even when you don’t want to about subjects/humour at inopportune times. That some days your tears are not controllable and that weeping emotions aren’t socially fun. The clumsy, confused, stammering and feeling as if you are a dithering idiot for which you will profusely apologise, your whole life because you changed meds/pj’s/emotions, mental illness keeps it real.

Most of all, no-one tells you about how people look at you and you look at them when you’ve lost your train of thought or spoken inappropriately and recovered, again. It’s darn hard keeping things straight when you are chemically charged just to make it through the day and also from experience, it doesn’t help telling them. I thought I could make it, I thought I honestly could pretend that I was ok and that my madness was only at the borderline level allowed by most. That I could colour in the lines, laugh on cue and fit into the normal few.

Perhaps you will tell me that I should not want to fit in, and that sanity seeking are for those who have truly lost it and you’d probably be right. You will forgive me though for wanting to have an under the radar conversation. For having no-one nod or blink their eyes “sympathetically” for just one day. Not feeling like I want to implode, just one day. My inner anguish is sufficient, must it be branded on brain and body too? I try each day to fight back. To give more and be more. To not worry about the lack of sleep and be there for me and my family. Difference isn’t respected as we’ve seen the world over. I’m so tired of it inside and externally to me. I pray that this is not your experience and that you would never seek sanity. It is in my experience, largely over-rated.

Learning to say no

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. Thank you to those who read my blog and a few new followers. It inspires me to write. It has been a difficult time for me and my writing voice felt blocked. I’ve recently become a proud grandmother but have found complications that come with mental illlness with this little blessing. This includes a granny who battles with sleep, not being able to sit still and wanting to buy groceries and nappies ceiling high to protect us from impending doom that I neither have the funds or storage for. The doom probably isn’t real, but it feels and frigthens my body and being like it really is, often waking me up at night.

As someone with Bipolar Type 2, I experience hypo-mania whether I like it or not. I often explain it as being akin to being eyeore on red bull. It’s tearfully terrific and turns the volume up on the impending doom track I already hate listening to. To quiet it and increasing anxiety, I cook for three days, I plan menus and busy myself with putting a preventative plaster on any area of my life I can at great personal cost. I’m always busy, I’m always catching up and apologizing for my very existence. I know very little rest, although I consistently adhere to my meds and pray for a quiet and peace that mental illness has never allowed me to know.

That’s a lot and all it makes me feel like doing is sighing even more. Instead, I need to learn a small way of addressing how I feel. From experience, blood, sweat, and tears, I have learned that you have to find and fight to chart a way of looking after yourself no matter how many times you fail in trying. Perhaps it could be in learning to say no which isn’t as easy as it sounds. To find ways to say no to the impending doom, the cleaning each room or the cooking of the contents of the fridge. Learn to say no I can’t to things and areas of your life as loudly as you can that it’s too much I tell myself. Perhaps you could try to. I’m trying to succesfully learn how..

Waving the White Flag

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope you are as well as possible. My recent blog and writing have been somewhat fraught – a small demonstration of what I have been feeling and experiencing. It has been a lot to go through. Going through. But I stopped and experienced something important for the first time today. I waved a white flag and conceded defeat. I allowed myself to let go – where I am usually the smallest detail stickler and instead said that’s ok, let’s go the other way. It was uplifting. Freeing. A white flag that allowed me to win in so many ways.

In my recent experience, I responded with aggression, being defensive, and resisting anything I could in an attempt to try to control the unwieldy cycle my life had become. I thought hanging onto the completely unnecessary was necessary to take control of the helm. Then today. Then that one taste of you and me don’t have to do that or tolerate it or feel it. I don’t know about you but I epxerience enough everyday, I need not add dealing with difficult people or situations I couldn’t control with a stringest fist. No. I can wave a white flag and save myself significant energy and emotion that I too don’t really have that much of.

I have learned that letting go and figuring out what is the most important to hang onto, is more important. Let’s be honest – there’s just so much one person can deal with. So much one person can process and understand and I’m not going to use unrealistic standards to judge me. Ok, maybe I’ve started just by saying that. I do now that me is worth more, deserves to be beaten less, and can walk away from conflict and situations that don’t promote my wellness. Maybe you too.

Emotional Exercise

Yesterday my eldest daughter and I went for a walk.  Well, she strongly encouraged me TO walk.  Her request was met with my usual enthusiasm for exercise aka NONE.  I much preferred the safety and sedentryness of my most recent occupation: pillow surfing. Because honestly exercise is a lot exhausting and all the memes offering advice about exercise are so muscular and driven that it’s quite off-putting. For example: “no pain, no gain”.  Screeching car brakes sound.  Pain? Gain?  Sorry friends, I do both already and I certainly don’t look or feel like the “buff” pictures which these misleading motivational sweat your butt off pictures suggest.  And also, let’s just be honest: to me the exercising frenzy women in the memes look like the female version of hulk with an itsy bitsy bikini on.  Scary.  I WOULD like a beach body, but not a machine that could crush soda cans whilst lifting weights during therapy.

Anyway, we walked and it was the best thing I could have done.  We started walking briskly and finally after exuberant, sweat inducing climbing on what seemed like a never-ending uphill road, I felt pleased and suggested a rest.  My daughter looked at me strangely, and said “perhaps a bit later on”, and I was flabbergasted.   Slave driver.  She rolled her eyes loudly remarking that we were a mere 100m away from our house and that we still had some way to go. Once I had given up complaining, I started seeing a few awesome things, set to the tune of my breathlessness.  The trees in our neighbourhood have been licked by the sun and are an array of red, browney, burnt coming Autumn colours.  Underneath the remaining green leaf underskirts are almost defiant, insisting that Summer continue to dance some more.  I told my daughter that I thought that this was a beautiful reminder that the season of sadness would soon commence.

Winter in my world was too cold, too sunless and yes, cold.  It’s almost as if Mother Nature is in mourning stripping her clothing of flowers and leaves until she is ready to grow again but quite frigid when you walk outside. And it’s ok. Everyone needs a rest.  And we smiled together about that.  And as she insisted that we walk a bit more, we talked a bit more.  We laughed about things her siblings did, how her Dad cried without any tears, and my reaction to passersby who hooted their ‘appreciation’ at my pretty daughter.  I insisted that I needed to buy a tennis racket made out of stainless steel (with a fly shocking insert that works on humans) to beat them off.  Really now.  And then I thought I could become Bicep Barbie so I could implement instructive means with my racket to alter permanently these “manners of appreciation” that get shown for her and all women.  And we laughed about that too. Bipolar Bicep Chubby Barbie.

Significantly, while we were walking, we talked about responsibility and the lack thereof. Don’t worry, I made us sit and take a break while we talked about this.  I couldn’t exercise AND think at the same time.  A few of the things that came out during our conversation is that I was tired.  Was that I had carried responsibility for such a long time and from such a young age that it was becoming a bone-crushing burden.  That I needed to be up, awake, apologetic for a chronic illness I never wanted or thought I would ever have.  And whilst I like certain things around me, and for things to be a certain way, they shouldn’t be so if they come at the detriment of something else – me.  If the curtains aren’t opened, the plants not watered, the windows not opened – just for a bit – is ok, if I am not.  And when we said that it’s almost as if I had lifted a heavy weight off my chest.  Like she understood so well.  And she said that I would never have to apologise to her for anything and that she loved me the way I was.  And you know what? I was ready to walk a lot more after that. Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t. I am 4 M’s Bipolar Mom.

Measuring Madness

There are many people who MAKE me feel mad.  The kind of mad varies.  There are those that make me want to be violent (I never am though) mad.  There are those who make me happy mad – which is like Tigger jumping with an angry face on.  Still happy.  And then there are those who make me feel like I can’t think,  I am broken, I can’t plan, I don’t know what I am doing mad.   And a further subset of that is the infectious mad, where people edge away from you lest you infect them with I dunno, a different way of being, thinking and very especially feeling.

I always wonder what their litmus test is.  How do you in fact know that someone is mad, should be called mad etc.  Like who and where is the definitive guide on being normal if mad is the opposite of that?   Because I don’t know about anybody else, but I would actually like on demand access to the top ten tips to living life without having to surf emotional tsunamis on a daily basis, change medication cocktails, and try and work and be a Mom without I don’t know, melting daily.  Yes, I would like the BORING option, where you plod along and have an opportunity to stop and smell the roses.  Because I am OK with THAT.  Using MAD for a good reason instead of the painful, painful impact it has when it is most usually used in an awful way.

I am ok with positive stigma.  Like for example, when I was pregnant, people would get up and let me sit in their places on the bus.  I still need this like the most.  If it meant I could slump into a specially allocated mad seat, where I could eat and drink to my heart’s content (even where this isn’t allowed) and ideally have a much needed cigarette in a public space with my therapeutic dog on the side.  I would like it.  Yes I would.

This week I was made to feel mad.  Ineffective and unreliable.  And in a place that is so close to my heart – my work.   It’s the place where my canvas is proposals / fundraising, the brush my keystrokes, the painting the story of those who’s stories are usually not told.  The painting including their strokes and thumbprints, involving them in thinking about, and asking for support to change lives.  I don’t do that.  But I hope that I am little conduit for bringing it about.  And so I decided that when I was made to feel this way, that I would say no.  That I would say, this is not the eating, smoking chair on the bus I asked for.  No.  It’s not positive, it doesn’t help – and it’s the most hurtful to me.  So instead, I said goodbye and chose me.  I said goodbye to money I needed to invest in me.  Because no-one else can measure what you are and what you are worth.  And as someone who has a record in not believing in her me, I decided that the enormity of who I am, who I am as a mother, a professional is boundless, and is without limitation.  And I, whilst sitting on my mad chair in the bus, will NOT accept anything else.  Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t.  I am 4M’s Bipolar Mom.

 

Mouth Murderer

There I was.  An innocent tooth virgin, laying at the slaughter, also known as the dentist’s chair a few days ago.  Ok that’s not true.  I’ve had loads of dental work.   So I’m not new to this rodeo.  But what unfolded, after having a super antibiotic injection the day before, not sleeping and taking anti-flammatories with lithium (which I later learnt could be a fun “breath taking” lethal combo) was a terrifying theatrical experience with a commando dentist, that wasn’t taking any tooth prisoners.  Walking into the dentist’s room, I immediately blurted out the need to know information:  1) My husband is inside and if you hurt me too much, he will come and hurt you (not true, but the adult version of my Mommy is watching), 2) I have an extremely low pain threshold, 3) I feel pain A LOT and 4) please don’t hurt me.  And he slapped on those gloves and that mouth mask, with a little more glee than I’d have wanted him to have.

The funny thing was that I did not mention that I have and live with Bipolar, which is usually what I tell most people, 2-3 seconds after I meet them.  I do this on purpose almost like a disclaimer, for my mouth that says too much, heart that feels too much, eyes that leak too much.  Yes, for the too much.  That way people aren’t suprised when I forget what I’m saying, talk about something completely random, or switch from being ok to sad in 0-2 seconds, or all of the above.  It’s not for me, it’s for them, so we know how to navigate the “mindfield” that is engagement with me.   No.  I didn’t tell glove slapping dentist or his too eager green clothed minions, offering mouth numbing mouthwash, like too many times for my comfort.

To add to this awesome experience, Mr. Dentist thought that the murder of my mouth could be a learning experience.    Yes, a student that he would need to literally explain every bone / jaw / tooth crushing experience to, in my mind, in slow motion, complete with Stephen King music (I imagined) playing loudly in my ears.  I managed through the first part, but when he started to explain to fellow mouth murderer, also known as student the need for a bone trimmer, and proceeded to take a chainsaw out of the cupboard to you know, trim my jaw, I started coughing profusely, and pretended to be naseous.  I didn’t care what the implication was.  Ain’t no-one turning my mouth into a sandwich, and copping a trim.  Ok that’s a lie.  The bone trimmer was there.  I was trimmed.  And I vowed to never ever ever not tell someone that I’m not Bipolar again.

Because there is really no reason why I needed to, other than the fact that I think and feel in emotional exclamation marks.  So I needed student to disappear the most, for dentist to instruct the minions to rub my leg and hold my hands, to tell me to close my eyes, ears, and basically any other orifice that could react because it was nervous and afraid.  That’s why you need to tell people you Bipolar, actually for you.  Because we’re not broken, we’re not silly and we’re not extra.  We feel more.  We are empathy more.  And in my opinion, you shouldn’t murder our mouths, minds, hearts and mental health just for that.  In the meantime, I will be avoiding further, teaching, graphically instructive  bone crushing moments.  Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t.   I am 4M’s Bipolar Mom.

 

 

 

 

 

On your marks, get set…

I have a red handbag that was given to me by someone special.  It even has cute, trendy leopard patches on the side, that say this gal knows what she wants.  Ok maybe not, but I do feel fashionable when I wear it.  And it’s a little bit fancier than the toddler’s backpack I usually carry, which is loaded with appropriate amounts of meds / snacks / snacks for the snacks and cigarettes.  What else would you want to carry?   Well the red bag was packed, categorised and filed into the way I needed my bag for the trip.  Packed most efficiently in most likely to be reached for / needed for order.  Yes.  I can even obsess about how to pack the pack.  That’s a special skill.

Having packed the pack for today, got to bed at the appropriate time, and even pre-loaded the address on my Uber,  the mental illness God’s were all too tickled by how well this was all going and decided to intervene in their usual charming *funny* way.    Their first prank was what I would call “eyes wide shut”.  This is where I am awake but actually asleep on my medication.  One example was I sat straight up, looked at my husband and asked him if we could have fried oysters at some ungodly hour, after having been FAST ASLEEP.  When I ask him about this now, he cannot look at me straight in the eye without wanting to throw his head back and laugh (in the nicest possible way). This happened last night, but I it seems I was in less of a seafood mood, and instead adopted the approach of eating everything I could see. Let’s just say I woke up with an empty 2 l ice cream tub, and wondered why I had a cold headache.

I also fought with my mother.  Throwing head back in laughter at inappropriate times Husband found this amusing and proceeded to jibe me with the one thing she said, which is going to cost me thousands and thousands in therapy to get over.  Repeatedly.  Basically it was something along the lines of – you need a second opinion – you are not mentally ill.  A decade later, multiple hospitalisations later, many medicine cocktails later.  And even more days with a mood rollercoaster I didn’t pay or choose to get on.  Hmm.  That’s right.  Everything I write about is one big plot to make me look like a idiot, feel it, and potentially cry and have a nap.  That’s made up.  ’cause I LIKE it.

I have also been struggling with a cold / flu over the last couple of days but honestly I felt better.  I was taking flu medication a lot frequently, but I think I could say that I was on my way to recovery.  Well, today was supposed to be a day of massive admin, and confronting ANOTHER Government Department (though not the scary Department of Health).  And I woke up.  Covered in ice-cream, sneezing and coughing repeatedly.  I felt like I could grow a succulent family in my throat – it was so dry – I DID see sand grains splutter from my mouth as I tried to reach for a drink.  So basically my day was: on your marks, get set, cough. Get up, fall back, sneeze.  Go nowhere. Think my mother will probably think my body is “over-reacting” to the overload of mucus it’s confronted.  Mis-diagnosed. Drink more flu meds.  Plan revenge against husband.  Repeat.  I’ll try again tomorrow.  Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t.  I am 4 M’s Bipolar Mom.

 

Home is where the pudding is

I have been home since Saturday.  And because I generally tend to over think well pretty much everything, I overthought coming home.  Coming home for me means that I have to take the bull by the horns of my fledgingling business so that it becomes the kind of business that will sustain myself, my chickens, my husband, my family.  From anywhere and in the way that promotes my well-being.  For once, putting my mental health first.  And never ever being prepared to sell that.

But I have not returned to be business busy.  I’ve been Mommy busy.  Wife busy.  Daughter busy.  Me loving it.  I’ve been baking, and our house is aromatic with aromas of Father’s Day lunches, flopped brownies and lamingtons, and a just right goey pudding with custard.  My eldest chicken has come home and clucks loudly around his fellow chickens.  They look at him startled, he has not clucked this loudly at home in while, and my heart sings a mother’s melody of my chickens being in the coop.  I woke up this morning singing auld lang syne loudly.  I don’t really know the meaning of the words, but I AM feeling festive.  Holiday like.  If I could snow spray I’m happy on my windows, with a couple of snowflakes I would.

But as is the way I would prefer it, I acknowledge that it’s not all picturesque.  In real family’s there are goey things that are not as enjoyable as a pudding with granny;s custard.  There are goey things that sometimes need to be aired and dealt with, so they can be replaced with more heartwarming less emotionally sticky versions.   And a family that can deal with those things, love each other through mistakes and continue to be each others biggest cheerleaders, hug each other afterwards, chart the way forward are the ones who actually survive.  And I would say that we’re surviving.  More actually.  And the other bonus, is my house, you get to eat loads and loads more puddings. Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t.  I am 4 M’s Bipolar MOm.

 

I’m happily, A Bipolar Mom

My eldest son once posted a status that said:  Know how when your Mom comes into the bedroom, and your siblings follow and then it becomes a room party?  Yes, that’s me (and his siblings, who all love the opportunity to crack open a bottle of pop, crisp and an assortment of sweets) .  I am also the Mom that has, for fun, gone to bed and forgotten to switch the lifts off.  I then called same eldest son to come to the room from the kitchen and switch off the lights.  The kitchen is far from my bedroom.  I was laughing even before he got to the room – and then he just straight faced emoji me – and refused to switch the light off.  Laugh.

They – my four chickens – can in turn, tell you many a story about my mental illness escapades.  This includes eating sweets in my sleep, issuing instructions, and sleep smoking and I have regularly needed to argue that I was awake (not true).  They find it funny and dare I say adorable because they’ve never made me feel like there was something wrong with me because of it.  They never made me feel like I shouldn’t go to hospital, or essentially just take care of myself.  And the more I am doing that, the more we are growing closer and moulding to make life easier for us.  And during this process (quite new still) I am learning a lot about what I do and don’t want, what’s good for me and what’s not, and I’ve never really done THAT.  Invested in taking care of me.  By the looks and feels of what’s going down, I’d like to say there are promising results so far.

There are giggles, impromptu waltzes in the passage, creative snack time food and surprise kisses.  Surprise hugs.  Friends have been for lunch, coffee’s have been pencilled in, I’ve done a bullet journal page or two.  Now, I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.  But so far it’s been fun. I even cooked without burning the majority of the food.  I will never be a lady of leisure, but walking out of my possibly self imposed prison of swallowing the dose of stigma that I’d been on the receiving end for the months before.  I am unpoisoned.  I feel a little bit peaceful.  I’ll admit that peacefulness for someone like me means that you limit yourself to three tasks per minute… But actually, it is a welcome reprieve from the usual TEN per minute (second sometimes) I usually get myself into a fix about.

For once I don’t feel guilty because I have Bipolar and I understand that I never asked for it, but can live with it, can be happy, can learn about myself and the lovely, unique person I am.  That’s a whole person.  Not a piece person.  Not a broken person.  I am ME.  I am a happy proudly Bipolar Mom. Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t. I am 4 M’s Bipolar Mom.