The Battle (Part 1)

The journey of a mother and her son through diagnosis and into treatment is a tamultious one. The passion for proper treatment, for actual care of ones health. The turbulent path of finding the right professionals and then the ups and downs of medications, their combinations, and side effects.

The love of a mother for her son is a special one. When he feels hurt I feel his pain multiplied deep within my soul.

Many of the medications used to treat Bi-Polar and Depression take time to seep into the system. Putting something into your body so foreign and dangerous that it can change how you think and behave is a scary proposition, certainly not one to be taken lightly. Making the decision to have my son treated in that way has created a deafening barrage of conflicting thoughts complicating my daily life. Looking in from the outside I see his pain, frustration and struggles so clearly. I see the wild look in his eyes come so quickly when something triggers him, dispersing as quickly as it appeared. His struggles are his norm so he cannot see them each time they appear, they all blend together.

I am more cautious with his medication journey than I was with mine. I am thankful to know exactly how I felt with each medication and although we all feel differently, hindsight is 20/20 and I am using those glasses. One medication at a time. I will not name medications publicly, as I am not an expert and don’t want to sway anyone. I will however, answer every e-mail with honesty. He started one a few weeks ago and is not yet up to the levels needed to make a difference. The waiting is so difficult but he has a great therapist who is helping him tremendously. He is frustrated by not “feeling” the medicine kicking in and I understand that feeling well. In the meantime, we take it day by day. I get up and make him his breakfast and lunch. I am in touch with each of his teachers  and administration at the high school to ensure that we are all supporting him.

Privacy is extremely important for a student who is looking to attend an institute of higher learning. 

I cannot stress enough the importance and value of not placing my son on any school “programs” or any other term the school uses to gain additional funding and places any notes or codes onto his transcripts. I want absolutely nothing to stand in his way of success. My job is to keep the doors open and minimize damage at all costs. I have been very firm and calculated with what I share about my sons health and how they will handle it. What they put on his transcripts and in his recommendations can change his future for worse or better and like a momma lion, I protect his future with my life. I communicate enough to allow for compassion on the part of educators but no more. I communicate that he is under the care of medical professionals and may experience lapses in memory and concentration. He may need their patience and compassion but nothing less and nothing more. They push to know what is wrong and I have only gone so far as to say that he is experiencing a temporary episode of severe depression.

Depression is a word that people understand even if they don’t understand it. Bi-Polar is a word that instantly turns you into an unstable crazy person. 

All is right in the world when others feel that they can help by having compassion for a young man experiencing a temporary bout of depression. Bi-Polar requires a team and a special counselor and a special program and on and on and on. Bi-Polar is a permanent state of instability in the eyes of many.

My son has the advantage of learning about his strengths and weaknesses at a young age. Armed with that knowledge he has the ability to become stronger than most. 

He has more of an opportunity to succeed now than he did a month ago. Getting out on the other side is the battle. Winning one battle at a time with knowledge and positivity is what will win this war.

 

I Gave It To My Son

I find it easier to handle my own diagnosis than that of my child. I haven’t written much lately because I have been caring for my son. It’s been a few months since my husband and I began to notice changes in our sons behavior; lack of academic performance, girlfriend after girlfriend, problems with teachers. He stopped making himself breakfast & lunch.
He is an advance placement student so he has the capability to do well and for some reason he couldn’t wrap his head around simple things anymore. He kept saying that he couldn’t remember anything, he was tired, “there is something wrong.”

I feel helpless. I am losing my son and watching his future slip away. He felt the same fear and uncertainty.

A couple weeks ago he finally broke down. It was an epic betrayal of his true self. I know that for some teenagers, anger outbursts can be standard behavior or expected, but those behaviors aren’t my sons baseline. It isn’t in his core personality.
He snapped! He threw his phone, punched a wall, and began an epic meltdown. His body was rigid with the anger that he was holding back. He ran into a bathroom and began sobbing.
I sat there, for an entire minute, in absolute shock. Although not so little (17) my little boy was in so much pain. It was a pain I had felt all too often in my life. I knew right then that this was something bigger than he. I ran in and knelt before him and as I saw his pain and his shaking from anger I felt as though he was so out of control that he may not be able to hold back physically if I leaned in. That was a chance I was more than willing to take as I quickly wrapped both my arms around him. It took a good 5 minutes before he could speak and then the panic attacks began. I consider myself an expert in those!
Eventually, I got him back to his bed and he began to open up.
Reckless behavior, emotional release when he buys something. Yikes!
“We are here for you son. No judgement, just love and support. Walls and phones dont matter, you matter!”
My husband demanded that I seek treatment for him immediately! He told me that he saw in him what he had seen in me; “that look in his eyes,” he said. “Our son is in trouble and needs help.” Luckily, I had an appt with my prescriber the next morning. She affirmed that he should be taken to a hospital to start the process of getting him help.
Unfortunately, they dont do anything but tell you that there is a 4 month wait for an eval and send you on your way.

I made several phone calls to my own providers and he has been seen by each of them this past week. The perks of being a loyal patient, I suppose. I should have a rewards card or something.

Official Diagnosis: bi-polar 2 (for now because he is so young) and a major depressive episode.

He wept…

“Are these pills going to be forever?” Yes, son. You know what else is forever? Multivitamins. 🙂

Love With A Side Of Klonopin

I really REALLY love my husband. He’s my biggest fan! #anxiety #PTSDchat pic.twitter.com/HysbDWs3Bv

— my purposeful mind (@chunkingminds) March 20, 2016

Reflecting on my weekend, I feel like it lasted two weeks. The days just fly by and yesterday was a snow day for the family which meant it lasted longer. I love having the family around but I really appreciate my week days alone too. I was incredibly overwhelmed on Saturday which made it hard to get moving, but just when I thought I would give in to sadness and lay around and feel crappy all day, my mother and brother in law called and would be at my house in an hour. WHAT?! Ok, time for a shower and OMG the house…I have construction tools and baseboards and rocks all over! OY! I was literally having a serious meltdown. Panic attack, oh hello, there you are again. It’s been what, like a few days at least since I was fearful enough to see you. I don’t like you and I want you to know that if I never saw you again I would celebrate. Just sayin’

My husband grabbed my Klonopin and handed it to me with water. “Relax. I got the house, you get the shower 😉 ” How did I get so darn lucky? I mean, have you read 5 Ways To Help Your Wife With PTSD? He really lives it out and thinks about it enough to always be a step ahead of me. He really really thinks about my well-being and my journey and what may come next and how to help me experience new things without fear. I can’t do it, so I don’t know how he does. He has a superpower, for sure.

He went to the grocery store and handled dinners, while I got lost somewhere in my head. Not sure where but, by the end of it all, I managed to pull myself together enough to accomplish one of the many tasks I have on my growing list. I sat down and put some rocks on a wall. I built an entertainment center about a year ago and a weekend job turned into a year long job but so be it. Slowly but surely.

I still have sanding and painting to do, but I haven’t quite wrangled up my manic romance yet, but once she kicks in, you will see a finished product. I managed to get the column on the right (next to the rocks) trimmed out all pretty last week though. YAY!

The hubby is home this morning to make sure that I get in the shower and don’t give in to the reaper. He knows how hard the slightest change in my routine is for me. He sees it so clearly and has such compassion. I credit him with so much; without him I wouldn’t be here.

 

Overwhelmed And Climbing

Yesterday I smacked myself in the face with a 2×4…no, really! I am desperately in a serious hurry to whip my house into shape within the next week. Realtors are calling to look at our house and my husband is going through the process of rounding up a list for the mortgage broker. North Carolina by summer is the plan. Warmer weather and no more snowblowers! It all looks like one big huge Mt. Everest to me.

My anxiety is at MAX. Panic has set back in and I can’t seem to ‘work’ when others are around because of it. Nightmares have come to help panic out, and I am struggling with meals again. Just when everything is so perfect, it all crashes down on my head. In this case, in my face. Half my face is swollen, I look ridiculous! On top of that I am working with one finger down. I accidentally cut into half of my right index finger and I can’t even type with the thing. On the positive side, I’m learning a new typing style.

Being a one-woman machine is so hard. I can’t maneuver everything on my own but I have to. I am putting up crown moulding, baseboards, trimming out doors, mudding & taping, sanding and painting. I pretty much do it all…when I can.

That’s the thing about bipolar, we are rockstars when the mania juice kicks in! People are like, “omg, she can do it all”… yeah, for a hot second until the reaper pays a visit. The reaper follows panic and mania around like an ambulance chaser.

I call my writing days, my days off. Usually I hit one room at a time and make my chunking list. Sometimes though, even making a list is a battle. That’s when i take my day off and write. I listen to my husband talk with his family and others on the phone. I wish I could do that, but the phone is overwhelming to me most days. I will say something wrong and then the end of the world comes down like a torrential rain. The world has ended many times. 😉

This too shall pass.

Chunk It Up!

Chunking is a term they use in the advertising world; reframing the old and making it new, more palatable, and interesting. Did you know that people are more likely to finish their antibiotics if you place 5 colored pills in the bottle and tell them to take them last. It’s all the same, we just make it look different and take it step by step.

Rory Sutherland does a great job of explaining the trickery of perspective in his TED talk.

My Twitter handle @chunkingminds reminds me every day to take it step by step and trick my mind if I need to. Today is a chunking day; I made my list and I chunked it up. One thing at a time. I usually get a lot more done on days like today, as long as I really chunk up my list. I make my list into really small parts. For example:

1. Get coffee
2. Blog while drinking coffee
3. Take shower
4. Get dressed
5. Remember you have an appt at 6
6. Put something in the washer
7. Check off the list
8. OMG you made it so far today, now check this off too 🙂

I make 3 goals for the day and add them into my list bit by bit. Maybe I do half, maybe I do all, but at least I did something! Hopefully, for my family’s sake I actually got into the shower…socks or no socks 🙂

Thanks To Those Who Inspire

Proverbs says that pride goeth before the fall. In my case, it’s definitely true and I admit it openly. I have to talk about Afflictive Emotions; Anger, Pride, Jealousy, Attachment, and Ignorance. My ignorant mind is attached to them in the most unhealthy ways sometimes.

My above the line is my mindful intentions, peaceful place of getting through the day. My below the line is my ignorant mind place where PTSD rears its ugly head. I do a really great job of staying above the line…generally. If I could stay above the line I wouldn’t be defensive about my life and I wouldn’t have pride on as my shield.

When my pride takes a hit I assess the potential damage to all of my attachments (afflictive emotions) and then all of my brains compassionate reasoning flies straight out of the top of my head like an erupting volcano. The lava of anger freely flows out consuming everything in its path. When anger is on a rampage all rational thought dives deep into the safety of some warm hidden corner of my mind. My anger is further fueled by fear which is my kryptonite. All of these steps happen within about 5 seconds just before a full shutdown sequence initiates > disassociation.

IGNORANCE! The reason each of these emotions begin, sequence, and end in the shutdown of my clear thought and reasoning is ignorance and lack of strength in my  mindfulness. Not the, lack of knowledge type ignorance, It is the ignorance as seeing myself as being separate from others, from nature, from the world around me. ALONE!

If there is one thing I have learned from the blogging community and twitter, it’s that I am not alone. I may be alone in my head, and look around and nobody is here in my worst times, but I now feel this army with me. This army that is trying crush a Berlin wall of stigma and help people understand that we aren’t garbage and don’t deserve to be called names and excluded. The true ignorance, the lack of education kind of ignorance, lies within many outsiders. What keeps me above the line is knowing how strong we are in surviving our struggles that are invisible to others. The outsiders don’t know and, in my opinion, are few in comparison to what I have seen since I began writing.

It’s blogs like youngandtwenty ,  blackspotsite , Take A Ride On My Mood Swing (hilarious!), Seeds 4 Life , and many more that lift my spirits on some days and help me understand that I am not alone in my thoughts on other days.

It’s Twitter peeps like @PTSD_chat and their wednesday night #PTSDchat , @bipolarinbiz , @LauriDMeizler , @HealthyPlace and many more who keep me engaged in working toward being #100%unashamed 🙂

Thank you to all who put themselves out there in their writing. If you are thankful to have touched just one person in your writing…you have! Much love and respect to you all. NAMASTE

What If I Told You?

You have no idea who I am. You have known me for years and you have no idea who I am. You think you do, but you only know what I choose to show you. If you had taken an interest, I may have let you in, but you haven’t taken an interest, so you stay on the outside. I want to tell you, but I don’t know what it would solve for me. I may feel an emotional release for a moment, but then what if you didn’t react the way I expected or intended?

• What if you still didn’t come by to say hello, maybe have dinner or check in with your grandchildren?
• What if you didn’t recognize the absolute heart wrenching pain your son has gone through and how he has traversed a 99.9% deadly ongoing sea of rapids and come out a different man?
• How he has supported a wife that lay on her deathbed 20 times over for the past 4 years and helped keep her alive.
• How he used up his vacation time sitting at my bedside instead of driving me to an emergency room.
• How he protected your grandchildren from seeing the pain.
• How he managed to thrive in his career through it all.

I don’t know how to tell you without expecting something in return. I don’t know how you could possibly understand. I don’t know if I could understand if I were in your shoes.

Maybe being 100% unashamed isn’t about telling people what you have, its about accepting who you are. I’m still navigating this part of my journey. Suggestions and experiences welcomed 🙂

The Reaper & My Saint

I feel so privileged most days now but it’s taken a while. The darkness was beautiful sometimes, until it ended and the lights turned on and my true broken self was almost seen. That’s when i would run. New job, new town, whatever needed to be done and whatever lie I needed to tell, I told.

I was in a state of survival, running from the reaper while manic. Damn I run fast and am unstoppable, fearless, productive, a superstar. Then the reaper and I would meet. I was alone no matter whose company I was in. Always alone. In a room of many, I was alone. Any relationship, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was alone and anticipating a battle before it ever began. The reaper would look at me and make me look in the mirror, my heart and gut would feel the fear of something worse than death; living with myself. I would beg the reaper to take me along his journey. I saw salvation in his eyes.

Life is quite different now. I have found the right blend of medications and I was like a kid who didn’t know she was half blind until she put some glasses on! Holy sh*t I didn’t know what anything really looked like!..wait, is this real or are you messing with me? I was left so confused and in disbelief of how different life can be. I felt feelings that didn’t need to be drown in wine. In fact, I don’t even have a desire to drink. what? How do I not drink? I’ve been drinking since I was 15 and at 37 I miraculously just don’t feel like it, from a few pills. WOW! I don’t even know how to socialize without alcohol. Now what?

FEEL!

I get to feel. I genuinely feel loved, supported, and most of all GRATEFUL. I couldn’t do any of this without my husband. Laundry, dishes, cooking, making it to doctors appt’s, making sure I eat. I don’t do all of these everyday or sometimes for weeks at a time, but I have support and love. I have a son who texts me everyday at 1:34pm to ask if I would like a coffee on his way home from school. I have a daughter who worries more about me than I do! In a good way. Most of all, I have a husband who hides my down days (and there are many), from the kids. He makes sure that they never see me down.

I go for days without being able to eat. I don’t know why that happens. I just gag thinking about food. My husband goes and buys me Almased for shakes that I can make. He stops at the store when I can’t seem to leave the house. He is my miracle in the midst of a crazy life. I wouldn’t be here without him and my children. My husband is the strength behind it all. He sees the reaper coming before I do sometimes and he initiates a Plan A. “My girl! Come with me to dinner tonight.” He makes me feel beautiful.

I think he and the reaper have a competition going and my husband doesn’t lose!

How Can I Be 100% Unashamed?

My goal: 100% unashamed and 150% inspirational to myself and those around me. I’m still lying because I’m still scared. I’m afraid that every emotion I have will be attributed to my diagnosis and/or my trauma. I’m afraid that future opportunities will be blocked because people will judge me. They judge others with diagnosis and experiences like mine, right in front of my face. I usually then ask if they are a christian and then the heavens open up and all silence breaks loose. We all sometimes need compassion reminders, including me. Ok, I’m judging and should move on. 😉

Most people just aren’t worthy of knowing me that intimately. Judgmental on my part, I suppose, but I think you need to earn that right. I have told my husband absolutely everything, but only because he earned that and more. He worked hard to understand my fears and my emotions and he read and studied  every diagnosis and it took 2 long years for him to see me and love me for who I am as opposed to who I allowed him to see. I don’t know that I could go through what he has gone through with me.

Over and over again I tested him and probably emotionally tortured the man. (I admit it). He stood strong and instead of getting angry when I provoked him, he would look me in the eyes and with the most compassion I could ever feel, say “how can I help you not feel this way? What can I do?” I was always left speechless and at the very same time he would be heading my way to wrap his arms around me. How can you fight with someone who sees your pain and loves you through every ounce of anger they are supposed to have? I threw my most powerful, push him away so that I don’t have to be vulnerable, super power his way! No man has ever endured that super power.

He showed me and continues to show me that he loves me unconditionally. The beauty in it all was how much he taught me. He taught me to feel love, to feel compassion, to comfort and most of all, how safe and healing it can be to be vulnerable with someone who will not use it against you or hurt you. But the world isn’t like my husband.

So, I beg the question, is it necessary to tell your family and others that you have X and experienced X in order to be 100% unashamed? I guess it would, in order to be 150% inspirational, right? How do you tell others who won’t necessarily understand, be compassionate, and nonjudgmental? I’m honestly asking….

 

On the Eve of Suicide

Around the time of my mother’s 56th birthday, her phone rang. A voice, once forgotten, came through loud and clear with questions of her happiness and inquiries as to the success of their daughter they had 34 years prior. Nothing like getting a strange emotional call from an ex husband to throw your head for a little loop. His voice was different than she had remembered. The voice was heartfelt and came from a place of knowing ones mortality. “You aren’t going to do anything stupid are you?” were the last words she spoke to him.

My mother was never aware of what had taken place between me and my father. She still isn’t. When my father raped me, I wrapped the pain and memory into a box and placed it somewhere in the bowels of a wasteland hoping it would go away and I could somehow still be loved normally. I pretended it never happened hoping that eventually that would be true.

A couple years prior to her receiving that phone call, I was pregnant with my daughter and my father disowned me for making the choice of having her, instead of having an abortion. I will always choose my children over anything or anyone else. I chose my daughter on that fateful day and would make the same choice a billion times over. I remember feeling a bit rejected, mad and numb at the same time when he told me to never contact him again. Are you kidding me? You disown me? I felt like I was in an alternate universe where my words couldn’t form and I couldn’t put one emotion in front of the other. The world was spinning around me as I stood there with a blank stare. He threw all the clothes I had with me when I visited him in a dumpster and that was that.

After purchasing my home 6 or 7 years later, my husband (not knowing what demons were with me) pressed me to look my father up. I always lied. It was one lie after the next to keep anyone from finding out that I had been raped by my father and had done nothing about it. I couldn’t imagine that “oh and by the way, my father is a piece of shit who raped his daughter” would go over so well in conversation. I felt guilt and shame and wanted it all to go away. I spoke well of my father so that I appeared to have a normal life. My husband became suspicious when i refused to make contact. FINE! So I started to reach out and he was nowhere to be found. I asked my mother and that is when I was told about the call he had made to her. I know now that that call was made on the eve of his suicide. Of all people to call, he called my mom.

I ran across a police bulletin that came up with his name in an online search. I took the article to work the next day and called the reporting Sheriff’s department. The woman on the other end of the phone began describing the gruesome tale of a 58 year old man who had ridden a bicycle 6 miles out of town, up a logging road and out to the edge of a cliff where he sat down, overlooking a valley, and placed a .45 caliber handgun to his chin and pulled the trigger. By the time she got to the point of verifying his birth date I could hardly breathe. 

Sitting at work in my office with the door shut I listened as my father’s description, prior address, and birth date fell into place like the ticking of the last three seconds prior to a bomb exploding inside my chest. The possibility of that one sentence on a police log in a far off state being my father couldn’t begin to prepare me for the devastating emotion that was to follow.

A million thoughts raced through my head as I learned that no one had claimed his body or possessions after nearly a year and half. He had abandoned all of his relationships throughout his life and when it came down to the end, he had no one. No one except the daughter he had raped and disowned. Isn’t that ironic. A part of me felt like he deserved the pain he felt after what he had done to me. I felt vindicated. An equally opposite part of me was left empty, knowing that I would never be able to have a father. It was like his parting gift was to throw his pain and unfinished business into my lap. I not only am left cleaning up his mess inside of me but now his physical mess and actually him physically, in ash form. I can’t begin to tell you how many tears were shed on that postal box that held his ashes. It was too big a burden for me to bear. I’m not saying poor me, but it is a significant event in my life. I had a psychotic break that, in the end, changed my life for the better.

Thoughts of worthlessness run through my head no matter how much I am told I am loved and needed. Those times can be some of the most trying times in my life. Others have walked in my shoes and come out on the other side more knowledgeable and stronger. My journey has had its up’s and down’s but the knowledge I now have about myself has made me a much stronger person in a much better way. I can only assume why he killed himself and why he chose to call my mother on the eve of his suicide…some days I assume it was an apology and others… I just don’t know. I am left without resolution from him and so I make my own each day.