A Surprisingly Sane Blog

I am trying very hard to stay grounded. Upon getting home from our fabulous camping trip, we pretty much had to hit the ground running, and right now I’m in the middle of a double or triple triathlon at full speed with little end in sight and no possibility of failure. Success has to be the only option. Period. Too many people are counting on me.

I’ve always struggled with that- success, feeling success, severe fear of failure. That’s a big part of why dance competition- and any competition- has been so difficult for me my entire life. My family didn’t encourage any kind of team sports or team anything, I was taught that non-comformity was superior (not directly, of course, but by example), and that we were better off doing it by ourselves. Completely, utterly, and pathetically alone. Luckily, I managed to pull off the skill of communication completely by the Grace of God because I certainly wasn’t taught the ins and outs of making friends or handling situations in a more diplomatic sense. It took trial and error, and I still have difficulty sometimes, but in general I am pretty confident with my communication skills.

And with communication skills has come the ability to find a way to succeed no matter how difficult the situation. Thank goodness.

Right now, I need that. Not only has my private lesson filled up to the max, but I’m booked to deejay five dances between last and this week, teach group classes, workshops, and run our own dance (wow!) indefinitely on Friday nights. I also have four dance competitions scheduled- three out of state, and I am on staff for the one coming up in town (which means I am teaching and deejaying at a freaking national convention- holy amazeballs Batman!), and that’s just during the end of summer and fall. That’s not even covering my life outside of dance, which is just as busy with family visiting, college interviewing, my daughter starting kindergarten at a private school (Cha-CHING!), another awesome camping getaway in a couple weeks, and like 40 other things that I can’t think to mention off the top of my head.

Yes, I am busy. But more importantly, I am constantly on the brink of having a heart attack due to that fear of failure. The possibility sucks. And then at the same time, I have moments like this where I can stop and breathe and look at the words on my virtual page and realize that regardless of how crazy my life looks from the outside and sometimes feels on the inside, there are moments every day where I can put my feet up or spend time scrubbing the mold off my bathroom walls and remember that I am, in fact, only human and that if success fails in one small arena, it’s hardly an indication of what kind of successful life I live, and there will always be that reality of taking care of my family and home to which I come back.

Perhaps in some ways, my illness is a blessing. Without the breakthrough mania despite the Lithium’s best efforts, I’m not sure I could get from one day to the next when my life gets a little out of hand.

Current Mood: Alarmed & Happy

It’s still sunny in Seattle, and last night the insomnia picked up full force.

Luckily, because mania is awesome like this (not), I feel fully rested and ready to take on the world.

Thank God for the Lithium, or I’d be running full force toward a short bridge when this calmed-down euphoria takes a plunge into dysphoria. Though I have to admit that regardless of how powerful of a drug it may be, it’s really no match for my insane mood swings.

Sometimes, I hate myself.

Current Mood: Alarmed

It’s been sunny in Seattle for the last few days, and while the weather is absolutely beautiful and it’s a a bit of a relief to see a parting of the clouds even for me, I’ve been having some trouble in the bipolar realm lately.

Sadly, it’s a direct result of the sunlight.

See, bipolar disorder has several different parts to it, but the two defining symptoms of the illness can manifest in a number of ways. That means the depression and mania can mean different beasts for different folks. People without depression commonly look at someone with it and think, “Oh, they’re just really sad.” And for mania, “Wow, they never slow down,” or, “They have so much energy,” or, “They’re just so happy!”

Depression can make one irritating to be around because the affected person just can’t feel a positive lift in energy or break out of that somber funk regardless of how hard you or they try to force it. In bipolar disorder, depressions is usually chemical, not situational. There are temporary fixes that are frequently part of an endorphin rush (sex, exercise, getting a promotion, etc), but persons affected by that sort of depression revert back to that downer state once the evanescent high passes.

Mania can run in both directions- it can look like a crazy, energetic frenzy, or it can manifest as a bitter, angry depression from an outsider’s perspective. The first one is more common- euphoric mania. The second, dysphoric mania, is the primary form of mania I struggle with, and probably the main reason I am on such a high dose of Lithium, though I can’t say for certain since I cannot see into my doctor’s head when she looks at me.

I have moments and times of euphoria, and it usually starts with positive energy and quickly fades into its negative counterpart. Without medication, my dysphoric mania looks something like this (though this is from my perspective, so people close to me might give you a more accurate description- I can only imagine the appearance of my illness from an outside view): I get extremely energetic, I run on ridiculous wee hours of sleep, I talk too fast, and I get this frenetic energy bursting from the inside that makes me feel like I’m missing something and desperately have to find it, or I have to suddenly achieve some impossible, unrealistic task RIGHT NOW (law school, anyone?). That lasts for only a short time- maybe weeks at best- because eventually, my body and mind can no longer handle the broken sleep and insomnia. I start feeling irritable over little things, my temper shortens. Then before I know it, I just can take it anymore. I get into circular, irrational arguments with James that make perfect sense to me, but I can see his face fall when he recognizes the Bipolar Conversation coming at him full force, and seeing that makes me even more irate because dammit, I am just fine whythefuckwon’thelistentomeSTOP BLAMINGEVERTHINGONMYILLNESSI’MNOTCRAZY! From there, everything starts to fall apart. My sleep habits worsen. My mood worsens. I feel frustrated, unmotivated, angry. I have too much energy and I wake up from my disturbing dreams of that time I was raped, or finding out I am pregnant again and knowing I’m going to die, and I have to force myself to stop from leaping up and running a marathon. My patience lessens, I stop doing housework and cooking. I don’t want to be touched, my body image suddenly becomes nothing but a horrible focus on that fat bulge at my hips or my prolapse or my stretch marks, and sex leaves me sitting naked on the bathroom floor, knees to my chest, scarcely breathing, and wishing that I had the nerve to kill myself and leave this world and my kids in a better place while I watch James’ heart break from the shear agony of knowing it is impossible to reach into my head and rewire me and make me believe that he loves me and everything will be okay. Because at that time, there is no possible way in my reality that I can be okay.

And then, finally, I crash. I burn. I sleep for pretty much days, and I welcome the 9 solid hours of zzzz’s because after months of that abusive dysphoric mania, I just can’t let my brain think while I’m conscious. I hibernate, barely blog, have nothing to say on Facebook, and I welcome the emptiness. I go to work and smile and laugh on autopilot, and I rarely do anything social. And this, of course, is the depression. The depression that looks more like a lack of energy, motivation, and caring. I’m not sad, I am almost unfeeling. A numbness that nearly denies me the ability to feel even love or pain at its worst. James calls it my “shell”, and the visual really does describe the internal turmoil inside.

And then the sun comes out.

And sunshine? There’s a reason I have always HATED sunshine and preferred cloudy days. Sunshine induces mania in bipolar folk. This would be a good thing for me until you remember that I don’t generally get the happy sort of mania, my mind focuses on dysphoric mania. BUT, it usually starts out as a euphoric mania and switches on me.

Which leads me back to the beginning of this ever-so-slightly manic post of mine: It’s been sunny in Seattle, and yesterday I noticed this burst of energy that left me just a little too happy and enlightened. So I asked James, “Am I acting wired, or am I starting to act manic?” Please, please, no. He kind of grimaced and said, “Honestly, it looks mania to me.”

I had a moment of panic about it lying in bed at 3:30 in the morning after not sleeping at all. I realized that I haven’t had a full-blown manic episode since last year when I almost ran some ugly, passive-aggresive manipulative asshole’s car off a bridge (said person deserved it, I swear) and almost divorced my amazing husband a few months later. After that, there was Lithium, and the mania was under control almost instantly. Every time since then, the “mania” that I have felt creeping up on me has passed on as nothing more than a short stint of its lesser and more gentle cousin, hypomania.

And if this extra energy I feel welling up inside my gut turns out to be just sunshine-induced hypomania, I know it will pass without stupid decisions, without suicide attempts, and without making choices that drastically affect my life only to be lost in translation when the inevitable dark cloud of depressions washes the sunlight away.

One can hope.

Current Mood: Alarmed

My little too-big-for-her-britches-and-smart-as-a-whip booger graduated from preschool last week. It’s officially “summer vacation” around here.

And you wanna know what I found this kid doing this morning as I made a lazy exit from my soft bed in my upstairs bedroom? I walked downstairs into the kitchen to find her and her little sister celebrating her new educational freedom by scooping ICE CREAM into bowls. And popsicle wrappers winked at me from the table. They both stared at me with HUGE eyes when they got caught red-handed.

I am the amazing, negligent mother. What makes the whole scenario even better is that after I almost died laughing, I finished scooping a small amount of ice cream into the-half-finished bowl and let them eat it for breakfast while asking Julie not to do it again.

To think that my postpartum depression with these girls was crippling, varying from unbearable all the way to flat-out paranoia and suicidal psychosis, is inconceivable now that I am past it. I have never been the girl who suffers from PMS or hormonal-related mood swings. I’ve always just quite level-headed. I get to play with my dear co-pilot, Bipolar Disorder instead. But at the time, it wasn’t diagnosed, and I had never experienced what role postpartum hormones can possibly play in an unstable mind. I found out, and I suddenly understood why mental hospitals are packed with people wandering the halls with vacant eyes or sitting in the corner batting at imaginary bugs.

I breastfed both my girls because I knew that it was, beyond a doubt, far healthier than shoving a bottle of formula in their mouths. Hindsight is 20/20. I should probably have risked the slight possibility that their IQs might drop, you know, a whole point on the scale if I let a cow or soybean feed them instead. Because what I later learned made so much sense that I probably could have avoided the whole trip to the psycho hospital had I just listened to my body in the first place.

I HATED breastfeeding. HATED. In fact, there was one solitary moment where I kind of enjoyed it- and that was when I nursed my friend’s foster son, a newborn drug baby who had just been weaned from meth. I babysat for him one day, and it broke my heart seeing a baby so listless and pathetic. I scooped him up, shoved his mouth on my boob, and that baby didn’t want to let go. After that, his eyes were open, he looked at me, and my friend was thrilled to see a new baby when she came to pick him up. That moment was so special, so amazing, because I knew that for whatever reason, my boob was a comfort for a baby who needed it most.

That was the one time that the horrible hormonal manic rush didn’t shoot through my body when I nursed. Most women like, even love, the way it feels. I couldn’t stand it. It tickled my nipple to the point where I wanted to scream or cry or throw my shoe through the wall. Once the let-down happens and milk starts to gush, I’ve seen dozens of moms get this sleepy, smily, dreamy, relaxed look in their eyes due to the release of prolactin, a supposedly awesome hormone that makes moms fall madly in love with their baby and forget the fact that they haven’t slept more than 2 hours at a time in the last 6 days.

That whole prolactin thing? Yeah, that was a myth for me. Instead of relaxing, I felt like I could hardly breathe while electricity shot its way up my spine. Night time feedings always forced my mind and thoughts to run a marathon, and I became the amazing, unsleeping insomniac. I’d get a burst of negative, manic energy, and I’d stare at the clock, sometimes shaking, wondering how long that freaking baby at my breast was going to feed off of me like a leech. See, that’s not a normal reaction. I didn’t think of my girls like that when they were off the boob, just on it.

Later, during all my treatment, I learned that for women struggling with a postpartum mood disorder who have that kind of reaction to nursing frequently have prolonged and more severe difficulty with depression, anxiety, and psychosis. My uncomfortable mental and physical reaction to breastfeeding? That was most likely my body’s way of trying to tell me, “This isn’t healthy for you… your kids will be just fine sucking off a bottle. Give it up and stop being such a stubborn brat.”

In other words, if I hadn’t breastfed, I probably would have gotten away with a minor version of the extreme postpartum mood disorder that I experienced. Almost three years after my little stinker was born, though, I can hardly remember what I was actually going through during that time. My mind was a black hole.

But see, that was then, and this is today. That picture above is me, truly proud and happy to have just watched my 5-year-old walk across the stage and accept her preschool diploma. Somehow, I survived those miserable postpartum crazy hormones, and now I’m just as happy- if not more so since I know what it’s like to be on the other side- than the “other moms” to be a mother.

Yay me! I’ve really gotten somewhere!

And as a side note, I love that color blue on myself. Normally I tear myself to shreds when I have to look at a picture of myself… but this time, I just see a happy mom with two amazing girls wearing a lovely blue top.

Current Mood: Happy

I struggle with depression all the time. Sometimes I’m okay, sometimes I’m hardly motivated to crack a smile unless I’m teaching, which always just seems to bring sunshine to my gloomy mood. But one thing I realized? It’s not a result of new motherhood, or breastfeeding hormones, and it’s certainly not because I am stuck taking care of a toddler and a screaming baby with a voice that rivals Cher’s powerful vocal boom.

In fact, I daresay that while babies, newborns especially, just flat-out freak me out and make me shudder, I absolutely, positively adore two-year-olds, young kids, older kids, and teens. Yes, you saw that right. While the rest of the motherly world coos and gushes over newborn toes and spit-up, I prefer everything beyond baby, included those “dreaded” teenage years. I love when bitter moms tell me, “Oh just you wait...”. Well, darling, trust me, I’ve paid my dues. I know it’s hard to believe, but yes, I enjoy teens. I always have. I love listening to their troubles and broken hearts, I enjoy hearing and watching them shape their own believes and argue for what they feel is right. I have no false impressions about the difficulty of being a parent of teens, but fact is, I enjoy that age. They’re smart, amazing, and they can take care of their basic needs with little guidance. And I’m a firm believer that if I do my job well while they’re younger, my girls will sprout into some pretty amazing peeps during their older years at home as well. Yeah, I know, shit happens, but I’m not going to dwell on that because I do have faith that I’m not going to change my mind regarding my thoughts on teens.

But until those years, I’d like to say that today in the here and now, I feel so far beyond my postpartum depression era that I can actually enjoy watching my kids run around like rugrats. Why they’re dubbed the “terrible twos” is beyond me… I love age two! I have with both of my kids. And five? Holy cow- my child is truly becoming an individual and it’s just so stinking cool to watch.

So finally, finally I can feel a bit smug when other parents are complaining about their 2-year-olds and wishing they were babies again. Not me! I am so glad my kids are finally beyond those years. Yes, kids are difficult in general, and yes, I have days where I want to step in front of a speeding bus… but 90% of the time, I’m having a great time with them. They’re just amazing little people, and I wasn’t well enough to enjoy them they way they deserve until they got beyond those infant years.

And yes, I’m smiling. Who wouldn’t with a beautiful daughter like Julie?

And, of course, my little spitfire and entertainer, with dimples for days- my darling April:

It’s nice to be well, to be beyond the bitter days of postpartum depression and days of psychosis. I’m not sure when it all faded away into the past, but I realize that here I am in the now, and it’s no longer haunting me. No more anxiety welling up when the dreaded blackened mood would start to rip up the “I think I might be okay again” moments. No more being a trapped prisoner in the labyrinth of psychosis, where I could see the buildings of sanity crumble and crash, but the voice inside of me was too paralyzed to say, “Help me, I can feel it happening, and I can’t stop it.”

‘Course, I’ve got bipolar to grapple with… but that’s a different story. And today, the sun is shining and having a mental illness is pretty far from my mind.

Thank God.

Current Mood: Happy