between two poles

Darling, I don’t know why I go to extremes
Too high or too low, there ain’t no in-betweens.
– Billy Joel

I’m in a strange place at the moment. At first glance, my bipolar symptoms seem to be relatively stable. I’m not having depressive spirals, and I haven’t had any hypomanic or manic episodes.

Emotionally however, I’ve been all over the place. It’s too easy for daily events to push me one way or the other, between mildly erratic behavior and sudden sadness. I’ll put myself into a hopeless mood when I listen to a melancholy song or ponder the future of our society. But a small bit of humor or irony at work will raise my mood a little too much.

I’ve been especially vulnerable when I perceive rejection, disappointment, or anger directed towards me. It’s like I stop trusting the people I care about because of a sentence or two of conversation which might be critical. I seem to be looking for reasons to throw relationships away, discarding people and memories like I’ve done multiple times in the past. At my most dramatic, I wish I could run away and disappear from life.

Then again, some days I feel like I’m vibrating with energy. I’ll be overly energetic, working on tasks that aren’t really productive, and putting on the mask to be somewhat social if I feel like it. I’ll be oblivious to this until something triggers the realization that I am being fake-social, and then I’ll immediately withdraw, feeling embarrassed and sometimes angry with myself.

I don’t know if I’m characterizing this correctly, but it seems like I’ve always been able to separate the physical effects of brain chemistry from the lingering emotional damage from childhood abuse. It’s as if I can feel the physical changes coming and prepare for the ocean swell, but my emotional lability sometimes hits me like a sneaker wave crashing on me.

My other issues are still causing some discomfort. I still get episodes of anxiety where I’m terrified of social situations, and I cancel plans or modify my routine to avoid people. My ADHD symptoms seem to be slowly getting worse over time, but I was able to increase the dosage on that pill.

The tardive dyskinesia is also still present; the medication seems to give some relief, but I’m still noticeably shaky and twitchy. I told my psychiatrist more about the mental part of the twitchiness: how I often feel like I need to do these movements, that I get only fleeting satisfaction from doing them, and that when I don’t do it “the right way” I have to do it again. The doctor said he would do some psychological testing next time, so we’ll see where that leads.

Maybe my next post here will be written in crayon from the rubber room.

yippie-ki-yay, m* f*

It’s December, which means I feel like crap. Everyone around me is so fucking happy and cheery, and I’m not at all in the holiday spirit. I am easily overwhelmed by the lights and music and happiness surrounding me. Even at home, my wife loves this time of year, and I’m ambivalent at best. It’s a good thing we’re not religious, because that would add even more pressure to act or feel a certain way. I’m trying not to be a buzzkill to those around me, but I need to take frequent breaks from the merriment so I can recharge a little.

My efforts to embrace the season led me back to Die Hard, the best Christmas movie ever. It’s not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from the Nakatomi Tower. In an act of cosmic synchronicity, the Fakebook algorithm showed me an ad for a Die Hard advent calendar. However I’m too cheap to pay $30 plus shipping, so I made my own and put it on my cubicle wall at work. When December 25th arrives, Hans will hit the pavement pretty hard.

“The benefits of a classical education.”

My wife loves Christmas, so her coworkers gave her an early present: Covid. There has been an epidemic at the Super Spreader hotel where she works, and her number was drawn today. She doesn’t feel real sick, maybe equivalent to moderate cold symptoms, which is good for her.

I wish she didn’t feel like she had to work in a physical job, but honestly she’s not really trained for other skills. She could do retail, but that would suck the life out of her pretty quick. If she loves Christmas now, working retail would teach her to hate it. She would love working at a yarn shop or some other crafty kind of place, but they’re not going to pay a lot at those types of stores.

My moods are in a strange place. My bipolar has been pretty stable for a couple of months, but I’m still depressed. In the past few years I have tried several different drugs for depression to add to my mood stabilizer (Lamictal). Unfortunately the side effects – weight gain, exhaustion, movement disorders, or anxiety – are too much for me to deal with. I don’t feel like I want to end it all, but I still feel pretty miserable.

My inner critic has been pretty hard on me lately, and the main themes seem to be that I am damaged beyond repair and unworthy of anyone’s affection, and the idea that I have nothing worthwhile to offer to friends, family, coworkers, or the world. Sometimes people around me make that feeling worse when I can’t possibly fulfill their expectations, and they don’t seem to value the things I can contribute.

Okay, this was supposed to be short, so that’s all for now.

throwing it all away

We’ve all heard the old saying: “Wherever you go, there you are.” Most people don’t give it much thought, but it’s been a theme in my life since I can remember. I have had a lot of challenges in the past; sometimes I was able to solve the problem, but other times I felt like everything was overwhelming and there was no way I could make things come out okay. When I get that feeling, I get the urge to discard things, to run away, and to change my life to avoid being hurt again. The escape can be physical or emotional; it can sometimes be immediate and hurried, or maybe a slower process over a period of time. But when you run away, it’s still your life, and all the things you try to leave behind are still following you when you turn around.

During grade school, instead of solving conflicts and problems with students and teachers, I managed to convince my A-mom to get me transferred to another elementary school in town. I decided to enroll in college out of state despite the financial and logistical problems because I wanted to leave my A-mom and my hometown behind, but ultimately I had to return, feeling defeated and depressed.

While in a relationship during college, I chose to run away by myself rather than stay and talk through a difficult time with my girlfriend, and she broke up with me. In another example, I was frustrated by the emotional barriers a girlfriend was creating, and I decided to throw away a meaningful relationship when a choice had to be made between two people, then the other girl I chose soon drifted out of my life.

While in my first job after college, I could have tried harder to resolve a conflict with a boss with a smothering personality, but instead I decided to leave a nice job that I enjoyed; this changed life for me and my family. Years later, when my uncontrolled bipolar was becoming more severe and I was having difficulty at a really good job, I convinced my family that leaving California and moving to a new life in Ohio was the right solution; the results were both positive and negative, but my mental problems remained.

I have had the desire to leave my family and run away by myself, usually when my mental health is at its worst. I have had deluded thoughts of simply disappearing someday by cashing out everything I can and taking a one-way trip somewhere. Sometimes I have a fantasy that I could become more involved with a friend and live in some faraway place. But in each of these scenarios, I know that I can’t leave my damaged psyche behind. Even if my friend were to run away with me to a cabin in the woods somewhere, I am pretty sure that my insecurities and personality flaws would surface soon, she would leave me behind to preserve her own sanity, and I would be completely alone and devastated.

The common threads in each of these examples include immaturity, emotional instability, delusional thinking, feeling overwhelmed, and looking for an escape route that didn’t involve work to improve the current situation. My mental illness deserves a lot of the blame, but I know I could have tried harder to handle things differently. I can’t count the number of times in life I have thought I could escape my problems and have a fresh start by changing things – different friends, different college, different job, different house, different state, different therapists or doctors. But throwing things and people away in the hopes of changing my life has only resulted in damaged relationships, hurt feelings, lost opportunities, financial difficulty, and lots of regret. You would think I have learned my lesson by now, but sometimes I’m not too sure.

side effects

I’ve been anxious and twitchy for a week so far. I can’t stop the nervous tics. I can’t relax long enough to think properly or speak in complete sentences. My eyes are red from the irritation caused by constantly blinking.

I have bipolar disorder, and I had started taking a different antidepressant to go along with my mood stabilizer. Unfortunately, the new med isn’t going to work out due to the side effects. I stopped the new drug on Friday, but I’m still having withdrawal symptoms.

It is extremely difficult to sit still and do my work while in this condition. My supervisor, who has been very understanding, is letting me work from home the rest of the week. This helps because I won’t have to worry about interacting with anyone in person right now. I don’t need to be back to the office until next week. I’m hoping I will be in better shape by then.

In the meantime, I’m drinking before bedtime in an attempt to calm down and sleep. Don’t worry, I’m still in control, but don’t tell my psychiatrist that I’m self-medicating.