Life Lessons

It is no secret that bipolar disorder is also known as “The Silent Killer,” because silently, it has the power to erupt and destroy everything in your life. This has happened to me numerous times in my life, but nothing prepared me for what I was about to lose this time around. I suffered so much, and there are still nights where I am crying myself to sleep. The shock to my system, the utter despair of yet another episode of mania in which my sense of reality was completely lost from me.

The worst part is getting over the medicine, all the medicine, that was pumped into my system to bring back down to “Earth.” It has sparked a very severe depression in which I am fighting every day to get rid of. Bipolar is hard, and so is the depressive side – the manic side may be all fun and games, but when you are slammed back down to Earth, you can surely feel it.

The upside of all of this is that I am incredibly fortunate and blessed. The wonderful people at my AA group are still supportive and welcoming, my friends at church are still there with open arms welcoming me at baptism on Easter, my amazing friends in and out of recovery have been wonderful, my amazing mom and dad who gave up everything to help me yet again are still incredible – and of course the wonderful man who I had once called my boyfriend is still at least emailing me.

So even though I feel so much loss, especially with the amazing accounting job I had, I feel so grateful that I still have my amazing apartment, my resilient car, and everything I had before this setback. That’s what I have to call it, just a setback. Jesus tells me that He saved me to serve a higher purpose. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to have a fancy job, maybe my time and energy is supposed to be giving back to the community – going back and volunteering with Recovery Alive, going back to Raleigh and teaching job readiness classes to felons just leaving prison, joining the Legions of Mary and giving the eucharist to those suffering and in need. My mind is on a different path now, on a different mission, and now that my disability is justified, I will be living a minimalist life now just making quick cash on the side doing a side gig – the dream of a career is on the back burner – I realize that I am needed in so many more ways than I am limiting myself.

I am hopeful for the future. I am hopeful for a world ahead of me that is going to hear my voice, to hear the tales of jail, addiction, and possible death, and despite this setback of bipolarness, I am still striving forward.

Here’s to the future!

Stay tuned.

Bipolar Disorder and Mental Health

Daily writing prompt
What’s something most people don’t understand?

So for the most part, it’s the “if I don’t have it, I don’t get it” mentality. Being bipolar for almost 20 years now, it has opened my eyes to a lot of things and a lot of stigmas there are out there about mental illness. I don’t want to claim ignorance, but I do want to say that for the most part we are “ignored.” For a long time in my life, my outbursts of anger, my alcoholism and my overall behavior was masked with, “it’ll be okay,” or “it’s just a phase,” and this advice was given to me by people who didn’t really understand what they were dealing with – not that I am criticizing, but you know people are only as knowledgeable as the information they are given.

There have been a lot of breakthroughs in the mental health field during the past 20 years, and one of them being awareness on the subject. People are a lot more knowledgeable as well as understanding. But the stigma still exists because there is a difference between just understanding and knowing what someone is actually going through. I love the phrase, “walk a mile in someone’s shoes before judging,” because unless you are going through a debilitating depression or a crippling manic episode you will never know or understand what that feels like.

I am glad though that my life has taken a turn where the idea of me being bipolar no longer equates me with being a leper. I can say that jobs are lined up even though I check off that “disability” box on a job application. So, even though most people still don’t understand mental health or bipolar disorder, I have learned that living with it and talking about it can enlighten someone’s thoughts on the subject.

Focused Despite a Pandemic, Bipolar, Addiction, Relationships, and Uncertainty

steps Those are the concrete steps I fell in a freefall backward, in which I could have died by breaking my neck. How I survived that fall with just some stitches on my head and a broken wrist, I shall never know. Of course, we all know the culprit – alcohol, which is ridiculously accessible during these times – even delivered to your door via the Drizzly app. An interesting thing isn’t it – that such a deadly substance is obtained so easily now, and many, many people are drowning their sorrows in it, especially for those of us losing certain unemployment benefits as of this week.

But that’s not the reason for my post today.

I was supposed to get married a week before that fall down those steps, and my parents and my fiance’s parents being what they are, canceled our wedding in some sort of punishment as if we are both teenagers recklessly in love. There is some truth to the reckless love part – we have almost nothing in common, except of course music – which unites us in a way 90’s R&B and rap songs usually do – it brings us back to a time in our life when things were simpler, more comfortable and just made sense.

I have spent a good portion of my life looking for true love. There were times in my life I thought I have felt it, but this man, the one I am going to marry, makes me feel the love so deeply that it moves me to tears even as I type. Our primary common bond is, of course, mental illness, in which certain parts of it come out of both of us, bad and good.

He hears voices and conversations and has delusions I try and cope with and understand, while he deals with my constant yelling and flip-flop moods of this horrible bipolar. We are hardly the perfect match, but the abundance of love that comes from the both of us to each other is undeniable – oh and as a bonus, two people who have incredibly vibrant mental illness issues have, without a doubt, the best sex life on the planet, at least for me it is.

But besides the sex, which is explosive and out of this world, on top of all things, I picked up a drug habit that I share with him now. I explained a little bit about this in my last post, and, ironically, I spent my entire life avoiding hard drugs and now I am a full-blown addict on top of my bipolar disorder. I have kept it quiet, of course, not broadcasting it on social media or even to any of my friends, but I know this drug addiction is killing our relationship. All of our fights, and I do mean all of them, have been around this habit – either fighting about money to get it, or the fact that he sits there and watches hours of porn in front of me as we do it together, (I won’t even go into how many fights there were about that one), it’s just the fact that I don’t want to do the drug anymore.

There is something to be said about incarceration or, in my case, 10 months in a psychiatric hospital. I spent most of 2018 and 2019 in a hospital (this happened twice), and honestly, I believe it cured me of any addiction I have ever had. I had a bad alcohol addiction most of my life – mostly, which I blame my violent, drunk father for (like father like daughter apparently), but I was really cured of it before I met my fiance.

Experimenting with cocaine has been an invigorating experience, and when I got the chance to mix it with both Vicodin and alcohol, suffice to say, I was hooked. That freefall came from a night of coke and alcohol, both of which the Emergency Room found in my blood, but luckily my landlord only knew about the drinking when he called my parents – (oh yeah, the cops were called, and they thought my fiance pushed me down the stairs, and my landlord threatened to kick us out).

After that incident, I haven’t touched an ounce of liquor, but I have been drowning more and more down the cocaine drain. And when we do it together, we’re okay for a while, then the worst comes out in both of us when we want more, and we just don’t have the money for it. I am currently negative $377.00 in my account due to the last binge, with rent due in a week or so. My fiance is working delivering pizzas with my car, which I can’t afford the payments on either, and we plan on getting high tonight, or at least he wants to, and I feel almost forced because I need some sort of pick-me-up.

This vicious cycle goes on and on, with every binge we break each other’s hearts, and I don’t know if it’s the fact that he has nowhere to go and I have nowhere to go that we stay together. We are so co-dependent; and we are both abusive – me calling him a worthless piece of shit and a loser, and telling him that I hate his guts – to him calling me an ugly whore and on and on. I have never been in such a volatile relationship, but we hang on to each other tightly because we know each other’s “crazy” really well. I once told him, “my crazy knows your crazy” because it really does.

I don’t know what will come of this – all I know is we hide this from everyone, employers, parents, friends, family, and landlord – and when we do it, we always want more, it’s never ever enough.

All I know is I’m trapped, and I am screaming on the inside every day. The cocaine brings me high and makes me incredibly focused, something I think rich people get off on; that’s why they are so successful, I mean stockbrokers are cranking in billions a year. But I know it’s my downfall and either my fiance or I am going to get really hurt – I mean I almost died down those steps so what’s next?

Probably death or jail.

Stay tuned

In Crisis – I Can’t Walk Away Because No One Else Ever Wanted Me.

Homeless adult male sitting in subway tunnel, hands on head

My self-esteem is at an all-time low. I have waited and dated miserably for over a decade for a man to come into my life who loves me completely – the only problem is he can’t beat his drug addiction.

I never wanted to date an addict – never – only because I know how hard that road is.  I had left my fiance when I was 19 due to his addiction and selling drugs, and I don’t know, it seemed easier to start over then. Everything seemed easier when I was younger. Now that I’m approaching 40, I have to say that dating had gotten so excruciatingly painful,  I honestly thought I would be spending the rest of my life alone. I don’t want to date, I don’t want to try, I don’t want to do anything anymore.

I really think I am falling into a depression. I am no prize either, I mean with my mental illness and my fat and ugly, pot-hole face and body, who the hell would want me? Am I going to stay in this relationship because I simply think I can’t get anybody else? I am so scared to be alone again that I am risking my overall mental health to be with this person. He can’t stop the drugs, I can’t stop loving him – two sides of this toxic coin that won’t stop spinning on the edge.

I feel like the whole world is rooting against me, I feel that God is punishing me for moving on from that ex-fiance whose heart I broke into a million pieces after he had gotten clean. What if I am not giving my current boyfriend the same chance I should have given that ex-fiance all those years ago? Is this a pattern that seems to have come full circle in my life?

I have been dying for love. My whole, damn life. I have never been loved like this before. Maybe it’s cause he’s an addict and is so desperate for love, that I find his desperation appealing. Maybe I am so damn desperate too, that I would believe anything he says.

I would love to walk away, say fuck it and let him deal with his own issues. But I can’t. I know things could be a whole lot worse because he could be an abuser, cheater or just downright misogynistic, but he’s not. He’s warm, loving, funny, and the man I want to marry, and who wants to marry me. But he can’t beat his addiction and my love isn’t enough. He just got out of rehab and hasn’t given himself a chance to be clean yet – they say it’s all about people, places and things, and I know his environment and the friends he hangs out with contributes to his weak resistance to his addiction.  I want to help him, I want to love him, but I feel so powerless that I can’t do anything for him.

Worst of all, I know everybody reading this will say, “just leave him,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s easy for ya’ll to judge me when you haven’t been in my shoes. I feel weak, pathetic and unworthy of a good man. I have been waiting my whole life to be loved the way he loves me, but unfortunately, he comes with his drug baggage that has destroyed my inner light inside.

I wish I could die.

This life is just too fucking hard.

Stay tuned.