inspiredodyssey bipolar

When You Cross The Line and Just, Well, Implode

a.baa-Ruff-Day

Today, was a bad day.  Have you ever let anything really minor upset you terribly? Things are so out of your control and power that you implode and show the worst parts of yourself to your significant other? How do you recover from the embarrassment from something like that? I know my partner isn’t mad at me, but I know I really let him down tonight.

I have always kept money out of my relationship. For almost 9 years, money was never an issue for me and I never brought it up to my partner. I would have always had enough to cover birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas and even an unforeseen expense in which I would show my partner, “I got this,” even though I’m on a very fixed income of disability.

I was on the road to recovery last year. Everything was working out; I finally fixed my credit score and history, I was just approved for an $8000 loan, and I had made it to the top of the list for a job in my county because I aced a Civil Service Exam. All my dreams were coming true and I could finally put my whole history of this horrible bipolar disorder, hospitalizations, debt and overall ugliness of the past 11 years behind me.

Until “IT” happened. The thing that we as bipolar victims dread most in life – an episode happens whether it be manic or depressed, that literally destroys EVERYTHING you worked so damn hard to achieve. It’s horrible what happens to us as mental health victims, (and I call us victims because of all the suffering associated with this dreaded curse of ours), but it’s not only the trauma but its the stigma that we deal with day after day for the rest of our lives from society, our community, family and peers.

The worst thing in the world happened to me when I had made such progress in my life and was about to embark on a career, good credit, and future. I had a severe manic episode that led to a ten-month hospitalization. It was no one’s fault, these things just happen right? I mean that’s what all the doctors can come up with – so it’s like here: we’ll give you all these medications for a life sentence of bipolar, but they may or may not work one day and your whole life may be destroyed by an episode.

WTF???????

Exactly my thoughts.

Anyway, back to crossing the line with my partner. Needless to say my credit was destroyed because I couldn’t pay my bills for ten months from the hospital, (there is no credit forgiveness if you’re hospitalized and “bonus,” if you want that kind of credit protection it costs about $30 a month PER card), the Civil Service Office gave away my job to the next one in line, and I was completely screwed.

As part of the rebuilding of my life, I have started investing in my writing career, I am in school for Business Management and I have been trying to get some classes to brush up on my Microsoft Office skills, so things were looking up,

UNTIL…..

Here comes the bipolar panic:

I saw a course for Excel on sale for $34 tonight, and I realized I don’t have $34 to my name. I have $22 on one credit card, $16 on another one and $10 in the bank UNTIL AUGUST 3rd. It would be nice if they let you split payments like in the old days, but they don’t today. How did I let it get this bad??? Why are my finances so OUT OF CONTROL?? I haven’t been manic or spending a lot, how is it that I’m THIS BROKE with no kind of back-up???

I started crying, ready to kill myself over this Excel course and the fact that I have no money, no savings, and my partner saw all that. For the first time in my relationship, I have been asking him for money, and I feel terrible about it. Wouldn’t you want a partner who is financially responsible and not a trainwreck? I would. I would dump me if I was with me.

Anyway, I let it get out of hand because all week I have been trying to get this course, and all I had been hitting is ridiculous roadblocks – no one at my current school would help me find out about these kinds of courses no matter how many times I called or who I spoke to, apparently since I was assigned a Student Services Advisor no one was allowed to help me but her. Okay, so what if the woman decides to never return my phone calls or emails all day? EXACTLY. And earlier in the week, I drove all the way out to my old Business school, (apparently you’re not allowed to find out about refresher courses over the phone you have to do them in person), so I wasted gas, time and energy for them to tell me the refresher Office courses won’t be available for another 5 months? And I was not allowed to hear this information over the phone…….why again??? WHAT???

I guess the frustration built up to a complete breaking point. The urgency of the matter is I need to move out on my own by next year. I had literally wasted about 11 years in a bipolar haze living on disability, living with my parents, thinking what? That they would take care of me forever?

I guess the moral of this whole story is, ALWAYS PLAN FOR YOUR FUTURE ladies and gentlemen. I am SO unbelievably lucky that my family was here to weather this bipolar storm with me; I have suffered so long with it, and just when I think I’m okay, something Holy Catastrophic happens. Guess that’s life right? Yeah, I guess. But serioously WTF???

If you guys can relate to any of this madness, please hit me with a like, it would really make my night. 🙂

Stay Tuned.

inspiredodyssey Life

Are You Happy In Life??

rain

Do you think you have the perfect career? Are you happy in your relationship(s)? Is there something missing in your life where you find yourself constantly searching, but can never find it?

Welcome to my world.

Hi, my name is Lynn and I am a writer in my 30s, from New York. Recently, I discovered that writing is mostly a hobby, and not really a career path, so I am in school for Business Management to try and figure it all out. It’s like that lightbulb went off when I noticed how everybody has jumped on the bandwagon of “freelance writer,” and I realized the market it just way too saturated with this type of profession. I think when Carrie Bradshaw showcased her life on “Sex and the City” every woman in New York was wondering: “In what universe can you write a couple of times a week for a no-name newspaper, and afford $500 shoes?” Trust me, I’ve lived in this city my whole life, and that crap is just straight-up fiction.

And what about relationships? Well, I am happy to say that it will be almost a decade that my best friend and I are still together. Why “best friend” and not “boyfriend?” Well, he is too old to be a “boy” friend, and secondly, I have always wanted to keep my options open; I am a “lots of options” type girl. But over the years, I realized, this is the guy for me and everything else is just an extra – and extra not being sleeping with a bunch of men on the side, just having an inordinate number of male friends, (and steamy co-writer partners), that most people don’t have the luxury of having. So you see, what I have works for both of us and works well. He is about an hour away by car, and I think I am going to keep our living situations this way until we both retire, then we can get married and grow old together. My set-up is pretty sweet, and I have to say I have no regrets, even though “I have no regrets” has turned into some new-age fix-it-all for modern-day problems and is now totally a cliché thing to say. But aren’t some cliché’s still relevant today? And to me, the biggest cliché that’s running around these days is: “online dating works.” I think if you survey all the people who are online dating right now, about 80% of them will tell you it’s crap turned over twice and all over your shoe. I will be talking about online dating more in this blog later on though because I think it’s such a fascinating subject.

This brings me to you guys.

Is it just me, or is it that with all this technology, all these great ways to meet new people, and all the advancements we’re making, are driving human beings apart? Are all these digital interactions killing us? Does it all leave you with an unsatisfied feeling at the end of the day, even though things are going well?

I think as a whole, we are losing our humanity. I was talking to my friend the other day and we were discussing the term “binging.” Wasn’t binging a negative term described in eating disorders? Why did such an ugly term become commonplace? Don’t we realize its unhealthy to binge, even though we think, “well it’s just Netflix?” A series isn’t made for the purpose of binging, well at least years ago it wasn’t.  I can remember every episode of “Star Trek the Next Generation,” “Knight Rider,” and “The A-Team,” because I had to wait a whole week to watch each episode. Since everything is available to stream and I was guilty of binging “Battlestar Galactica” a few years ago, I can honestly report to you, I have no frickin’ idea what half those episodes were about. Do you see what I mean?

It’s unhealthy.

We’re unhealthy.

So, what do we do??

Since this is my first blog post, what do you think we should do to make ourselves more human, more satisfied with life?

I totally would love to hear some of your ideas.

Stay tuned.