I'm having one of those rapid cycle days. Sometimes my mood cycles last for weeks, even months. Here lately, though, I've been cycling daily. I wake up in the morning and I can't even fathom getting out of bed/off the couch. So I don't. Then, I make the switch. Sometime in the afternoon (or late evening) I start feeling energetic (or very irritated) and suddenly I'm motivated to do things. I want to get out of the house and go somewhere, anywhere. Inevitably, the looming fact that we are strapped for cash comes back to bite me in the rear-end and I wind up spending the night alternately frolicking on the Internet, feverishly doing school work, and channel surfing. Thoughts zip through my mind at neck-breaking speed. I don't bother even trying to keep up. Go with the flow. I bring things to a screeching halt with a milligram of Xanax which might account for my early morning lethargy. But it's that, or stay up all night with the thoughts.
Lately my thoughts have been drifting back to the turn of the century. I was approaching my 20s in a bad state. Coming off of a year of near non-stop binge drinking, I made the decision to move back in with my parents. I can't even begin to describe the unrelenting feelings of doom that moving back to Germany gave me. But everyone had convinced me that if I stayed in Kentucky my life would never amount to anything. Even if they were right, it still seems like they were wrong because my life still hasn't amounted to much of anything. From 2001 to 2003 I did lots of things that, depending on your personal point-of-view, could be seen as normal things that people my age did or completely insane/stupid/irrational. Maybe both. Knowing what I know now, I realize that I was coming into bipolar disorder.
I spent two and a half years on Zoloft. The maximum dosage of Zoloft, at that. Between the self injury, the depression, the suicidality, the frequent mood swings, the intense and irrational fears of abandonment, and my complete social awkwardness - my pdoc (whom I loved and adored and trusted without a shadow of a doubt) diagnosed me with Borderline Personality Disorder. It seemed to explain everything about me, especially my self-destructive nature. And when something fits, we wear it, right? It did not, however, explain why I failed to get any better after two years of regular treatment. In fact, it seemed like I kept getting worse. I was making a ridiculous amount of money ($13.70 an hour, tax free, 70+ hours a week) for someone with no bills except for rent and car insurance yet there were several months that I found myself reeling, praying my landlord wouldn't kick me out when I told him, again, that I'd be late with the rent. (Towards the end of my stay at that apartment, I blew off paying the rent all together and wound up moving on New Years Eve in the middle of the night.) I was constantly going on crazy spending sprees but never seemed to buy anything substantial. I regularly overdrew my account for something I
had to have but never needed. I always drove at least 20 MPH over the speed limit. (Which, since I lived in Germany, meant I frequently drove at least 80 MPH even on the twisted, dangerous back roads.) Nevermind when I could come up with an excuse to go somewhere that involved getting on the Autobahn. My friends hated riding with me because I embraced the complete lack of speed limit. Most everything that gave me a rush paled in comparison to the exhilaration of pushing my gas pedal to the floorboard wishing I had a car that went faster than 90 MPH. (Once, in January of 2002, I actually rented a brand new Mercedes sedan to pick up my best friend at the Frankfurt airport. I managed to get the damn thing up to 140 MPH. Fortunately I had a friend riding with me and she was terrified and made me slow down after a few minutes. It's the closest I've ever been to flying.)
I wish I could say that was the extent of my recklessness but, alas, no. I was a complete pot head and experimented with other drugs regularly. I can't say that I drank much because I always preferred getting high to getting drunk. Still do, in fact, though I haven't smoked pot in well over a year. (See, my lack of self control always catches up with me when I drink but there is no such thing as smoking too much pot. And the intoxiciations are comparable so I've always opted to smoke rather than drink when the option was there.) Looking back, I'm amazed that I have never been arrested. I often associated with people that were being watched by CID for dealing and/or using drugs. But I was
invincible I tell you! It never occurred to me that I could be arrested. It never occurred to me that having sex with random guys could result in an unwanted pregnancy (oh, the
irony) or, worse, an STD. (I did wind up with a bad reputation, but really didn't care.) I never gave the statistics that Autobahn accidents were almost always FATAL a second thought. And the fact that I was consistently estranged from my family comforted me instead of bothering me. After all, who wanted to be like those up tight, self-absorbed, righteous, holier-than-thou assholes, anyway? They weren't invincible like me. They didn't have my talent, smarts, or charm. They were boring, to say the least! And when I did find myself wishing our relationship was different, it was nothing more than something to bitch about in therapy.
Okay, so by now, you're probably wondering why on earth I was on such a high dose of antidepressants when I clearly wasn't depressed, right? Well, I've only told part of the story. Certainly, according to the DSM-IV, by the aforementioned behaviors, I was clearly manic. But I haven't mentioned the relentless depression yet. Nights that I sat up smoking cigarettes and writing morbid entries in my paper journals, drowning myself in depressing music, desperately fighting the urge to raid my fridge and cabinets for something, anything to eat. Those were nights that I wanted nothing more than to sleep but sleep just wouldn't come. I'd lie awake in my freezing cold bedroom, tangled in my sheets and comforter, surrounded by pillows, Olivia perched and purring on my stomach, trying to ignore what sounded like soft conversation coming from my living room.
What on earth
were they talking about?? Sometimes I had to shut my eyes tightly to chase away the spiders crawling on the ceiling and walls. If they made it into the bed, forget it. I ran screaming into the living room where I'd proceed to sit on my couch, wide awake and vigilant. Antidepressant-induced psychosis.
I continually wished for death, almost never finding a good enough reason to keep on living. I dissociated a lot; feeling that I wasn't real, that nothing was real. Those nights were the worst and inevitably ended bloody. After enduring months of this hellish torture, I finally fessed up to Doc who proceeded to prescribe me an antipsychotic (first Risperdal, then Seroquel) and a sleep aid (Restoril). I blame myself for things getting worse after that. Vanity before sanity had me 86ing the Risperdal after a few weeks when I noted marked weight gain. I gave up on Seroquel after I returned from my vacation in California because my friends were always commenting on how I turned into a complete zombie after I took my dose. I agreed, obviously. The sleep aid was the danger factor in this equation. When I wasn't self-medicating with pot, alcohol, or other street drugs, I abused my prescriptions. Shortly after I was released from the psych ward I was fired from my cushy, well-paying job and I just snapped. To me, it was the end of the world and one night I decided it was over.
I downed every pill from a leftover prescription of Trazodone (probably seven or eight pills) and poured out my freshly filled bottle of Restoril onto my end table. I then proceeded to alternate taking a pill with slicing my forearm. The sting of the cuts kept me alert and focused on the task at hand. Thankfully Restoril is relatively fast-acting so after roughly nine or ten pills I was in a fog and noticed that the cutting was no longer snapping me back to reality like it had when I started. Curious, I pressed harder and harder with the razorblade but still, nothing. This was it. I'd reached a state of complete nirvana where pain no longer existed. Not only was I completely oblivious to my emotional pain, physical pain had vanished along with it. Content, I swallowed another mouthful of pills before passing out. (I only know now that I took 15 pills because I counted what was left of my prescription several days later.) The next couple of days are hazy. A pounding on my door. Blood soaked rags. At some point I'd apparently woken up long enough to fix a bowl of cream of wheat (which was crusting on my couch when I awoke a second time to the pounding on my door). My sister and mom drug me off to the ER where things are yet more hazy. An inept Army "doctor" poking a needle into my arm and mumbling something about subcutaneous fat, tendons, and an artery. Plenty of tears, whys, and attempts at comfort by my mom and sister. The ER tried to force me into a German psych ward but I managed to talk them out of it. They notified the on-call pdoc since Doc was TDY. I talked her out of sending me back to Landstuhl by promising to stay with my sister for a while. Soon after, Doc PCS'd, ending my long-standing relationship with therapy. When my logistical support from my dad ran out a month later, I was forced to stop taking medication all together.
I don't know if it was stopping the meds, surrounding myself with understanding friends, my blooming social life, landing the best job on earth, or all of the above that kept me mostly sane for my remainder in Germany. For the first time since I'd been back I felt like I was in control of things. Yes, I still had my mood swings but they weren't nearly as debilitating as they had been while I was on Zoloft. (There's a monumental difference between being manic
or depressed and being in a mixed state - a dangerous combination of the two - which is what I'd spent the previous two years dealing with: a perpetual mixed state.) My new job at Outdoor Recreation kept me active and accomodated my social awkwardness nicely. It had fantastic perks like white water rafting trips in the summer and ski trips in the winter. Not to mention early AM airport shuttles to quell my need for speed and to disguise the fact that I was back to not sleeping, or sleeping very little. My boss adored me, my coworkers thought I was interesting, and best of all, I was good at and enjoyed what I was doing. But almost all good things come to an end. When I decided to move to Alabama it was really a no brainer. It was supposed to be temporary; a weigh station on my way to a bigger, better, more exciting life! My plan was to stay with my parents long enough to get a job and save up enough money to move out to California with my best friend where we would take on the world as a fiercesome duet. We made plans to attend college together in the winter and road trip and/or travel the globe during the summer. All that changed when I fell in love. Isn't it strange how something so volatile can be so can be so compelling? Compelling enough to change the course of your entire life.
These last six years have had their perks and quirks. My loving husband accepted me and all my disordered ways long before, I believe, he really knew what he was getting himself into. I know he loves me and I know I love him. But more than that, I think we're heavily dependant on one another which may be what truly keeps our relationship from falling apart at the seams. Mental illness is trying. It's a strain on every relationship I forge. Most of my family members have come to understand bipolar disorder and how it works. This makes our relationships much easier to manage. Instead of seeing me as pathetic and lazy for staying in bed for days on end, they try to understand the severity and all-encompassing symptoms of my depressive states. Instead of making me feel worthless and irresponsible when I spend money we don't have (or otherwise act with reckless abandon) they try to understand that I'm feeling invincible.
I can't really say whether things are better or worse than they were almost nine years ago. Mostly things are just different. The scenery has changed. I'll always be as different as I've always been. My imagination will surely on occasion run away with me as its hostage. It's almost guaranteed that, for the rest of my life, I'll experience times of intense despair that are all too familiar to me. It's just part of who I am; part of who I'll always be.
