So, let's discuss a topic near and dear to my heart - Mental health. This is going to be a very long post, but it's important, and I SWEAR it has something to do with poly, even though at first it might not seem that way.
Lately, I've been feeling great. R, my husband, seems annoyed with me lately. When he's annoyed for what seems like absolutely no good reason, it's usually because I'm starting to slide down the slippery manic slope.
So. Just so people know, before I say anything else, just like depression isn't being "just sad" mania isn't being "just happy" either. And I've been at this for so long, that I can see the darkness hiding in the light. I know that even though I have a laundry list of good things going on, I can see the red flags in there, even in the best of happenings.
1.) I'm crushing it at work. We have key performance indicators and I am DESTROYING them with my charisma and charm. haha. This is not a bad thing at all.
2.) Inflated self esteem. (if you couldn't tell from point number 1.) I'm clearly feeling REAL good about myself. My self esteem is great and my value at work is being noticed which only makes me feel even better. Again, not a bad thing. I also feel super pretty.
3.) I keep a fairly strict sleep/wake routine, and eating routine and other such things as a way to monitor my mental health so that when I start to fall away from my patterns, I am more likely to notice it and make note. I generally go to bed between 11:30-12:30 and wake around 7:30 am. Last night I socialized with a new person until 1:30 am and it took everything in me to finally kick him out so I could go to sleep like I knew I should have an hour prior.
4.) I tend to get super generous with my money when I'm hypomanic. Today I bought W a pair of (to be fair, sorely needed) eyeglasses. Not terribly cheap.
5.) I've been fighting the urge to drink lately. I don't drink. At all. It makes me manic. When I'm getting manic, I usually want to give in and drink and just scream into the void to BRING IT ON!
6.) I've been feeling super creative lately and writing more. I AM NOT COMPLAINING. I love to write!
7.) I've been told to 'slow my speech down' a lot lately.
8.) My sex drive is up.
So, while almost all of these things can be considered GOOD things in my life, they are also red flags. Because they eventually, if left unchecked, have a good chance of turning bonkers. This is how it goes:
At first, I crush my numbers at work, I get a lot of accolades and notice of my accomplishments. Then I start to get weird.
I start sleeping less, socializing more, staying up late, waking up early, maybe I drink, Suddenly my performance starts to slide, and in a big way because I have a job where being charismatic is super important. When actual mania hits, and I start to worry that people can look me in the eye and SEE that I am not mentally well is when it really goes downhill fast. I worry people can see the illness inside me, I stop making eye contact, very important in my job. I start to distance myself from my patients/customers, get snippy with my co workers. It becomes difficult to go to work, to stay at work, to even show up and I talk so fast no one can understand me. I'm told over and over again to slow down while I'm explaining features and benefits, but I can't, so I just annoy people. This hurts my numbers and makes my boss (who knows I am bipolar) worry about me and the business.
I start pretty much giving away my hard earned cash, taking my friends and sometimes strangers out to expensive dinners, I can't possibly burn through my money fast enough doing that so I start gambling. Tables games sometimes, mostly poker. You should not play poker, manic. NOTE: YOU SHOULD NOT PLAY POKER, MANIC.
Then once I've burned through my cash I start wracking up the debt. Some episodes take months if not longer to recover from financially. I stop going to work. I use up all my PTO, I stay home and fuck strangers I find on tinder because my sex drive is out of this world. I invite them to my house on first meeting and might not even catch their name by the time they are out the door. Then I unmatch them before they reach my porch. This is around the time I'll start hallucinating. Thinking the police are listening to me through my phone, I swear I can hear the police walkie talkie clicking coming from my phone, I hear them, hearing me. Old fashioned phones are ringing in my ear, people are angrily screaming my name, doors that aren't there are slamming. I feel electricity under my skin and I can't get all the energy inside me OUT fast enough and I shake and wring my hands until they are raw. I pace until I've worn a path in the floor. Soon, I'll get violent, and it will all end in a blazing glory of me hiking up the hill to the local psych hospital where I'll go to get my meds straight. Something I should have done long before all that other shit happened.
So yes, I'm keeping an eye out right now, and will up my haldol once I see for sure it's needed.
How does this relate to poly, you are wondering?
Well, I'm good at catching shit these days, I see the bonkers coming in the wave of positive things happening in my life. I find myself saying, "Why can't I ALWAYS feel this way? Why does it have to turn bad?" To which my bipolar partner K replies, "That is a manic sentence if I've ever heard one. And I have. From myself, every time I get manic."
My husband is annoyed at me and it will only get worse and drive a wedge between us if I let this go. K is happy and proud that I'm catching it early. W is saying, "Maybe you are just happy." But he has very little experience with mental health issues and doesn't quite grasp the seriousness of the events unfolding before us.
I'm very happy that I have so many loving people in my life that I can bounce off of and find support from and hell, even teach and help to understand further. If I HAVE to be sick...If I ABSOLUTELY MUST deal with this cyclical, at alternating times depressing and maniacal illness, if it is something, which it always has been (diagnosed at 14, sick long before that.) that I must deal with, in the end I'm glad I'm not dealing with it alone. I'm also so happy to have my polycule, so that I don't drain any one partner with all my bullshit. It makes it easier for me, and I imagine, easier for them, they have each other, I have each of them, no one person has to bear the weight of my sickness. We share this...I hate to say burden but in all honesty it is a burden. We share this burden and it makes the load a little less heavy for each who must carry it with them. For that, I am grateful.
******************************************************
TL;DR
*I suffer from a wretched mental illness and am so happy I have multiple loves in my life to help me carry this burden.*
******************************************************
*~*~*Slutty Heart*~*~*
Lately, I've been feeling great. R, my husband, seems annoyed with me lately. When he's annoyed for what seems like absolutely no good reason, it's usually because I'm starting to slide down the slippery manic slope.
So. Just so people know, before I say anything else, just like depression isn't being "just sad" mania isn't being "just happy" either. And I've been at this for so long, that I can see the darkness hiding in the light. I know that even though I have a laundry list of good things going on, I can see the red flags in there, even in the best of happenings.
1.) I'm crushing it at work. We have key performance indicators and I am DESTROYING them with my charisma and charm. haha. This is not a bad thing at all.
2.) Inflated self esteem. (if you couldn't tell from point number 1.) I'm clearly feeling REAL good about myself. My self esteem is great and my value at work is being noticed which only makes me feel even better. Again, not a bad thing. I also feel super pretty.
3.) I keep a fairly strict sleep/wake routine, and eating routine and other such things as a way to monitor my mental health so that when I start to fall away from my patterns, I am more likely to notice it and make note. I generally go to bed between 11:30-12:30 and wake around 7:30 am. Last night I socialized with a new person until 1:30 am and it took everything in me to finally kick him out so I could go to sleep like I knew I should have an hour prior.
4.) I tend to get super generous with my money when I'm hypomanic. Today I bought W a pair of (to be fair, sorely needed) eyeglasses. Not terribly cheap.
5.) I've been fighting the urge to drink lately. I don't drink. At all. It makes me manic. When I'm getting manic, I usually want to give in and drink and just scream into the void to BRING IT ON!
6.) I've been feeling super creative lately and writing more. I AM NOT COMPLAINING. I love to write!
7.) I've been told to 'slow my speech down' a lot lately.
8.) My sex drive is up.
So, while almost all of these things can be considered GOOD things in my life, they are also red flags. Because they eventually, if left unchecked, have a good chance of turning bonkers. This is how it goes:
At first, I crush my numbers at work, I get a lot of accolades and notice of my accomplishments. Then I start to get weird.
I start sleeping less, socializing more, staying up late, waking up early, maybe I drink, Suddenly my performance starts to slide, and in a big way because I have a job where being charismatic is super important. When actual mania hits, and I start to worry that people can look me in the eye and SEE that I am not mentally well is when it really goes downhill fast. I worry people can see the illness inside me, I stop making eye contact, very important in my job. I start to distance myself from my patients/customers, get snippy with my co workers. It becomes difficult to go to work, to stay at work, to even show up and I talk so fast no one can understand me. I'm told over and over again to slow down while I'm explaining features and benefits, but I can't, so I just annoy people. This hurts my numbers and makes my boss (who knows I am bipolar) worry about me and the business.
I start pretty much giving away my hard earned cash, taking my friends and sometimes strangers out to expensive dinners, I can't possibly burn through my money fast enough doing that so I start gambling. Tables games sometimes, mostly poker. You should not play poker, manic. NOTE: YOU SHOULD NOT PLAY POKER, MANIC.
Then once I've burned through my cash I start wracking up the debt. Some episodes take months if not longer to recover from financially. I stop going to work. I use up all my PTO, I stay home and fuck strangers I find on tinder because my sex drive is out of this world. I invite them to my house on first meeting and might not even catch their name by the time they are out the door. Then I unmatch them before they reach my porch. This is around the time I'll start hallucinating. Thinking the police are listening to me through my phone, I swear I can hear the police walkie talkie clicking coming from my phone, I hear them, hearing me. Old fashioned phones are ringing in my ear, people are angrily screaming my name, doors that aren't there are slamming. I feel electricity under my skin and I can't get all the energy inside me OUT fast enough and I shake and wring my hands until they are raw. I pace until I've worn a path in the floor. Soon, I'll get violent, and it will all end in a blazing glory of me hiking up the hill to the local psych hospital where I'll go to get my meds straight. Something I should have done long before all that other shit happened.
So yes, I'm keeping an eye out right now, and will up my haldol once I see for sure it's needed.
How does this relate to poly, you are wondering?
Well, I'm good at catching shit these days, I see the bonkers coming in the wave of positive things happening in my life. I find myself saying, "Why can't I ALWAYS feel this way? Why does it have to turn bad?" To which my bipolar partner K replies, "That is a manic sentence if I've ever heard one. And I have. From myself, every time I get manic."
My husband is annoyed at me and it will only get worse and drive a wedge between us if I let this go. K is happy and proud that I'm catching it early. W is saying, "Maybe you are just happy." But he has very little experience with mental health issues and doesn't quite grasp the seriousness of the events unfolding before us.
I'm very happy that I have so many loving people in my life that I can bounce off of and find support from and hell, even teach and help to understand further. If I HAVE to be sick...If I ABSOLUTELY MUST deal with this cyclical, at alternating times depressing and maniacal illness, if it is something, which it always has been (diagnosed at 14, sick long before that.) that I must deal with, in the end I'm glad I'm not dealing with it alone. I'm also so happy to have my polycule, so that I don't drain any one partner with all my bullshit. It makes it easier for me, and I imagine, easier for them, they have each other, I have each of them, no one person has to bear the weight of my sickness. We share this...I hate to say burden but in all honesty it is a burden. We share this burden and it makes the load a little less heavy for each who must carry it with them. For that, I am grateful.
******************************************************
TL;DR
*I suffer from a wretched mental illness and am so happy I have multiple loves in my life to help me carry this burden.*
******************************************************
*~*~*Slutty Heart*~*~*
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