Going from good to bonkers

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.

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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.*

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*~*~*Slutty Heart*~*~*

Short and sweet

Today K got to come home from the psych hospital, she seems to feel so much better, and I love to hear all the hope in  her for her future and being well and love and gush and sqee!

Ahem, I must compose myself.

Anyhow, I feel like this experience has strengthened our little triad. We went through a rough first month of living together, but it was good at the same time. It's difficult to describe, the way we on one hand watched her cycle between deteriorating and stable and manic to a full blown, "time to call a mobile unit to the house and take her away."  Going on a two-hour ride out to the hospital to see her dumb cute face that I missed so much.

The ride up was stressful. Before we left I was snapping at R badly and just kind of being a bitch in general, it took a good couple of hours before I realized I was dreading the hospital trip. But it was okay, once we got there I honed in and focused on K and how she felt that I didn't have time to think about all of my time with past hospitalizations. That made me feel good. That I was so present in that moment of wanting to be there for her, that I could put my anxieties and fears and weird hospital ptsd shit to bed for an hour or so to be a comfort to her made me feel good. I knew, that moment that I could handle it...then on the way home I heard Unconditionally, and talked to R about how I felt, and that was it. We had sealed the deal. I would tough it out.

Now she is home though, and I want to go snuggle with her so I'll keep tonight's entry short and sweet.

*~*~*Slutty Heart*~*~*

Unconditionally...

A couple of weeks ago K and I were talking about relationships and I made the mistake of saying "I could never be with someone like me, I could never deal with that." Now, we both knew that I was referring to someone who was like me prior to 2005. I was unstable, manic for months on end, then crashing and suicidal, refusing to leave the house for an entire year, self-injuring, I was a mess.

She would later tell me that she couldn't get that thought out of her mind. I had worried that may happen and regretted saying it as soon as the words escaped my lips, but there was no taking it back. I talked to R about it and said I was scared I wouldn't be able to handle it. I said "What if I can't deal with it?" and he said, "You will, because that is just what you do when you love someone." My heart broke. He was right. It was such a simple concept, and my fears kept me from getting it.

Still, there was the scent of the ER at the psychiatric hospital. It was as if my mind hit rewind to the last time I spent time hospitalized. Fear wrapped its fingers tightly around my throat; I looked at the familiar surroundings, the mentally ill people sleeping on the floor, waiting for a bed to open up somewhere so they could get the treatment they so desperately needed. I used to be one of those people. I hated being there, but I had to, for K. I had to sit by her side and wait for them to take her and make her safe from herself. Honestly, as much as I hated it, I was happy to do it, to return the favor. I never went to the hospital alone; R was always by my side, and now, it was my turn to be that steady hand for someone I loved dearly.

I talked to K on the phone tonight. I mentioned hearing that song by katy perry, Unconditionally, and how it made me think of her. I know she's worried I'll leave because I won't be able to handle all the crazy inside her. I will though, because that is just what you do when you love someone.

"Come just as you are to me
Don't need apologies
Know that you are worthy
I'll take your bad days with your good
Walk through the storm I would
I do it all because I love you, I love you

--Unconditionally, Katy Perry.

*~*~*Slutty Heart~*~*~*

Feeling a little unwell

This weekend has been trying. Some back story:

K and I are both bipolar. I have been stable for about six years, out of the hospital the entire time. Prior to 2005, I had nearly a dozen hospitalizations. K is as I mentioned before, 13 years my junior. We were both diagnosed at a young age, but she is...still young. When we met, she wasn't on medication and was not in therapy. She had been in the past but then lost her insurance and thought she could handle it on her own.

Fast forward to this past weekend. She is experiencing a mixed episode; depressed mood and the energy of mania. A mixed episode is a very dangerous time for someone with bipolar disorder. She is suicidal and doesn't know why. Everything in her life is going amazingly well, and she just can't shake the intrusive suicidal obsession that is plaguing her. She's talking about suicide with a calm sort of distance to it. As if she's discussing the way she will fold her laundry and put it away later that evening. Maybe she will buy a syringe and inject bleach into her veins. Maybe she will down a bottle of my anti-psychotic medication and chase it with a bottle or two of my anti-depressants and sleeping pills. There wasn't much of this talk before we got her help.

Now, sadly, she is inpatient in a psychiatric hospital. We love her too much to let her suffer and worry too much to leave her home alone while we work, and she avoids life, here in our home...with nothing but thoughts of suicide to keep her company.

I have been in this place. It's destroying me that she has to be there too. I have hope for her though that like me she will find something that works, she will find a way to make herself well again. We will someday be well together, and we won't even look back at those frenzied years we escaped, we will only look forward, to our future together, and all that wellness will bring us.

*~*~*~Slutty Heart~*~*~*