How Rapic Cycling Screws Up Your Life

For many, many years I had a crap shrink who saw me once every 3 months and gave zero credence to what the therapists told him about how they’d witnessed me go from depressed to manic to depressed, in a week. He labeled me as “dysthymic” and shoved anti-depressants down my gullet. Which is possibly the WORST thing you can do for someone who is bipolar. He was basically treating me to a year round cycle of even more rapid cycling because with no mood stabilizer, the antidepressants made me go full on manic or hypomanic. He was a douche. It took 16 years to find a doctor who actually nailed the diagnosis of bipolar 2 because I do have more lows than highs. Once she put me on mood stabilizers, life got a little easier.

A little.

But as is typical for me during summer months, I am rapic cycling through ups and hypo manic episodes at breakneck speed. The now-departing shrink said she wasn’t worried about it because of the mood stabilizers, but hey, guess what? Rapic cycling during these months has always been my norm. They are so gung ho on their stupid cocktails they cannot be convinced it’s not a cure-all for these symptoms and cycling.

Today has been a roller coaster. I woke before 5 a.m., could not get back to sleep, so I paid some bills on line and the phone, all the while cussing my internet provider for making it too damn confusing to pay on line thus making me use the hated phone. (I love my Droid for everything BUT making calls, go figure.) I forcded myself to bathe and put on clean clothes. I woke my kid up so we could get to town to pay the power bill on time and also, to avoid the extreme temperatures we’re now having. In town, I was okay, though traffic did miff me, people drive like maniacs.

Then we got home, carried stuff in, and I took my meds. Now, I’d had food an hour or so before, so I didn’t blink. And then I got so nauseous, my head started to hurt, I was woozy and dizzy…And that crack of dawn waking thing has me dragging ass. SPLAT. So I had corndogs for lunch and that took care of the nausea but now I have heartburn and it bloody hurts. I’d take a Pepcid but it’s so damn hot, I can’t breathe in the curtained off room. Thankfully the AC and fans are keeping the other rooms bearable.

From Splat I’ve gone to spinning mind and rabid paranoia and anxiety. We had a storm last night and it blew down an enorous tree branch (miss the glass patio table by an inch!) and I of course asked my dad if they could appear at some point this weekend to haul it off and trim the branches that are growing into the power lines, messing with our electricity, making it flicker. The landlord was supposed to take care of it weeks ago, but I figure he’s not being a total dick about the rest of his security deposit so I shouldn’t be too fussy about his lack of memory, he is 78. I digress…Dad and his woman have access to a chainsaw and they have pick ups to haul away yard debris like huge ass tree limbs so asking them is painful but necessary. I did manage to detangle it from the chairs and stuff it crashed on and drag the enormous thing to the front yard where they can easily dismantle it with their power toolsy stuff. (I’m not into chainsaws, mowers, weed whackers, that shit terrifies me and as clumsy as I am..NOPE.)

Now…downside…They never call before they show up so I am on pins and needles just waiting for them to appear out of nowhere and assault my sensitivities to sound with roaring power tools. And the house is kind of a mess which they will be uber critical about, reminding me they vouched for me with the landlord, but ya know what? Unfolded laundry, unmopped floors, and the vaccuum that spits out more than it picks up aren’t high on my priority list when the humidity is so thick even inside with air I am having trouble breathing with allergies and sinus problems. It can wait til night time when it cools down. I am not risking more med nausea by doing all this stuff in the heat and humidity, which of course you’re super sensitive to on mood stabilizers and you can dehydrate and overheat and get very ill, very quickly. Especially in my “will the meds make me sick or not today” lottery lifestyle.

I despise people who refuse to give me a heads up before they darken my doorstep. Is a 30 second “on the way” call really that inconvenient? In polite society, I think it’s looked upon with fondness. But rednecks like dad and stepmonster and my brother aren’t quite polite society, their way or fuck you. Yet they gripe when people knock on their door before 8 a.m. or after 8 p.m. Hypocrite much? This anxiety makes me feel frozen in place, like if I even walk to the other room, they’re gonna coming barging into the door. And if my dad sees me hypo, he will be sniffing me for alcohol smell and ranting because he’s too damned ignorant to understand mania and bipolar. (Yet my brother’s on meds for the same and it’s ok, because his disorder manifested less as manic and more as aggressive anger tirades and god knows, society loves them some anger, way more appropriate than tears or depression or mania.)

I think it may be time to bite the bullet and go to therapy. Obviously the revolving door of shrinks at the psych center isn’t going to help me much to gain stability and learn how to manage the constant anxiety that these people cause me. But then comes that terror that I will end up with R’s daughter Ursula as a counselor and while my nephew’s fiance things Ursula is a great therapist and she likes her a lot….I used to babysit Ursula and I have witnessed how many of her own issues she has and won’t own and I’ve seen the lack of empathy she has for the mentally disabled (sanity challenged a better term?) They just assign you a counselor, you get no say in it, and you ask to change, they take that as non compliance because obviously, the therapist gave you a diagnosis you didn’t like and want to try someone who might see things your way. That is the place’s mentality. And it’s no longer counseling center, it’s ‘behavioral health’ and I loathe that term as much as I despise the overuse of stupid trendy terms like “Creating a narrative” and “Your brand could be bigger if you used social media”. Brand? Seriously? I’m a person, not tennis shoes or a can of corn.

I don’t need a counselor to agree with my every (fucked up) thought but I do need them to be supportive, non critical, and HELP me sort through the constant garbage in, garbage out cycle of mind. And I definitely need to learn some assertion skills (never used to be an issue when I wasn’t on mood stabilizers, I pretty much told people to bite me at every turn, including a boss or two.) Now I am 45 and live in terror of my father and his crew. Not cool, not normal, not healthy. I was never a daddy’s girl, I don’t much care what he thinks of me, but since they helped us out so much during the move and with furniture and such…I guess I feel beholden to keep the peace and not rock the boat. And that, too, sickens me, because that was always the donor’s mentality. Some old lady in a restaurant assumed I was pregnant again when Spook was two weeks old. Rather than be classy and say something like, “She dropped 20 pounds already, I think she looks great for just having a baby.” Nope. ‘Consider the source.” “Ignore it.” “Don’t rock the boat.” And that I have become that spineless and pathetic really makes me want to stab my eyes out with a metal Spork and let Spook beat me with a Z-Whacker. This is NOT me.

Can you tell from my rant and topic bouncing how hypomanic my mind is right now? And this is fully medicated.

Sadly, a hypo manic brain does not equal a productive mental state and the anxiety is paralyzing me. My ear itches from the fan blowing my hair and I think, ermygod, someone is talking about me!!! (Damn you, momby, for instilling such stupid superstitions in my head, even if I think they’re bogus, I still get panicky.)

Breathe, Morgue, breathe.

So walking on eggshells made out of busted Faberge knock offs it is.

Be a great time for a power nap but I can’t do that with the spawn loose and the sun reminding me it’s not sleepy time. But sleep has always been the best way to reboot my brain’s OS, so to speak, and I usually wake up in a better, or different, mind frame.

The sleep disturbance is gonna drive me mad. It’s not that I require a lot, I just don’t like seeing the hour 5a.m. unless I’ve been up all night. I can sleep from 8am to 11 am and run the whole day and night just fine. Anything before 7 a.m., I’m fairly useless.

6 hours of uninterrupted sleep has become my fantasy. That and owning a Dodge Challenger or Hellcat, and I am fairly sure neither is going to happen.

Damn rapic cycling to hell.


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