Irritable

People are irritating me to no end. They need to shut up. It's going to be a long time until bedtime when I can veg. out with tv. I'm being pestered by people I know and strangers alike. It's gonna be a long day. Cold. Taking my walk wouldn't last long. I have appointments for the kids the next two days. Then the weekend. Everybody needs to stay away from me.

It's several hours later and I'm relaxed in bed. Tv. Talking to a good friend. Yay.

More Hallucinations

Same as the other day. Sounds like someone put a phone down on the table while the other party was still talking. Sounds tinny. Almost whispery. Can't understand them, still.

I'm feeling manic again

I was walking and felt that floating-along feeling. I'm at a cafe. I'm paranoid. I'm talkative. I'm happy. My thoughts are jagged. This peanut-butter-chocolate cookie bar thing I just bought tastes SOOOOOOOO good! The flavors are nuanced and the peanut butter part is OMG so tasty! Oh WOW is it good! I just ate another piece. I'm happy. Time seems to have stopped. Its just the cafe and my friend and me. Yeah I'm taking my meds. Every night. The double dose and all. The dark outside is shimmering. The lights so bright and cool. The reflections happy and smiling. What it needs is a fireplace but alas there is none. In fact, I'm typing on my friend's laptop because my ipod touch is too darned slow! If I type too quickly for it, all the letters "hang" and then the browser crashes and I lose everything. Grr.

I just said, "That's not a crack monster; that's a glory hole!" to my friend. Then laughed. And I'll laugh again here: Hahahahahahaha!

Let's see. If I tell my dr. I'm manic again, she'll up my meds. Maybe sleep will help. No hallucinations yet. Night time is their favorite time, though. Right now its 9 p.m.

I still feel in another world. Its awesome! The night, the dark, the light and the suspension of reality. I'd LOVE to stay here! LOVE IT!

So what's to do is see if I sleep tonight. I bet I will, but I may need Ativan. I tried Benedryl the other night but I got really itchy and then woke up at 5 a.m.

However, my car is fixed and I'm so happy about that. There were two big holes in the exhaust and the car was very loud. Now that that is fixed and I fixed the brakes, my car is like a luxury sedan. So SMOOOOOTH.

What I need now is snow. Yeah, that's it. Big fat flakes falling down. But they aren't there! What's their problem?! I need to stand under them and eat them and see my breath. That won't happen for a few more months.

I still think my friend was denying that she said she'd meet me just to be mean to me. Only thing to do is just ignore her. Its still an issue of someone purposefully changed the rules on me just to fuck with my mind. Not nice. See why I say that there are really only a few people out there who truely love me no matter what?

I still have my sense of past and future. Was reading about that today. Without your sense of past, you have no sense of the future. Its like we're constantly referring to what we've done so that we can make the right choice as we move through life. I don't mean the big choices. I mean, how do I go to the kitchen to eat because I'm hungry and last time that happened... If you lose your short-term memory, you have to keep constant notes in a little notebook. Otherwise, you can't even walk to the bathroom to pee. This post, if anything, shows how the brain is pretty darned fragile. I know that! I feel like I know what the green wall tastes like. No not lime. Just green! What does green taste like? Well what does it look like? Not like blue or yellow, and yet... The old "try explaining it to a blind person" idea. That's what we are: I'm the bipolar person and you're the blind person. I hope this translates into something. I met someone once who was not creative at all. My daughter found a potato chip that was shaped exactly like... something. But she turned around to this stranger and said, "Look at this! It looks just like..." and he said, "Sorry, but I'm not the least bit creative." And he meant it. So much that goes on in our brains. So much....

"Do you believe in what you see? What is real?" This is a song that is playing over the speakers here at the coffee shop.

Comfortable Detatchment

I am at whole foods. The battery on my iPod is about to die.  I'm feeling shaky.  I had some yogurt in case it was blood sugar though I don't have a problem with that. The sun is going down.  The atmosphere with the Saturday shoppers and the lighting is making me more detached.  Where the world's rules cease to function. Its comfortable, ironically.  Except the vibrating feeling I still have.  It's almost an anxiety which makes me feel that my friends are put off by me somehow.  One of which said she would meet me at the book store and then didn't.  So I called her: she was across the street at another store and furthermore she never said shed meet me;  in fact, I was completely wrong!  Now, am I remembering something that never actually happened or is she being mean to me by changing her mind and then lying to me blatantly? 

More later.  I forgot my password to this site so will have to log in later when I have more battery on my iPod.  Battery about to die.

  Home. Heat in car helped but still cold/anxious. Sun not down yet. People had better leave me alone. Or give me hugs. Can't decide which.

Ramped up/Anxious

I slept in a lot compared to yesterday when I was up at 5 a.m. So I made up the sleep. But I've had coffee and feel anxious. Hallucinations didn't come back. Usually coffee doesn't do this. Though I have had flashes of memories from being manic: flashes of being impatient and people being slow. Can't stand being where I am from moment to moment. Had lunch with Friday lunch group. All was well there. I want something to do tomorrow and yet I have no plans. Not seeing psych dr for 3 weeks or so. Can always call if things get worse, but the answer is usually increasing my Zyprexa. Welcome to Zombieland.

Hallucinating Right Now

I dunno if it's the tv but I hear people talking into my left ear! Right now. It's whispering or like someone talking to you on the phone but you have the handset away from your ear.

"You Should Stop Taking Your Meds"/"Everybody Is Biplolar" 2

Back in May or so, I wrote a post about my son's music teacher saying that everybody was bipolar. There is nothing that can compare to walking a mile in someone's shoes- maybe 2 or 3.

And on that light, I'd like to continue along a similar theme. I was out to lunch about a week ago with a small group of friends. We try to get together every week, but not everybody shows up every time.

I ended up across the table from one of two transgender people who are part of our group. A very lovely, gentle, funny woman. An engineer. I enjoy our conversations and her infectious laugh very much.

So I broached the subject of bipolar with her. "Do you remember about 5 or 6 weeks ago when Betty* nearly got run into in the parking lot?" [*Name is changed.] "Well," I continued," she and I were at odds because she was upset still and I wasn't sympathetic at all; I was manic, and didn't quite realize it yet." What she replied next floored me. "Why don't you wean off your meds?" Yes, she went on, they were the cause of my problems. Bipolar, to her, didn't exist. It was a "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps approach. Well, from an engineer, I can see this. But what I WANTED to say- in my now-appropriately-medicated state- was, "Its not a character flaw!!!" I cannot JUST think myself out of a manic state. I wanted to explain to her just WHAT would happen if I weren't ON any meds, as this episode started while on quite a few. But would that logic even make sense to such a person?

Well, you say, what about Dialectical Behavior Therapy to learn to communicate with others better? I've never had that. I've had plenty of therapy, and I am going to go to DBT groups in the new year. But it stands to reason that you can't just think yourself out of the state that I was in a month ago. Go back in this blog and read my four-part series written *while* I was manic; too far gone, is too far gone. Bipolar has a way of hijacking your brain and that's that. No matter if my friend says, "You ARE you brain!" or not. Sometimes, little by little, you are too far gone. And that's what happened to me in September.

So, we're back to what "normal" people think bipolar is. Its clear that- outside of this blog- I am not very good at explaining what it is. I have about three friends who truly understand my being bipolar. (One has taken me to the psych ER several times.) People have their ideas of what it means to be bipolar and its very difficult to get them to change those. Just like how people think schizophrenic means "multiple personalities". It doesn't; that's disassociative disorder, or DID. So what can we do? Gentle explain ourselves, and when misunderstood, cut our losses? Or do we just drop it for another time when maybe, just maybe, this person might understand? We must ask, "How important is it for this person to truely understand this part of me?"

Sometimes lunch is just lunch, and chatting with a music teacher after school should stay on the topic of music. And for those few who understand me and love me even so, I am so glad you're in my life, and I'm grateful for our relationship.