Tagged: bi-polar

Did I take my pill?!!?

I have that horrible thought several times a day.  I even use a pill case to make sure I can go back and look to verify I took my meds.  However, being bi-polar, if I happen to forget it just once I usually end up going down a deep spiral.  Sometimes I end up only forgetting for a couple of days but most times it ends up being a couple of weeks.  This, of course, throws me into a swing of moods. 

I have been thinking of ways I could make this better and easier to remember.  I came up with a solution but it requires a ton of help.  I need someone who can program, someone who can build electronic devices and then someone to get a patent/market the product.  It would be a grand idea and after running by a few people it would be great for those of us with mental disorders who require meds as well as those in the geriatric community who also forget to take meds. 

Sadly, this will probably all be forgotten within a couple of weeks though – because like all things I do, I get distracted or just give up or can’t get anything accomplished fast enough and never follow through.  It’s a good idea though.  I just have to figure out how not to lose this one.

School Meetings Suck

Any of you with special needs kids probably know what an ARD meeting is and those who don’t well, its a really long drawn out meeting to review your child’s progress in school.  We also come up with goals and ways to help in the classroom.  You would think these are great ideas for helping your student with special needs unless you have a child like mine.  He is Bi-polar as well as being diagnosed with Asperger’s.  School is a pain in the ass on so many levels for him and us as well.  It doesn’t help that the schools today are so wrapped up in the social conventions that they are supposed to be enforcing that you get issues with them being more concerned about a lip piercing than the fact that your child is on the verge of failing and possibly wanting to drop out while he is only 15.  I just keep reminding myself that he is almost grown and will be out there on his own.  I know he is more than capable and extremely smart but your average, everyday public school is not the place for him to be and probably not too many other kids with the same diagnosis.

I will be writing tonight and hope to have prompt #3 complete and up for your reading pleasure.  Please don’t forget to provide any feedback.  I welcome all critiques.  Till then, I guess I better actually do work although I really want to go run outside and frolic in the gorgeous weather we are having right now.

There are rules to this game son.

Sometimes raising a teenager with bi-polar and Asperger’s syndrome can produce some really funny situations.  I love my boy but really…. come on. 

I got a call this morning from the high school in our neighborhood.  This may seem normal except that neither of my children are in high school.  This was a strange message to listen to on my voicemail.  The assistant principal was informing me that my son was at the school and someone from the Jr High was on their way to pick him up.  HUH??!!? I quickly returned the school’s call only to find out that he had decided he was done with the Jr High.  Our conversation when like this:

Me: “What are you doing?!”

Boy: “I’m done with Jr High.  I don’t want to go to that school anymore.”

Me: “Well I understand you are ready to move on but you still have a couple of weeks left of the school year.  You can’t just decide you are going to High School.  It doesn’t work that way.”

Boy: “I know.  I only have nine and a half days left.  I’ll go back and finish them.  I won’t do anything like this again, I promise.” 

Me: “Why did you do this in the first place.”

Boy: “I don’t know.  I just didn’t want to be in Jr High anymore.”

I can say that at least my fears of the transition from Jr High to High school being too much for him have pretty much dissipated after this conversation.  Rules BOY!  There are steps to take in education.  The thought process that got him to that school is baffling to me.  I guess he thought he could just walk into the office and request a schedule or something…..who knows.  The fun never ends with him.  If life would only work as simply as he thinks it should.  I think we’d all be better off sometimes.  The game of life is a complicated and precarious game and he is asserting his own rules as often as he can…. the funny thing, sometimes those new rules stick for him other times they just come bouncing back off the wall and smack him in the face; like today.

A day in which we take a ride in my car.

When you realize and are diagnosed with being Bi-polar it’s like hitting the jackpot of all emotional roller coasters.  There is not much else out there that can allow you to “seem” to function pretty normally and at the same time take you off on some devastating/exciting rides on a daily basis. 

There is nothing like waking up and feeling like you can conquer the world.  Everything is perfect and wonderful.  No matter the piled up dishes in the kitchen or the kid prints all over the walls, those things just don’t register.  There may be enough stuff in the corners of the staircase to intrigue any scientist but it doesn’t stop the visual of a picture perfect house.  You feel GREAT!  Nothing is ever going to go wrong because you are perfect and awesome and everyone loves you.  On wait, what time is it…..oh THAT time.  Time for everything to come crashing down around you in just a few short hours after proclaiming the world is wonderful and you can conquer it all.  Now you get to swing to the other side of the pendulum and crawl into a dark hole somewhere and wonder why existence has to be so painful.  Why does the world have to be such an ugly difficult place to maneuver all of a sudden?  The kids hate you, your spouse hates you, your friends hate you and now you realize you live in absolute squalor.  Why can’t you just get your shit together long enough to clean something?  Anything!?  Those stairs are disgusting and the ceiling fan has its own civilization growing in dust mounds.  But wait, you have to go grocery shopping.  Okay.  You can do this.  Put a pair of shoes on and just step outside.  Woop!  There you go.  Now you’re back and the world is yours to conquer again.  You can’t believe you were just so down and angry a few minutes ago.  No….that wasn’t really you.  You wouldn’t spend an entire afternoon sulking under your covers.  Couldn’t have been you at all.  You feel great and are ready to tackle all those little things that need to get done including restocking your pantry.  So, let’s go.

Ahhhh, driving.  This is the best part of life.  Just sitting in your little box on wheels while the music blares and you can really get down to who you are.  No one is there with you and nothing gets to you in your little box.  You speed down the streets watching the buildings go by and just enjoy the greatness that is life.  Except now you are parking and realize you have to go into this store that is full of PEOPLE!  Crap.  No worries, you are feeling okay today, right now.  So you step out of your safe little box and head to the doors grabbing your basket on the way.  You shop for awhile.  Things really are going okay.  Nope not okay.  Some lady just blocked your path to the toilet paper and try as you might she just won’t get out of the way.  Your blood boils, your heart races and you can feel the pounding of the uncontrollable anger bubbling up in your veins.  WHY THE FUCK WON’T SHE MOVE!!!  Finally she gets out of the way but its too late.  Now you are in your angry place.  The place that makes you say and do things that you don’t remember half the time.  The place that scares even you because you aren’t sure just exactly how you will handle anything from this point forward in your day.  You stomp around corners throwing things in your basket and muttering the most creative curses under your breath.  You almost take out the little boy gallivanting down the middle of the aisle.  Where “THE FUCK” is his mom/dad.  Little brats shouldn’t be allowed in public.  Your grocery shopping trip has become a visit into the depths of your deepest, hellish anger.  You have to get the hell out NOW!  So you do, you just walk away from your basket and go to your safe little box and head back home to the comfort of your cocoon.

This is my life.  This is my hell.  This is my rapture.  Every day is an adventure in patience and control.  Neither of these two things are in great abundance for me.  I take meds, I see my doctor but it still doesn’t stop.  There is also the new developing severe anxiety as I have gotten older.  I have had one major “psychological” breakdown and a little blip of one recently.  It sucks to never know what my day is going to hold for me.  I have no way of knowing if my good mood will stay or if my bad mood will progress to something darker.  I have had small visual and auditoria hallucinations.  It makes life interesting that’s for sure.  However, I’d give my left arm to be able to never have to experience any of this ever again.  Life in my car is no easy feat.  I guess today is one of the “pity” myself days.  Suffer on.