Bi-Polar Disorder is Not Loveable

Bi-polar disorder is a challenge to say the very least. I have a form of bi-polar disorder, known as type II. The simple explanation of it is that, I have many more lows than I do highs. My highs are usually not happy either. They are filled with anxiety and irritation. I was googling bi-polar disorder as I am in the habit of doing about once a year. Medications come and go and I like to try and stay ahead of the curve in case a change is needed in the future. Medication changes are the worst for me. There is much fatigue and brain fog involved . Looming on most medication warning labels is the threat of weight gain. I don't like it. I deal with it so people can be around me but it isn't fun. In all honesty I do it so I can stand myself as well. Loving someone with bi-polar disorder isn't easy either. There are enough ups and downs in life without choosing a roller coaster wife on purpose. Unfortunately, most get one by accident. Loving me can be difficult. In the beginning it was great! Just ask me, I'll tell you. I was there, loving myself too! I was funny, upbeat and full of energy. I thought driving fast with the top down around steep curving country roads was fantastic. My husband- to- be could not believe I wasn't afraid. He kept telling me how fun I was! Of course I was fun. I was an undiagnosed bi-polar teenager. I had the world by the oysters and I loved seafood.

Bi-Polar Love

Somewhere during our first year of marriage I continued to swing long after the chandelier did. The first indication that something was wrong was when I developed a fear of speed in the convertible. We were careening around a curve and my heart just started to pound out of my chest. I remember grabbing my husband's arm and beating it and screaming my head off. At first he thought I was laughing and enjoying myself as usual. It wasn't until he realized I was making it difficult for him to steer that I was no longer having fun. Pulling over he just looked at me with his mouth hanging open. I still can see the look of horror on his face. I was choking out the words in between sobs, "you have to slow down, I'm scared". It took forever for his mouth to close. Finally, he just shook his head and he eased on down the road and headed home. He wanted to know what happened to me. I didn't know. I couldn't tell him. I wasn't diagnosed yet. Heading into the second year of our marriage I rocked our first baby in a gray fog. It wasn't the blackest of depressions but it was a slow simmering unease that I was unfamiliar with.

Walk It Off

Our son was born in January. Instinctively, I coped with the grayness by walking it off. I would bundle the baby in a snowsuit and a pile of blankets and I would walk. I walked in snow. I walked in rain. I skittered over frozen earth for all I was worth in order to stay ahead of "it". I knew something was trying to engulf me but I didn't know what. It was frightening. The only thing that kept my head on my shoulders was our baby. I immersed myself in motherhood. I loved everything about it. The baby smells and sounds. The little fingers gripping mine for dear life. I knew what that baby was feeling. He had just come out of the safest environment in the world. All of his needs had been automatically taken care of. He had nothing to worry about. He was warm and fed and constantly moving. Then he hit the cold air of the delivery room and he lost his grip on life as he knew it. He had to learn he was still in a safe place. He was still loved. It just wasn't going to come instantly anymore. He had to work to make his needs understood. I had to learn what he needed and when in order to make him feel safe and secure. I poured myself into this needy little being and left myself behind as much as I possibly could. It was getting too complicated in my head and I relished the distraction.

Thinking Too Much

As the early years of our marriage rocked along and believe me they rocked and did not roll, I thought too much. I became aware of having too many thoughts trying to occupy the same space. I now call this, ruminating. It would keep me up half the night when I sorely needed sleep. Babies kept coming in between verbal skirmishes. I was becoming a master in barbed tongue warfare. A bi-polar mouth makes quite a formidable enemy. I could hurl a witty insult faster than a speeding bullet and hit my target every time. Unfortunately, my target was often my husband. How could it not be? He was there and I was bi-polar and thinking too much never included thinking clearly. Most of those years he blocked out. I have heard him say it many times. I, on the other hand can remember every detail. He vaguely recalls a wet cloth diaper wrapping around his head during one of my tirades. I fully recall the instant I took that diaper off of my second son and whipped it at my husband as he was trying to escape an argument. No one walks away from an angry, unmedicated bi-polar person unscathed in some way. I swore. I threw things. I rocked myself until 3:00 A.M. on the couch. I wanted to run away all the time. Unfortunately, I could not run away from myself. I tried twice and I realized being alone with two kids and thinking too much is worse. I realized I was a humongous part of our problem.

I Walked Like a Duck

I fast forward at this point to stave off redundancy. At long last I hit the big black hole I had been avoiding for scads of years. I couldn't out walk it anymore. I had four children by then. Walking anywhere, especially in the wintertime took more effort than I could muster. The black hole claimed me in grand finality. I started to fear sharp things. Everyday tasks proved too difficult. Running out of milk was a catastrophe. Looking in the mirror was frightening. I didn't recognize myself anymore. I had blue dripping hollows for eyes sunken into my bony cheekbones. I was ugly inside and out. I was dark and brooding. My husband brought me to my doctor and tried his best to relate our story. My doctor promptly sent me to a psychiatrist in under four days. Within the first half hour of my visit with my new shrink he pronounced me bi-polar in the second degree. As if I could wrap my brain around the fact that there were more than one kind of bi-polar disorder. I had just learned heard the term bi-polar for the first time in my life. I just stared at the floor. Tears weren't falling so much as they were just oozing out the sides of my eyes. I didn't really cry anymore, I leaked continually. He said, "if walks like a duck, it's a duck". I apparently waddled in that office and he had me pegged from the get-go. I do remember the insatiable urge to hurl something wet and pissy at him but diapers had been long gone in our house at that time.

Just Go With It

I returned home with my diagnosis and new medication. My husband's only reply was, "I knew there was something wrong with you". It didn't sit well with me at the time. He had to learn how to talk to me. He had to learn who I really was. He had to learn how to love me all over again. Our love was so old and battered by the time I met with a doctor. So many times we thought it might be best to jump of the roller coaster. We decided to just go with it, and see what happened. That was over thirteen years ago. I never was that "over the top teenager" to begin with. I was manic. My husband had fell in love with a maniac. I was just in love with myself and with being in love at the beginning. After I got a few years of medication under my hat I was able to weed through the yo-yo thoughts of a mood disorder. I stopped throwing things. I stopped swearing at the father of my children. I just stopped and started life over.

Letting Everyone In On It

I felt like I was an addict living out the steps. I had to try to make amends where I could as long as it didn't hurt anyone. I had to let as many loved ones in on it as possible. I started with my kids. They had seen so much turmoil. Mom was a crazy person half the time and Martha Stewart the other half. I had to meld these two people into one. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I really was. Finally, the doctor answered that same question I would pose to him time after time. "Yvette, you are not one or the other. There is no black and white here, all or nothing personality. You like most people, live in a gray area. You may be darker some days or feel lighter on others because you are coping with a mood disorder. You need to love yourself just the way you are". It isn't easy to do that when confronted with memories of mayhem and unrest. Hearing my children recount tales of the time mom kicked the laundry basket and broke the front window is painful. Tuning them out and asking them to keep their stories to themselves because I don't want to revisit them are equally unjust. Their past and their childhood is deeply entwined in the ups and downs of my rebirth. Birth can be the most painful experience but also the most rewarding. I involved everyone in the labor pains of my rebirth. I'm not easy to love but somehow, like a wrinkly old bawling newborn I am loved. My husband and my kids unconditionally love me. I have learned how to love myself. By letting everyone in on it I step out of the shadows, out of the gray and into the light.