Crash and Burn

I find myself crashing more on this new 3/day Adderall script.  I also find I’m more tired in the morning taking Lamictal 2/day.  I hate med changes.  The Adderall boost in the afternoon helps, but the mid day crashes leave me exhausted and drained.

On the plus side, the extra Lamictal seems to be helping and I feel less depressed.  Not sunshine and daisies or anything, but better.

Haven’t posted much because there hasn’t been much to say.  I’ve been busy with work and school but generally feeling unmotivated and doing as little as possible to get by with those things.  Where I was making 30 calls a day for work, I now make 10 on a good day.  I was spending 3+ hours a day on school and now if I spend one I’m lucky.  I’m just too tired or something.  I can’t muster the energy or ambition to do anything.

Ambition.  That’s it.  I’m usually such a go getter.  It’s like I just don’t care now.  I’m unhappy with mediocre results, but want to put in mediocre effort.  Clearly a mismatch there.  Something needs to give.  At some point my grades or income will drop and I’ll be in deep you know what.

Hubby and I are going out next weekend.  That should be a nice change of pace.  It’s something we really needed.  Our anniversary is coming up so it’ll be good to reflect on what went well and what didn’t this year.  It’s also a chance to start clean for our next year together.

Look at that.  Some optimism.  Courtesy of Lamictal.  Thank goodness for drug induced happiness.

Hopefully this coming week will bring with it some much needed energy and some serious motivation before things start to go to hell in a hand basket, as my grandmother would have said.

The Circle Never Breaks…

So Sallie Mae declined my student loan application based on the fact that I’ve only been at my current job position for 8 months, even though I’ve been with the company for four years.  That and the fact that I work on commission.  Now I’m in the fun position of having literally no money to go to school next semester.  FML.

I mean, really?  They said I need a cosigner.  I can’t get a cosigner.  My husband has shit for credit from a car repo before we got married.  My mom refuses to cosign because she said she tried to help me go to college when I was 18 and I dropped out.

Yeah, I dropped out because I had no goals at the time and had a bit of a nervous breakdown.  I told her I wasn’t on meds at the time and this time was different, even my therapist says so.  She says I did it for the first two years okay, why did I have issues the last two?  Hell if I know.  Why does my brain ever do anything?  Why did I get depressed or manic or whatever the hell I was that I can’t even remember?  I’m pretty sure I was depressed because I recall sleeping a lot and not being able to get up to go to class.  Most of it is a blur at this point.  I’m sure there was a manic episode or two that cause some of those A semesters.  Lots of energy to burn?  Try college!  But the F semesters were more likely depression.  When I got my transcript I could actually see the mood swings in my grades.  Semester one – A, B, A, A.  Semester Two – A, B, C, A.  Semester Three – C, D, F, F.  Semester Four – F, D, W, W.  Not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

She says me going back to school isn’t her problem.  I get it.  It’s not.  But since I got free tuition when I went the first time and she just paid for books I don’t see why she can’t at least cosign for me.  She then went on to say she might be willing to give me some money.  She confuses me so much.  You’ll give me money but won’t sign your name so that I’ll pay it myself?  No, she says, because if I can’t pay it her name will be on it.  Yes, I say, but whenever I don’t have money you help me out anyway so what difference does it make?  Apparently not the right thing to say.  What do I know?

So now I wonder what the fuck is the point of me continuing this semester if I just have to drop after it?  If I don’t have the money to keep on going, why waste all this time now?  I’m giving up time with my family, time sleeping, time relaxing, time working, time doing any number of things that would likely be more enjoyable than studying.  If I’m not going to get a degree out of said time, then why the hell should I be wasting it on school?  Yes, I like to learn, but at my own pace and about things I’m interested in not things that the deities of the school system think I should know.

But alas, the degree is important for my job.  My job was actually supposed to help pay half, but the declined me too.  They couldn’t even be bothered to tell me why.  I wasn’t special enough or something.  I really don’t know what to do at this point.  I need to go, but funds are limited and I’ve spent us in a total hole the last eight months.

I can’t tell my mom this of course.  She knows.  She tells me I spend too much.  Now that I’m mildly depressed I spend in budget, but coming off the high of a manic phase I just couldn’t curb it.  It wasn’t the panicked spending in the thousands of dollars a day I was doing in the manic phase, but it was $50 here, $20 there, $100 there and it all added up.  I just kept needing things.  Don’t know why.  Just had to have them.  Would die without them.  Skincare first.  Then makeup.  Then skincare agin.  Then purses and wallets.  All always one thing I would obsess over and spend on that one thing.  When I’m manic I do that, but also buy loads of other random crap just to spend money.  Coming off the mania, it was like obsessions with categories.  I must have every eyeshadow color this brand has ever made.  I must have every Coach Poppy bag.  My wallets must all mach and I need three.  Does this sound like some type of OCD?  Hoarding?  Something.  It’s not manic spending.  It feels different.  But it’s bad.  Maybe just a shopping addiction.  I always have to be addicted to something.  Better than the drugs, I suppose.  More expensive though.

I saw my pDoc today.  She upped my Lamictal to 300mg to help the mild depression.  We also switched from 30mg XR Adderall am and 15mg regular Adderall pm to 15mg regular Adderall 3/day.  That was my suggestion because I find that the XR lasts less time than the regular.  I take the XR around 6am and by noon I can’t even focus long enough to read a book or listen to a phone call with a client.  When I take my regular dose at 5pm I can focus until around 1am if I really needed to.  So about the same amount of time actually.  But with the current setup I can’t focus from 12pm-5pm.  That’s five hours of me being totally unproductive and generally surfing the internet because I can change the page every five seconds when I get distracted or bored.  Or napping.  Whatever.

I hate these long posts.  I’m sure no one reads them.  They look too long and formidable to get through.  Ultimately I post to vent to myself, but my vanity wants to think that someone somewhere gives a shit about my crazy.  My family can’t stand my crazy though, so why would anyone else voluntarily subject themselves to it?

My husband says he hates himself all the time.  I dislike me a lot right now and I hate my life.  I love my son though and my husband, so I plow on for them.  If not for them, I’d curl up in a ball and wallow.  If it gets bad enough I still might.  I wonder if other people hate themselves often.  I wonder if other people wake up and go “what happened to me” or “what happened to my life.”  I must think that 100 times a day.

I used to be so fun, such a party girl.  I had gotten out of a deep depression and was self medicating, so of course I was fun.  Everyone loved me.  Or hated me.  Not a lot of grey area.  Most people loved me though.  I lit up a room.  I was out ’till four in the morning and staggering into work the next day with stories about having sex in front of four people or dancing on table tops or whatever other crazy shit I had come up with.  The reality check is that I was in a very unhealthy place.  The ideal version I have in my head is that people actually liked me for once.  Plus I was having fun.  I liked me.  I liked my life like that.  I liked numbing the crazy and self medicating.  It’s much more fun than the real medication.

I look back…and part of me really misses that time in my life.  As absolutely fucked up as my life was then, I kinda liked it.  I had no money.  I was destroying my future.  I was destroying relationships with my family.  I was making reckless decisions left and right.  I was filled with wild abandon.  I was let loose and crazy and manic but not in the hallucinogenic type of way.  In the fun way where you destroy your life and think it’s awesome.

Then I realized what I was doing and I got really depressed.  Like, tried to kill myself depressed.  Tried to go to a doctor who turned me away.  Got worse.  Cried all day for months.  I tried to pick up the pieces of my life and I did.  I got a good job, I got married, I had a kid.  All things I had decided to do while manic and messed up, but I held through with my crazy promises to myself.

I stabilized after a while.  Had some episodes here and there.  Had one long episode of depression the whole time I was pregnant and about three months after.  I try to forget how bad I was then because I know I made my husband miserable.  The fact that he didn’t leave still surprises me.

Stabilized for a while again, and had another break about nine months ago.  Screwed more stuff up.  Got to a good doctor.  Got on the right meds.

And now, here I am left with this normal, ordinary life.  And it’s just not enough for crazy, extreme me.  My life is filled with the highest highs and the lowest lows and middle periods?  They get kinda boring after a while.  Right now I’m holding on to “right below the middle” for dear life though.  Not the biggest fan of the depressive side of the illness.

But this normal life, it’s making me itch.  Normal job.  Normal family.  Normal employee.  Normal wife.  Normal mother.  Who is this person?  I don’t like her.  She’s too vanilla.  I want that fun, crazy, party girl back.  But to get that back, I’d have to give up my son and husband.  My son I tried so hard to have.  My husband I’ve worked so hard to keep.  I wouldn’t give them up for anything – not all the parties and self medication in the world.  So why do I still feel like I miss that life?  If I wouldn’t change what I have, why do I ache for what I don’t?  I guess somehow I think I could have both.  I can be nomal!Kira until 8pm and party!Kira when the sun goes down.  History tells me normal and manic don’t go well together, but I sure wish I could have the good things that come with mania normally.  The energy.  The lively personality.  The lack of fear.

Now I’m just here, with my vanilla life, hating myself for wanting something different than my wonderful family.  Well, I don’t but I do.  I don’t know.  I know I hate thinking I might want something different.  I know I hate missing the party life.  Then my paranoia kicks in and I think, what if I can think these things into reality?  What if by the mere passing thought of wanting to be that girl again that somehow my son and husband will be taken from me by some greater act of nature.  A car wreck or a fire or something that takes what’s most important to me away because I wasn’t grateful enough for what I had.  Then I’d forever be missing what I have right this second and I’m here too stupid to enjoy it.  That’s my greatest fear of all – losing them because I didn’t love them well enough.

I’m such a shit wife and mother.

And now I’m officially wallowing.

Things That Suck

I just got the information on our new medical plan at work.  The “low deductible” options has a $3000 deductible.  $3000!!  That’s ridiculous!  It covers 100% of well visits to primary care so it’s supposed to be cheaper for most people, but for me…well, I’m screwed.  I see my therapist twice a month and my doctor at least once every three months, more if I’m having issues.  I go to the ER sometimes in really bad situations, which will now only be covered at 80%.  To top it off, neither of my crazy doctors will be in network, so even after the insane deductible is met they will only cover 60% of the cost.  WTF am I gonna do?  My medical costs are already astronomical.  I really can’t afford another huge hit to my wallet just because I’m ill.  Then I have my son’s medical care to worry about as well.  He takes a few trips to the ER each year for serious illness etc.  I have a health spending account, but that won’t really help.  I put in $2400 this year and was out of money in less than six months.  I can’t even deal with this right now.

Onto relationship issues.  Today is the day that my husband and I send each other weekly emails.  This was a suggestion of my therapist after the Craigslist fall out.  We decided that since he was obviously more comfortable sending emails than actually coming to me saying there was a problem that we would try to fix our communication problems via email.  So now once a week we write to each other saying how we feel, how the other did that week, and what could have been improved.  So far it’s working okay, but my husband’s emails are always just a few sentences while mine are like a book so I get a little frustrated.  The ultimate goal is to make it a habit of being open about our feelings and discovering problems in a timely fashion so they don’t spiral out of control like they have in the past.  I’m hoping that even if it’s not Thursday that if there is a mjor problem we will email each other to disucss it.  This also helps because you can’t really yell or walk out one someone via email so it keeps tensions lower.  Plus you generally think before you type but not so much before you speak, so it makes you say less hurtful things.  That’s the intention anyhow.  We’ll see how it works long term.

I’m not sure exactly what I want to say this week.  Things have been good between us, but I’m still feeling mildly depressed.  I feel generally crappy and like my life blows.  I’m not wallowing in it too much.  I’m getting on with my days.  But around 3:00 I exhaust out and can’t do much of anything until around 6:00 when I get a second wind (usually thanks to my new second dose of Adderall).  I’m stressed that even though things are okay now that we’ll just get back in our regular pattern of fighting and misery.  I love my husband dearly and wouldn’t want anyone else, but we both have short fuses and don’t bend so easily and it makes for explosive situations sometimes.  I hope we can work through these things and have a lasting, somewhat healthy relationship.

I guess I’m depressed because I remember when we first got together and never fought.  I remember how nice it was to feel loved and wanted.  I remember nighst up late talking to talk.  Then I see us barely speaking in our bad times and fighting in our worst times.  But then we have upswings and things are great and we talk all night again and love each other.  My marriage is like my mood – great or awful with hardly any in between.  Is it my lot in life to have only extremes?  Can I not have a middle ground in any aspect of my crazy life?

Back From a Break

So I haven’t posted in a long time. I didn’t die or anything. I guess I just felt like I was spending too much time living in my illness and I needed a break from it. I needed some time to enjoy the fact that my meds were working and to just enjoy feeling somewhat normal. Then I thought that I wasn’t keeping up with my mood as well as I should be and was getting out of touch with myself, so I decided maybe I needed to come back to doing this as a journal.

I’ve been really busy lately. I decided to go back to school to further my career a bit. I’m on my second semester and things are going well. I’m sure that a full time job, full time school, and parenthood is probably more than what I should be taking on, but things have to get done in spite of my illness, so onward I press.

I’ve been going to therapy regularly. It’s been a huge help in my life. I feel like I’m over a lot of the huge fears that were taking over my life and making it hard to do little things that other people can do with ease. It’s also helped me learn to think through things more before they do them and have someone to have a sense of accountability to in terms of my mood and keeping up with my meds.

On the bad side of things, I found out that shortly after my breakdown (when my husband and I weren’t really on speaking terms) that he had been talking to girls on Craigslist. He said nothing more than talking ever happened, which I believe. That doesn’t stop it from hurting though. The sad thing is that we had been doing really well before I found this out. We were getting along and hardly fighting at all.

I found out about two weeks ago. I’m still hurt, like, brain splitting, mind numbing, heart crushing hurt. I’m depressed, but not so much so that I’m unable to function and get through the day. The odd thing is that while I’m depressed, I’m able to have moments of happiness in between the depression. He’ll do something sweet or comfort me when I’m feeling really down, and I get a warmth and happiness inside. It’s odd for me because that’s never happened before. Usually when I’m depressed that’s all I can be. Like there isn’t room inside me for more than one strong emotion at a time. I talked to my therapist about it and she said this is how normal people feel when they have a mild depression. It doesn’t take over their whole being. Huh. So I’m feeling something normal for once. A little glimpse into the life of a regular person.

Thing is, it keeps sending off alarms for me. I don’t know what I’m afraid might happen, but something about having a depression with a light at the end of the tunnel feels scary to me. I guess maybe simply because it’s not what I’m used to or what I know. Depression? Got it. Mania? Check. Depression with a side of happy? Now my brain hurts.

I’m also spending a lot of time thinking about what our life was when we first got together. We had a lot of freedom those days. We could go out if we wanted when we felt like it. We could get home and have sex and fall asleep in each other’s arms. We could do what we wanted when we felt like it. Marriage, serious jobs, and a kid have changed all that. And I wonder…would our relationship have gotten so bad if we still had that kind of freedom? If we could still do whatever we wanted with only job constrains, would we have separated once and been on the verge this last time? I think probably not.

Then that thought, wishing that we still had the life we had in our younger years together, makes me feel like a bad mom. Like somehow thinking this is the same thing as thinking that I wish I wouldn’t have had a kid. Which of course, it’s not. I love my son more than anything. He brings me so much joy and a sense of purpose I never knew without him. He gives me a reason to keep trying to get better and not destroy my life with every move I make. But somehow, missing my old life makes me feel like Worst Mother of the Year. It’s just some days I wish my husband and I had more time to be us. More time to spend together, not exhausted from a full day of work and childrearing. Some time that wasn’t spent thwarting terrible twos.

Maybe it’s just the depression. I’m sure that’s what it is. But can’t stop feeling like a really crappy mom.

Anyway, back to my regular routine. I’m going to try to get back in the habit of posting regularly on here again. It seemed to help when I did. I just needed a break from my mind for a while. i can’t promise a post a day what with school and work and my son and trying to re-fix my marriage, but I will do the best I can. Not like oh so many people read this or anything…

Boring day, boring night, boring me

I have absolutely nothing interesting to say today.  My son is at my mom’s house and my husband and I have no work tomorrow.  We planned to go out and have some fun…but instead I’m blogging.

Why you ask?  Because we are boring, unsociable people once we leave work.  My husband and I are both the type that sit in corners and look miserable at a party if we go by ourselves.  If we go with someone social, I tend to pick up on their vibe and then my husband follows suit and we have a good time (mostly).  If we go with just us, we both sourpuss the whole time.

We tried to get some people together, but to no avail.  So, like so many toddler free nights, we are sitting at home drinking by ourselves being bored.

Back when we were younger we preferred this.  Going out with others meant less time together.  Less time for substance abuse, talking, and sex.  Now, five years later, we want to spend time with people other than just us.  We see each other every day and we talk every day about work, life, and what’s going on with our son.  There’s no updates to give if we go out together.  We just talk about the same stuff we did when we got home.  Unless new things have happened, we’ve kinda said it all.

Don’t read that the wrong way.  I’m happy we know each other so well that the only things we don’t know are the things that happened in the last 24 hours.  Any story I tell is a repeat.  So are his.  It’s a safe place to be, knowing each other.  We know each other’s issues and faults.  There’s no surprises when my mood swings or he acts emotionless.  We’re both hard to deal with to other people, but not as much to each other.  It’s nice, really.

It’s just also boring when we go places.  So we sit at home.  Going places just isn’t fun without a group.  Too bad we ran that group away that first year or two when we didn’t want anything to do with anyone that wasn’t us or didn’t supply drinks or pills.

In other news, I’m trying to make a Caramel Frappe and failing miserably.

My son also is unofficially kicked out of the speech therapy.  He had his annual test today and is no longer speech delayed, so no more speech therapy for him.  It’s good and bad.  I’m thrilled that he’s come so far and is doing so well.  On the other side of the coin, I’m worried without the speech therapy that he might backslide.  His therapy was done from the state (federal?) sponsored program that pays for all kids (under 5 I think) that have a physical or speaking delay.  No income maximum or anything.  Just to make sure kids get the help they need.  It’s a good program so long as you get one of the good therapists.

I guess my concern is that I’m not a speech therapist so I don’t know the best way to help him learn.  I tell him what things are and try to get him to say it back to me, but beyond that I’m clueless.  The ever present mommy worry – somehow, I’ll screw him up.

He’s not officially kicked out yet because they haven’t scored his test, but the lady that did it pretty much told me not to hold my breath.

Time to get speech therapy books I guess.

New town, lots of stress

Well being in a new town has my stress level up high.  Got lost for a while which was fun.  Lots of one way streets which is always a plus when you’re lost.  Training is going well though on 10mg of Adderall I find my concentration and alertness wanes throughout the day.  Eight hours of training is a little hard on low doses of ADD meds.

I did end up meeting up with my uncle (also bipolar).  It was a good but depressing experience.  He said some things that I feel like I could have said myself which is refreshing since I usually can’t relate to most of my family who have at worst anxiety or minor depression.  We talked about meds and how much the side effects suck.  We seem to have similar reactions to meds which I find interesting.

The depressing part was watching his wife get upset with him when he would pass out from his medication or forget what happened five seconds ago.  I know when those things happen to me I generally feel awful and like I’m a burden.  Someone fussing at me on top of that would be intolerable.  I feel very lucky to have my husband who knows when to be patient with me even if sometimes he gets under my skin.