Laying it out for all to see

Okay, I am back. I don't know why I can throw around so easily that my son has Bipolar (BP 1) to be exact...and that I have such a hard to admitting that I have it too (BP 2...which means I don't lose touch with reality...at least not yet). What happened? I got a dog, I was euphoric and on cloud nine. Initially, Ben took to the Cottage School and Autumn and I were doing fun stuff. Then, crap started happening with Ben, the puppy became more of an issue due to the demands of housetraining etc...(I was cleaning alot of pee....luckily we have hardwood floors), then Ben started freaking out more and ran away from school and the police were called. I was not getting any sleep (and I am still not)which is lethal to me, and I started slipping away. All that energy just dropped away and I wanted to disappear and get away. I didn't feel like I loved anyone...ANYONE....mostly me. (I am still kind of there...but trying like Hell to fight my way back). Dr. C (Rick) has added a new med to me. I ususally just do with an antidepressant, but they don't work for me that way...the Prozac is more for my overwhelming anxiety (jeez....you wonder where Ben gets it from????). So, now I am on a mood stabilizer called Lamictal. I have only been on it for a couple of days and Rick has called a 'Team Meeting" (me, Robert & him) because he and Robert went out to dinner last night (yes, we are friends, not just patients) and tho they usually don't talk shop he could tell by Robert's face that something was up (me....or rather not up but down). So, Rick is worried . He told Robert he saw it coming, tho. A few weeks ago at our last appointment I was "On". So on that he saw the crash coming. Robert sarcastically said, "Thanks for the heads up! You could of warned me." (This is what Robert told me last night when he came home from their dinner).

I have a BP 2 dad and a BP1 kid but I figured I was just a QuADD (queen of Adhd) with a serious anxiety disorder, but crap, when I look back at my life it is plain as frickin' day. I was a super high energy kid, very precocious very early. Even though I didn't lose my virginity til I was 2 weeks shy of 20, I was hyper aware of my sexuality and boys. I could stay up for hours and never slept as a baby...according to my mom, and just like Ben, when I did sleep I could never wake up and would sleep the day away. I was and still am the quintessential night owl. I was never anywhere on time and still am not, I have no concept of time. I, like Ben, was scared to death that my Mom was going to die. I hated leaving her. I didn't move out until I was 29 year old. When I heard sirens out the window at my highschool I would be interiorly terrified that they were headed toward her and she was trapped and burning to death in a fire....or anything else horrible. When she died 8 years ago that fear of her death got replaced by fears for my kids. Yesterday, I sobbed out on the deck so desperately missing my mom, who died October 8th 2000. Today, when Robert and I came home from dropping Ben off at school I was so overwhelmed with anxiety about having to take care of the dog, the cats, Autumn, the laundry etc... that I really wanted to jump out of the car. I suddenly felt so sympathetic to Ben when he ran from school last week . God, he drives me crazy, but it's because he is so like I was. I just was less impulsive, though, even as a kid. I didn't deal so much with depression then. That hit really hard when I got that horrible eczema that covered my arms and hands and was excruciatingly painful for 5 FULL YEARS. Then, after Ben , I got full blown PPD and when Ben was 5 months old was planning on divorcing Robert for no other reason than I thought he didn't deserve me. I remember being so unhappy and NOTHING, NOTHING would make it better. Then it lifted. I could go on and on about all the things that happened. The unbelievable obsessive thoughts of my kids dying that played like unstoppable tapes in my head all during my pregnancy with Autumn that had me sobbing and begging God to make them stop in the middle of the night. Then Mom's death and Dad's going completely off the deep end, my car accident and the insomnia and constant pain. And I was alway SO angry...ready to rage at a moments notice. Then these last 4 Summers and now this Fall when I am "up and on" everything is great or at least manageable and then CRASH! Plus, everytime I head down I go through what I call my 'atheist' phase. But, I still believe in God, I just want nothing to do with Him.

I can't explain, like I said before, where I am now. I so don't want to be me. I so don't want to do anything, to go anywhere, to see or talk to anyone. I just want to sleep forever. That is how I feel. This is a cyclical thing and should go away. I am just holding on by my fingertips waiting for it to pass. Hopefully, the meds will help too.

More than anything I don't want people to pray for me. I feel like a whiny baby. I know I am not terminally unique and that everyone has shit going on in their lives and mine shouldn't take any precedence at all. Robert tells me he wakes up thinking of me and goes to sleep thinking of me. I think of no one. I think that I just want to go back to sleep...that I want everything to stop. That I want to run away...far away...but I can't escape me. I worry about what the hell this is doing to my kids and my husband, having a mom(wife) who at once so irritable, then so self absorbed, then so loving, then so insulting, then screaming and yelling, then withdrawn. WTF!?!?!?!?! And I can't seem to stop myself. God help them all. I feel like I have f*cked up so much stuff in my life and I have no idea where to begin to change it.

Okay, so that is where I am. Intellectually, I get that it is stupid and unnecessary. But, if you could feel what I feel and hear my inner thoughts, which I have no way of escaping, and that no matter what you intellectually knew you couldn't act on or feel, because your brain JUST wouldn't let you, you would understand where I am.

Peace,