Those Quiet Moments

I'm curled up in the corner of the sofa, a blanket spread across my lap and a mug of hot tea beside me. It's 10:00am on a Thursday and the kids are in school, my husband at work. Aside from the sound of the laundry tumbling in the dryer, it's silent in the house.
I pick up my book, read a couple of paragraphs and then set it down because I can't focus on it. I open up my computer and pull up the writing I began months ago, hoping that I can lose myself in the words and yet, nothing happens; my fingers are frozen over the keys, unable to type a single word. I put the computer away and stand up, I move to the kitchen and inspect the cupboards to see what I can bake - I've always loved baking - but the minutes tick by as I stand there until I eventually close the cupboards again and turn the kettle back on. I'll have another cup of tea. While I wait for the kettle to boil I look at the stack of dishes in the sink, the toys scattered around the living room, the dust collecting on the bookshelf. I think I should do something, clean something and I start. And then I stop. And then I just stand there, utterly overwhelmed as the tears build in my eyes.
I can't do this. I don't want to feel this way any longer.
I feel the familiar feelings as they creep over me. I feel frustrated by my inability to make a decision, to simply complete tasks, to do something - anything. I feel overwhelmed by the to-do list that's getting longer. I feel guilty because I should just do it and I force myself to try again before I return to my spot on the sofa and close my eyes because I'm suddenly exhausted. And then I feel lazy and useless and worthless and a mess - like a complete failure at life.
But I'm not.
I've forgotten that I am still recovering from a severe illness, a complete breakdown.
I've forgotten that it takes small steps and perspective.
I've forgotten everything I have done.
I took my medications. I got out of bed this morning despite the weight on my body that told me to just stay there and sleep. I showered and dressed. I got my kids and husband off to work/school and I went to the local hockey arena and went walking. I stopped at the grocery store on the way back home and picked up a few things. And that's just today. In the past few months I have gone from wanting to kill myself to wanting to live - and to live a good life.
I'm slowly learning that I need to stop comparing myself between what I was like 'before' and what I'm like now but it's not easy to do, especially when it comes to my expectations of myself.
But I'm working on it. And when I get overwhelmed I try to remind myself of where I've come back from, and where I'm heading. It won't always be easy, especially in the quiet moments when my mind has too much time and not enough focus, but eventually I'll get there.
So for now, I sit and I drink my tea. I make a list of things that must be completed and I tackle them one thing at a time, resting in between. And I write about how I'm feeling because I have to remind myself. Things will get better, they're already getting there. In these quiet moments I just need to remember that it takes time. That I am strong and worthy and going to beat this. It just takes time.

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Finding My Voice

Every morning I look in the mirror. What I see is no surprise. I see a woman – a mom, a wife, a person. I don’t see a disease, a label or the stigma associated with my illness. I’m just an ordinary girl.

To those who know me, my illness is no surprise. I don’t usually go announcing it to every person that I come into contact with, but if it comes up in conversation – there is no secret. I will talk about the fact that I have bipolar disorder. I will share events that have happened in my life with others if it’s relevant or if I believe it will help in some way. In most cases I don’t mind telling people.

And yet… there is still a part of me that is hesitant to let people in, to let them see my labels, my weakness. Even here, I write this blog and I don’t share it with friends and family because I’m terrified that it’s all they will see. I don’t want the diagnosis to become my name, my identifying feature. I don’t want to experience more of the stigma that surrounds a person with a mental illness and separates us from the rest of the so-called ‘normal’ world.

And yet… I wonder. I wonder why I can’t be as open about it, wear it proudly like a badge of honor – look what I have survived, what I face every day. I wonder why it’s still such a stigma. Why those who suffer with mental illness are still shunned and silenced. Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to hear about it.

But I do want to talk about it. And I do want to hear about it from others.

I want people to know that the struggle is real. That those big one-time events or breakdowns are not isolated incidents, not shameful failings by a person to keep it all together. They are only a small part of the daily pain, ups, downs, and general struggle that some of us live with. I believe that I need to start speaking out, that a part of my own healing will come from letting everyone in, from finding my voice and not being afraid to use it.

And so here I am, and for the first time I’m going to share this blog, this post and let the world in and although it’s terrifying… it’s also freeing.

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Getting Back to Normal - Routine

I was High Functioning.

Every day I woke up and went about business as usual. Usually that meant waking up the kids and getting them out the door and on their way to school, going to work myself, coming home and making dinner, running the kids to various sports/clubs and coming home again to spend some time with my husband. It was chaotic and there was no stability. There was no routine and yet I stormed through it, functioning as best as I could at the time.

It wasn’t all roses though. My moods, especially at home were up, down, and volatile. I went through periods of deep depression while continuing to go through life on autopilot and then I would bounce up into a more manic state, with endless energy and plans and hopes and dreams and hobbies. Sometimes my mood would shift suddenly and I would pick fights with my husband, and either act out (argue, yell and manipulate him) or act in (hurt myself or threaten suicide). A

nd occasionally – very rarely, I would have a level mood.

For years we operated this way. We knew about my bipolar diagnosis years ago and I went on and off meds, never happy with the side-effects and not knowing about the available therapies out there to help me cope.

On the inside I was an absolute mess of emotion and instability. On the outside I wore a mask.

Unfortunately, mental illness has a habit of throwing you curve balls, taking your high functioning, normal appearance of a life and twisting it into something almost completely unrecognisable. For me, that happened last July/August and it started with something that should have been a happy event for our family, but instead it became a trigger.

My husband changed careers. It was a good move for him as he was unhappy in his job and the new position would allow him to work in an area that he had been trying to get into for a while. The only problem was that it required us to move nearly three hours away… and I didn’t want to.

At the time, I was employed full time, I was involved in a sports team that I absolutely loved, and I was happy with our house, our location, our friends, the kids school, etc… I had spent the past several years making the area and everything around it home.

Three hours doesn’t seem like that far though… at least not until you are in a new town, with a new, very part-time job, no friends and suffering from social anxiety. Then you feel trapped and isolated and lost and very very betrayed and hurt to have been forced into the move. For someone with Bipolar Disorder/Borderline Personality Disorder it is enough to trigger a major episode. When the snow starts to fall and you are literally isolated in your house while the kids are at school and the husband is at work and you miss your home and your life – it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

And that is exactly what happened last November.

I mentioned in my last post that I’m now in recovery mode.

Now my daily routine is much different.

First of all, people know that I have been sick. My boss at work knows, my one friend I have managed to make up here knows, and the group of people at the support group I attended all know. And knowing that other people know - it makes it easier to drop the mask. I don’t have to look like I have it all together. I don’t have to be high functioning to the point of breaking down again.

I can just heal.

Now my daily routine is simple.

I don’t work full-time. I couldn’t handle it right now.

I wake up at 7 am every morning. I get the kids up and get myself showered and dressed. When the kids leave for school and my husband leaves for work, I also leave the house and I generally go walking. (Unless I’m working that morning). My husband comes home for lunch every day and I try to make something for us to eat. In the afternoons, I do housework, I read or bake or go to a support group, I greet the kids when they get home from school and I make dinner. My husband and I share the running around in the evenings and we have down time before I go to bed at 10pm.

Routine is much more important to me now than it has ever been. It helps me to feel in control and force myself through the ups and downs and even helps to regulate them a bit. Some days my routine gets slightly disrupted – yesterday I took a self-care afternoon where I sat and drank tea because my mood had dipped down.

Things are slowly getting better. I’m feeling more level and I know that the better I feel, the more the routine will need to be kept up. It isn’t always easy, but nothing with Mental Illness is. I cannot stress enough though how helpful routine is. It’s something that I can control no matter what my mood is doing, no matter how I feel. It’s also something that is stable when everything going on inside me is chaotic and out of control.

Routine can help. Even if it’s just the routine of getting out of bed and showered by a certain time. Every step of my routine has been taken one at a time and even though some days I still struggle with the routine, it has made recovery much easier.

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Getting Back to Normal - Self Care

For the past two-three weeks, if you asked either myself or my husband how I'm doing we would probably tell you that I'm doing okay. And that is the simple, least complex way to describe it. Okay.
The more complex version is a little more like this:
I'm feel like I'm in a tough spot right now... perhaps even a little bit tougher than when I'm not doing well at all.
To begin with, my mood has come up quite a bit. I'm not manic, nor am I in the darkest pits of depression that I was in... most days my mood is actually fairly level right now. Here's where things get tricky though because while my mood itself is level, it comes with a whole new set of problems.
First of all, there are the nightmares. This is nothing new to me, because I generally have a lot of nightmares... but now that I'm a little more level I tend to remember, care and analyze them a little bit more. It's also frustrating when I feel level through the day, but my nightmares remind me of where I have recently been. It's incredibly difficult when they play on repeat the scene from the waterfall and I wake up in sweats because of what almost happened, or the nausea that hits after I face myself and the choice of suicide methods. The difference between now and a few weeks ago? Now I can let them go throughout the day and while they bother me, its more of a grief, a sense of what could have happened. When I was in the pits of depression they were welcome fantasies.
The second thing that I'm finding tough is the awareness. When I'm manic or depressed or in the midst of a BPD rage, things tend to get hazy. My reality becomes skewed and there are times that I can't see how or why the things that I say or do are not right. In the depression and rage I tend to be in survival mode and the only things that make sense are the things that I do that I think protect myself - even if they don't. Now that I'm 'back' I'm much more alert and although I try not to dwell in the past, I can now see the things that I did or that I said that hurt both myself and those people closest to me. With that knowledge comes a slight sense of guilt because even though I know it was out of my control at the time, it was still me that did it. It's nearly impossible to separate the 'normal' me from the 'sick' me.
Today was a particularly rough day.
I woke up feeling normal, smiling and going about my day as usual, keeping up my daily routine (a huge part of what helps me remain level!). Then I picked up a book that my husband is currently reading on Borderline Personality Disorder and flipped through it for a few minutes. The problem was that I started seeing all of these traits of BPD and comparing them to myself in recent months. It was a definite trigger for me, bringing my mood down and convincing me that I am a horrible person because of the things I have said/done during my episodes.
Thankfully some of the work I've done has paid off and after a brief cry and chat with my husband I was able to take a deep breath and put things into perspective - something huge for someone with this disorder - and it didn't spiral out of my control. Something else I've learned though is that during recovery, self care is vital. Although my symptoms are decreasing, I'm still not at 100%... I don't know if I ever will be perfectly 'normal'. But I know that on the road to a stable life I may have setbacks and I might have a hard time adjusting to being level, to being aware and awake. So today I've decided to take a few hours this afternoon to devote to my well-being, to bring myself back up by doing things that I enjoy doing. I've watched a favorite movie. I've had a large cup of tea. I spent time going through pictures of my children.
I've typed out this blog post. I've talked about the difficult feelings I had.
I'm not back to my normal yet. But I'm getting there. Step by step, day by day, with a little self-care in the mix.

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Unmasked

Right now, in the present moment I feel naked and I feel vulnerable.

All through out the various stages of my life and specifically during my time with mental illness I have had a safety net of sorts - walls that I built up to keep people out, a mask that I wore so that nobody ever saw the real me. 

It was my comfort. 

It helped me function. 

As long as I was wearing my mask I was a normal, happy, healthy woman. I was a mom of four, a devoted spouse, a hard worker, a creative mind. Throughout the years my mask occasionally slipped up and revealed parts of myself to others through angry outbursts, isolated behaviour, or sudden decisions. Only during those times where my mask slipped would my illness spill out, let those around me know that something wasn't quite right. Fortunately it was usually easy to excuse... whether or not those close to me ever believed the act is a whole other question. 

Last November though, my mask fell off. Like the lid not tightly screwed on a bottle of Soda that has been shaken, my mood suddenly and violently came through and I made some drastic decisions. No longer able to handle it all, I attempted to end my life. 

Since then, the mask has all but disappeared. 

And it's an uncomfortable feeling.

For the first time in a long time, the real me is showing through. I'm struggling immensely with this because the mask had not only hidden me, it had become me. Now, in the months that follow I'm trying to rediscover who I am aside from my illness, who I want to become. But beyond that, everyone else now sees the mess that I've always been inside. Family and friends now know the struggles that I have been dealing with for years, the intense emotions and the mood swings have been revealed and although my family and friends have been nothing but supportive, it is one of the scariest things I have had to face. 

Walking back into my workplace. Walking back into my church. Walking into family functions. 

I feel like all eyes are on me, everyone knows the truth that I tried so hard to keep hidden for years. 

A day at a time I'm getting better, but some days are just harder than others. Some days I want desperately to put the mask back up and become what I was before that day in November. I want to pretend that everything is okay and that I have it all together. 

But I don't. It's time to face the truth.

It's not for those people who are finally seeing it though. It's for me. I need to rediscover myself if I'm going to continue fighting this disease. I need to find out who I truly am and hang on to that because I know first hand how easily things can fall apart again. 

I'm the only one who CAN fight it. So I'm slowly letting go, seeing the mask as it flutters from my body and drops into oblivion because I can't afford to put it back on or I might never win this battle.

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The Fight.

I’m in a dark, mirrored room. It reminds me of something you would see on television, an interrogation room of sorts. There are only two things in the room.

The first is me. I’m anxious and I can feel my heart throbbing in my chest painfully as I glance towards one mirrored wall. I don’t know why I’m in this room, what’s going on. But that’s not what’s bothering me.

The second thing in the room is a long table with several objects strewn across the top. I immediately recognise every item there and I feel my chest constricting as I look at them one by one.

And then the voice begins. It’s loud and firm as it plays from the speaker in the top corner of the room, above the door and I step back, frightened. The voice keeps speaking and I tune in to listen to what it is telling me. It’s ordering me in that same infuriatingly calm and yet firm voice to pick up the gun from the table, to look it over. It describes the damage that this particular gun could cause and then describes where and how to hold it if I choose to use it on myself. Shocked at this information I drop the gun back to the table, my hands shaking and my breathing ragged. But the voice doesn’t stop. It simply moves to the next object… a rope, already tied into a noose and waiting to be used. I’m feeling overwhelmed now, out of control as the voice simply continues and my eyes are stuck glued to each object as it describes them. The sharp knife, the smaller razor blade, the bottle of prescription pills, the jug of rat poison and the image of a cliff, jagged rocks at the bottom.

When the voice finally pauses I feel the warmth of my tears as they travel down my cheek. I’m completely overwhelmed and confused. Why am I here? Why are these options laid out on the table in front of me like this?

Just as I feel in the midst of my panic, about to collapse to my knees and scream I hear the creak as the door opens into the room, a woman far too familiar walking in and staring me down.

In the same calm and yet firm voice she used over the speaker, I hear her tell me to choose. She tells me it’s time to give up and let myself go, that I’ve been fighting too long and too hard.

I don’t want to listen to her, but what other choice do I have when she is me?

I wake up with a racing heart and my mind already working a mile a minute. Even dreaming I can't escape feeling like this and as much as I try not to let it, it sets the tone for the day. It's even harder to drag myself out of bed, to choke down a breakfast I have no interest in eating.
I don't want to feel this way any longer and I fight to remind myself that it won't last forever. It will end one day. I fight to make it through just one more day.

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