The Tragic Side of Me

I wasn't diagnosed as bipolar until 1999 when I was 35, but I'm sure I have been all of my life. One Mother's Day after I was diagnosed, I was with my mother and she had just finished reading her cards from me. I always gave her a sentimental one to make her cry and then followed that with a humorous one to stop the crying quicker. But on this day, her crying didn't stop. As I tried to console her, she started to apologize to me saying, "I didn't know what was wrong. Even as a baby you cried all the time and as you grew up I felt something was wrong, but I should have done something! I treated you so wrong sometimes and all this time you couldn't help it! I am so so sorry!" I hugged her tight and assured her that there was nothing she could have done. No one had ever thought that a baby could be "bipolar" or medicated for it. She did the best she could with the knowledge that she had, just like every other mother has done. "None of it is your fault!" I told her. We had a long discussion about everything that happened in my life that she felt should have told her to have me checked out. And many of them could have been attributed to being bipolar, looking back on them, but at the time, many other things could have been the cause too.

One of my biggest memories is as being 12 years old when my father's mother passed away. She was my favorite person in the whole world and I wasn't allowed to go to her funeral to say goodbye, because I was "too young". I was furious and dwelled in that for a year. THEN, a year to the day....February 10th. My mother's father died of a massive heart attack and we were on a plane the next day headed to his funeral. He was one of my favorite people too, but in my 13 year old mind, I didn't understand how one year made that much difference and why was I not allowed to do the same for my grandmother. Then on December 13th of the following year, my favorite uncle died. He was doing such noble things that I couldn't understand why he was taken away from me and from his 2 baby girls! And a few months later a boy that I was seeing was killed in a car wreck. :-( Within a few months, I couldn't live life anymore, but never really thought about ending it.

One night, as I was talking on the phone with a friend, I told him to hold on while I went and got a drink of water. I don't remember even thinking about it, but my mother had been prescribed some nerve pills that she couldn't take and on my way to get that drink, I got the bottle out of the cabinet, poured it into my mouth, put it right back where I got it and got that drink and swallowed them all down. I got back on the phone with the friend and when I began to get sleepy, I told him good night and I would talk to him tomorrow. I went in and told mom and my sister that I was tired and going to bed early and I did.

The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital enraged that I was still here!! I unhooked the heart monitor and planned to sneak out. But when the monitor flat lined, nurses came running in. I grabbed magazines and things that were within my grasp and threw them at them, cussing and crying, "Why am I here?" When they realized I wasn't dead they left the room, except one younger nurse who hooked me back to the monitor and tried to soothe me and talk about why I had done this. I continued to cuss her and let her know that she didn't know me and would never understand. She handed me a thick stack of papers and told me to go through them and answer every question honestly, so that maybe someone could understand. It was a psych evaluation. My eyesight was so blurry from the medicine I had taken that I couldn't even attempt to read or answer it. She asked if there was anyone she could call for me. I said, "NO!" She told me that my father had been called and I told her that THAT was the last thing I needed!! Call him back and tell him not to come! She said she wouldn't do that and left me to cry and scream out my anger alone. When my father got there, he walked in crying and hugging me. Something he never did anymore. I pushed him away, telling him that it was too late for all of that now! He gave me a card that my little sister had made for me and then he reached in the drawer beside my bed and handed me the Bible. I screamed at him that I had a whole damn pile of papers I had to read and answer and that I couldn't even see them. I sure as hell wouldn't be trying to read that! He began to cry, put the Bible in the drawer and walked out on me. My mother came to visit the next morning and told me what had happened the morning before when she tried to wake me to go to school. I won't go into those details here, but you can imagine it wasn't a pretty scene, especially the part that my sister was getting on the school bus as they wheeled me out to the ambulance and she had to answer questions that she didn't even have answers for herself. :-( Mom also told me they they told her if she had tried to wake me an hour later, that I probably wouldn't have made it, because so much of the drugs had gotten into my system. I screamed, "Why didn't you just leave me there then!?!?" She cried and hugged me and told me how much she loved me and that she would never have done that. I didn't believe any of that at the time, I was a VERY angry girl! Thank God, I have grown out of most of that and I do believe every word of that now and regret ever having put my mother through any second of the MANY hours of worry I ever caused her!

Medication helps tremendously, but even with medication I still have mood swings that come out of the blue that I have no control over. I still get many suicidal thoughts, but with wisdom and love of my children and grandchildren I have been able to overcome those, so far. One never knows what the future holds, but I strive every day to be better than the day before and if I fall, I try to have the courage to get back up and try again. My biggest goal and biggest hurdle is to love myself and to have peace and happiness. But I will continue to work on it every day for the rest of my life, because what more do any of us have? Am I right?