Someone Like Me

I sort of know this person who is also BP 1. She is actually a person from my past. I haven't seen her since she was a little girl, but we are connected through family so I hear about her frequently. She is going through a lot right now, and she is constantly in my thoughts and prayers.

I am not entirely certain of the circumstances surrounding her current suffering, but I know her road is very painful and exhausting right now. I long to be able to help her somehow, to be able to make a difference for her. From what I have been able to gather, she sounds very tormented, very alone. There are many people who love her and are trying their best to help, but I don't know if she is at the point where she knows how to receive that help. I understand how that is. I don't know what I could possibly do or say for this woman, but her pain is put upon my heart as sure as my own has been at times.

Wandering through the darkness of this disorder is terrifying. You don't understand what's going on around you, what's going on inside your own head. You can't trust yourself, so you certainly can't trust anyone else. There's no way to reach out because you can't articulate what it is that you need. You pick fights with people you love without knowing why, yet you are unable to help yourself. Everything is so intensely personal and once that fire is lit, every word fans that flame and the next thing you know you are a wildfire burning out of control. You want to pull back, you don't want to hurt anyone, but you are so far gone... To be honest, it actually feels good to set everything and everyone around you on fire, even if the real you inside is horrified at what you are doing. The illness just becomes bigger than you are--it takes over and you quickly shrink back and become a tiny observer to the destruction it causes.

That's the hardest part to understand. We are swallowed up by Bipolar. When we have flares, we are consumed by the illness and our real selves become dormant. We become tiny witnesses to our own lives, while the illness controls us. We are not in charge. We're in there, but helpless to do anything to immediately regain that control. If I could try to make a non-Bipolar understand even a modicum of what we experience, it would be to imagine what it's like to be a hostage. The only flare where we feel a sense of self-possession is during a mania (unless it's a delusional or hallucinatory episode). We feel engaged, vibrant, alive! This is, of course, an illusion. We are just as out of control, if not more so.

My friend, for lack of a better term, may or may not be accepting of her diagnosis. She may or may not be compliant with her treatment plan. These are things on which I am not entirely clear or informed. Something is preventing her stability, and for some reason it affects me deeply. I am sure it is because I identify with that--and I remember her as the little girl she once was. I want to hold her hand and play with her hair like I used to do. I want to go back to a time when life was so much easier for the both of us; when neither of us had to feel this shared pain and agony that has been thrust upon us. Having been her babysitter when we were young, I think I want to take care of her again in a way. To lead her and let her know that things can and will be ok. That it's alright to lay down when she needs to rest, that when she can't keep slogging along, it's ok to sit down for as long as she needs. That when she's ready to try to stand up, she doesn't have to pick up all her burdens at once, but just a little at a time. To slowly build a structure that works for her and to let her know there is enough time in the world to do that. There's no hurry, it's not a race. Yes, it's a fight and some days it will take it all out of her, but the only way to win the fight is to be very well rested and prepared.

I doubt that I will ever have the chance to help, but I will continue to pray for her. She will never be far from my thoughts.

Dear Mom

Almost since I started this blog, I've been trying to write an entry about my mom. It's not an easy thing to do. There's so much there, that it becomes this rambling, epic post that hardly makes sense. I can't say that this post will be any different, but today I have a real need to write about it, so here goes.

The other day, my mother's husband's daughter (I guess that makes her my step-sister. I've never even met the girl, and she's probably 15 or so years younger than me, so it feels really awkward for me to call her that.) asked me to be her friend on Facebook. I had no reason not to accept, and she probably won't even write to me so no issue there. In doing so, I found out my Mom has a Facebook account. All this time, and she'd never invited me to be her friend. I know it sounds silly, but it's my MOM. To be fair, she may not have known I had an account, but in all likelihood she did. I am friends with my niece (who practically lives with her) and I am on my niece's page.

A couple days later, my Mom asked me to be her FB friend. I'm sure she realized that I saw her on my step-sister's page, but then maybe I'm on the psychotic tip a little. Of course I accepted, she's my Mom. Here's the thing: I went to her page and she had listed my sister and my niece as her children. No mention of me. I am suddenly daughter-non grata. You can list anyone you want as your child, they don't have to be on Facebook. So even if she didn't know I had a page, she could have put me there. I can't see any way around this. To her, she still only has two daughters. I am just not one of them. Her granddaughter, (my niece) has somehow become her second daughter.

This may all seem silly and minor to everyone. Compared to everything else she's done to me, it actually is. To me, I think it's just the final acknowledgment that she really doesn't have any special sort of love or even affection for me. I'm just someone to whom she gave birth. A mentally defective person to whom she gave birth.

My Mom has lied to me, manipulated me, stolen money from me, had inappropriate relations with my ex-husband (while he was my husband), accused me of throwing myself at her boyfriend (ewwww), shamed and humiliated me, and so on and so forth. I could sit here for hours describing in detail the times she has deeply wounded me. To what end? To prove that she's Joan Crawford and that I don't deserve what she does to me? I finally have come to the conclusion that things are what they are. I now realize that not only is my Mom a really bad mother, she's kind of a bad person, too.

I was going to use this post as an open letter to my Mom. I can't write to her because there's no point to it. She would tell me that I was crazy and get mad. Then it would become a whole big family thing with my sister and my aunt involved. While I was writing though, I also realized I don't have any anger left in me to say anything to her. She's reduced herself to nearly nothing in my life by being the kind of mother, the kind of person she is. All my life I have forgiven her--no given her PERMISSION--to be the kind of person she is and treat me the way she has. As I grew older and more aware, I pulled away from her because she is toxic. A part of me remained the loving daughter because I always had a tremendous love for my mom. Over time though, she has managed to reduce that love, dismantle it, destroy it. She can say what she likes or think what she likes about me now. If I am not her child anymore, that is ok. I think I stopped being her child in my own eyes a really long time ago, too.

Someone More Stubborn Than Me

School starts tomorrow. It's hard to believe summer vacation has come to an end. It's even harder to believe that my daughter will start Kindergarten and I will have two in school. Both are very excited for the school year to begin and have been counting the days for the last week or so. I am not sure how my youngest is going to react at being alone all day. I am not sure how I am going to react at being alone with my youngest all day. He is quite the demanding little boy. He is very attached to my older two, even if his primary goal in life is to irritate the hell out of his older sister. He's never been without her, and I've never been without the distraction she provides him. Don't get me wrong, it isn't always constant friction between the two of them (even if it sometimes seems that way). They get along much better when my oldest isn't home and they aren't competing for his attention. Now...

I've never been alone with one child all day before. When I just had one, I worked. If it were my daughter, it might be easier. She is the one who is content to be on her own, or to sit and talk with me. I'm not the imaginative mom who can come up with all sorts of ideas to entertain, teach and interact with my children. I'm the nurturing type, yes. I will sit and talk with them. I hug and cuddle with them. We tell stories to each other sometimes. Other than that, I'm sort of at a loss. I can't see myself taking him to the park, especially right now since there will be other moms there and the possibility of one talking to me puts me in a state. This child gets into things in a way the others did not. He has a temper that was not present in my older children. He wears me out in a way the others did not. He refuses to be toilet trained. He won't to use his manners, whereas it came very naturally to the others. He has screaming tantrums and the older two had only mild ones for a few months before they turned two. There is a lot I need to do with him, and his determination to be contrary bewilders me. I am hoping that having all my attention focused on him will change things, but I am so fearful that it won't. Don't get me wrong. He is the cutest child at times. He is so funny. He says the craziest things that make me burst out in laughter--more so than the older ones. He does really funny things. I always say his only saving grace is that he is so damned cute. If not for that, I'd have put him up on eBay a long time ago.

He's smart, very smart. The other day, we were at the dinner table and my 7 year old asked what the economy was. When my husband began to explain what it was, he piped up, finger pointed in the air and said "Barack Obama". He knew that the two were related, and he had picked it up on his own. During the presidential elections he knew who Barack Obama was, and he had picked that up on his own, too. He also knew who Hillary Clinton was. He wasn't even 3 years old yet. He remembers Joe Biden's name, although he probably can't pick him out on TV. With all this, I think about starting to teaching him the sounds the the letters of the alphabet make so he can read small words, but I don't know if he would sit still that long or take any interest in it. Would he be like he is with toilet training? Would he just dig his heels in and say "NO!" I'd try to send him to pre-school for a couple days a week if it weren't for the toilet training issue. His pediatrician says I can't rush it or force it (but he's going to be 4 in a little over 4 months!!!!!). My oldest was toilet trained at his day care, and my daughter was a dream at it. We trained her on vacation, in fact. She might as well have done it herself.

What do I do? I never thought I'd meet someone more stubborn than me. I have no idea how to outsmart, outlast this child. My daughter is stubborn, and I had thought she would be the death of me. This one...he surprised me. I used to think he'd grow out of his willfulness, at least a little. Now, I'm not so sure. Beyond entertaining him, I think he's going to a) give me a heart attack b) wear me out c) drive me crazy d) all of the above.

Pray for me. Please?