Author: Bipolar Happens

Psych central from both sides of the couch

AFSP- American Foundation for Suicide Prevention- Out of the Darkness walk

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

This year is my 3rd year doing the AFSP walk. I work around as a survivor but I see all of these people with pins, shirts, balloons in remembrance of someone who died by suicide as early as a month before the walk. You wonder what you did differently why did you survive it, medically I should’ve died on several different occasions but I am still here fighting. I’ve walked up to random people and just hugged them, because I feel their pain. I walk every year as a proof that dammit I did it. I make promises to people that I will be able to walk and leave my mark on this world somehow even if it is just talking to you guys. You can go to AFSP website sign up for a walk in your area or volunteer our voices will make the biggest differences.

My current medication regimen- popping pills like a pro

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

I have a long list of medications and if you’ve ever been diagnosed you know that finding the exact right combination of pills is sometimes similar as looking for a 4 leaf clover. Medication process if you are a lucky unicorn is painless, but it wasn’t that way for me. I made a list one time of all the medication I’ve been on not including the dosage changes. I found an amazing psychiatrist who talks to me about things going on in my life, mood changes, current feelings and between him and the nurse in the office they take great care of me. I think if your psychiatrist can tell when you are completely full of shit and lying for pills, to the times you aren’t being completely honest to avoid the hospital and he always can. My insurance won’t cover him which is tough sometimes but I don’t mind because he is worth it! He and I have an agreement I will try and be 100% honest and if he think psych is necessary we will discuss it in great detail before the decision is made. (In 2015 that wasn’t always the case.)

My medication at this very moment looks like this: Lamictal 400 mg – btw when they put you on Lamictal and tell you if you develop a rash to go straight to the ER because of what it can turn into is terrifying. Seroquel – 600 mg an antipsychotic but also helps me sleep, most of the time. Restoril- to help some with nightmares. I am so good at meds that I can tell you what most of them are and what they are used for. I can also tell you about any reactions from mixing the medication. I also know their government and brand names. I also have Nuvigil which I never take because it makes me feel weird sometimes I feel like a zombie and numb other times I feel nothing at all it just depends on what is going on. I take my medicine at 7:30 every night like clockwork. The alarm is set on my phone and I make sure I have it. I can’t skip or take less then prescribed. I know at some point my meds will have to be adjusted but I think I can handle it now. A word of advice NEVER STOP TAKING YOUR PILLS COLD TURKEY YOU IT CAN CAUSE A LOT OF PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!!!!!!

Funny story- CVS handles my prescriptions because I have Caremark and if I ever have to go inside none of them want to talk to me. Why are you asking me what the generic name is and why are you asking me if you can fill it a day early? I don’t know can you fill it a day early? I don’t work in the pharmacy also when they call my prescription in (the office is an hour away from CVS) and they make it a point to tell me who they spoke with and when I get there and they say, “No one called us. We need to call them and confirm.” “No she just talked to you.” “It wasn’t me” “Yes it was I heard you say your name.” This will continue for a few minutes until the pharmacist comes over and tells me I’m wrong and then realizes I am right. There was also this woman, she didn’t last very long, would tell everyone “Wow that is a lot of medicine.” Yeah you really shouldn’t say that to people. I think she lasted a month and they fired her.

So this is my medicine story, What is yours?

🖤

Open Mic Night 2018

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

This year I wanted to do something different to raise money for the AFSP Out of the Darkness Walk. This year is my third year and I am so excited! I normally go on Facebook and give people long winded stories on why suicide prevention is so important and the hotline number. The plus side to all of this are the people who come up to me and feel comfortable enough to tell me their story. I want that communication with everyone, the event started out as an original content only but quickly changed to bring more people in. I tried selling tickets online (which if you do this please check the websites credibility first. You live and you learn. I managed to raise $500 in one night. $500 I had cozies (I still have some if anyone is interested) and charged $7.50 a ticket with free food. I was hoping for $200 and when we got the final total I cried. I cried for so many reasons but mostly I cried because in a little over 2 hours we educated over 50 people about suicide and mental health. If you are able to reach one person you are successful.

I got up and told my story. I don’t do well in front of people and not fond of eye contact so I stared at the mic and probably talked a little too fast but when I said “I tried to die by suicide a year ago on 9/27/18. It was like all the was sucked out of the room. I could feel the eyes staring through me and I knew this was it, the time I wanted so bad and even though I seem very comfortable discussing my illness on social media saying it out loud was a completely different story. I never told the true story on my Facebook page but when I finished and walked away from the mic still shaking I was met with hugs, I love you’s, I didn’t know how bad it was, and please call me if you ever need anything. It was more support I expected but I welcomed it all. I never thought my words could have so much power. Which is why I started this blog and these social media sites, I wanted to spread my word and make a difference. I would quote Gandhi but his views about rape make me question his morales. I have attached some pics of the open night mic cozies and my centerpieces that turned out beautiful.

🖤

🖤Day 6 🖤 3 Personality Traits I am proud of (This feels like one of those worksheets your therapist make you do)

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

3 personality traits I am proud of… this requires a semi optimistic view of yourself, this is not one of my stronger traits. I’ve spent all day thinking about this and I’ve come up with the following: (I googled this for some inspiration and realized they are just adjectives)

1.) Passionate- This would probably be my #1 choice. I am extremely passionate as you can tell by my post. I believe that we can make a huge difference in the world if we are all open and honest about where we’ve been. I absolutely love all of us weirdos and have determined that the more comfortable we are to tell our stories the bigger difference we can make. I also want to help people who aren’t ready to tell their stories. I want you to know that no matter we our community stands by and supports all of your decisions (the positive ones not anything that would cause harm to yourself or anyone else.) We will change the world!!!

2.) Resourceful- Anyone that knows me will tell you I am one of the most resourceful person they know. I can make anything happen just give me 2 hours. I know ways around bills, rules and sometimes laws. I’ve unfortunately been through some severe circumstances but I don’t regret them. It wouldn’t make me the person I was without it. If you can put gas in 2 trucks, pay a partial light bill that is 4 months late and they are about to turn it off, water bill that is on the cut off list with only $200 in less than an hour. I also believe this has something to do with how poor you are growing up I think being poor you learn from your parents how to survive the struggle. I am thankful that these situations aren’t as common before but I always keep these options in my back pocket.

3.) Extraordinary- We all have this trait it doesn’t matter what you are going through you are an extraordinary person. You walk around with this Black Plague that can engulf you and you do it. No matter how hard it is you try, even when your trying feels unbearable. You do it for yourself, you family, your children and sometimes when we feel we can’t anymore we are still extraordinary because we lived a life that some people couldn’t handle in a day. You are extraordinary and you are a beautiful soul. You got this shit and fuck people who say you can’t do it.

🖤🖤🖤🖤

Physical symptoms of my illness.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

We all have them and they differ even with similar diagnosis.

In the last 3 years I’ve had 6 teeth pulled and I have a partial denture for 5 of them. They are my front teeth. My teeth decayed from years of not brushing them or going to the dentist. I physically could not do it. If you are reading this and not understand how that is possible deal with untreated depression. The things you are not capable of doing is a mile long. I could go for weeks sometimes months without showering, I still don’t think it is disgusting I just say it is depression. I never washed my clothes unless my husband did laundry and even then I would wear the same clothes for days sometimes weeks at a time no deodorant or freshening up. I just didn’t care. I would cut clumps of my hair out because it was so matted you couldn’t brush it. My weight verified depending on how things were. I would either gain a lot of weight from overeating or lose 20 pounds or more from not eating. I never slept in the same bed as my husband it was always on the couch for some bullshit excuse but the reason was simple. I hated me and I treated my body like it was a garbage because I was garbage. I didn’t love myself and I stayed like this for a long time. I had a job at the bank and they tried in so many different ways to tell me that I smelled and bought me little gifts of lotions, sprays, and body wash. My boss was a Miranda Priestly (which is a completely different topic.) I would forget to iron my clothes, my hair was always greasy. My husband and I would get into screaming matches over my personal hygiene. These are moments I am not proud of. I have scars all over me from picking (which I still do) the inside of my lips and my cheeks are covered in scars and tender spots from biting them so much. I think we don’t talk enough about our physical symptoms with our illness. I have and known people to have crippling migraines, cationic (It’s been years since the last time it happened to me.) alopecia, pneumonia the list goes on and on. The symptoms of our mental illness start to go down it turns physical. Please tell your story.

We notice them now, the physical symptoms and we try to take control over them before it gets worse.

Gun Threats, Bit Lipstick, used underwear. My short career at Wal-Mart.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

I don’t know if I’m allowed to say I worked there? I didn’t sign a NDA or anything but I’m not sure about the whole slander thing.

Anyway, I worked at Wal-Mart in 2004 – 2005. I started off as a cashier. Sunday’s were horrible especially after church. People come in on Sundays usually because they were paid on Friday and Saturday and buy a ton of groceries. I mean two or three carts of groceries. One full of meat the other vegetables and the rest miscellaneous things. Just a disclosure for everyone when they are grocery shopping please put your meat in a bag because the blood runs down the belt and it is disgusting. They pay in cash but not twenties, fifties or hundreds but in tens, fives and ones. So counting $300 in small bills is a pain the ass while trying to bag their groceries motioning for them to bring their cart up so I can put their groceries in because I’m running out of room and they aren’t paying you any attention. These are all things you do that piss off cashiers, also if you slowly put your items on the belt it messes up their scan time. They keep track of her SPM (scans per minutes) so the slower you are the worst the times are.

Other shitty things: Read your fucking WIC list before you go to the store. I had WIC they gave you a full list of what you could buy. EBT – You know when they load your money. I know you do so why must you buy $200 worth of groceries and then argue with me why your EBT card isn’t working only to realize there is no money on it. These weren’t people who were new to it I saw them frequently at the beginning of the month. It is a pain in the ass to have to shut your line down to reverse all of the items you just bought. You have to make sure the perishables are put away first. It’s just a pain.

I also did Layaway….I just can’t with that. If you knew you couldn’t afford half of the shit you on layaway then why did you do it. You come to pick up your layaway (which Wal-Mart has an extremely shitty way of cataloging it to make it easy to find.) so then when we finally pull your layaway items you don’t want any of them except one thing. I will tell you if you came to the Wal-Mart I worked out you probably got free stuff because it wasn’t wrapped well and we were busy so we just started grabbing some of the stuff.

Self Checkout- If you want a list of ways to cheat the self checkout I can give them to you for a small fee. You aren’t fooling anyone with some of the tricks you pulled. Just because you try to buy beer from the self checkout doesn’t mean we won’t check your ID dumbass people. When it says place the item in the bag. Place the item in the bag and move your hands it goes off weight and if your band is on it then it throws the weight off and we have to override it. We are also judged on the amount of overrides we do, so next time you go to Wal-Mart don’t be a dick and follow the prompts. Also if you decide at 2 am that you need to hit up the electronics department and go through self checkout with over $200 worth of items and hand me a check that doesn’t have your name on it anywhere and tell me you don’t have an ID, but it is okay but it is your grandmothers and she sent you to get these items. I’m sure your grandmother was up at 2 am saying please go buy all of these electronics with my checkbook. No and I will call the police because I can guarantee you stole it. The same with credit cards. Just because we worked at Wal-Mart doesn’t mean we are stupid. I will save you the spill about door greeter and working in lawn and garden. I only did those to cover breaks and by the time their break was over I wanted to stab stupid people.

Customer Service Desk- This is the good stuff. I quickly made my way to customer service desk because I’m good at it and the only positive thing I can say is you develop a thick skin fast. My first day up there by myself (They trained me for 1 day btw) a man in a wheelchair came up with bullets to return. There is a HUGE sign behind me that has a list of things you couldn’t return and bullets were there in big bold letters. I told him he couldn’t return them and he got mad and threatened to shoot me which I retorted, “No you can’t you don’t have the right bullets.” There were a ton of other ways to handle that but that definitely wasn’t the right way. This was the start to a 6 month dedication to help stupid people who constantly screamed at you and called you stupid told you to get a better job and ask you why you couldn’t find anything better than Wal-Mart (people suck and I was 19). We had a woman come in repeatedly with lipstick to return and EVERY TIME I opened it there would be teeth marks. I would point them out and she would say it was that way when I bought it even though her receipt is from 3 days ago. Way-Mart used to have a policy if it is under a certain amount just to refund it. Those barcodes on the back of items are scanned and specifically for that retailer so when you go buy shit at Target and try to return it at Wal-Mart it won’t work because the barcode won’t read on the system. If you buy underwear or bathing suits you CANNOT return them. Firstly that is absolutely disgusting and secondly when we have to touch them and there are tread marks in them. I know the bag was sealed when you bought it so telling me “It was like that when I bought it.” Doesn’t work. We don’t believe that with anything you return. You bought the underwear a month ago but they didn’t fit, but there are tread marks and I can tell you washed them. Trying to return electronics goes to electronics for a reason. When DVDs were popular people would take other DVDs that were old and scratched and exchange them for new ones. That went for almost all of the electronics. You can’t return gift cards they are like cash and why would you want to return them anyway that is tacky.

Wal-Mart treats their employees like shit. You never got the overtime you deserved or pay increases you were supposed to get instead they worked you 10+ days in a row without a day off. Our lunches normally didn’t happen until the register cut you off and made you go. None of the managers bothered to learn your name the turn over rate is so high there was no need to. When I left there I didn’t burn that bridge. I loaded it with dynamite blew that bitch up. I’ve never worked anywhere like Wal-Mart and maybe they’ve gotten better over the years but it was a horrible place to work. I started off at $7.20 am hour and when I left I was making $8.00 with little to no overtime pay, and fucked up holiday pay.

🖤Day 5🖤 Guilty pleasures… yeah I hope you take me seriously after this one.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

Guilty pleasures: Yay for a funny post. I plan on doing a couple of these today.

1.) YouTube- I know everyone watches YouTube but I only watch a few people for the drama and pure entertainment. The more popular channels with the good drama. I follow those and will start following all of the videos to keep up.

2.) slim Jim’s and beef jerky- I can eat them all day long. They aren’t good for you but anytime I can get them I inhale them.

3.) Movies- There will be a separate post about this but I’m not allowed to watch certain movies because of triggers. When no one is around I will spend all day watching them. I know they are bad for me, but I love them.

4.) Dirty videos and websites- Do I really need to say what it is and go into further detail. Yep

5.) Music- Some of these new “artist” with their weird music and 15 minutes of fame. I love their music and jam out in my car to it. EVERYDAY! (That is a Spotify playlist you can’t see.)

I don’t believe in name dropping in my blogs for more views except that stupid bitch on E! who said anxiety wasn’t real. I took her picture from the TV and made in impulse post. I probably have more guilty pleasures I can’t think of right now.

The man that lives beside my bed. Schizophrenia and psychosis manifestation.

Bipolar Happens1 Comment

I’ve debated this post and I’ve started and stopped it so many times. I am open about my addiction, my bipolar, mood swings, suicide attempts, hell even the exorcism but this one is hard for me. This is the part of the illness I’m not so open about because this is where the stigma about mental health finds a home. I’ve talked about it before and people are scared of me so much so they wouldn’t let their children play with my daughter. The good thing is anyone who is reading this and part of the mental health community can feel me on this subject with great understanding. I probably should talk about this more anyway.

I was diagnosed in July of 2013 the man appeared in April of 2014 but he’s never gone away. It doesn’t matter what antipsychotic they put me on what dose it is he doesn’t go away, but if I am taking my antipsychotic he doesn’t talk to me as much. I know how that sounds and I also know I am opening up a door for criticism and judgement but he is very much a part of my life. My husband, close friends, psychiatrist and my old therapist know all about him and they worry if I start to mention him because that means I am getting bad again and fast.

***Schizophrenia is a mental illness that causes psychosis, but schizophrenia also has other symptoms. And it isn’t the only cause of psychosis. In some cases, other mental illnesses cause psychosis, including depression, bipolar disorder, dementia and borderline personality disorder.*** In case you have no idea what I am talking about.

The man doesn’t have a face and he used to be a silhouette but as time passed he became more distinct. I would describe his shape almost like Jack on “The Nightmare before Christmas.” He’s tall and lean with extremely long arms and legs his fingers stretch out almost as far as his arm, but his face is still a shadow and he talks to me. It isn’t English but it isn’t tongues before any of you get excited about another exorcism. It is almost like a made up language between the two of us. Basically it’s your imaginary friend that’s been bit by a demon and won’t go away. When I stop taking my meds he starts with simple things keeping me awake he pokes at my anxiety. Then he starts with putting things in my head and I can’t avoid him so I start talking back. Those conversations start off with pacing back and forth then speaking quickly in between his sentences. I get hot and end up with half naked shaking and talking louder and louder. This normally happens in the middle of the night and wakes my husband up and I start rubbing the bottoms of my feet talking incoherently. From this point it gets blurry but he eventually doesn’t become the man beside my bed he is the man beside me everywhere.

The worst case was when I had an appointment with my therapist and he told me not to go as almost wrecked my car on the way there but when I got to the office I tell her he is here and she says she wants to talk to him and kept saying it wasn’t a good idea but she didn’t listen. I don’t know what happened but she said she could feel someone else in the room and there was a chill in the air.

That is as much as I am willing to talk about right now the more I say the more he starts to communicate.

Depression and disappointing your child.

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

I didn’t do much of anything today besides fall asleep watching Netflix. I didn’t sleep well last night my dreams keep me up and down most of the night so sleeping was my biggest accomplishment for the day. I can feel the weight pulling me down the exhaustion from the thought of getting off the couch or picking up the remote. The list of stuff I need to do is crushing and there isn’t enough caffeine for motivation. My daughter wanted to go to the homecoming parade in the next city over but I haven’t showered, put on deodorant or a bra. I’m still wearing the same clothes I had on yesterday. I haven’t brushed my teeth or my hair so any public appearance is not happening. She jumped in my car when I went to pick her up and all she could talk about is the parade with her friends and I had to break her heart and tell her we weren’t going. I could see the hurt in her eyes and face but she tries to play it off. I ask her what’s wrong and she returns with nothing but her face is starting to turn red. She says she can’t tell me the truth because I get mad and start to call myself a bad mom. I tried to hold back the tears because she is all too familiar feeling when mama is sick. So I took my depressed ensemble to the dollar store where I spent $20 on random shit just to make her hate me a little less because it is my fault again we can’t go somewhere. I could feel people staring at me they knew what a horrible person I was. I bought her markers, notebook, modeling clay, and ice cream. She is excited but then I feel like I’m buying her love. We came home and I find my spot back on the couch find a movie she wants to watch and start to color with her. She is 11 and I know one day this won’t work anymore. This guilt is eating at me and I know she resents me for it and it will only get worse as she gets older. She wanted to go outside and play so I’m writing this hoping that I can rest for a few minutes before she comes back in. I can try and hide it for a little longer until my husband gets home or she goes to bed. I may not make it that long but I will try for her.

I snorted Valium off a Bible. 2015- I have no idea how I’m not dead. (The months before the exorcism)

Bipolar HappensLeave a comment

If you’ve read my exorcism story you will know that 2015 was just a complete and utter cluster fuck. Don’t worry the story about the Valium and the Bible will be included. I don’t believe in click bait. From January until December I was the definition of chaos.

January through February – I emotionally abused strangers on the internet. (The Xanax and Valium started here. That isn’t an excuse for what happened but is important to the timeline.) I cat fished people and it was for attention. I craved that attention so I joined a chat room and I saw all of these people pop on and the chat would be so excited to see them and they would give these long winded dramatic stories of “their life” I think we chat room full of catfish and the few true people there got more emotional baggage then they needed. I made the story so outrageous it was only logical in some outrageous fiction novel. I joined in with this group of people talking about drugs (that wasn’t completely a lie) overdosing (some truth there too) abusive partners, emergency surgeries. I just needed that attention and the more I got the bigger the lies became until I had to fake my own death (on at least 4 different occasions.) it was only after I completely broke someone’s heart that the attention I craved was given to me in another form. I was honest and even then so much damage was done. My hurt still hearts for her and I still have an enormous amount of guilt for what I did. If you are still here then you realize that I’m seriously not a horrible person.

March through July- I started walking because my psychiatrist said that exercising would improve my moods along with the weight loss. Then those damn Facebook ads started popping up (thanks big brother) with those weight loss tablets that are all natural and all you had to do is take them. They magically made your cellulite, carbs, water weight, freckles, credit all improve. (You get where I’m going with this) Well I started taking those and then decided they weren’t enough so I bought/stole diet pills from Wal-Mart and started taking them all day long. My hypomanic that started has now turned into a haze of pills and mania, but I got attention. It was extremely negative attention from the wrong people but it was attention.) When I would start shaking from all of the caffeine from the diet pills and Redbull I would take Xanax and Valium to calm myself down. In this period I’m randomly taking my antipsychotic and mood stabilizers.  I was itching one day bad and I grabbed the first thing I could find which was my Bible tore out a piece of the first page and snorted Valium. (I still question if God has forgiven me for this.) I got so obsessed with snorting that I would snort anything. I mixed Goodys headache powder with Valium to help with my headache and my high. Never snort Goodys it burns and I’m surprised my nose didn’t bleed excessively during the process. I was extremely angry during this period as well. There was a huge part of my past that I never talked about and it was triggered. I did everything I could to make go away. I hated my husband because he wasn’t there when it happened. He wasn’t present in that part of my life the way he should’ve been.) I was a mess and became an expert at lying to get my way and making sure I always had what I needed to make me forget. I pushed away my best friend who always tried to help. I made myself hate her because she didn’t understand and no matter how many times I tried to overdose or how high I got she was always there supporting and helping me. My husband was the same way. It was so much easier to hate them then for me to hurt because I was in so much agony over everything that was happening that had happened I wanted to be high I needed to be high to function. I wasn’t functioning though not the way I thought. I was drowning myself in pills. It is easy to feel sorry for yourself and use that as an excuse for every horrible thing you did to anyone especially yourself. When you hate yourself that much every bad decision feels like a good one. All of this leads up to the point where I try to kill myself which I document in the other post about my exorcism. As for the horrible thing that happened to me I’m sure you figured it out but that isn’t something yet I’m ready to discuss.

I can’t take back any of the things I did. I can only thank the people who stayed in my life that supported and loved me through this. If there are any doubts in my story or you think that they are in anyway not true please let me know I have receipts for all of it… trust me.

Fuck you 2015 you tried to kill me but I fucking survived.