Yesterday, I told you about the start of the Bipolar experience. Today, I continue the journey.
I started the school year well. I had fun setting up my classroom and picking out lots of colorful pictures, posters, and teaching tools to help aid my students learning. However, a lot of good that would come when the teacher became unable to teach due to an overload of emotional turmoil.
The Lamictal and lexapro were a perfection combination and the stressload went well. The kids were angels. I would give them work and they would excitedly get to work. I'd turn on a little music and they would sing quietly as they worked. I had a wonderful aide who helped immensely. Everything was going well. Even Karissa and I seemed to be picking up the pieces. She came by once after school and we went out to the Starbucks after school. (Yeah, I know all you Oregonites how Starbucks is the evil empire, but for some reason CC goers love their Starbucks!) So, we went, we prayed, and we shared our hearts. It was a really sweet time of friendship and we seemed to really connect. About that time, I told my psychiatrist that things were going so well and her advice "time to change the med."
Looking back on it, it seemed like the craziest thing someone would think to do, I mean, why change a good thing? But, we cannot foresee the future and I didn't think anything would come of it. After all, doctors know best, right?
Right about that time, the school lost some of its funding and had to let go of my aide. I pretended everything was okay but I was frantic and the loss of the antidepressant left me desparate. I could no longer hold it together anymore. I cried on the way to school every morning, cried during breaks to my boyfriend, would climb underneath my desk after school to hide, couldn't control my anger outbreaks in front of my students...yet, however, the students continued to love me, I have no idea why. Maybe, its because deep down they saw that I really cared, that deep down that's what anyone that loves me sees, that although I may have the biting and quick temper, I really have a heart of compassion and really want to do what is right.
This ended up in putting me on an leave of absence from work for health related reasons. Up to that point, I was in denial that I couldn't hold down a job. After that, things went to hell in a hand basket with Randy when one day at church I tried to race away from church and he stopped me by standing in front of my car, of course, it looked like I tried to run over him. He decided that he wanted to step back from the romantic part of our relationship but the problem was, he still held my hand, still bought me little gifts, still paid for meals, and even some time would tell me he loved me. Then, when I would return the expression, he would step back and claim, "Look, we are just friends." I wish to God in retrospect that he had broken up with me then because it confused the hell out of me and I believe made things worse in the long run. But, to his credit, I think he was just scared that I would do something dangerous if he officially called it off. Yeah, I guess he was just protecting me. But, at what cost to both of our psyches?
I did the manipulative thing many a time and would tell people I was going to kill myself. Part of me really meant it and was a cry for help but after doing it so many times, people stopped trusting me. Also, after calling them up and screaming at them, sending angry emails, people started distancing themselves...more and more and more...until I was alone, but are we ever really alone?
In April, my sister and her new boyfriend were coming from Australia. I looked at her life, how successful she was, and became very depressed. When my parents went to pick them up at the airport, I took two aspirin, called my pastor, and before I knew it the firemen, police, and emt were banging down my door. I was carted off to the hospital because of a suicide attempt but really if I had explained to anyone what harm could two pills do. See, I got scared. The thing about me and suicide is, I have this thing about suicide ambilivance, or had. I have a fear of life but a fear of death. I don't really want to live but what does death hold for the suicide victim. I remember asking my pastor what happens to people if they commit suicide. He had no clear answer for me.
The visit to the hospital left me with a huge ambulance bill and a ER bill. However, my dad being a doctor got the ambulance bill knocked down to zero because hey, he's a good doctor. If only they knew what he is like at home!
The angry writing began. I started thinking of ways I could freak out my ex boss and sort of ex/sudo boyfriend. Picking him up at work and driving him to the school and slitting my wrists in front of them. I wrote over and over in my journal:
I want to die!
I want to die!
I want to die!
I want to die!
I want to die!
During that time, I turned 29 and remembered as a little girl when my friend, Michael Jean Tovani turned 8 on her 8th birthday and called that her golden birthday. Then, recalling at such a tender age that I would celebrate my 29th birthday in that way. 29 on the 29th. Lots of people showed up, except for Karissa, who really wanted to come but who I had emailed and specifically asked not to come...yeah, I was a bitch. And when my other best friend, Suzanne, was late, I called and left a mean message about how rude it was to do that to me. She showed up right away. Also, a manipulative bitch. Why did these people even give me a chance?
Things went well at that party, except for the fact that I wanted to get drunk. But, we played party games and ate cake and laughed and everyone had a good time. Pastor Chris prayed a specific prayer for me. How lovely! I guess he really cared. Go figure.
A few days after that, I called the school and told them that I would kill myself in front of my former boss. The police were called and I ended up with my stuffed pig, Piggy, at Northridge; the emergency mental illness facility in Sonoma County. They talked to me for awhile and let me go, seeing as I was fine. I just would have these little breaks, I call snaps, where I lapse into poor judgment and on an impulse say or do things that get me into trouble. This got me a restraining order.
Being the good little Christian girl, I had been taught that sex before marriage was a definite no no. However, my elite university boyfriend and I had had sex, Bill and I had had sex, and so on and so forth. I had always repented and moved on but never forgot the feeling of illicit sexual acts. I remember when I thought about dating a good Christian virgin man, thought that when we got married and had sex first the time, would he even know to go down on me or would he be so experienced that he wouldn't even know how to come inside....and me, trying to be good, would I be too embarrassed to explain? Anyway, I started having sexual fantasies about Randy, about Will (the counterpart to Bill from the Oregon cafe days, only the one I didn't love). Yeah, I seduced Randy. We had sex and it began this cursed romance of come a little closer, guilt, repent, guilt...until finally he broke it off two days before our second annivarsary on guess whose birthday...Bills! I remember thinking what the irony, my supposed second love broke up with me on my first love's birthday. But, why in the world did I remember Bill's birthday anyway? I had gotten over him, hadn't I?
The depression deepened to an almost unbearable level. I was looking for work and this was just at the beginning of the unemployment crisis so was getting a lot of rejections and not taking them so well. To add insult to injury, my favorite grandpa, who taught me the value of a good joke, died of complications of alzheimers that very month. I kept calling Randy, I kept sending out emails. I was hallucinating. In college during the trying times of theater major years, I would see blue feathers everywhere that meant danger on every side. Well, now in this time of intense darkness, the feathers returned...with a vengeance. There was this blue feathered eye, pure evil, that lived inside my heart. It exploded and blue feathers floated all over my body. They forced me to say and do to things that I didn't want to say. I didn't know what to do. I tried to tell my therapist who just explained, feathers are protective. What the fuck? These feathers were going to kill me. I imagined surgeons doing heart surgery, finding this eye, contemplating it, and then putting it back in there. Help me, help me, I am drowning.
Around labor day, I sent out this email to sabotage a bible study. A few years before at CCH, when things were going well, I had helped start a college and career age bible study. I knew it was going to start that night so I sent an email around telling everyone that the Pastor and his family had had a death in a family and needed time to mourn. Crazy, but I thought it would work.
The Pastor was shocked and the next day asked me not to return or contact anyone from the church indefinitely. The pain overwhelmed me and I decided to numb myself with three xanaxs. I didn't want to feel. I drove to work and on the way home, almost a sleep at the wheel, I got arrested and put in jail. Coming home, I had been given a DUI and had my license taken away.
Things weren't going to be that bad. A few days before the email, I had gone to see my psychiatrist and she listened as I told her about the emails of hate, the blue feathers, the immense feeling of dread, the incessant crying "please put me in a hospital" (to which my parents ignored), and she put me on a drug that is labeled "emergency only"...so after the fall, after the DUI, my head suddenly cleared...but after suffering with such agony, my brain was fried and I was like a child. To top it off, I felt far from God. I had no friends and felt separated from God. I started screaming at him, telling him to leave. He would say, "You are pushing me away too, it won't work, I can take as good as you can give."
So, more tomorrow on the slow progress of recovery...
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