lifestyle – Mirrored Madness: The Monster In Me

One of Those Posts…

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
– John Lennon

Well, I finally get to make one of those posts explaining a 2–3 week absence from WordPress. Surely to God I can find something else to blather on about along the way because my time away from here has been due to nothing exciting.

Ultimately, I’ve just been super busy. I’ve been as productive as I could’ve been, but between Life and all that comes with it I’ve had to play the “This or That” game quite a bit lately.

My wife is doing much better with her narcolepsy but there still are moments and we just can’t afford any of those, no matter how minimal. She is still surely to be taken off work soon…which means I will have to work more…which means she will be with the kids more…which ultimately means even just one “moment” could be scary (no offense, honey).

I have my own health concerns, as well. I have begun, under the care of a doctor, weaning myself off certain medications in order to try and shake some of this “fogginess”. Admitting that I had been overmedicated for years now, my psych doctor wasn’t against eliminating some certain medications.

But mainly I’ve just been busy and have had to use the free time I’ve had to put my focus towards other “projects” of mine. On top of trying to keep both a professional and personal grasp on things, I’m trying to write about my life before I forget (I’m finding myself remembering certain things I never would’ve if it wasn’t for a certain, specific, often random trigger). I always want to remember, and I never want to forget.

I don’t expect to create the kind of “work” that will make the kind of impact as, say, The Diary of Anne Frank or something, but I feel I have something to say, at least about my life. I’ve had many “milestone”-like moments that I feel deserve to be both remembered and documented, if only for myself.

I’d love to work on an idea for a script I’ve been sitting on for some time now, but the format is off putting and above my attention span. So, I guess if that goal ever gets set to paper it will be in a note-like form and then the grueling work of transcribing what those notes will end up looking like shall commence, I suppose.

I hope to be available more on here but can make no guarantees. I do hope to be able to share updates on progress made and maybe even snippets or samples of what I’ve completed on these “projects”, but they must remain the focus in my life at this time.

I’m going to make it a goal to post at least once a week if that can be balanced out with everything else. However, if I do not have anything to say or any thoughts that need to be shared I won’t. Until such time, I shall continue along this path and hope for the best.

Forever Bipolar,

Thank you

We’re Really in The Soup, Aren’t We?

That is what madness is, isn’t it? All the wheels fly off the bus and things don’t make sense anymore. Or rather, they do, but it’s not a kind of sense anyone else can understand
– Audrey Niffennegger

After two weeks, a slight return. Whether it’s my children or my day job (it’s only June and we’re hitting 105 degrees with the heat index – not exactly prime conditions for mowing), free time has been non-existent for me, and it’s affected all avenues of my writing for the time being. If I can’t write, I will read. There hasn’t been too much time for either of those things, though. Stuck in the soup.

I do, however, have something on my mind. I live in a small town. Bars, churches, and fast-food restaurants take up most of the space. Conservatives, drunks, and drunk conservatives take up most of what’s left, not leaving much of anything for the rest of us. So, there aren’t a lot of resources for…anything. This became all too clear recently after watching a local Facebook group dedicated to those suffering from drug and alcohol addiction do battle with members of Small Mind, USA.

Agree or disagree, alcoholism and addiction are considered diseases in the scientific and medical fields. Diseases can be managed or treated so not all hope is lost. To many, though, addiction is a choice. I’m not going to pretend that I know the ins and outs of all of the science, but it shouldn’t take a scientist to understand the effects alcohol and drug use have on human biology and brain chemistry.

“You chose to put the needle in your arm, junky.” Granted, that’s kind of fair, I guess, but on a very low, superficial level. It’s not so black and white. Not at all.

That was just one of the many negative, ignorant comments posted on this “recovery group’s” Facebook page. I felt so bad watching these people who are trying to find empowerment through recovery get torn apart by the vicious ignorance of the misinformed. And on a digital platform, no less.

“Our tax dollars shouldn’t go to paying for your methadon.” Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ignorant and illiterate. If you can’t spell “methadone” then you shouldn’t have a fighting hand in the argument.

I must give it up to the recovery group and its members, though. They stayed firm in their decree while also taking the higher ground by not going on the attack.

The one thing it made me realize is if this recovery group is getting criticized to this extent, what “challenges” would a support group for the mentally ill face in a small town? My town particularly. Would we be laughed at? Called lazy? Told to suck it up? Probably all those things and then some.

It’s pointless to feel hopeless, though. Some things will never change or will only at a rate so slow I won’t be here to see the repercussions of any of the progress.

Although mental health resources are usually limited everywhere, I’m sure it’s a little different in my town of 2,000 people. There is a “county counselling service”, but good luck getting an appointment or consultation there. The system is more than broken. It’s non-existent in some places.

I don’t have much else to say about this. There is nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said. Mental Health Awareness Month is almost over, and I don’t feel it’s made much difference or was “successful” in any special way. “Awareness” is a relative term, even useless at times. Did we remember to call our support groups together? Did we make T-shirts for everyone, or picket in the streets? Mental Health Awareness Month was just a month wasted on pride for our condition, not a celebration of our endeavors and struggles. Nothing was truly spotlighted except “woo weee…it’s our month.” Every day is Mental Health Awareness Month for me. And for many others reading and stuck in the soup.

I’m trying to be a realist but am recognizing all I do is complain about the ignorance or misgivings of those who don’t understand or agree. And who knows when or if real change will occur. Perspectives and foundational ideologies must change for many and that’s not up to me or any of us. But for the time being I’ll remain here, in the soup.

Genetic Predisposition: A Bipolar Parent’s Worst Fear

“I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was barely out of my teens. Like our olive skin tone and caterpillar eyebrows, I guess it just runs in the family.”
– AJ Lee

When I learned, or accepted, my diagnosis (Doctors diagnosed me with bipolar disorder at least three times over nine years before I decided to seek out treatment), I had to learn everything I could about the disorder. I needed to know everything. It was all consuming and, to a certain extent, still is. I needed to do my own comparisons, though. I wasn’t a doctor and, it’s true, I’m still not, but I had to know if my “symptoms” matched the criteria for bipolar disorder. It didn’t take but a few minutes to acknowledge the doctors had more than likely been right.

Nine years. I spent nine years in the fire before finally accepting that that was the case. So, I studied up on the disorder and found most of the facts discouraging and embarrassing. But the one thing that was most prevalent was the fact that 80% of the disorder’s existence was genetic. My oldest son was born when I was 18, and I was 24 when I first got any kind of treatment. So, there was a selfish six-year period I avoided what I had learned as “the facts” when it came to any part of the disorder. One day it hit me, though, and it was back to the books.

I knew there was a general genetic connection and that was the first thing that popped into my head.

Various studies ”estimated a heritability rate of about 58%”, according to a 2015 report. Research from the Black Dog Institute suggests the disorder is “inherited, with genetic factors accounting for approximately 80% of the cause of the condition”.

“Bipolar disorder is the most likely psychiatric disorder to be passed down from family.”

That’s scary to me.

One doctor said that “scientists confirm that bipolar disorder has a genetic component, meaning the disorder can run in families.”

Now it’s 2022. I have three sons, and the likelihood of one of them developing bipolar disorder, or any psychiatric disorder, is higher than what is average or typical. Below are some basic stats on the issue:

A child of one parent with bipolar disorder and one without has a 15% to 30% chance of having BP.

If both parents have bipolar disorder, there’s a 50% to 75% chance that a child of theirs will, too.

If you already have one child with BP, there is a 15% to 25% chance that another of your children will also have it.

If one identical twin has BP, there’s about an 85%chance that the other one will as well. In three other studies, the chance of an identical twin also having bipolar disorder ranges from 38% to 43% with that of dizygotic non-identical) twins being between 4.5% and 5.6%.

Stats scare me, and maybe they’re supposed to. This was a fear of a different caliber, though. This felt as if I was somehow doomed to a fate that was out of my hands, and one I wanted nothing to do with.

For a long time, I beat myself up over it. I was never like “why me?”, but I sure was pissed. At God, mainly. I realized that was a waste of time and energy, for many reasons. However, the constant state of anxiety I live in doesn’t allow the idea to go away. I still have my moments of sadness and anger, but it’s the worrying part that, at times, can eat me alive.

My wife is my rock. She can usually keep me in check. Thankfully so, because I can’t afford to worry about anything else. The things I worry about may seem trivial to many, but that doesn’t mean they’re not all consuming. It’s hard for me not to worry about something without getting fixated on it.

There are other environmental risk factors that play into the causation of bipolar disorder. The big ones are sleep deprivation, substance abuse, trauma, and stress.

Some of the most common life stressors that can trigger symptoms include:

changing jobs or losing a job
experiencing a death in the family
going to college
going through a divorce

A 2019 study suggested that “the resulting cognitive deficits, the high risk of suicide, and the occurrence of severe psychiatric and medical comorbidities all make BD one of the major causes of mortality and disability worldwide.”

Nothing familial in that declaration, but I couldn’t imagine any of my children having to go through any of that or ever feel like that. My wife insists that that’s not something I need to worry about because it’s out of my hands. It’s out of all our hands. What will be, will be, right?

Such a silly thought. Never been a big fan of that ideology.

I still have my moments where it will cross my mind, though, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.