January 5, 2014
Well, that happened faster than I thought. I thought I might at least have another day or two before paying for the good days.
After the valium kicked in last night I fell asleep easily enough. I don't remember dreaming anything. The baby woke up for her morning feeding around 5:30, Bradley is still sick but I still let him take care of it, even though I shouldn't have. I guess you could say I felt impending doom and that I needed sleep to take preemptive measures, so to speak. I feel like I need to keep reminding myself that I am just as sick as he is and need to take care of myself just as much. It doesn't make me feel any less guilty though. We stayed home from church today so that Bradley could rest and I could take care of him and the baby (and also rest. I didn't tell Bradley, but I sensed something was coming. I felt like the best thing I could to to prevent a breakdown would be to rest or sleep as much as possible) but I had to duck out for an hour to help out in Primary. Around 9, I got ready to go, gave Bea a bottle and put her back to bed. Bradley thought I was going to take her, though I don't know why. I was supposed to be leading music in Primary. I couldn't very well do that while taking care of an infant. I don't know what he was imagining I would do, but he acted like he was doing me a huge favor in letting me leave her home, asleep in her crib.
I'm not expecting him to read my mind. I know it's not obvious to anyone but me when I'm starting to feel things in my head are getting soupy. But I do, unrealistically I suppose, expect him to always be mindful of the fact that I have an illness, and often need help or at the very least reassurance that I can do the everyday tasks that need to be done. Instead, he slept. It shouldn't bother me. He's sick. But so am I. It was very difficult for me to get out of bed this morning. It was even more difficult to face Bea on a day when I didn't feel up to it. It was difficult for me to look presentable enough to go out in public. It was difficult for me to leave her in her room with a video playing in hopes that she'd fall asleep and not disturb Bradley while I was gone. It was difficult to get out the door. It's difficult to explain why all those things are difficult. I suppose the irrationality of it all is part of why it's an illness. It's my brain refusing to accept normal things as normal and instead turning them into things that cause me immense pain and anguish. Most often it manifests itself at night, when I think of when, in the morning, I have to face Beatrice when she wakes up. Instead of feeling excited to see her, as I would on a good day, I feel grief and often terror. Grief that she's been cursed with a mother who can't be happy when it's time to say "Good morning" and terror that I'll never be enough for her. That's how I feel right now.
It had rained in the night last night and had frozen over this morning so everything, including our car, was covered in a thick, icy film when it was time for me to go to the church. On my way to the car, my boot slipped on a stair off my porch and I slid down the entire set of steps. Up until that moment this morning I was managing. I was on the edge, but I was managing. Falling down those steps, something inside me snapped. I'd given up. I was done. I almost turned around and walked right back inside to crawl back into bed, but I felt too bad for our understaffed ward to do so. I picked myself up out of the snow, pried open the car, which had frozen shut, and scraped and scraped and scraped until enough ice had chipped away to allow me some visibility out of the windshield. I remained stable throughout my time in Primary and came straight home. Bradley was in bed, and Bea was crying in her crib. He hadn't fed her any breakfast.
I'd always applauded Bradley in the past for never getting the "man cold". He usually plows through sickness without a complaint. I don't know why he chose this one time, this one crucial time when everything was so fragile, to become "too sick to function". I would have felt more sorry for him had I not had the exact same bug last week. I spent one and a half days in bed. He's spent three. Maybe that's why I'm resentful. I need help. Returning home from a vacation for a bipolar person is like an infection to a wound. It must be attended to immediately and delicately and with lots of patience. I don't think anyone without the illness will ever understand how important this is. I used to think Bradley understood, but the longer we're married, the more I realize there are things about my illness he just doesn't, and may not ever understand.
I can't return home and get back into a routine like a normal person. My body senses a shift and my brain reacts improperly. My brain catches a bug. When that happens, it's a lot like what would happen if a circuit shorted in a robot or something. It either crashes immediately and shuts down completely, or it malfunctions and malfunctions and malfunctions rapidly and then shuts down. Rather than recognize a shift in routine, my illness acts as a bug. And in this case, I've malfunctioned through hypomania two days in a row, teetered between normalcy and darkness throughout today, and tonight, I crashed.
After I got Bea out of her crib, fed her some breakfast, and put her back down for a proper nap, I finally cleaned out the closet. I couldn't handle it any longer. But instead of cleaning it with manic zeal, I did so tiredly and begrudgingly, resenting my compulsion rather than reveling in it. I did the dishes. I sat down to catch my breath. And Bea woke up. Something snapped again. Or splintered I guess.
I have more to say about all this but my Valium at long last is kicking in and I need to sleep or tomorrow will be worse than today. I'll pick up where I left off but it may be difficult, as I often suffer from "bipolar amnesia" where I can't remember exactly how bad things were once the wave subsides. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true but we can talk about that another time as well.
-edit- September 2, 2014-
While skimming my blogs today I realized I had never posted this post so I went back to read it. I have nothing to add because the next day, I woke up fine. I didn't plummet again, and haven't yet since we switched my doses right before our Christmas trip. The only thing I remember from that day is sadness and frustration, slipping on the ice, and apologizing to Adrianna for being late for primary. Everything else is gone. Bipolar amnesia strikes again. I'll always be grateful for the blessing it is to forget.
