Rights of Passage

I got to spend last weekend with my family, best weekend in a long time. Worst in a lot of ways too, but that isn't their fault, that's all my brain. There was a lot of people. A lot of people. Some that I was actually a little scared to see and one in particular I was really scared to see, but it turned out ok. I have the best mom ever. Ever. She's so supportive and she knows exactly what to say when I'm really struggling with interacting with people. Plus shes really funny when she drinks. (One drop! That's all it takes! Thank your Grandpa Marv for that knowledge! - Of course, the real funny thing is she does that anyway.) My brother is amazing too. He does the best impressions. (Ule, anyone? You know he's the life of the party!) It's incredible to see what amazing women my little baby cousins are growing into, they're beautiful and really considerate of each other when they think no one's watching. I always felt like I could never share my illness with people, like it was shameful. Society taught me that, my ex taught me that, and my most recent job tried to teach me that. But I got to talk about it this weekend. My mom talks about it. I don't know how much she shares, but that makes me more comfortable being who I am in front of the people I need most. Even though sometimes I feel like an outsider, it's easier to remember that's my brain trying to alienate me from the people I need the most when my family is willing to listen.

Graduation was last weekend, I spent it where I needed to be more than anywhere else in the world. At my cousin's high school graduation. There was a little pang of guilt when I realized I wouldn't have the graduation pictures, but that passes. My diploma will be mailed to me by the middle of summer and I have a cap and gown, I can take pictures then. Photoshop people in around me. ;) I got some pretty sweet presents. My aunts & uncles and grandma gave me money so I get the earrings I've been eyeing. My parents bought me a Kindle. Coolest present ever. I never thought I would like one, but its super awesome.

Now, as I return to reality there is paperwork to fill out about a job that gets more and more distant and heartless by the day. I talked to my boss twice today. It's weird, but the more I read dystopian young adult novels the easier it is for me to pick out the acid behind the smile. Not just with work, but everywhere. Some of that is training from my former coworkers, trying to learn when enough was enough. Not because they were ever cruel intentionally, and some of them never were anything but kind and understanding, even when I pushed the boundaries of acceptable like I accidentally do. But everyone has limits, and I spent a lot of time at my old job trying to figure out how to know what those were. It's not easy, and I would still rather just be me all the time with no filter at all, but I know now that there are people who are intentionally cruel. I can't just be me with no filter at all because those people capitalize on any weakness and exploit it at the first opportunity. I'm really susceptible to manipulation by media, and lately I've been grateful for that. The Hunger Games and Divergent have made me more cynical of humanity, which has allowed me an easier time of picking the snakes out of the crowd.

I'm still having panic attacks so bad that I feel like I'm dying of a heart attack, but it is what it is. I had seven beers last weekend. Three at my friends house, one the night I had so much fun with my mom, and three when we stayed at Terry's cousins. That's a lot for me to handle. Plus I've given in to the sugar and caffeine again. That has to stop. That's more dangerous than alcohol. Time to detox and prepare for the next big event, my best friend's wedding. It's really important to me that I'm there for her no matter what she needs, which means I must be coherent and that will only happen after a good old fashioned detox.

Starting over!

I've been reading a LOT about bipolar lately, though it's really been following severe mental illness in general (schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar, borderline personality disorder...). I've joined the group Thrive with Bipolar Disorder on Facebook (Side note: it would be super nice if I could keep those comments from going to my friends newsfeeds. Not that I wouldn't share that much of myself anyway, but I feel like it can be off-putting for friends that aren't on that level of "there" yet with the illness...), I read blogs, and follow what books are coming out. I follow all kinds of information about mental illness; marriage, children, pregnancy, individual responsibility, legal proceedings, scientific breakthroughs...everything I can get my hands on. I've been keeping track of it in a strange way, as always, a combination of my memory, bookmarks on my computer, sharing with family and friends... Anyway, I feel that method isn't working anymore and now that I am 6 days away from my commencement ceremony and have no undergraduate work left my goal is to post all of that stuff on here to keep better track of it. Starting today! :)

I just read this article about the difficulty knowing the difference between pre-hypomania and exuberance. As always when I read anything I immediately apply it to my experience, and my life. This actually has been a life saver in my last few weeks of the semester since I've found Thrive on Facebook. I've been able to focus on things I do in relation to others questions. But I digress, returning to the article at hand I realized how lucky I am to have the family and friends that support me unconditionally and are able to be objective about my moods. I think the best part is they are objective in different ways, which lets me figure out who I am and how I feel about my moods.

In the last 4 years I have met and married the best husband on the face of the planet. Totally a biased opinion, but it's mine and this is my blog so that's what I'm sharing. Terry and I have worked together to create a "mood map" of sorts for my bipolar to help figure out when things need attention and when they don't. It's not perfect, and it will forever be a work in progress, but its allowed us lots of freedom in our relationship that I didn't experience when I was with the ex. That's been a really positive experience. Last weekend was really rough, Terry was at camp helping with cub scouts, and I was supposed to be studying. Instead, since there is so much happening in my life right now my brain went into overdrive and I didn't sleep at all. However, because of our "mood map" I knew that I was going to be ok. I could text & check in, there was no freaking out. I could vocalize that I'm stressed, scared, and too much is changing at once. He knew that before he left town so there was no worry about the huge impact my mood had on my Facebook updating. We came up with a plan together for how to handle it, I did some little things that mean a lot to me (haircut with shampoo, eyebrow wax, shopping), I spent time with my best friend who understands me better than I understand myself. We focused on conversation and each other and her beautiful baby.

In my experience pre-hypomania and exuberance can be the same thing. The end result depends immensely on how I treat the feelings when they happen. Because of the "mood map" and my exposure to people who love me and have been around for a long time, who have seen me develop through the bipolar, who have stood by me when I needed help the most, I can actually turn pre-hypomania into exuberance and prevent the whole thing in the first place. Currently I still have anxiety/panic bordering on heart attack all the time lately, I'm still losing feeling in my extremities and having trouble with circulation, but its stress. There's a lot of changes happening. My long term claim is under review again, I'm finishing a whole chapter of my academic career and preparing for something completely new and scary. Not only new and scary, but new and scary and with all new people. That's enough to make me have a panic attack all by itself. I just keep reminding myself how amazing everyone I encountered in my last bit of undergrad has been with my illness. It's been infinitely better than the way corporate America treated me. That makes the panic disappear a little. I'm still packing. I'll be living out of as many suitcases as I can fit in Terry's Ion come June 1st.

Terrifying...

Learning experiences.

This year has been so full of learning experiences. It seems to be coming out ok. I got into grad school! I was offered and accepted a teaching assistantship where I'll be teaching one or two gen chem sections of 24 undergrads. Honestly, I'm a little scared, but there's time to worry about that later. It doesn't start until next fall.

I'm currently working on my last semester as an undergrad, so excited to be graduating after 10 years! There's lots of chemistry information to learn for my inorganic class, lots of writing to do for my french lit, english, and ethics classes, photos to take for my photography class...my apartment is getting packed up very methodically and carefully. Things are getting taken to Goodwill, and thrown out to have less to move. The cats are starting to get worried. I'm helping my best friend plan her wedding for the beginning of June.

The school thing is the most time consuming right now, but I'm also transitioning from short term to long term disability. This has been a barrage of phone calls and its going to be a ton of paperwork for both me and my doctors. Every phone call has started with "when will you be able to return to work" and my responding "I could have returned in December, but they are unable to accommodate my restrictions". To which I've had to answer all kinds of questions about my hours and history at my job, tons of questions about the change in management and how I would have handled the whole situation differently if I knew then what I know now. The whole process is complicated and annoying because it could have been avoided by just letting me keep the hours I had for two years.

I'm actually kind of hoping the insurance company takes legal action against my company for the money they've lost over the last year. There have been a lot of judges siding with employees who have had issues with ADA violations. When I talked to the vocational counselor she asked if I had a lawyer. I do, but the disability proceedings went so smoothly I didn't need to use the lawyer. I'm not out for a huge settlement (though I'd be dumb to turn one down if it landed in my lap), I just want the accommodations that will allow me to do my job successfully. I told her that if there was a problem in the future I would not hesitate to use legal action. I also told her that in the future I hope to have my restrictions in writing before all of this happens so I can stay at work. I'm not disabled to the point where I can't work at all, I just need the freedom to do the work in a way that allows me to be successful.

Live and learn. I'm looking forward to many more stories of judges siding with the ADA laws rather than employers. It's necessary for people to know they have support legally as well as personally.

A Healthy Dose of Paranoia Never Hurt Anyone

I've been on and off short term disability for roughly four months of this less than happy year. Not of my own accord, but because Corporate America does not believe in the employee. Which leads me to my conspiracy theory about this employers market that is currently happening in the good old U. S. of A.

My employer does engagement surveys to improve their employees experience in the workplace. I've filled out this engagement survey twice. Last years survey was very positive. I was more than satisfied with my job, I needed improvement but trusted my company to provide me with the opportunity and tools to improve. I trusted my boss, my bosses boss, my bosses bosses boss, and HR to provide me with fair treatment and a due process if anything happened to go awry. Unfortunately, everything went awry. My new boss had a degree that made me trust her with my very individual set of mental illness difficulties. I was presented with a series of "opportunities" packaged to make me feel good about the direction I was moving in the company. There were accusations made on my abilities as a scientist, and my ability to perform my job satisfactorily was systematically demolished by a boss that was unable to communicate with me. There was no help given to my boss, except to continue feeding them corporate double-speak that worked less every time we tried to make sense of each other. In the end my schedule was changed in a way that was impossible for me to accommodate with my medications and my illness. I was deprived of the ability to help my coworkers, the one thing that really brings me joy at work.

I love doing a great job, I love being phenomenal at what I do, being indispensable. Most of all, I love being helpful. Knowing enough about my job to step in where I'm needed, taking some of the blood, sweat and tears away from coworkers that don't have as much of a desire to throw their lives into their work. I want nothing more than to give my employer everything they want, and do a better job for them then they could ever dream. In return I ask for respect, the ability to have flexibility in my schedule to accommodate my insane need to fill my life with more than most would dare with school. I also ask for understanding for my strange schedule habits just in general. My particular breed of crazy sometimes doesn't let me do my job all at once if it's not necessary. Sometimes I need to take longer breaks than most, sometimes I work better in the middle of the night. If I'm needed for something there is a guarantee I will be there for the entire time I'm needed, but if I'm not I work better with an accommodation of extreme flexibility. I'm not alone. I read a memoir of a lawyer who used to sleep under her desk for that very reason. People like she and I don't fit into Corporate America's rules and regulations. If the company is willing to look the other way, or make special contracts to allow for our strange work habits we will be the best employee you will ever have.

America right now is an employer's market. They don't have to put up with such nonsense, and no one cares if employees are good as long as they don't cost very much. Unfortunately for people like the memoir writer and myself, we are very costly. Each of the first two years I worked for my company I was hospitalized for a week, and out for two more after that to determine the correct amount of medication. Six weeks of unworked time paid for by the short term insurance company. Six weeks the company had to hold my job for me without the ability to bring someone else in and fill the void. It was two terms of three weeks, nearly a year apart, but when it becomes an employers market they remember those things. In the year since I filled out that first employee engagement survey I have been pushed and pulled into stress that resulted in four months out in one year. Every time I make enough personal headway to return to work the rules change. Last time the rules were completely thrown out the window and I didn't even recognize the game that was being played.

It would be very easy to point at my company and say it's their fault. That's false. I'm not usually one for political statements, but what I've heard of the "We are the 99%" movement, it is the same principle at work. Our large businesses run exactly the way congress works. Everything is based on money. In an employees market, when companies are struggling to fill jobs I am worth the risk and the cost because I am an amazing employee. When employees are struggling to find work because the unemployment rate is so high I'm not worth the cost. Quality is sacrificed for the sake of the bottom line. Power and control lie with the company and when the power falls elsewhere the company uses any means necessary to get it back. It's lame and I've seen and heard many large companies doing this recently in the U.S. The 99% don't have money, therefore they don't have power. This means that the corporations, which behave like our government, are going to run our lives until there is an economic shift.

I don't know how to fix the underlying problem without an overhaul of the government, but I do know that we need to educate the public about their rights regarding illnesses and disorders. There are laws that require companies to behave a certain way when there is a legitimate medical reason for an accommodation. Students use this all the time in the form of test readers, note takers, extra time provided for tests, and quiet environments provided for tests, among other accommodations. These laws do extend to Corporate America and an adult life. It is unreasonable to expect someone that needs extra accommodations at school won't need them in their professional life. The ADA may be a good place to look for help, but there are two professions that are the most stable in these economic circumstances: law enforcement and lawyers. Many lawyers provide free consultations. They will be able to tell you if your employer is behaving in a legal manner. Not all unsavory behavior is illegal, in spite of being unethical. A lawyer can help sort that out for you.

One year ago I believed that large corporations would be able to self-regulate against unethical behavior. I now know better. I don't believe that unions are the answer to regulating unethical behavior, but employee knowledge of the line between unethical and illegal will be a huge step forward. Don't let an employer take advantage for as long as I did. Find answers, find help, learn the laws that pertain to your circumstances and don't be afraid to take a stand. The more people do this, the more companies will realize people value fair treatment and ethical employers. And please, don't forget being the 99% five, ten, twenty years from now when the market turns and yet again favors employees more than corporations. That is when we will have power and can make a real change in Corporate America.

Returning to the real world.

As I mentioned in my last post this summer has been particularly hard on my brain. I don't know if my diagnoses of bipolar will change or adapt with this summer's activities, but the psychosis has increased dramatically. I have had visual and auditory hallucinations my whole life. Most of the time they were pushed aside by everyone, myself included, as an overactive imagination. To be fair to all, it was very difficult to tell apart my dealings with hallucinations and a normal child with an overactive, or overstimulated, imagination.

This summer the ability to distinguish between dreams and reality has been impossible. I spent countless weeks dreading the night, dreading the descent into that dark place where horrible things happened. The worst part, though, is when I wake up I don't know that those horrible things weren't real. I spent close to 15 hours one day believing my father-in-law died. I went to his funeral, my husband decided not to talk to me shortly after, and my friend Dan stepped up and helped me out when I needed it.

None of those things happened. When I finally talked to my husband I couldn't believe him, wouldn't believe him. It took me hours of ruminating on the idea that Dave is fine, Terry never abandoned me, and I haven't seen Dan all summer, for me to finally accept that it never happened.

Shortly after that incident the Seroquel was increased to 200 mg a day and an alpha blocker was added to my tiny cocktail. I now take 2 mg a day of Prazosin, which for some strange reason separates the dreamer from the dream. I can now, most of the time, tell the difference between dream and reality. Though, when I saw Inception two weeks ago I identified dearly with Mal. I wished that I identified a little more with Ariadne. Maybe someday.

Unfortunately, that is not the end. I still hear, see, feel, and smell things that do not exist while awake. Such fun! I'm starting to be able to identify which things exist and which don't by other cues around me and around the object, but it isn't enough. To the cocktail! I have already tried and failed with one additional anti-psychotic, I'm currently refusing to take Zyprexa because of the terrible reaction I had to it the last time it was in my cocktail (sometime between 2001 and 2004). The second medication I'm trying is trifluoperazine. I'm on a low dose that is going to be increased a week from today. My driving ability is nil currently. I flighty, I can't hold more than one thought in my head at a time. I'm on short term disability at work to protect my job from poor performance.

Tomorrow I start school. To say I have an ambitious schedule may be the understatement of the year. In the end, talking to the teachers, taking a TON of notes, writing everything down...hopefully that works. If there is damage done to my 3.83 GPA it will be unfortunate, but with a 3.83 at least I have room to fall a little. And work is scheduled to start again on 26th of September. Fingers crossed for sure that this will all improve and I can go back. I hate the way this feels.

And we try again...

I stopped blogging in June because several things happened. First, Terry left for boy scout camp for about 8 weeks (staff, not camper). Second, I was placed on an improvement plan at work, which left me a tad bit scared to share things about myself. Third, my bipolar has gotten significantly worse, and this has left me with an even more scared feeling about sharing with myself. Reasons number two and three are kind of bull for not wanting to sharing my experiences. I naturally am a very open person and I want so badly to share and be an advocate for people with mental illness. I told Terry that I'm interested in writing a sort of memoir-truth-telling-self-help kind of book, but these are so commonplace right now for mental illness that I'm a little gunshy of doing anything with that idea.

I don't know where I lost my voice. At some point I decided that I was going to let social acceptability and corporate America take away my ability to shout from the rooftops that I am mentally ill and you know what people? it is okay. sometimes life with mental illness is hard, its regularly not pretty, but that doesn't mean its urinating on the side of the liquor store scary. So, long story short, I am going to make an attempt to find that voice again. I want to share good things about life, bad things about life, annoying things...

Look for more of me soon.

A little on my favorite topic.

First let me say something in defense of myself. The reason I have not really said any of the following except in the confines of my own home and my therapists office is because I am well aware it can be taken the wrong way, I know it may sound racist and bigoted and that is not my intention at all. Hopefully my choice of words will make it sound less so.

There is a major issue happening in our country right now surrounding diversity. Not some diversity, not simply different skin colors, different sexual orientations, different religions, but also different brain chemistry. ALL diversity is being threatened in the great melting pot currently. By all kinds of people. This is an appalling occurrence. Those poor kids who have committed  suicide over the bullying they have experienced SHOULD NOT HAPPEN in this day and age. End. Of. Story. We should be beyond that as a country. I want to make that very clear, I understand the horror the country is feeling, I understand where that is coming from because I feel it too.

I want to ask a question though. If these kids that are being bullied and committing suicide weren't gay, if they were, for instance, mentally ill...would there be the same outrage? Would their parents be as willing to share that information with the world? That man at Rutgers who was filmed (which, by the way, is awful to do to anyone, gay or straight), if his roommate filmed him having an anxiety attack or a manic episode, would we as a country be appalled or would we laugh?

I understand that there are differing levels of comfort with the topic of diversity and I also know that we have to fight for each and every person to be accepted for who they are. The problem for me is, while I do see the need for all races to be accepted and all sexual orientations to be accepted I see something being done about those issues. At my school there is a "Diversity" office where diversity is defined as racial diversity. There is a LGBT office where students who identify as such and students who are supportive of the issues can go. Why do these offices need to be separate?

Also, the only offer of support for mentally ill students on campus is through a "therapy center" on campus. To be honest I haven't looked into how that therapy center works, mostly because I go to the center that is supported by the college for the community at large in my city. Students would be able to attend sessions there also, but that information isn't provided anywhere. The information about testing accommodations has to be requested, it isn't readily available. In my city the only groups I have found for people with bipolar are for people who cannot hold a job or go to school. What am I going to be able to relate to there? I am highly functioning bipolar, I attend school and do extremely well, I have a full time job that I have had for over 2 years, I maintain a very successful marriage...and because of that the community at large does not allow me the support I need. I am shushed when I discuss mood issues because "people talk" and it makes people uncomfortable. How can we expect people to become comfortable with new ideas if we hide them all the time? How are people supposed to continue being success stories with mental illness if there is no support or guidance?