Hey, it’s been a while. I’ll skip over the stale drama and get to the new stuff.

I feel I’m doing better, understanding and accepting other people’s actions. Not to say I agree with them but everyone is entitled to think/act however they’d like, to some degree. But, it’s still a struggle at times. I’m feeling good about myself and my situation. Work front is good, got a few new contracts/contacts which should tide me over for a while. School stuff is good, was told to submit my application to a great school so I’m hopeful about that. Love life is still great.

Great start on all fronts for 2008, lets hope it lasts. I might be posting more often on this thing, we’ll see.

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Probably the only reason I’m actually writing here.

I really do want to write, I want to share feelings and all that crap but quite frankly, I was shortsighted in sharing this blog with people who I consider close, or were close. I don’t want to write the things that are on my mind because I fear of the backlash, since they do in fact involve people I’m supposed to care about. I don’t want to deal with the drama, but before that I don’t want to be called an attention whore, or a drama queen.

Why? Well I dont’ want people to roll their eyes and say, “oh, what a drama queen, must be because he’s bipolar” or some other retarded bullshit. That and I don’t want to let anyone close to me, I’ve been burned far too many times. I’ve trusted people and it’s pretty much turned bad every single time I have.

i don’t see why I should allow these people a free look deep inside my mind while they can stand 10 feet away, or worse, use it for their advantage. Whatever, rigtht?

Well, enough about that, it’s been so long hopefully they’ve forgotten about this. I’m enjoying my newfound … distance from people in general, it’s nice really. I’ve also as a result been trying to define or redefine my expectations and definitions of what I consider friendship, or what I want from life. And increasingly I don’t want to deal with people in general. Sure, I started this blog with the altruistic intention of changing people and all that crap, but really, who’s buying. Alone, I can’t make a difference and even if I did it wouldn’t be felt during my lifetime. I don’t see the advantage or benefit in there for me, yes, you’ve noticed, I’m selfish.

I’m really, really starting to actually believe, and WANT, to live an isolated life and to avoid human and social interaction as much as possible. Society isn’t ready to accept my kind and there is little I can do that won’t result in tearing my own hair out that will help.

All of this contemplation has been leading me to reconsider what I want from life, really, I might be repeating myself but I can blame that on the cheap wine (and the headache). Friendship is definitely awesome, having people to care about you, sharing good moments and all that kick ass. But with the kicking of ass comes the kicking of your own ass and it’s boiling down to figuring out whether the revenues outweigh the costs. I want to say that it boils down to a net loss, I want to close that door and continue my life without “friends”, but I can’t say I’m there just yet. I’d be lying to myself if I could convince myself without hesitation that this were the case. But in my own anecdotal experience, everything would point to closing that door.

My sunny side has up and died
I’m betting that when we collide
The universe will shift into a low
The travesties that we have seen
Are treating me like Benzedrine
Automatic laughter from a pro

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It’s been a tough week, there’s no other way to say it. As my previous post indicates my best friend was diagnosed with Leukemia. I managed to visit him a couple times and that really brought my spirits up, I learned more about the illness, how his treatments are affecting him and so far things are going as well as they possible could be (I think).

For once in my life I was happy to be bipolar, for obvious reasons but also because I’ve seen my fair share of hospitals, and spent my fair share of time in them as well. I’m not going to pretend to know everything he’s going through, but there were a lot of experiences that I’ve been through that he could relate and vice versa. Food being the most interesting part of the day was something we both agreed on.

He’s got a lot of things on his side right now, there’s hope to be had and I definitely believe he can pull through, if anyone can it’s definitely him.

Myself I’ve had my ups and my downs as usual. Freaking out a bit more than usual but that’s to be expected, I’m managing. For the most part I don’t think I’ve been dipping down into the depressive end of the whole deal, although it has happened momentarily here and there. Sometime I’ve been dealing with all my life mind you.

Anyway, this is a start. I’ll be writing more but it’s enough for today.

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There are certain things in life that will easily put things in perspective for you. Certain things that will dwarf your own problems, certain things that will make you feel like a fool for caring about trivial and insignificant events.

One of those things could be having your best friend of 20 years (since the age of 5) diagnosed with Leukemia.

I want to write, but there are no words that can express how I feel right now.

But soon, they will.

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But I don’t have the courage. I suspected this would happen, and it’s the reason I didn’t tell anyone about this blog in the first place. I broke and shared it, and now I can’t express myself as I would desire, now the usefulness of this blog is coming to an end. It’s pretty much the same reason why I stopped using my first blog, and it looks like it will be happening to another.

Next time, I’ll learn, I promise.

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I just wish something around here was made out of wood.

There has been a topic that has been bouncing around my life for the past few days, have you already guessed? Lovely comparisons and everything that stems from them. What is our worth? How can we rank ourselves, separate ourselves from others and judge how well we’re doing? It’s a topic of contention, especially among people who suffer from bipolar.

I suppose we could start by looking at what other people have said. Albert Einstein (too cliché?) said the following,

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

Well, I don’t know what to say. I have a hard time seperating reality from fiction at times, not sure how well I would do seperating myself from myself. Atlhough come to think of it, feels like something I’ve done when manic.

Wikipedia had the following to say about the value of life,

In biosafety, workplace safety, and insurance, it is also necessary to put a precise economic value on a given life. There can be no such thing as a perfectly safe or risk free system - one can always make a system safer by spending more money. However, there are diminishing returns involved. In travel, the economic value of life, for safety purposes, varies between around $1,000,000 for trains, and around $20,000 for automobiles.

I doubt this is comforting to anyone, but again this isn’t what I was looking for either. If I recall there has been an extensive amount of philosophy “done” on the topic, and what I felt the strongest about was that it’s impossible to put a price tag on a human life. It’s hard for me to accept or truly believe but it has to be, we are not commodities to be sold our traded (although history would like to have us believe otherwise) and thus it’s impossible to say “he’s a better human being than you”. Although I’m sure it’s all something we’ve done at one point.

As someone who is manic depressive, it’s something that I’ve struggled with for a long time and some degree I doubt this struggle is over. I’m 7 years behind educationally, to some of my peers and I’ve had trouble accepting that. At times I feel completely worthless. I suppose we’ve all felt something similar, when watching someone do something we take pride in, in our ability and competence, completely belittle our performance with their own. It’s humbling, and I’m always left feeling a little hopeless and overwhelmed. Sometimes I feel renewed strength and commitment, wanting to best that performance but other times a feeling of desperation washes over me taking along with it my will to continue.

I’ve had to reconcile my expectations as a human, and my adjust my perspectives, still working on it too. One way of doing this was to stop looking at the end goal and focus on the incremental change found on the journey towards that end goal. If I’m moving forward, I’m making progress, right? I think. I can’t compare myself to someone who isn’t bipolar, and they can’t do the same to me. Our life experiences are completely different, although when I say this I can’t but feel like I’m coming up with excuses for a “poor” performance. I suppose I can thank society for that.

I’m learning, I’m changing (for the better, I’m hoping), and that to me is what I’m trying to focus on. Avoiding the whole life is a race, degree by 24, entering the corporate world be 25, getting married at 26, kids, pension, death. This desire to conform to what society has outlined as the optimal life line is completely unrealistic. I am not society. I finally feel like I’m accepting this, I just need a few things to keep me happy, and I’d have to say, right now I am. I’m working towards my end goal, making progress albeit at a snails pace at times and that’s all I can ask for.

Feels good, although catch me in my next depressive phase and I’ll tell you how much I want to die.

That’s the way she goes.

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Maybe this is a bad sign, that I’m happy that I feel determined and finally ready to tackle what awaits ahead. Maybe I’m just crazy.

But I feel it, I’m on my own now. I’ve come to terms with missing school for another year or two, and now I’m lining myself up to starting my “new” life with my girlfriend. Yeah, I’m gonna have to work and it probably won’t be fun. And I might not be making the money I was in the past for a while until I get reestablished, but that’s okay. (Anyone looking for a web developer? )

Enthusiastic, determined, anxious, willing, able and ready.

When will I crash?

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I’ll get the majority of the whining out of the way right away for the sake of the reader, my xbox 360 died. Three red rings of death, a tragedy I know, 3 to 4 weeks until I get it fixed and back from a journey across the continent.

On a more serious note, I’m doing pretty well. Have been on a high for a week or so but today experienced my first real dip into a depressive state. But before I start on that, being able to write about my experiences is almost euphoric, writing for an audience brings me great pleasure. I will be working on editing a novel I’ve written, hopefully within a month I’ll be able to send it to a publisher and earn myself my first rejection slip. I’m looking forward to that. Also planing on sending much of my poetry to magazines and the like. I’m really excited about all of this, they’re ideas I’ve had sitting on the back burner for a while and I finally have the energy and drive to follow through with them.

So what caused me to crash earlier? I’m not really sure, a series of unfortunate events. Plans that I had made but fell apart because I accepted adding on additional plans in order to accommodate others. Which isn’t so bad, but when these concessions were made my own plans weren’t supposed to actually be affected, and they were and all seemed lost. On top of that, the wonderful feeling of being relegated to the rank of child by my parents. I have a feeling that when I deal with my father I’m dealing with a mirror image of myself which in itself is pretty scary. He’s probably as stubborn as myself, and enjoys being right as much as I do. I just try to convince myself that I’m actually right. I must be.

The last week spent with my family was pretty damn fun. Except the part where I was scolded by my uncle, who I’ve seen angry once in my life, for drinking too much. The next morning was rather vindicating when I joined them all for breakfast bright and early and dug into my eggs with nothing more than a slight headache. Yeah, I drink a lot but I also weight 220 and have a pretty good tolerance (thank you Irish blood). Regardless, what he really was upset was that the last time my cousin and I met up we got pretty trashed, he doesn’t want it to become a recurring trend, which it will but nothing I haven’t already done in the past, but I understand where he’s coming from.

We must have went through at least 20 or so bottles of wine during the week, drinking with my aunt was fun, no doubt in my mind. I have a good family even though I don’t always want to admit it, to be fair to myself, they’re not all as present and fun to be with as this specific set of aunt and uncles. Surprisingly all the drinking didn’t depress me at all, the high I was riding persisted and even included drunken singing on the lake with my cousin in the middle of the night. I can’t help but smile at the fact that we were reminded of this by people sleep 50 feet away inside the chalet the morning after. Ridiculously fun.

I had to take Risperdal one night, 3 mg actually. I was trying to knock myself out, trying to escape a nasty migraine which split my skull straight down the middle without warning. Also missed my dose of Lamictal and Lithium one evening, due to drinking and simply passing out. All in all, it went well, surprised that during another night of heavy drinking I managed to take my meds before passing out. I did well, and felt great the entire week.

Sunday I had the pleasure to meet my godchild. Yes, it sounds crazy, crazier than nephew but it’s absolutely true and I couldn’t be happier. I’m afraid of the responsibility though, I had a godmother that was conspicuously absent. I’ve decided that this is something I won’t be, I want to be present and I want to be a positive influence and help this kid out. I’ve decided to start a bank account for him, put a small percentage aside with each influx of cash for him. Money is the absolute least I could do, although it won’t be a lot, but Christmas will be coming up and I want to have something for him, it’s important to me. Brings to me an entirely new sense of responsibility, increases my drive to succeed. This kid deserves it all, for no other reason than being my brother’s child. I don’t want to be the uncle who’s working a minimum wage job, I want to be able to provide him with everything I can. Since I’m questioning ever having children of my own because I don’t want to risk the 33% chance of me passing on the wonderful gift of manic depression.

So all in all, so far, great. But today I dipped down into the chasms of depressions for a moment or two. A bit of what I talked about above, a bit of something I really can’t pin down. I’m afraid. I’m afraid that this is just a precursor of things to come, that depression isn’t too far off. It’s never a question of if I will be depressed for me, it’s always a question of when will it strike next. Couple that with financial difficulties, although I should be semi fine for the rest of 2007.

Waiting for the axe to fall.

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I’m off to see the lake, the wonderful lake in the woods. That’s right, tomorrow morning I am the grand champion of a visit to an age old family retreat, a cottage on a lake, in the woods. The girlfriend will be accompanying me, as will my father. Aunt and uncle should be there, always enjoy spending time with them. Although my uncle can be a bit wordy at times, someone bless his soul.

I’m anxious to get to sleep, so I’ll keep this short.

I showed this site to my parents on my passage through these parts. My mother, who is bipolar, took it rather well. I was surprised, if you look around you can see there would be more than a few posts that one might think inappropriate for ones folks. She actually related to a lot of what I posted, I would say one of our rare “bonding” moments over the illness. It’s really not something we discuss very often. She even confided in me that she too had felt as strongly as I had on a few issues. I’m assuming the suicide part (Hi Mom). It was nice actually, makes her seem more real, she had never talked to or admitted to anything or the sort before and as a result I never connected quite as much to her as I do now, now that I know for a fact she has been through a few of the same things I have.

Our time together went better then I could have expected, all things considered, although for a good half hour I was under the impression she might be going manic, but that passed and all is okay.

Okay, that’s enough I can hardly keep my eyes open. I’ll be gone for about a week, I may be back for friday but who knows. I hope you can live without me until then. I may write additional entries at the lake, during some quiet time which I am sure there will be plenty, and post that when I get back. Or if I’m feeling rather adventurous and desperate, drive to the nearest village and hijack someone’s wireless network. There’s a bug on my screen.

Alright, take care and I shall be seeing you in a week or so,

until then.

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I just woke up, went to bed 5 hours ago and I woke up more than awake. Completely unable to sleep any more than I already had.

This is not a good sign.

I took 1mg of Risperdal but so far it hasn’t taken effect, or perhaps it won’t, I may have to take more. If there’s one thing I truly dislike about Risperdal is that I have to keep taking it until I feel a difference, and when I do feel a difference it usually means it has practically knocked me out and I feel desperately like passing out. Not a good way to go through a day, which means I won’t be able to accomplish much today.

Second thing I experienced in the short time I’ve been is a mixed state. I think I have, I’ve never experienced one today. But I feel absolutely wired, and I also feel like crying my eyes out. I think it qualifies, but I don’t have the diploma hanging on my wall. What brought this on? Reading about other people’s educational successes, if you’ve had a look through the archives you’ll understand that I’ve been hit with more than a few setbacks in this department. As much as people tell me I’m young, and that I have a lot of time to accomplish my goals I still feel like a complete failure for being unable to keep up with the people my age.

Regardless, I should probably contact my psychiatrist. Unfortunately I’m not too pleased with the health care system as it stands. I feel it lacks empathy, it lacks caring, especially when it comes to dealing with people who have mental illnesses. I missed my appointment with my psychiatrist, didn’t have the opportunity to call. Did they ever call me to see what was up? No. I know that in any other business or field it would be the complete fault of the person who missed the appointment, but you’re dealing with people who are mentally ill. Wouldn’t it be at the very least prudent to call and ensure that everything is okay? My dentist has called when I missed an appointment, and so far they’ve shown more interest and care than my psychiatrist’s office which is almost pathetic.

Reminds me the time I was in the early stages of mania. I couldn’t get back home and didn’t have my medication, so I decided to go to the hospital where I had previously been kept for a few months due to my manic episodes. I figured they would at least be able to help me out, I figured wrong. It was 3am, and the emergency room was absolutely full. I asked the security guard what the wait time was, he said about 4 hours. Now, if you know anything about manic depression is that when you’re on your way to being manic, or are manic, the last thing you are is patient. There was no way in hell I was going to wait 4 hours, not in the state I was.

I decided to go directly to the psychiatric ward, to perhaps obtain some help there. I was met by an incredibly rude male nurse who had absolutely no regard for my well being, basically told me that if I wanted any help I had to wait in the emergency room. Which in itself is rather idiotic, 4 hour could be the difference between full blown mania, or mania prevented. Needless to say I was less than pleased, I left abruptly, needing no more of this man’s insolence. As I was leaving I left him with a parting quip, “thanks for the help, maybe I’ll be seeing you next week”. This guy had absolutely no business dealing with psychiatric patients, his attitude gave that away the moment he stepped through the door into the lobby area where I was.

The reason the psych ward couldn’t help me directly is because they didn’t have a doctor on duty at 3am. Alright fair enough, but it seems completely illogical to expect a person who is on their way to becoming manic, who realizes this, to wait 4 hours in an emergency room. One of the key symptoms is lack of patience. With all their medical training and experience you would have thought they would have accounted for this possibility, but I’m guessing for the sake of saving for a few dollars. And ~3% of the population is insignificant, right? And on top of that, the percentage of those people actually requiring assistance on any given night is probably so low that they ruled it out. I guess I fell through the cracks.

I didn’t get my medication that night, but things turned out alright in the end, I ended up being able to find my way home quicker than expected. All in all I’m extremely disappointed with how the health care system towards people with psychiatric problems handles itself. There are glaring deficiencies in the way they function is disturbing. But who will care for such a small percentage of people? How can we make our voices heard?

I haven’t figured that one out, but I’ll try. This is completely unacceptable.

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I came across some interesting statistics on Bipolarchick.net. I, am a sucker for statistics, especially ones you can throw in people’s faces when they give you lip on how mental illness is a fabrication of a person’s mind, or how all these people want is attention.

nitwit: Man, mental health is a joke, Tom Cruise has it right.
me: really, so you’re telling me 1 in 5 people suffering from bipolar disorder kill themselves over a joke?

Childish maybe, but ultimately satisfying. You can check them out here, or scroll down to the pages section. Enjoy!

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