One aspect of bipolar disorder than never fails to scare me a little is how quickly life can begin to spin out of control when something is off. Maybe a medication needs tweaked. Maybe an extra stress or two have creeped into life. Or perhaps I'm just feeling off. Regardless, without care and without listening to the signals my body almost always gives me, life can quickly unravel and pretty soon I am in trouble.
Usually my sleep pattern is the first sign that all is not well. Suddenly I want to sleep all the time, or I can't sleep at all. I lay down and my mind races with thought after thought. Usually I get back up and journal, hoping that getting all those thoughts on paper will quiet the mind. Sometimes it works, or sometimes the extra time up allows for my sleepy-time meds to kick in. Other times nothing works and so I am up all night long. The good part of this is I often get a lot done. The bad part is when my husband gets up to go to work and I'm still up. He worries, I feel crazy, and we know something is off.
Other signs that I'm out of check is that I want to spend money like mad (and more than likely don't have any to spend), or I want to eat and eat and eat even though I am not really hungry and nothing really satisfies. I feel that large void back in my soul gaping as ever and nothing comes close to filling it satisfactorily.
This cycle occurs over and over and over again in my life. Sometimes I am able to acknowledge it and just live with it. What else can you do? But at other times I get so incredibly frustrated that despite my medical appointments, my cocktail of many medications and THOUSANDS of dollars spent on therapy, it all returns and it is every bit as difficult the 50th time as it was the first time around. And every bit as frightening.
I always have to wonder how far out of whack things will go. Will a couple of sleepless days and nights find me back in my usual patterns by the weekend? Or will one thing add to another and require me to call my doctor, frantically trying to keep on top of things? I never know. That not knowing eats at me.
I have never liked change. I've had more than my fair share of it, too. The constants in my life are the key people, places, events and whatever else that I cling to when my life ship starts taking on water. Those are the things that I focus on while I start to feel the pull of the water as it creeps higher on my body...first just puddling around my feet as I take note of those early warning signs. Later, threatening to overcome my entire being, smothering me. Constants are really important for me, and probably for many other bipolars.
Like with any other illness, all one can do is keep plugging away. Oh, how I hate that term sometimes. Sometimes I want to throw myself on the floor, kick my heels in a tantrum and demand that life be good to me. Or at least better to me. I get all crabby and I don't want to have to fight the fight anymore. I don't think I have the energy. But I do. It's the only viable option, really.
And life has been really good to me in so many ways. Let me not lose sight of that. Because those little perks here and there are like the sprinkles on a cupcake. On it's own, a good cupcake is enough in and of itself. But isn't it oh so much better with those colorful little sprinkles?
No comments:
Post a Comment