Forget The Apocalypse! Lets Just Let Bipolars Run The Universe

I cant sleep. Nothing really new about that I go in cycles of insomnia quite often actually. Thing is I usually flip out of it in 3 or 4 days max. Well I haven't been sleeping more than 4 or 5 hours since like the 21st. When I go that long without sleep, well I take whatever I can get, even if that means like today sleeping from noon until 7pm when my parents decided it would be a nice, soothing and kind way to wake my up by turning the stereo system as high as it could go and having that startle me awake. And I was having a really nice dream too! Darn it!

Well, I need sleep there is no way around that. So for the past few days my doctor has given me the green light to go ahead and try various sleeping pills pretty much a new one every night until we find something that works. So far I'm on the 4th one. Well last nights didn't work so I was awake (after a short 2 hour nap) from 11 pm until 12 noon today. Then I FINALLY went to sleep on my own. Then was woken up (see above paragraph). Like anyone in my situation, I wasn't too crazy about this. Nah that's too kind, I hated it. I was and still am grumpy I needed sleep and they basically stole that away from me.

Any who I spend about an hour in my room waking up on my own terms and realize that its time for my new sleeping medicine. So I go downstairs and low and behold its nowhere to be seen. I ask my mom about it and she tells me shes hidden it. WAY TO GO MOM! Great parenting there ya know depriving your child of the medicine that she needs according to 2 licensed doctors and a licensed therapist. Yea my moms reasoning (word for word here people) Mom- " You don't NEED THEM!"

Me- "Umm I cant sleep and Dr. Re, Dr. M and Dr. Ru said I do because I cant sleep so can I please have my sleeping medicine?"

Mom- "You haven't been sleeping anyways so CLEARLY YOU DON'T NEED THEM!!!"

Me- "Umm well I kinda do you just said that I haven't been sleeping so maybe I should take a SLEEPING pill?"

Mom- "YOUR NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE THEM BECAUSE YOU CANT SLEEP!"

Me- " Oh because that TOTALLY MAKES SENSE! I mean I cant sleep so by golly lets just deprive me of the medicine that might help me sleep while were at it!"

Mom- "AND YOUR NOT ALLOWED TO NAP EITHER! ha ha ha"

Me- "Oohhh so I cant sleep tonight because your not giving me my medicine and I cant sleep tomorrow either?"

Mom- "Yep"

Me- "Because that makes SOOOOOOOOO much sense! Thanks Mom I don't know what I would do without you and your clearly superior logic skills."

Yea thanks for that mother parent of the year right there. Lucky for me my mom is short like 5 feet tall short so i find it and I go in the big lock box of medicines that we have (Oh you know the one everyone who's bipolar has one! Its the new thing to have! Ours is even fireproof!) find what I need and take them up to my room.

Well she starts making fun of me (yes because that's what all great moms do, find their child's weak spot and poke it with a sharpened spear) because I didn't do well in Chemistry class. I told her that I did great in my MEDICAL class, heck even got an 98 on the exam. Well apparently that's not relevant at all I mean the fact that I'm even going to a state level in HOSA (a health competition!) and I even know how much to adjust her lithium levels when she gets a new medicine and I babysit a diabetic kid and can calculate just how much insulin to give him. But nope I'm a failure because I didn't do well in honors chemistry.

Now my mom is in a chat room with a whole bunch of bipolar people who will inevitably tell her shes right and I'm wrong. Because I mean one crazy, irrational and Illogical person isn't enough lets just add about 14 more to the mix and see what SPECTACULAR ideas they come up with!

Yea, "Were all doomed" was the phrase I was thinking of too.

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I have a new theory. Anyone that knows me well knows that I am fabulous at coming up with insane, unrealistic, ridiculous theories on life, people, the world, well just about anything. I know they are insane, and well, that just makes it fun.

My new theory you might ask? Oh, well nothing too complicated just that my family is being secretly recorded and the footage is being made into a comedy show ( or possibly a horrible day time soap opera ) for another country.

I mean COME ON! Just look at all Ive got going on here in my life! (see previous post (which was edited to be much, much less morbid))

Why I will give you a conversation that took place not 5 minutes ago.

My mother, my brother and I are all in our car driving home from visiting my Grandfather. My brother is listening to music on his iPod and its kinda loud.

Mother: Please, can you turn the volume down?
Brother: Why?
Mother: BECAUSE I SAID TO YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING SMART A--!
Brother: WELL MAYBE I WILL JUST TURN IT UP LOUDER TO ANNOY YOU BOTH!!!
Mother: YEA THAT TOTALLY MAKES SENSE LETS JUST DRIVE KATHRYN INSANE WITH YOUR HORRID SATANIC MUSIC!
Brother : WELL SHES ALREADY CRAZY!
Mother: WELL YOUR KINDA RIGHT ABOUT THAT!
Brother: YEA I WISH SHE WOULD JUST GO DIE IN A HOLE!
At witch point they both start hurling insults at me and at one point my brother is threatening to hurt me. And I'm left there thinking to myself "What the firck just happened here?!?"

And eventually they both start threatening things at which point I, while still remaining calm, state that from a psychological and anthropological standpoint violence is what animals resort to when they cannot get their message heard and comprehended in the way they would like it to be. Humans only revert to violence when they fail at conversing first, get frustrated and THEN turn towards violence. Language is the reason that we don't go all caveman on one another, because we can speak and be heard.

Obviously this didn't help but I kinda blocked it all out after that point because It got me thinking that my family could make a great comedy show ( or daytime soap opera ) because really, when are you going to get such a diverse selection of people with such diverse intellect and scruples and cram them together in a car without a greater purpose?

So there must be hidden cameras around here somewhere to capture these moments in my life for the soul purpose of making a TV show for the German people. (But at least it will come with subtitles)

If one more person asks me how the hell im doing I think im going to finally snap

Lets just imagine for a minute what the world would be like if I wasn't here. I'm not sitting over here gloating, I'm just trying to get a good firm picture so that maybe I can justify suffering through the next year and a half until I leave this hell hole that is unfortunately my home. So for my depleting sanity can we please just come up with even 1 good reason why I should go through it anymore?
My brother threatens me and without notice or reason beat me up (Ive come close to several concussions), my mother hates me (and as a matter of face not 5 minutes ago just screamed it at me, along with the threats of calling the cops), my fathers cheating on my mom again and I seem the be the only one phased by it. School is falling apart. I haven't been able to sit through an entire class for weeks. My Grandaddy mistakes me for my 4 year old ASIAN cousin! My Grandaddy is going to die soon, like hospice soon. Ive been on a slippery slope with my religion. Yearbook is becoming more and more of a burden instead of a fun activity. I am a teenager who is running the financial aspect of a business. Who the hecks idea was it to give me 50,000 and give me no instructions on what the hell to do with it.
I'm sitting here, trying to think of maybe someone, any one's life Ive affected so that maybe I wont feel so worthless. I'm slipping back into what feels like my deep dark depression, I do nothing but cry, sleep and the only thing Ive eaten in days is grapefruit and tea. I cant be left alone anymore because I passed out from hyperventilating the other day.

Because, in all honesty, if this is what my life is, then why do I even try. Is it worth it? Has my 17 years here been any good to anyone?

My battery is running on empty and I don't know where to turn. So tonight I will forget my ideas of baking gingerbread, I will lay in bed, stair at the ceiling, and cry.

Can someone just wake me up when December ends?

Dark and Twisty

I cant take showers. Now don't get me wrong I bathe and all but it takes hours, days to mentally prepare myself and until now I had no idea why.

At first I had no idea why. For months now I have had no clue what-so-ever. But today in the 12 minutes it took me to take a shower, I realized why.

Its because its so quiet and so loud all at the same time. There is no noise other than the water splashing on the floor, my radio playing what ever top 20 song is on at the time, the sound of opening and closing the shampoo bottle and every once in a while something will fall and there is that noise. Its quiet, quiet beyond reason. And that leaves me with my thoughts.

The thoughts that play out scenarios of what if I was adopted into another family, the thoughts of how, maybe, just maybe my family isn't all messed up, the fear of slipping back into my depression or my eating disorder or dieing and wondering if anyone would notice, the thoughts of my grandfather, the only positive role model Ive had my whole life, slowly dieing in front of my eyes, the thought of my uncle coming to take my grandfather from me and move him 1/2 way across the country so far that its a different time zone, and so so much more. Things that are so horrible that I cant speak of, type, or even think of. Things so horrible that my mind has blocked them out of my conscious and subconscious mind.

Now anywhere else there are people. Now they may not be in eyesight or even hearing range, but they are there and I feel their presence. I feel when someone is sad, happy, angry, and all those other, better, adjectives that people feel. It makes me feel less alone in this big scary world. Even when I'm home alone there are the neighbors, I talk about things just to break the silence, I turn on the TV, all so I have something to think about.

But in the shower there are not any of those things, its just me and my thoughts for 12 straight minutes. And being alone with my thoughts is a scary, scary thing.

My thoughts are dark and twisty. My life seems to be headed in a dark and twisty path; so maybe, just maybe, I'm dark and twisty too.

I apologize in advance for some foul language.

December 17 is coming up.

There are many feelings I have about this date. Lets start out with the least important, I have 44 DPS due on the yearbook then and I'm personally responsible for quite a few of those so its stressful. However that's the least important one.

See December 17, 2007 was the day my mother and I answered the door to see a large military officer (huge man prob 6'4 and 300 lbs or so but it was all muscle. We'll call him Rob) and looked at us and asked if my fathers name was Pat. I asked why he needed to know and my mother stepped in. For the next 20 minutes or so my mother talked to this man while I stood, shocked, at all of these things he was accusing my father of. At one point I just collapsed. Rob was saying what my mother had been suspecting. My father was having an affair with Rob's little sister.

Rob's little sister knew that my father had a wife, 2 children and she had 2 children of her own( although much, much younger ). My father was also doing drugs, drinking, and was trying to start fights with Rob.

When my father got home the next day, after lots and lots of yelling, he came up to me and my little brother and attempted an apology. I remember it like it was yesterday. It went like this " I'm sorry that I had to resort to seeing that woman, BUT if YOU TWO weren't bickering all the time and stressing me out then I wouldn't of gone to see her." My brother accepted that 'apology' ( I use the term loosely) but I didn't. I knew better. I stormed out of the room and told him that if he wanted to sleep with a whore than that's on him, but there is no way in hell this is MY fault!

He hasn't spoken to me about it since.

But what really prompted this post (besides the date getting closer and closer) was just now when my brother told me that my dad has been drinking (and not like casual drinking, like getting drunk 3 or 4 times a week) because of me. Hes my father, I will give him that. But he thinks hes 20 and hes going to be 52 this month. He cannot take responsibility for his actions. I know all of these things because he thinks out loud without knowing. So he will say something simple to me like go wash the dishes and i will tell him to give me 5 minutes and i will go, but he turns around and within ear shot I can hear him insulting me, saying how I will never make it in the world on my own, how I'm a slob, how I'm just this overall bitch and how he cant wait a year until I go off to collage. And I'm not gonna sugar coat it, not this one. Things are bad in my house and I have been sugar coating them, but not with this one.

It is said that school aged girls in America only speak an average of 20 minutes with their fathers per day. I would be lucky to get that in 2.5 weeks. We don't talk. I hide from him and from the rest of my family. I cant talk to them. If I do, bad things happen. Violent things happen. So I go into my room, and pray to the good Lord that no one gets hurt today in a physical or emotional way.

I live in a dysfunctional family in every aspect of the term. This week alone I have talked to Dr. R 3 times and there is a good chance that I may be paging her again tomorrow, who knows.

In my house ( I would say family but see were more like room mates that happen to share DNA ) your either hugged or slugged and no one can predict it.

So i lay in bed repeating to myself
I am not what caused him to cheat or drink
I am not what caused him to cheat or drink
I am not what caused him to cheat or drink
I am not what caused him to cheat or drink
I am not what caused him to cheat or drink
I am not what caused him to cheat or drink

And maybe, just maybe I can convince myself of that

I'm just tired of it all

I'm tired.

Tired of this stupid illness, tired of being the punching bag in this family, tired of being flat out punched, tired of having teachers talk about me behind my back and share my medical history ( or what little they know of it ), tired of having parents that don't care, tired of coming to school sobbing, tired of fearing that a teacher is going to call child protective services... again, tired of having to call my therapist, tired of having to miss class because of panic or some other reason, tired of people saying they understand what I'm going through, tired of sleeping, tired of not being able to sleep, tired of crying, tired of having to plaster on a smile all day when all i want to do is curl up in a ball and cry my eyes out, tired of telling people I'm ok when everyone knows I'm falling apart, tired of the changes, tired of living here, tired of having to hide in my room so i don't get hurt, tired of having to take on the mother responsibilities in my family, tired of having to sort out pills and make sure everyone takes what they need to, tired of making sure the lights are turned off and the doors are locked before I go to sleep, tired of this freaking heater not working, tired of being sick, tired of having a grandfather who is going to die soon, tired of having to help my mom deal with her emotions regarding my grandfather, tired of having to play into his delusions to calm him down, tired of pain, tired of sorrow, and tired of being tired.

I'm just tired and I don't know how much longer I can take it.

Does anyone really know? I sure as heck dont.

So I had an IEP meeting about 2 weeks ago. Not many people have IEP meetings so I shall explain what exactly it is. IEP ( or Individualized Education Plan ) meetings are basically all of your teachers your case manager who is appointed by the school or school district (usually a special ED teacher) your parent and you sit in a room and talk about how to help you do the best you can in school. Sounds nice, group of people who just want to help you. Ehhhh not so much.

So lets do a little math equation here shall we?
bipolar mother who hasn't spoken to you in days + teacher who you really do think of as your own mother + math teacher who has depression and anxiety + science teacher who quite possibly could be a Russian spy (its a theory I have) + case manager who is trying to say she understands exactly what you are going through + history teacher who clearly doesn't want to be there + extremely anxious student who is sobbing and being asked 40 million questions at once while going through withdrawal from her medicines= well you can prob get the picture, it ended up being not so fun.

So then I couldn't say much. But now I feel compelled to go on a rant and yell at my computer and scream to the Internet world what I wanted to scream to those people back then.

Really? You understand what I'm going through? Really ? You know what its like to have to prepare 6 months in advance for a day trip you are taking with your HOSA club to a competition? You lay awake at night day after day after day listening to your mind go in loop non stop wondering what bad thing will happen next and think of ways for you to prepare for it? You are afraid to go to bed at night because you know that you wont be able to sleep more than 3 hours before you are startled awake by something in a dream you had, that caused your mind to have a panic attack? You wake up most mornings and just know its going to be a bad day because you have this feeling in your gut that you will in fact be having a panic attack today its just a matter of how much energy you want to use fighting it? You know what its like to only be able to feel 100% safe in 1 place in the entire world, and that be a classroom ? You know what its like to not be able to trust your own therapist to the point that you cant share everything that is causing your PTSD in shear terror of what she will do with that information? You know what its like to have to mentally prepare yourself for 3 hours to take a shower? You know what its like to not be able to go to church for months at a time and even when you go you have to sit in the pantry because that's the only place people wont see you? You know what its like to have a mother, or anyone for that matter, say they understand ? Because NO ONE understands!

No one. Not your mother, not your father, not your crazy possible spy teacher who wont let you out of class when you panic so you are forced to panic in the middle of class, not your class mates who stare at you like you are some diseased puppy, not your friends who you tell all of this to and they cant even come up with a response ( not that you expected them to ), not your own doctors ( YES that is plural! ), Not your pharmacist who knows you your mother your brother and your grandfather by name who gives you speeches on how these medicines you are taking will kill you if you do the stupid stuff teenagers do like drink or smoke or any of that crap, and not even you. Not that you are stupid enough to drink or do drugs. I mean gosh the benzos already cause your pupils to dilate so much that your own peers come and ask you what drugs your taking because even the stupid high school students can tell its no where near natural to look like that.

Do you know what its like to not understand whats going on with your own body? Your own mind? Do you know what its like to be laying in bed typing and still have panic to the point where you have to keep stopping to take a deep breath because you are not sure you can go on much longer? Do you know what its like to have missed full units in a class because, despite the fact you were at school that day, you had to be in another room panicking and talking to your therapist through the lessons.

Little things become huge things. I was able to complete a trip to Old Navy last weekend. I haven't been able to do a simple task like shopping for a pair of pants in months. I haven't been to a movie since Ice Age 2, I don't even feel safe in my own house even with CPI security!

So really? With all do respect do you really have a freaking idea what its really like? Because if you do, and have any tips, please tell because I'm hanging on by a piece of thread over here.

Submission unto God isnt as easy as it sounds ( and it sounds pretty hard to begin with! )

Waiting is hard. Waiting to meet someone. Waiting to move out. Waiting to fall head over heels in love, get married and have kids. Waiting for my kids and my husband and live in the house I'm designing and be a nurse on the weekends and stay at home with my kids during the week and greet my husband when he gets home from work and all of that. And yea it will be totally worth the wait I have no doubts but gosh darn it I don't wanna wait.

But I don't want to be a teen mom and I don't want to be married now and I don't want any of that because I know the statistics. Rationally I know the marriage will fail and I will be alone ( I mean who would really want to marry a single nurse with a preteen child? Honestly, I wouldn't blame anyone from running the other way and screaming) and have a baby to raise by myself and one day I will have to stand in front of God and explain my actions and I don't know what I would say I mean like " Sorry buddy but your whole 'plan' wasn't working out too well so I took matters into my own hands" Somehow I have a feeling that wouldn't go over too well. And I don't know I just have doubts. I want NOTHING else in the entire world than to be a mother. I mean since I was 2 I have wanted to be a doctor, actually a neonatologist and and world renown fetal surgeon. Have pregnant mothers-to-be lining up just to talk to me and coming to me as a last resort so I can help them and hopefully I would know how. But I wanted that however I gave all of that up because I wouldn't get to spend time with my kids And I mean I'm a teenager and Ive already given up so much so that one day my kids will have the childhood that I never had and will never have. I can accept that my chance came and went for days of running around care free pretending your a dinosaur or a princess, coloring the sky brown and the trees purple, sitting in a sandbox making a village and pretending I'm the queen, all of that; but my kids still have those days to come and I want nothing more than to have them and watch them play and use those smart brains God will give them (Lord willing). But that's exactly it. Lord willing. He knows that I want this more than anything else in the world Ive given up my life's dream career Ive settled and yes a neonatal NP will be a marvelous job but its not what I dreamed of. My dreams have changed for kids that God may never even allow me to have; and that bothers me.

I see my 30 something year old math teacher with this emptiness in her eyes and I know from talking to her and from just my hearts feeling's when I look her in the eyes that she wanted kids. The 'American Dream' the suburban little house with the family of four a boy and a girl and the gossip that the mothers have and the neighbor that makes everyone crazy and all of these little things people take for granted. But I look at her and know she was here in my shoes. Right here. One of those little "Elvis stood here and picked a daisy" annoying signs is sticking out of the ground in front of me. She was(and possibly still is) praying for a family, planning for one and God didn't have it in His plan for her. I don't know what she sacrificed for those kids. She wants and she could still have them, but well I don't know. Just what if Gods plan ( the big picture here, not like if I have enough spare money to go to a movie or something insignificant like that) isn't the big plan I want. There is no negotiating with Him, its His way or well, no. That's just it its His way and no other way and I love God and don't get me wrong I do love Him more than anything and I am thankful for everything I have and the life I have been so graciously been given but still, some days I just wonder if my family of 6 will ever exist. I want my babies! I want all of them! I want my baby girls. Isabelle Temperance Bree, Meredith Lynn Juliette, Addison Lucy Lita, and my baby boy Jacques Richard. Jacques will have a 2nd middle name as well but that's where I left room for my husband's input on a name. I don't have them now and I long for them I long for a child, but not now.

But still. What if God doesn't want me to be a wife or a mom? What then? That's the hardest part. Trusting that God knows and hears my needs and wants and will provide. Trusting my entire life in the hands of someone that I have prayed to, begged and pleaded for things to, cried in tears of thankfulness for those wonderful things in my life that I do have.

There is no doubt in my mind that God will provide for me in the best way ever imaginable, but submission is a hard thing to do. So I will put one foot in front of the other and trust that God will give me what I need. Because that's all I can really do. That's all any of us can really do.

Trust: Its a delicate thing

So last April I had some tests done and the report came. It was sent to my mother only because I am a minor. I saw it lying on the kitchen counter one day and read it even though my mother and therapist advised me not to. OK, sure I was in the wrong I will admit that and I apologized for my wrongdoings. But this brought up something Ive been thinking a lot about latley; Trust.

Trust. A 5 letter word meaning take all my deepest secrets, fears, desires, hopes and dreams; grind them into a hamburger and devour it. How do you know if you can truly, deeply, 100% trust a person? Some people have the whole " I will trust you until you prove me wrong" attitude while others view it as " I have no reason to trust you so prove it to me and then I will trust you". But really, what is trust? Honestly, does anyone really know?

We all need to be able to trust a person, at least one single person in this entire world of billions of people. But how do we find those we can trust and better yet, how do we deal with it when someone betrays our trust?

Do we choose to ignore it and hope it goes away or do we face it head on, battle axes raised screaming at the top of our lungs in hopes that we will feel better later? Do we bottle it up until it explodes or do we do something productive and hope we can make ourselves feel better afterwords? There are so many ways to deal with it, but what is the right one?

Trust is a delicate thing. Any and all relationships are biased on trust. From a baby trusting they will be fed, to a girl trusting that her heart wont be broken by a boy, to even a pet trusting that when you hold them you wont hurt them. Its a beautiful bond that not only is an unspoken and universal but also a bond between two beings that truly holds humanity together. Once it was said that "All you need is love" and I honestly think that is not true, however, all you need is trust.

But what happens when someone betrays our trust? We have all had to suffer through it; learn from the pain and hope, pray and guard our hearts a little more securely, build walls around ourselves in hopes that we can avoid that feeling of betrayal. And finally find someone new to trust.

We build walls, not to see others struggle to gain our affection, but to protect ourselves from that feeling that no one on earth ever wants to feel. Pain.

its 3 am do YOU know where your children are ?

So ya know how bipolar is also commonly called Manic Depression (because those are the 2 most common, and extreme, states) well someone should rename it to WHY-ARE-MY-FAMILY-MEMBERS-STILL-FREAKING-AWAKE-AND-SCREAMING-AT-EACH-OTHER-AT-3-FREAKING-AM syndrome.

Yes because that is my life. The ONLY time everyone is asleep in my house is between the hours of 4-4:30 am. On a good day, everyone is dead to the world then.

Here's our sleeping schedule
Dad 8pm-6am (that lucky little bast... (no, only use nice words) ...duck )
Brother 3am-5 or 6am
Mom on a good day 4am-4:30 or 5am
Me whenever I get the chance, heck last night I finally got to sleep at 7:30 am

As you can see, its like living with a newborn baby. Oh plus the fact that we have enough sleeping pills in this house to knock out a herd or elephants. But does anyone use them OF COURSE NOT!!!!!

Bipolar people are notorious for being able to function on 2 or less hours of sleep and not being sleep deprived even though they can continue this pattern for months at a time. Why my mother informed me the other day that she only gets 20 minutes of REM sleep a night and hasn't had a dream in over 3 years. (how that woman hasn't died from exhaustion, don't ask me, I guess its just another mystical gift of the disease)

So lets recap here its now almost 3am, my mother isn't home, my father has been out cold for hours and what is my brother doing? Why watching Jerry Springer of course! I mean WHAT ELSE DO PEOPLE DO AT 3 AM? SLEEP? PSHHHH SLEEP IS FOR WIMPS!

Isn't my 'normal' routine pleasant ?

Drive with Caution

So I mentioned briefly that my meds have been changed. Its not usually a big thing but this time one of my benzos is being taken away, it was a fairly low dose and its been replaced with another one and yea Ive been through med with drawl like 25 times in my life. Even been through the worst one to get off of, effexor... ughhhh. So I had to just cut this one ( adivan ) cold turkey and it takes a little while for me to notice so its been 24 hours and ive already had a few doses of the new one tranxene. Ive heard its a good med but all it makes me do is sleep. No joke I have never fallen asleep in class before but today I fell asleep in each and every single class I had, and for lunch I sat in a chair, curled up in a ball, covered myself with my jacket and slept for 40 minutes until my next class. I wanted to be awake more than anything but I have to wait this med out a week before my psych md will change anything.

Either way I thought that I should tell a few of my teachers whats going on so they don't think I'm just slacking off or anything, I mean I have a medical reason I mean heck its written on the side of the bottle to be warned of this ( safety while driving heavy machinery) so I told my 1st pd teacher this and she shrugged at me and said that she didn't care what was happening as long as I did my work. Real compassion in that one Hun? I didn't want to tell my next 2 teachers in anticipation of the same response, however when i told her she didn't give the apathetic response I had been getting but she truly cared. See she has been struggling with depression ( as am I ) for several years and she is the sweetest outspoken loud perky person i have ever met and honestly it was mind boggling to hear her say that she was suffering with it. I love that woman, shes a fantastic teacher and now I feel like I have someone who actually gets it. Someone who may of had the worst night in history but still drags themselves out of bed, gets dressed pops their daily pills and drags themselves out the door. All the car ride putting their cement smile on for the day and telling themselves that no matter how you feel you will laugh and be goofy and have fun today and then as soon as you go home you can lay in bed all afternoon and fall asleep and repeat the whole thing again and again and again and again. Someone who will be there for me ( now dint get me wrong I have my best friend who truly understands this and helps me out at moment's notice ) But finally someone who knows first hand what its like.

Therapists may try to understand but its one thing to study a behavior and read about it in a book and a completely different thing to have to deal with it on a every day basis.

Prayers PLUUHHHHEEASSSSSSS!!!!

My 4 year old cousin has H1N1 which is horrible on its own but she ALSO has Shingles ( a form of chickenpox ) At the rate she is going she is going straight to the hospital. Do not pass go do not collect 200 dollars. She tends to spike extremley high fevers so with all of this she could end up with a 104 fever easily. She cant keep anything down including water so that just screams "GIVE ME AN IV!!!" She is the only cousin I have and she is such a wonderful, spirited child who loves everyone she meets. Camille and I are so close we dont even say " oh hey theres cousun Camille" its more of " hey look its my sister Kathryn" I pray she is better before halloween because she was looking forward to that so much she is going as a queen her mom is a witch and i dont know what my uncle is going as


At her age with her fever and her previous health conditions, I ask all of you praying folks to drop to your knees in prayer for her. If you dont do praying, could you atleast hope the best or give kind thoughts to her?


Thank you all!
<3 Kathryn

I Passed!!

So today was my day to go to the psych MD and see how my medicines are going. Were making a few changes on mine just to lessen anxiety. Out of the 3 major anxiety disorders, I guess Im just lucky because I have them all! YAY! no, not really. What really bothered me was when my Dr and I were talking about my anxiety attacks and he turned to me and said something similar to " its ONLY adrenaline..." Now that bothered me. It made me feel like he doesn't care or understand. It was an extremely insensitive thing to say and I don't think he realizes how much that bothered me and I know that he didn't mean to hurt me but still. Just because he didn't mean it, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

But onto good news. Because I have a long family history of bipolar and i live in bipolar land there is an insane risk that I will develop bipolar disorder one day. So about 4 times a year I have to go in and answer what seems to be 30 billion questions and talk about random things ( today we talked about school lunches ) and then, almost magically, he tells me that I don't have a mood disorder. Its always a relief when he says it because the last thing in the world I want is to be bipolar.


But that's a different story for a different time... For now im just extatic that I dont have it !

Bipolar examples

So I would like to talk today about genuine bipolar actions. Actions where it is 100% the disease talking in to you via your bipolar loved one. I came up with this idea for a post about 30 minutes ago when My mom, brother and I went to the store. I had no intentions of going to the store but by golly a 11 pm trip with the two of them and my mom in her current state? Man, I couldn't pass that up ! So there was some arguing talking in the car going there about how these pills my brother is on have a side effect of making him eat uncontrollably. Apparently his body feels like its starving all the time no matter what he eats, so he just eats and eats and eats ( add in the fact that he is a 13 year old boy too... that doesn't help ) Sure it gets bothersome, annoying, aggravating to have to live with someone who is like that but i get over it. Sure he just drank all of the milk and i wanted a glass before bed but cant now, or sure i just made 500 cookies and he ate them all without asking, etc. Yea I can brush off those little things. However the fair is here. My favorite thing in the world is available for only 2 weeks a year and I got some ! Yay I finally can eat my maple syrup cotton candy, maple syrup candies and my maple syrup lolly pop!!!

And gluttonous boy decided to chow down on all of it... not so yay anymore

Back to my original story though. So we were talking about that in the car going to the grocery store to get some milk and whatever my mother picks up and puts into the cart, chances being that we don't need it but what ever. Tonight it was only a box or 2 of nilla wafers. Considering the things we've walked out of the store with in the past, tonight was a good night.

So while they are in the store I decide to move to where my brother was sitting so I could see better. Anxiety + history of being in a robbery + night time darkness = no good

Then they came back unloaded the bags of groceries ( remember, we had only needed milk) and my mom got in the car, looked at where I was sitting and started screaming at me. It went something like this " YOU LITTLE BITCH YOU NEED TO GET YOUR BIG A-- OUT OF THAT GOD D--N SEAT WHY DINT YOU JUST GO BURN IN HELL?!?!?! " Now if I went up to a stranger and told them that my mother had just told me that, well child protective services might be called. However they are missing the 1 key point. My mother is Bipolar. My mother says mean, hurtful, flat out ugly things to me. But its not her saying them; Its her disease.

So I cant argue with her ( I have in the past and boy was it ugly, but that's another story) because I wouldn't be arguing with my nice, sweet, loving, protective mother, I would be hollering at her disease. The horrible disease that leaves me at stores and doesn't come back to pick me up, that pulls my hair and tells me that I fail at life, that had me convinced that nothing was wrong when I was younger despite the fact that I was being beaten. The disease that lurks within my mother just waiting until it can takeover her mind body and spirit and hurt those loved ones that happen to be around at that time.

So I sit there. I calmly ask her if I can remain sitting here because I believe that is a rational request. So my mom asks me if I have taken my sleeping pill yet, I respond yes. She looks at me and says that no I cannot sit there because the car wont move until I'm either out of the car or in another seat. She then informs me that she has all the time in the world but I will start to nod off soon and when I do she will drive somewhere and get my sleeping body out of the car and leave me there and drive off. I calmly remind her that doing that would be child abandonment and it is highly illegal. Oh, she didn't realize that. Forget that plan, she will just roll down the windows in the car so we can all freeze, unless I move. I ask her nicely if she would mind rolling them back up because it is 40 degrees outside and I am getting chilly. But of course, she doesn't. Finally after about 20 minutes of sitting in a parking lot in the middle of the night I turn and ask my brother what his opinion on all of this is. He said that he would love his seat back but its not a big deal to him. Since he and I were both freezing and we knew that the only way for us to go home was for us to switch seats, we did and we finally got to go home.

Yay! We were finally leaving! After a long 3 minute car ride I get out and go into the house and walk away from them. I will spare you from having to hear about the conversations in the car coming back but I walked away and I apparently have a borderline personality disorder wonderfully diagnosed by my mother, a writer.

But Kathryn? Wait! Inform us please!
Has she studied psych ? no.
Has she tried to diagnose you with things before? yes.
Does she have any idea what she is doing? nopee
Do your doctors think she is wrong 100% of the time? yeppers
Does anyone actually take her seriously? that's a big negative there buddy

Either way tonight was a good night. Sure we almost froze to death and I almost got abandoned in a parking lot. But despite all of that it was a good night. No one was hurt! And for us, that is a huge step!

See things like tonight could of been taken in the opposite direction, I was lucky to of recognized that I wasn't talking to my mother but her disease. If that hadn't happened my brother and I would of probably ended up beaten and abandoned somewhere. Or something like that.

Point is, there are people these days that say they are bipolar but have never been confirmed by a Dr as such, and there are those people who look it up on Web MD and say " BY GOLLY I FIT THOSE 4 SYMPTOMS I MUST BE BIPOLAR TOO!!!" But what those people are missing are when the bipolar monster takes over and controls the loved one.

Ha ha on a side note here I have been watching this amazing show Fringe. Its kinda si-fi so that may of come through in this post. lol whoops!

Testing 1 2 3

Hi! I'm Kathryn and in all honesty I really have no idea what I'm doing seeing as Ive never blogged before, but life is a learning process so I figured that I would give this a shot.

I live in what I refer to as bipolar-land. Bipolar is now a widely known mental disease that is often compared to a roller coaster ride. There are several types of bipolar and no one has any idea why some people get it and others don't or why some people display it in certain ways and others seem to live a 'normal' life and no one would ever guess they have any problems.

I live in my small family of four where 50% of us are bipolar. My mother and my younger brother are both suffering from Type 2 Rapid Cycling bipolar. And unless you are someone who is super familiar with the disease then this probably doesn't mean much to you so let me try and explain. Bipolar ii people are typically aware that something is wrong with them although when they are going through a manic phase or depressed phase (or one of the many other phases) sometimes they are don't see their behavior as abnormal. However others who know the individual well may see the behaviors as out of the ordinary. Bipolar ii people are typically hospitalized at one point or another in their lifetime. They are also typically medicine dependant. Now the rapid cycling part is a totally different thing. A cycle refers to the entire circle of phases that take place before they repeat. So for instance in my family the typical cycle is: hypomanic, manic, mixed episode, apathetic, full blown depression, and finally normal then it all repeats. Now in order to be classified as 'rapid cycling' one must go through at least 4 cycles in a 12 month period. In my family people cycle about every month so its a tad extreme but not unheard of. Now some people only cycle once in their lifetime and some cycle more than that it all varies from person to person.

No one really knows why people get this disease or why all of the sudden some medicines stop working or why the typical medicine, lithium, seems to help so much. I would of never thought that taking a little pill made of a metal would do anything productive. But heck it helps them so I don't complain.

But this is more for the people who deal with bipolar people. Its one thing to be bipolar and I would be 100% wrong if i said that I understood even a little bit of what its like to be bipolar. But I do understand what its like to live in a home where you never know what its going to be like when you open the front door. Where its not abnormal to have conversations about your family members with their psychologist. (or the fact that you actually have a family psychologist) Where you know that when they scream that they wish you would just go die, its not them, its the disease. Where sometimes it gets violent in the house and its not abnormal to have knives pulled on people.

But its life, its my life and its crazy ( literary ha ha) and no its not the typical family life but ya know? It has its good days and those good days are are what keep me going.