I am 25 years old,
I have been “Bipolar” for 30 days now however, I have been the
‘unpredictable’ one for over 13 years.
When I thought about sending this
memoir I wasn’t sure if it would be best to start with the “end”
(also known as the present) or the beginning (also known as
puberty). In the end I decided that I would start off with the 3rd
act, as I so lovingly refer to it.
It was February 17th
2003, I was sitting in my bedroom in Baltimore MD debating on
whether or not I wanted to go and Reshovel my car out of its parking
space in front of my apartment. It was 2 days after the biggest
snow storm since 1996 to hit the eastern seaboard and while I spent
7 hours the day before trying to locate my car underneath 8 feet of
snow, the snow plows had blocked it in again. So I put on my
sneakers and walked outside to see what I was in for, I decided that
if I just moved the car a little I could probably get it out without
having to shovel. I hit the alarm, climbed in slid the key into the
ignition and NOTHING. It seemed that the enormous amount of snow
that had been on the hood for 2 days drained the battery. Now
logically that would not have been a crisis, you get some jumper
cables and put some juice back into the darn thing and go about your
day right? No, that isn’t how things worked in my brain, it
immediately turned into the crisis of 2003, and I had NO IDEA how I
was going to get out of it.
Pretty quickly though Mrs. Logic
took back over and I made myself walk into the apartment and call
someone, but I stopped to get the mail on the way in. Bills were
never a good thing, and today mixed in with all those mean ole bills
was a notice from the District Court of Maryland informing me that I
had NOT paid my rent. Now logic was still there and I told myself
that I paid the rent and I would call them tomorrow and straighten
it all out, then walked into my apartment. Now I had fully intended
to call a friend to give me a jump, but by this time logic was being
overthrown by irrationality, and instead I decided to see exactly
how much my bills were.
Ok here’s the condensed version,
after I saw how much I owed in bills, and my car not starting and
getting a notice that I hadn’t paid the rent logic was a thing of
the past and I had made up my mind. I scoped out my medicine
cabinet found 80 or so pills that would do the trick; poured a glass
of tea and went to my bedroom. While I was on the phone convincing
my best friend that I was ok, I was swallowing these pills (took me
2 gulps flat). Of course that amount of pills takes about 2 and a
half minutes to take effect and soon I couldn’t hold the phone up
and was slurring, I told my friend I would call her back in 20
minutes and hung up and passed out. She got concerned when I didn’t
call her back, came to my apt and found me and called 911. I was
taken to the ER where I was “Certified” by the state of Maryland to
a mental hospital where I spent 6 days.
Now the funny thing is that I had
taken pills like this many times before, the first time when I was
12. See even that young I knew something was wrong with me I was
NEVER happy and to read my journals from that time period you would
not argue with me. But we were a military family and I am sure that
a lot of the depression was written off to our frequent moves and
new countries. I went through incredible suicidal lows until I was
about 17, and then I discovered drugs and alcohol. From then until I
was 20 that’s ALL I did, get high, get drunk and party. I know now
that this was apparently a very long manic episode, it all fits;
decreased need for sleep increased energy, feelings of invincibility
etc etc. When I look back it seems that as I got older I added more
elements to my mania, they also got longer; in fact at times they
were so long people just got “used” to them. I added men into the
picture – LOTS OF MEN - added more drugs harder drugs and started
spending money I had put away for bills. Of course I just KNEW that
money would be there when I needed it, so I had no worries. My
mania was never violent then it was always just FUN, tiring for
those around me but FUN, we would party drink get high whatever we
wanted to do. It was during these times that I was the most sexy,
the funniest the classiest the coolest person around. That was what
I saw anyway.
By the time I was 24 I had been with
over 70 men, done enough drugs to finance an entire Cuban cartel,
drank enough liquor to make up for all those in Utah that don’t
drink; spent a night in jail after I went postal on an ex boyfriend
of mine, got involved with and married a man who 2 weeks later went
to prison on King Pin charges; had 2 miscarriages. Attempted
suicide 2 more times, paid over 3K in speeding tickets (thanks to
that recklessness that comes with mania) gotten thrown out of 3
night clubs for fighting, and the list goes on.
At 25, now; I was hospitalized,
subsequently diagnosed and deemed unsafe to myself by an ENTIRE
state. As you can see I try and find some humor in this,
it’s still so foreign to me that I have to! Right now I am on
Lithium, Wellbutrin, and Risperidol but it’s still very early and I
am not able to see a difference yet.
I would like to say that I wrote
this in hopes that someone somewhere can learn from my experience
but that just isn’t the case, I wrote this to see my life or a
version of it on paper so that maybe I can get a better grip on
what’s going on. Regardless I hope that this was informative and
possibly humorous to whomever decided to read it.