Tiptoe through those tulips
It’s a tricky task, becoming a teacher when one has serious mental health disorders. There’s a struggle to self-regulate, to self-censor, to “pass.” These struggles consume an immense amount of energy.
The positive aspect is that I have empathy and respect and life experience to help my students, especially those with social emotional disabilities and mental health disorders of their own. Some of my colleagues may find my style too lenient, but I take a quiet, measured approach with all my students. That’s just me. I give to them what I cannot give to myself.
It’s tricky to look a parent of a struggling kid in the eye and NOT say, “Ya know what? I get it. I got a similar thing going on. We’re gonna get through this together.” I can say most of it, but not all of it.
Few people want their children, especially their most vulnerable kids, educated by a certified crazy person. But, we’re here.
These crazy kids turn into crazy adults and they do jobs like teach, and build, and hairdressing, and engineer, and doctoring. They are lawyers and librarians and vet techs and bus drivers.
People say “We have so many kids in special ed these days. It never used to be this way.” True. Real disability screening in schools didn’t become widespread until well after Gen Y. Many millenials didn’t even get screened.
Yet here we all are, trying to make it.
With a quiet, measured approach, and extra spoons in our bags, just in case someone needs a spare.
Known vs not
Share your story here. Ha.
It’s awful not to know who or what or how to trust.
It’s awful not to know if or when or how to believe.
It’s awful to not know what’s real and what isn’t.
Bipolar disorder is hateful and I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.
It’s not cute. It’s not “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”
It’s not “ermahgerd I found myself lol.” “Haha lookit me, i’m bipolar and demiromantic and semibisexual.” No, honey, you’re just lacking in hobbies and overdosing on prefixes. Press 7 in the elevator.
It’s severe paranoia. It’s everyone faking being nice to you. It’s not being good enough. It’s knowing you’re never going to be fixed.
It’s never knowing, after you’ve shared your diagnosis, if the one you’re talking to is genuine. It’s assuming everyone is 2nd guessing you. It’s assuming everyone is underestimating you.
It’s never knowing what is the right thing to do. It’s never knowing the feeling of certainty.
It’s never knowing if anyone will see it or care. 7 billion of us. Most of us aren’t worth remembering.
How long can I make this work?
The fun(ny) thing about mental illness or mental health disorders is the occasional absence of symptoms. Holy shit, is this how normal people feel? THiS is amazing!
After a couple months of wicked inconsistency (SUPER HIIIIGGGHHHH, andnalso, murderous rages), I’ve strung together almost a week of good days, i.e., no paranoia, no meltdowns. I am wondering how long this will last, and how can I make it last longer? I will never be cured of bipolar disorder, but am I really in a state of remission? Is this real life?
Or is this the mythical “hypomania” state that I’ve heard so much about? Where you’re not depressed, and also not manic?
Yay, and also oh shit! Does this mean the inevitable swing one way or the other is coming, and coming hard?
Ironically, i’m sick as a dog physically, but I don’t care that much because my mind feels clear.
It never feels clear. This is so WEIRD.
I like it, but man… so… weird.
Twitches
Small twitches
Turn to itches
Turn to welts
And hives
And burns
Sometimes thoughts
Small wonders
Suspicions
Turn to whispers
Lashes felt
Make sure
You get caught up
With Lucy in Paris, the octuple threat
With boobs and sports
Who gives you life and hype
Who promised to leave but with her number intact
And then didn’t
With whoever and whatever in Game of Thrones universe
In Marvel Universe
In DC Universe
I’ll be here
In the real universe trying to make sense of it all
You saw the others but not us
Who’s real, and who’s pretend?
Oh hi
Paranoia
You weren’t invited to this party
Yes of course
You’re here. As am I.
When
You don’t know.
You do know.
But you can’t know for sure.
You don’t want to make assumptions. But you kinda been down this road a hundred times.
You don’t know. But you do.
But you hold onto the idea that you might not know. You hope. You pray to nongods and reality, “Please let this be. Please let this be what I hope it will be.”
You hope. You fear. But you hope.
Just Shapes and Beats and Mania and Heaps…
…of work. So much work. Work that needs to be done and work that I create for myself and of course I don’t need to reinvent the wheel but why wouldn’t I? Because WORKITY WORK TIME.
I’ve been in a manic phase for over a year now, and medicated for barely a month. The paranoia and anger and aggression are the hardest symptoms to manage because they actively derail the one adult relationship that I can depend on not to judge my mental disorder.
I wake up high as a kite: I’m going to make tools and sew and knit and read and write and clean my house! I’m going to be the perfect parent! I’ll be TWO perfect parents! And I’ll be 2 sets of perfect grandparents too! I’ll be a perfect partner and I’ll make them laugh and cry happy tears and want to hug me into oblivion!
I can be rolling along just fine.
Then it all goes to hell in a FRACTION of a second. I see one statement on social media, and it throws me into Murder Mode. Murder Mode is paranoia and hatefulness and self-indulgence and selfishness and toddler tantrum territory. It’s “What about meeeeeee?!” in the most grating voice imaginable. I feel it coming on and I consider suicide most often when I feel out of control of that voice.
It’s really difficult to manage my behaviors, in particular, my reactionary behaviors. I want to be able to freely emote, I want to be able to turn myself inside out, I want to be able to do this without judgment. But I can’t.
I turn off the internet. I give myself space. I try to forget about whatever set me off. I find things to do. Still… it sits and festers like a blister in the sun. Why can’t I let things go? The more I try to forget, the more I tell myself I’m being ridiculous, the louder that monster clangs until I explode and take out whoever is in the immediate area.
What I need is a brain that allows my monster to cry it out. Be sad, be mad, be jealous. My monster always, eventually, runs out of steam. I count on that. But only after I let it out. That’s what brain monsters do. They’re assholes.
As my doctor adjusts my medication, my disorder seems to fight back. I not only have bipolar 2 and PTSD, I have PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder), which is longhand for saying I make Mommy Dearest look like The Flying Nun every 2 weeks. At the tender age of 44, I can’t take hormonal medication due to the risk of stroke. So I continue to ride through reverse puberty in the backseat with the equivalent of Sybil’s mother and Annie Wilkes up front, waiting to either tuck n’roll on a hard turn, or drive off the cliff with them.
This is exhausting. I work full time as a Special Ed teacher in a substantially separate classroom for K-2 kids with autism and social-emotional disorders. I work part time for my town’s rec dept at the after-school program. I make custom weighted blankets and other anxiety-related therapy tools. I’m taking my CAGS. I parent a tween and a teen.
I’m doing everything I can. I don’t have three breaths in a row that aren’t spoken for by some entity, an employer or a client or an offspring. If you need me, I’ll be hunkered down on the floorboards of the backseat counting backwards from 100.
Swirling
The whirling dervish in my ears has beat me pound for pound.
I turned my insides out and cut the ropes that bound.
Dropped the car, picked up the book, the pencil, and the doubt
Can’t save me but who can I catch before I see myself out?
Tornados never cease to scoop and fling and shatter
they doesn’t care who’s in the way, gravity’s no matter
There’s none inside my head at least just catch whatever lands
closest to my hands and hope I mend it in my trance.
I can’t remember rational or natural or remainders
They just remind me of the every present warming danger
The brownies and the signatures and high fives of supervisors
I lasso this tornado and I’m hoping for survivors.
If I shatter too please know I tried to mend it all
the milligrams and double dosage couldn’t break the fall.
Incendiary Kitty 