I give up

I give up. There's no hope for me. There never will be because of this fucking bipolar. Unless and until they find a cure for it, I'm screwed. I'll never be able to start fresh. The bipolar will just continue to hunt me down and kill me. :(

A new me for 2007

I was reading a post on Suicide Forum and it rocked me to the core. It really got me thinking about where I wanted my life to go from here. A man who is wise beyond his 20 years said something that's elegantly simple, yet so many people never think of it. Or think they can't do it.

But you know, what I've learned in CBT is that you really do have control over how you think and feel. And his post spoke to me. The gist of it is using the New Year to start fresh. Figure out what you don't like about yourself and change it. I responded to his post (if you read down, I'm bipolarkitty).

I hope all of you will read his post and the responses. Some of the responders are able to see the possibility of change, but sadly others are in so much pain that they think either it won't work or it's too late for them. I hope that all of you who read it are able to see the possibility.

I, for one, am giving it a shot. I'm committed to making true and lasting change in my life.

I'll let you all know how it goes. :)

Only a question of when and how

My therapist confirmed that I'm having a mixed episode right now. Problem is, with the exception of August, I've been mixed since April of this year. That's 8 very long months of sheer agony. I've had enough.

I don't know why this is happening. I never had a mixed episode before this year. I was always either up or down or fine. But it seems my illness has taken a turn in how it manifests itself, and it's left me reeling.

I feel like I'm going backward. I used to be so good at knowing exactly how I felt. But now it's very hard to define how I feel. The lines between emotions are so blurry. I'm reduced to either I feel "good" or "bad". There's so much more underneath, I just can't form it into words. If I feel bad and I'm asked what does bad mean or what am I thinking about, all I can hear is screaming in my head. No thought, no reason - only screams of anger and pain and fear.

And here I thought I couldn't go any crazier.

My therapist asked me Thursday if I was going to be safe when I left his office. I didn't want to answer him because I knew what my answer was. It was no. But I was afraid if I told him that then he'd start to think that I was becoming too dangerous to myself. He pressed me for an answer and I resentfully said yes.

I guess what it boils down to is that this mix that I'm in is getting worse every day. The self-destructive feelings I've been having aren't going away, they're getting stronger. I dream about the things I want to do, which only serves to reinforce and strengthen the desire to act on them.

The other night I dreamed I had dozens of cuts on my lower leg (which is weird, considering the only place I usually cut is my left forearm). Anyway, there was blood everywhere and it wouldn't stop. I was blissfully happy in the dream about it and when I woke up I still felt that afterglow. I really REALLY wanted to make that dream a reality.

If these feelings don't subside, it's not a question of whether I'll act or not. It's only a question of when. And of what form it will take.

Morphed into the child again

I get so angry at myself when I morph into the needy, over-emotional, suicidal child. Yet I don't know how to stop it.

If I'm suicidal, it's almost always between 1-5 am. I can only think of a few times that I was seriously suicidal during the day. Those were when I wasn't sleeping at all and saw too many sunrises. All of my suicide attempts have happened in the middle of the night, when I'm most impulsive and have the least control.

I know this is a dangerous time for me. The obvious answer would be to not be awake during the middle of the night. The only problem is that I'm a major night owl.

Pretty messed up, isn't it?

I had a bad few hours tonight, but I'm coming out of it, thanks to two wonderfully supportive people who helped me through the worst of it. I'm going to bed before it hits again.

I lose myself each night

I wonder why it is that I can be rational, logical, and clear-headed in my thinking during the day, but at night I lose all reason and rationality.

The daytime whispers of the past telling me I'm no good and that nobody cares become loud and oppressive in my mind while the rest of the world sleeps. And my resistance to them becomes non-existant.

It's like I'm 2 different people. During the day I'm (for the most part) strong and smart and can think my way out of things. In the middle of the night I become some needy, whimpering child huddled in the corner begging for help, yet knowing I deserve none.

I pride myself on my ability to think and to reason. But when I become that child, all thought goes out the window and only emotion remains. Raw pain, desperation, and hopelessness. I forget everything I've learned over the years on how to cope with the pain. I feel weak and powerless in those hours. The next day I hate who I became the previous night. It's embarrassing and many times, after reading what I've said the night before, I'm ashamed.

This duality is driving me crazy and I don't know what to do about it or how to fix it. I feel like I lose who I am every night.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Living in hell

I'm so tired of this shit! This has been the worst month of my life and it's probably going to get much worse before it's over.

My step-son is being an asshole. He's acting like he's the only one who's having a bad month. His problems? He dumped his girlfriend and his truck is running badly. BIG FUCKING DEAL!!! My mom DIED, the IRS took ALL of our money and will continue to do so, and one of my cats is so sick we're probably going to have to put him to sleep. How does that even BEGIN to compare???

Tonight he was in a rage because he couldn't get a seat cover on the seat in his truck. WTF??? He threw something when my back was turned. It made a huge crash and scared the crap out of me. I lost it and told him if he was going to do shit like that, go to his room. Don't do it around me. He got even more pissed off and left the house. He's been gone for over 7 hours now and he's so FUCKING inconsiderate that he doesn't even CARE that we're worried about him. I bet he doesn't come home at all tonight. He's probably out getting high and drunk.

I've had it with him!!! He makes me so miserable I can't stand it! He's 18 now. He's an adult. If he wants to keep doing this shit, he can fucking go do it somewhere else!

It's hard enough trying to control my emotions without his melodramatic bullshit and rage of a temper day in and day out. My emotions flare up to match his ALL the time and it's EXHAUSTING. I'm so pissed off right now!

My control over my feelings and impulses is hanging on by a thread. All I can think about is wanting to just take one risperdal m-tab after another. Let them dissolve in my mouth and then I'll just slip away. I don't want to wake up in this hell anymore.

I don't want it to be christmas

It's 3am and I don't want to go to bed, even though I'm very tired. I don't want to wake up and it be christmas and not have my mom. I miss her so much.

I finally found a home for her cat yesterday and when I handed him to his new family I was hit with such overwhelming pain, sadness, and guilt. I went inside and laid on my bed and cried so hard I was actually screaming. He was the last living reminder of her and it was like when I had to give him away it was finally real. She's gone and she's not coming back. As long as I was taking care of him I guess some part of my mind wouldn't accept that she's really gone.

I'm so sad right now. I wish I had someone to hold me right now. Hubby's asleep and I won't wake him up. Not just because I need to be held. He wouldn't understand anyway. He tries really hard to be supportive, but sometimes he just can't understand how I'm feeling.

I would really love to take a handful of some of my meds for sleep, but I would ruin christmas for everyone else if I did that. I already feel bad enough. I don't want to add to it. Maybe I'll knock myself out tomorrow night. At least that gives me something to look forward to.

Motivations for feeling self-destructive

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted here. This month has been very difficult. Not only did I lose my mom, but the IRS levied our bank accounts and one of my cats is so sick we may have to put him to sleep. I've been spending a lot of time on a site called Suicide Forum. It's been helping me a lot, since I've been so suicidal and self-destructive lately. I'm also meeting other bipolars and finding out that I'm not as alone as I thought I was in this.

Like I said, I've been feeling very self-destructive as of late. I did a lot of thinking about it the other day and this is what I've come up with as to the what's and why's of it. I'd love some feedback on it, see what you guys think:

I'm feeling a very strong desire to be self-destructive. I'm wanting to knock myself out with pills. I want to drive very fast without a seat belt. I want to take a whole bunch of pills and drink a lot of alcohol. I can't explain why, but I want something to happen to me. I want to feel in physical danger. Why?? What the hell is wrong with me that I'm wanting to go out and look for danger? I'm feeling very impulsive. I'm wanting to put myself in dangerous situations. And I know I should care about the consequences, but I don't, even though that's selfish.

I know this is dangerous thinking for me. And there is a small part inside that's a little concerned that I'm feeling this way again. Once when I was feeling this way I acted on it in a drastic way. I ended up being sexually assaulted. During the assault I didn't care what was happening to me, but for a long time later I did. Not only did I have to deal with the emotional aftermath of the assault itself, but I was horrified at what I'd done. I'd gone looking for trouble and it found me. Once again I'm walking that line of not caring what happens to me, of actually wanting to ask for trouble.

These are feelings that are very difficult for me to put into words. Even when I'm thinking these thoughts, they're really more like what it's like to remember an emotion you'd felt. I mean, yeah, I think about what action I want to take, but everything else is all thought out in emotion. That makes it hard to pin down the why's and motivations for me.

This is what I've been able to come up with:

Sometimes the consequences are a punishment. At those times I do believe that I deserve it. But not always. Really, it depends on my mood. For example, if I'm depressed then it tends to lean toward punishment. But if I'm manic it's the adrenaline and risk-taking that's forefront in my mind.

Which part of the day it is, is also a factor. During the day I lean more toward the risk-taking aspect; in the middle of the night, however, it's a different story. That's more likely the time when I feel I deserve to be punished. During the day my danger seeking behaviors are usually focused on things like driving fast without a seatbelt, seeking out people and situations that are dangerous, etc. During the night the behaviors shift more toward taking too many pills, or mixing them with alcohol, cutting, etc. But it's not cutting because I feel overwhelmed. When I cut for that reason, it's usually only a couple of cuts. If I'm wanting danger through cutting, it's more like 20 or 30 cuts.

It's kind of like day = outward and fun, night = inward and punishment. Usually, at least.

During the day if on the slim chance something bad were to happen, that would be ok. I don't really care, probably because I don't really believe anything bad will happen to me. During the night is more when I actually want something bad to happen. That's when I get disappointed and angry when it doesn't. And when nothing happens, it reinforces the belief that nothing bad can or will happen to me.

The disappointment part is really hard for me to define, even to myself. It's multi-layered. Maybe if nothing happens, then the risk wasn't big enough. There's also the belief and desire that I be punished, and when it doesn't happen, I get disappointed and sometimes very angry. Part of it is coming from that old desire to die, but not be responsible. But that's not the whole thing... I keep trying to prove myself wrong about the belief that nothing bad can happen to me. For some reason, that's a very distressing belief for me. I don't always feel all of those reasons for disappointment. It varies.

As far as it being pleasurable to have something bad happen to me, that's part of it too. I think that comes from the same part of me that enjoys cutting.

Actually, the whole thing is comparable to having a mixed episode. You never know what you're going to get.

My mom died

My mom died on Saturday. It was such a shock. Every doctor and nurse said her vitals were great - that she was in no danger physically. So what the hell happened??!

I'm freaking out. I bounce back and forth between numb, depressed, angry, and manic.

I don't know what I'm going to do without her. And I feel very guilty. I was out of town "taking a break from her" when she died. I abandoned her. I wanted her to move to my brother's house so I wouldn't have to be responsible because it was so hard on me. Now she's gone. How could I have done that to her? This is my punishment.

I found out tonight that she hadn't been taking her meds for at least a month or two. If I'd paid closer attention, she wouldn't have gotten sick and died. It's all my fault.

I want to cut. I want to take handfuls of pills. But I can't right now because there are too many people here. But I'm scared of what I may do next week once they're all gone.

And I can't FUCKING sleep!!! I'm losing it.

I don't want to feel this pain anymore.