This weekend was nice because my mom has really mellowed out. The drugs seem to have really done their job, or at least they have this past weekend, and it was nice to have a normal conversation with her. Yes she still harped on things, yes she was occasionally irrational but for the most part these were more like regular mom-isms then symptoms. We even had a great conversation while sitting in the waiting room at one of the doctors offices. Yes this was after she called my dad screaming about why he didn’t wake her up so she could take me to the first doctor’s appointment of the morning and saying things to him like ‘i guess you won, congratulations’ but still, little steps.

This weekend was hard because while I can see improvements in my mom I know my dad really can’t, or rather that he’s just so over her and how horrible she’s been to him that he doesn’t care that there are improvements.  I hate seeing him not care, seeing him so broken. I also hate that now he provokes her, or rather just isn’t as careful about what he says or how he responds as he once was. It’s hard to sit there and listen to them because of how freaking anxious I get about what he’ll say and how she’ll take it. I know they’ve had rough patches in the past, I specifically remember a time in my childhood where she went to the attic to get her bags and go stay with my grandmother (my dad’s mother actually…so try to understand that one) and I refused to leave the house, meaning I told them I was staying with whoever kept the house. But that doesn’t make this any easier, it doesn’t make me any less afraid that my parents are going to hate each other enough to leave each other.

All in all though this weekend was an improvement, it didn’t leave me feeling like I was going to die every time I thought about spending this next weekend there and that is certainly something. This weekend my middle sister will be around so perhaps I’ll tell her about the shitty stuff that’s been happening, or maybe I’ll just see what she picks up on.

1. Swine Flu. Did I get the vaccine? Why not? When am I going to get it? Why wouldn’t I get it. Please listen to me rattle off every fact ever written on Swine Flu.
2. Did you make that doctors appointment? Why not? Oh you don’t like that practice and plan to find a new one? Well make the apointment. Why not? Oh… (repeat 30 times in the last 16 hours)
3. Why does your father hide stuff? (To be fair, he can be very tricky with his putting things back where they belong and have been kept the last 15 years.)

A small sampling for your enjoyment.

For the week leading up to the visit I begin to think endlessly about it, it sort of creeps up until I realize that it’s all I’m thinking about. Generally by Friday I will have convinced myself that it’ll be ok this time, this time I’ll go home and my real parents will be there. Last visit they were arguing by the time I got into the car, arguing about how my dad called me over to the car. It was a fairly short-lived hope.

Next week is Thanksgiving and so begins the Holiday season that I’ve been dreading. I HATE dreading he holidays because I generally love the holidays, I’m all about getting lost in the Christmas (as that’s the holiday I celebrate) spirit. I love getting people gifts and agonized over getting something they’ll love and wouldn’t buy themself. I love the idea of decorating my house and my parents house where we have at least 20 boxes of sparkly, memory filled things.

The problem is that the holidays are also tough, they tend to be stressful which of course is a trigger for a bipolar person. Since she has (or at least believes she has to because otherwise they’ll judge her) to put up the ‘face’ of being totally fine for so many extended family members at that time we in her immediate family feel the brunt of it, because when you’re pretending for entire days you don’t have the energy to pretend at home to. Holidays mean cleaning the house obsessively, buying gifts, arguing over who to buy gifts for, arguing over why we have to go to ‘blank’s’ house, why ‘blank’ doesn’t come to us blah blah blah.  It sucks the joy right out.

I’m not sure that this would bother me so much if I wasn’t such a planner, I can’t help but think about the future, it’s just how I roll. I know that I can take these stressful holidays, I’ve done it before I can steal myself for the next one but I think  about the future. One day, God willing, I will have kids, and I will not accept a stressful holiday for them. One day I want to be married but I am scared to death of bringing someone else into this situation, how will I protect that person and make it so that they don’t notice the crazy? I don’t know if that’s possible.

And so today I steel myself, I get ready to put on my happy face for 72 hours, to make my dad feel better and to pretend nothing bothers me because in 72 hours I get to escape again.

In the middle of this talk I asked her why she was getting up in the middle of the night and calling her daughters  and if she felt like that wasn’t a little off behavior wise. My mom took a second, looked me square in the face and said ‘Well, have you heard of a little thing called Swine Flu?” Now for someone who hasn’t had the pleasure of dealing with a manic personality who is incapable of staying on one topic, or dealing with someone who fixates on random shit with no real rhythm or reason this may not be funny. For my father and I it was Fucking Hilarious. I mean we held it in at the moment because I mean, not even the two words of our conversation she might have held on to would have sunk in if we started making fun of her mid-talk but wow. I mean come on.

So for weeks now we’ve just been walking around and every so often we will turn to each other mid conversation and completely straight-faced say ‘Have you heard of a little thing called Swine Flu?’ Gotta take what you can when looking for the funny in a crappy situation.

Now please don’t get me wrong, if you were just meeting my mom in a passing situation you would have absolutely no idea she had a mental disorder. Even if you knew her for years and years actually.  I really think this is an important fact to point out, she does not look outwardly nuts. If you met her you would see a well dressed, clearly well off intelligent funny loud ass forty something who brags about her kids alot. You wouldn’t think ‘oh man look at that nutter’ and that’s one of the scariest things about a mental disorder, it’s not always obvious. And if it’s not plainly obvious to anyone else it’s certainly not obvious to her.

Anyway the reason I get embarrassed in public at times is because she can be very loud, and pushy. And she has this wierd built in aversion to all sales people so for some reason she can’t help but be slightly rude and condescending to them. I’m not saying thats a symptom of the disease, this could quite possibly just be her personality, but there’s the rub, how do you tell? Well you can’t. Now if you were to ask for my google/primetime TV professional opinion I would say that it has to do with authority issues and needing to show an immediate authority over another person blah blah babble.

The point is I’ve done a lot of research at this point and I know that in many respects I’m lucky, my mom does not take out her mental issues on me or any of my sisters directly, she mostly reserves that for my dad. She is on the extremely mild side of the illness which is a blessing even if it still feels totally overwhelming most of the time. I’ve read horror stories of mothers who absolutely terrorize their kids, or one kid over the others. My mom was fairly ‘normal’ in my childhood, she participated in my school stuff (not to the degree that she does now with the youngest thank God, but still, she showed up to all my things and cared), she set boundaries that weren’t insane and I feel that for the most part I had a very ‘normal’ childhood.

She worked very hard for the same company for many years and always gave me anything I wanted. I never went without when she could help it, she and my dad have always been there, they sent me to college without expecting to be paid back. They have been my support, always in the background ready to catch me if I fail but also letting me do what I felt was right, even when they didn’t agree. My mom had a crappy childhood and worked very hard to make sure we didn’t have those types of experiences.

I am thankful, I love her and I always will. Thats why this breaks my heart every time, thats why watching her push my dad away makes my chest feel so tight its hard to breathe.

I’ve read many posts online about children who have cut their bipolar parents out of their lives. I can’t judge these people because on some level I get it, I get that being a choice, but it’s not a choice I can ever see myself making.  On some level I don’t even see it as an option, if there is one thing my family seriously emphasizes it’s the importance of our immediate family unit. We have always spent enormous amounts of time together, we have our family and it’s private and important and special. What that means it that this option if moot, for me at least, she’s my mom. You don’t get to pick your parents, you don’t get to decide who will be influential in your life. And you don’t get to pick what your trials in this life will be, this is a concept I am working on right now, you don’t get to pick the good or the bad you only get to decide how you personally deal with it.

So that’s the over arching truth but don’t expect me to be saying it every day. This blog is about me getting out frustrations and documenting my life with a nutter even if she’s a nutter I love.

‘So, people, if you have a family member or friend who is bipolar – GET EDUCATED! Start caring and understand what your loved ones are going through. Stop the stigma starting with YOU! Don’t be afraid of us, we are as normal as anyone else. In fact, those who DON’T have a mental illness are the ones who commit robbery, rape, abuse, and other unlawful acts. Not everyone who goes against the law has mental illnesses.’

This post pissed me off for a number of reasons.

First, it hits on that terrible symptom of the Bipolar monster, it jumps around with no real sense from one sentence to the next. If you’ve never had a conversation with a Bipolar person you may not understand why this is so irritating but go ahead and give such a conversation a try. I guarantee you’ll be exhausted in 10 minutes. Why? Because it is IMPOSSIBLE to follow the logic of the conversation and trying to make the leaps that a person in mania makes so easily will leave you dizzy from the effort.

Second, it hits on what is my LEAST FAVORITE symptom of the Bipolar disorder, a symptom that deserves it’s very own post or maybe book. The ‘I’m the most important person in the world and everyone should only think about how things affect me and make me feel’ symptom. Don’t think that’s a symptom? Google it. I’ll wait. Oh yea, it’s in there, narcissism.  Nice right? Because if it wasn’t bad enough that a person has paranoia, delusions and depression what you really need is for them to have no understanding that they may be wrong because they truly believe they are the most intelligent person to have ever graced the earth. Now you try to explain to that person, that person on the cloud 9 of superiority, that they are not actually in a state of mind where they should be making big decisions.

Get Educated. Right. Everyone else should get educated but please don’t make any attempt to educate yourself. Please don’t take a moment and think ‘hm, maybe this isn’t just happening to me, maybe this is happening to my family.’ Oh no, you’re right, everyone should drop everything and think ONLY of how hard this is for you. Don’t take any responsibility for yourself, for your actions, for your health and healing. Just have everyone else cater to what you want, in your MENTALLY ALTERED state. Perfect.

and then there’s this part :

In fact, those who DON’T have a mental illness are the ones who commit robbery, rape, abuse, and other unlawful acts.

I’m sorry, what? What on Earth are you talking about? You are honestly going to argue that only those without mental illness  commit unlawful acts? Now don’t get me wrong, I get it. I get what this person was going for, that they just want people to stop acting like they have the plague and assuming that because they have a mental disorder they are automatically dangerous and unfit to walk the Earth and take an active role in regular society. But honestly, what are you accomplishing by claiming that people with mental illness never break the law and only those without mental illness do? You are ‘turning the tables’, is that what you want? To throw the wild generalizations in the other direction. Oh yea, that should result in real improvements to the world.  Ass.

I’m sorry, I can go on and on about this which I know no one wants. Lack of responsibility just gets under my skin.

Characteristics of Injustice Collectors:
1. Injustice Collectors are convinced that they are never wrong. How is it possible that they are never wrong? It is simple: They are always right.

2. Injustice Collectors never apologize. Ever. For anything.

3. Injustice Collectors truly believe that they are morally and ethically superior to others and that others chronically do not hold themselves to the same high standards as the injustice collector does.

4. Injustice Collectors make the rules, break the rules and enforce the rules of the family. They are a combined legislator, police, and judge and jury.

5. Injustice Collectors never worry about what is wrong with themselves as their “bad list” grows. Their focus is always on the failings of others.

6. Injustice Collectors are never upset by the disparity of their rules for others with their own expectations of themselves.

7. Injustice Collectors rationalize their own behavior with great ease and comfort.

Ladies and Gentlemen this is my Mother. How did this person meet her I wonder and make this short list of her most specific traits? My Mother is always right, she is the epitome of the ‘I’m sorry but’ apology.She is always right, superior, all knowing.

Really the problem is that in the end she is actually very intelligent, this makes these conversations even more frustrating. But really her intelligence just makes the fact that she refuses to take steps to help herself and our family infuriating.

Apparently 20 years ago right after my middle sister was born my mom got very depressed.  Doctors at the time assumed that she was suffering from post-pardom depression, which to some level she probably was, and as she got worse they tried to treat her. They gave her anti-depressants and long story short she got worse and worse. After a few months she was non-functioning, she wasn’t able to read or think, completely useless and my Dad was dealing with a three year old and infant trying to keep the house together and figure out what was wrong with his wife. Finally they had gone through all of their savings, the college funds and their patience, and they turned to their very last hope, scraping together what little they had left my Dad and Grandfather took my mother, flew her across the country and checked her into facility, leaving her there without any idea of when/if she would get out or get better. The doctor at this facility spent two days with her, gave her the Lithium she actually needed and boom, she was back to her ‘normal’ self.  Apparently giving anti-depressants to a Bipolar person is the absolute worst thing you can do for them, it screws them up even worse (is that possible?) and makes them completely unable to function. This was the first person to correctly diagnose her condition and the next day my Dad was back on a plane going to pick up my very confused mother who wanted to know where he had been. So far as I can tell from there it was sunshine and roses with the magical lithium pill that made all of their worries go away.

At this point in history my parents made the following choice: We will pretend like this never happened, like she had a cold, got meds and is now great. Read: We will not seek any therapy, stay on any medication or ever mention this condition. And so they stuck with that and for 20 years it worked great except for a small snaffoo at about year 12 but magical Lithium swooped in again and saved the day. Of course we won’t mention the fact that she had little ‘dips’ our entire lives, pretty much multiple times a day. Times my dad called ‘spinning’. My whole life I thought that was just his way of saying ‘you’re acting crazy’, I had no idea how right I was, no idea that it was his little reminder/warning to her.

Fast forward to last November, my mom started to act stranger and stranger. She had trouble sleeping (she operates almost exclusively in the mania portion of this disease), she was talking about the people at work being out to get her, she removed her email from her blackberry and finally in a meeting at work she had a total breakdown. I don’t think it was really that noticeable to the other people in the room but she needed to leave, she went home and didn’t return for a month.

They went back to get more magic pills and that is where I came into the story. He told me all this over the phone, it was a lot. I wasn’t shocked the way I knew they assumed I (we) would be. I always knew there was something wrong with my mother, my shock came purely from the fact that she was able to keep a secret. She talks constantly, seriously, all day long, so the fact that there was anything at all in her head that she hadn’t said 12 times in the last hour was just plain shocking to me.

He asked me not to tell my sisters, we were all going to be home the next weekend and he wanted to tell my Middle sister and I then, his plan was to keep the Youngest in the dark which I didn’t agree with but figured we could argue over later.

After this very informative conversation I went back to work, in a slight daze. Eventually I was able to call my incredibly wonderful boyfriend and asked him to drive me home, basically in the middle of the night, so that I could be there for my Dad who sounded awful.  I got there, spoke to my Dad and agreed to take the next week and some odd off work to stay home and help.

The next night or maybe that night, it’s so hard to remember now. We all sat down as a family and my parents told us the story and what was going on. Things I remember from that:

- None of us was surprised, at all. We knew there was somthing now we just had a name.

- My mother couldn’t remember exactly what she had, she was incredibly out of it and it was strange to hear her talking.

- My Dad initially tried to leave the youngest out of it, she was asleep on the couch and we were on our way to the livingroom to talk when my Mom, who kept going between telling her and not according to who said what, meaning when my dad said he didn’t think we should she agreed and when I said we should she agreed back and forth like ping pong, looked at the couch my sister had just woken up and looked at us all huddled talking and my mother goes ‘well now she’s looking at us’ a comical moment to break the tension. My mom didn’t know what was funny.

From there we all went into coping mode, we had no idea what to do or how to handle things. I noticed that my Dad was obsessive about being with my mom all the time, or having someone be with her. He constantly wondered out loud where she was, what she was doing.  It became clearer recently why when he finally told me the rest of the story but this post is long enough. Not that anyone is reading but still. So, thats my mom.

Bipolar Disorder. A year ago this was not something I thought about, it had nothing to do with my life. I was a recent college graduate with a wonderful family consisting of a Mother, a Father and two younger sisters. Clearly we weren’t perfect, Bipolar Disorder didnt sneak into our house and get us while we were sleeping, it had been in the house for years, for our entire childhoods, but it was normal, it was how we were raised. Well let me tell you about the day that all changed.

I work and live in New York city in the entertainment business, theater to be specific, I don’t act, I don’t want to act, I have never wanted to, I work backstage doing stuff no one probably cares about so I’ll save you from going into it but just know I am not an actor. Now I’m going to take a second and talk about being discreet. I do not personally feel that having an illness like being bipolar is something you should be ashamed of and hide at all costs but my mother was raised in a different world and to her this is a dirty secret she keeps buried in the back of the closet so taking that into consideration I wont’ be using names etc. But I’m also not going to avoid sharing any details of my life or changing places and such. If you feel like you know who I am keep it quiet, you’re probably wrong and there’s no reason to spread it around even if you’re right.

SO ANYWAY, last November. I was working on a festival at the time when I started noticing wierd things with my parents. I don’t live at home and I try to call often enough (read:I never call according to my mother), during these calls I started to notice a tone in my dad’s voice, he was acting distant, not returning calls, hurrying off the phone and sending texts to call my mother, she was sad. I knew something was off but figured they would tell me eventually, I was also working days and nights at that point and a little over tired.   One Saturday morning I got a call from my father at 8am totally panicked. Now I’m going to stop here and insert the fact that my dad doesn’t panic. My dad plans. My dad is also firmly of the mind that there’s no need to worry the kids with things, he has always kept us in the dark about the big scary world as much as possible and just let us be kids. So you can see why a panicked early morning phone call made me a little jumpy.

It’s been too long  now and I don’t completely remember what he said, mostly I just remember his tone of voice, a desperation I had NEVER ever heard him use  before and him asking when I could go home again. Now the answer to that was not for at least  2 days no matter how I worked things out at work.  He quickly ended the conversation by apologizing for calling, saying everything was fine and it wasn’t fair of him to put it on my and hanging up. What the hell? Very upsetting.  So I went to work after calling my boyfriend and sister, and worried and fretted.  Finally about halfway through the afternoon he called again and told me the whole story.