Stuck

My life has changed exceptionally over the last 3 years. I went from an emotionally abusive marriage to a psychotic woman to marrying a man I didn’t know could exist. I’ve moved 4 times and changed jobs 5 times. My son went from living primarily with me to living primarily with his dad in Colorado. I’ve been on top of the world and I’ve been suicidal. There have been 2 new meds added to my regimen. I changed therapists twice. I bought a new car. Now here I am, writing to get through my struggle.

In real time I always feel like my life is mostly boring; when I have to describe it out loud it becomes clear that it is not boring. There’s always something going on and my mentality is always fluid between healthy and sick. I’m currently somehwere between healthy and sick. If my mental illnesses get any tighter of a grip I will be definitely be sick. I’m teetering on that ledge, I fight it the best I can. So far, I seem to be winning. This writing on the regular is helpful. This blog is basically a journal. They always tell the mentally ill to journal, journal, journal. Here I am.

I like writing in the mornings best. I drink copious amounts of coffee and chain smoke. This goes on for a couple of hours and then I’m done writing and drinking coffee, I slow down on my smoking. Then I’m left feeling like I have nothing to do. I like my mornings, I get to work on myself the most.

Since I started taking the Lithium I haven’t noticed a lick of difference. I have an appointment with my pyschiatrist tomorrow afternoon. She’ll probably up it. I don’t want to add another med to my regimen. I already take 5 and it’s a lot. Why does it seem like they aren’t really doing much? I must be really far gone for the meds to not seem to be working. I take 3 mood stabilizers and I’m still swinging from one mood branch to another. Bipolar II is a bitch. I’m always on the downside of this illness. I become depressed and it just goes on for fucking ever.

My husband says I haven’t been right since right after we got married in August 2018. That’s a year and a half. Have I really been emotionally fucked up since then? I suppose so. The situations I’ve dealt with haven’t exactly been helpful. Right after we got married we had to put my son a plane to go back to Colorado, I switched to a job I ended up hating, and we moved from our apartment out to my parents farm. A lot of loss. I’m always losing shit. Including my mind. My brain isn’t wired like a “normal” brain so I struggle, severely, with loss. I haven’t figured out how to just roll with it. During the situations I feel like I’m just rolling with it all. Apparently not.

There’s a great saying, “I’m not fragile like a flower, I’m fragile like a bomb”. I feel like I could get that tattooed on myself. My anger isn’t what it used to be. That or I’ve just internalized it so much for so long that it doesn’t present like it did when I was younger. My nickname is Scrappy. That should tell you all you need to know. I used to be very angry and crass. I wasn’t afraid to go toe to toe with anyone. Guy or girl, it didn’t matter. I spoke my mind loud and clear with no regard to how it would be received. I was very selective about who I respected. I rejected a lot of people. I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t let anyone walk on me, if they tried I stomped the shit out of them instead. I had been in enough toxic relationships that I wasn’t letting anyone fuck around when it came to me. I’m not like that anymore. I’m soft spoken and I’m a doormat. People get away with treating me however they want and I just let it happen. This is bullshit.

I’m not sure what has turned me so soft. I’m sure it is an after affect of my former marriage. It was saturated with emotional abuse, manipulations, alienation from family and friends, a constant stream of giving things and then violently taking them away. I was a strong, independent woman before all of that happened. I was ground down into basically nothing. So was my son. But we eventually escaped it all. After it was over I was so free and happy. I all but floated through my life. I was adventurous and back to being strong in myself. Eventually that all fell away and I became small and meak again. This blog is where I speak my mind now. I just write about what’s going on in my head. I guess that’s the benefit of journaling. It does help. Look at that.

When my husband met me I was still married. He watched me go through the hell that was my life. Then he watched me get away from all of that. He was there for me when I had to get a restraining order against my ex wife. He was there for me as I divorced her. He put his arms around me, literally and figuratively, and I felt all my pieces come back together. I felt safe and taken care of. He encouraged me to be free and adventurous. We would always find something to do. As time has gone on, we still have periodic adventures, but life gets in the way and we don’t do much anymore. It doesn’t matter because I love just doing nothing with him as much as I love having an adventure with him. I just wish I could give him a strong, healthy version of me. Just another frustration of feeling like a failure that I deal with.

Mabye this just the way I am now. I fear this is going to be the rest of my life. Just a forlorn writer with no way out of my head. I’m not suicidal, but I know this is why a lot of mentally ill people take their own lives. They get overwhelmed with their illnesses and instead of living the rest of their lives that way, they just end it all because they think it’ll never get better. I get that, I really do. I know the reality of my mental health is that it’ll never go away. It’s likely I’ll be hospitlized again at some point. I’ve said before that with my mental illnesses I’ll either die from them or with them. It’s lifelong. Ain’t that a bitch? There’s a new group, a wellness group, that I’ll be starting. At least it’s not another DBT group. I’m tired of those. I’ve been in 3 different groups for that. It’s exhausting. I know all of the skills, I just can’t always practice them. When I lived in Colorado I did an 8 week long group that met for 4 hours 3 times a week. I graduated out of that group. One day a young girl from group stopped me and asked if it ever really does get better. I told her that it does, if you let it. Here I am. Stuck and not letting it get better. I’m so fucking tired of being stuck. I don’t know how to change my brain or my life. It all is what it is.