An Example

Well, well, well. Here I am while I should be at work. See? I already have an example to share with you from the present.

How to explain this clearly? . . . I guess I'll start by saying that everything started off fine tonight. I went to work, and I was doing okay. This week, we have worked ten hours every night. It has been exhausting, and I was glad to see Friday come, knowing that it was the last night of overtime. For the first few hours of work, everything was fine.

Now, to explain what happened, I need to let you know about my job. I key. Yep, as in data entry. Sitting for hours and hours and hours in front of a computer just staring and typing and typing and typing. It sucks. Fortunately, I listen to my mp3 player to make the time go faster, but it still bores me to death.

Anyway, everyone at work is not working on the exact same "job"--that is to say, we are all divided into groups who each work on a specific project. My project is special. Only about four people in the entire department work on this project. And tonight, we ran out of work.

So I got excited and thought I would get to leave early. That was sooooo appealing, but a short-lived little fantasy. As soon as I informed my boss that I was out of work to do, she told me I had to go sit with some other person and learn how to work on a different project. Now, this is not a bad thing, in and of itself. But let me point something out.

Almost EVERYONE else at work is on the main project. On nights, in the past, that those people ran out of work to do, they all got up and left. I remember some nights that people left after only being at work for three hours, but my ass sat there for five more hours with about three other people and did our project. But, for once, MY people run out of work, and we're told we have to learn the main project like everyone else.

So I flipped.

Well, I didn't flip completely. I seethed. I sat with the trainer and seethed silently. The things I was thinking, the focus it took to stop my hands from shaking, the crazy things I was stopping myself from saying--all of it, crazy, crazy, crazy. I nearly ran up to my boss and yelled at her to tell her what bullshit this was and how I was gonna blow the place up and blah blah blah, you get the idea.

But I took some deep breaths, and listened to the trainer, and worked on the main project.

So, for two hours, I tried doing some of the work on the main project. It sucked. But I was doing okay. I had calmed myself down and accepted the fact that I still had many more hours to go.

Then suddenly, with no warning, I decided I was leaving. I just got up and left.

What the hell? Do you see why this makes no sense?

And here I am, at home, typing THIS instead of typing at work, where I'm supposed to be.

Now, to be clear, leaving early is allowed, you just can't leave too many times or you get written up. And the guy next to me left, too, right about the time I did, so it's not like I was the only one. But the main thing is, I didn't tell my boss I was leaving. That's what worries me. I just vanished. Not good. Not good at all.

I'm sure I still have a job, and I'm sure things will be fine, but now I feel shitty about how I freaked out, then got better, then just spontaneously flipped and left. That's not good. I know my medication is working, but I shouldn't be doing things like that.

What else can I say?

An Introduction

Hello.

I am going to try to help people understand what it is like to live with Type I Bipolar Disorder by writing about my own experiences. At times, especially when I delve into the past, some of the things I say may seem so bizarre that you may be inclined to believe I am just making them up. But I won't be. Everything I tell you here is true.

So let's get started.

I am thirty-two years old, and my life has almost ground to a screeching halt. All my dreams and desires have fallen out of my grasp, and even though I am doing exceptionally well right now (I'm going to work, I have some money, I have a roof over my head, I'm on the right medications), and even though I'm not in the midst of depression at the moment, my life simply sucks. To say it is disappointing is not even close to expressing how it really feels. Hopefully, keeping up with this blog will help me vent some of the frustration I am feeling and work through it.

How did I get to this point? Why is my life so shitty right now? These are questions that must be answered in future posts, and in time. But I will try to summarize the basics here for you now.

Basically, I am thirty-two years old, and I am living back in my scary little hometown with my mom and dad. I'm back in the bedroom I grew up in. I'm surrounded by my past, and little of it is any good. Everywhere I go in this hick town either scares me or depresses me. And I'm lonely. I have no friends here whatsoever.

How did I get here, though? Why am I living here? Basically, the last two years of my life (actually, the last ten years or more, but let's try to focus) were a mess. A severe mess. A series of lost jobs and suicide attempts. Lost friends. Lost identity. Depression. Alcoholism. And worse.

At this time, a year ago, I had just moved into an apartment with a total stranger. And at that time, I had just started a new job. But before that, I went through, hmm . . . let's see . . . about seven jobs in a matter of, I think, five months. Seriously.

Every job I went to, no matter what it was or where it was or when I had to be there, freaked me out. I wasn't taking the right medication at the time, and as a matter of fact I still wish that, to this day, I had sued my psychiatrist for malpractice, because he was making me take so many pills a day I should have died. But that's a slight digression.

The point is, I would freak out and not go to work. Or I would freak out at work and leave. Or I would freak out and lie, and create an excuse to avoid work. For example, at one of those jobs, I spontaneously decided, while at work, that my brother and sister-in-law had died in a horrible car accident. I started crying and told my supervisor that I needed to leave and go to the viewing of their bodies. Then I proceeded to use that lie for days, or weeks, as I had trouble going to work, or staying there, without bursting into tears for no good reason.

Then there was the job I lost because I kept waking up from nightmares, horrid dreams in which my friends had died in horrible ways. But when I awoke, I thought the dreams were real, and I would lie in bed as the alarm clock beeped on and on, telling me to go to work. But I wouldn't. I would lie there and cry for hours, eventually realizing that I was upset over nothing but a dream, but by then it was too late. My employers were never pleased with this behavior.

Anyway, to get back to the point of why I ended up living with my parents at this point in my life . . . .

I either quit a job or lost a job or whatever, while I was living with my last roommate, whom I had met through "Craig's List" to get an apartment with. He was not happy with me. Basically, I had to flee. Again. I could do an entire post, and I'm sure I will, about how many times I've "fled" my current situation in life. Once, I had to flee a roommate who was ready to murder me, but that's a story for another day.

So I fled, and had nowhere to go, and I ended up here. In hell. I'm going crazy, but in truth, and I can laugh as I say this, I'm NOT going crazy. That's kind of the whole point. I'm doing unusally well right now, mainly because I found a good doctor who put me on the right pills. But my best friend, who does not live here now, has been very impressed with me, stating that if he were me, he would go crazy living in this boring little town with no friends and a shitty job, and he isn't mentally ill.

So I must be doing something right. And I'll leave you with that thought for tonight.