Brain Cooties + Familial Stress = Imminent Nuclear Meltdown

So...I decided to start blogging again...hopefully it can give me an outlet, since it looks like home and partner are NOT going to be one.
I was first dx with mild schizophrenia at 16, then Bipolar Disorder was added after a severe bout of PPD following the birth of my first daughter. PTSD was added during therapy about 2 yrs later as my severely abusive upbringing and the panic attacks that I suffered throughout my teens and 20s was explored. Finally, some mild OCD was tacked on with relation to little things like lined up pill bottles, only even numbers for tv and radio volumes, checking and re-checking the door at night, and having to re-type a word that I misspell on the 'puter instead of just fixing the actual letter(s) that are wrong or using spell-check in the editing process...these are pretty minor things and by and large they don't really impact life too much, (although I have left my lane on the road quite a few times when obsessing about the radio volume) :blush: The BPD is my major daily hurdle without a doubt.
Anyhoo...I've been on medication steadily for 5 yrs now (since an even worse bout of PPD after the birth of my twins). It took about 1-1 1/2 yrs to get the cocktail right, but once we did, it was like a whole different way of life was revealed to me. Keeping in mind that I was doing everything "right" Therapy, meds, journaling, recognizing when my head was getting a little too tight and trying to fix it without popping another pill, (walking, reading, music, etc.) About a yr ago or so I started getting manic again and I was having a LOT of trouble with my teeth, (I only have about 9 left, and all of them are broken somewhere or another.) I had been on Wellbutrin for 2 yrs and also 200mg apiece of Topamax and Lamictal daily. I'd already been genetically predisposed to bad teeth, but they've really gone to hell since I started the meds.
At any rate, I've been trying different med combos in the last 10 months or so, (even spent a hellish couple of months on Lamictal alone, THAT was a kettle o' joy right there!!) In the last month I have had a violent allergic reaction to Tegretol that had me in the ER twice in 30 hrs, and cardiac side effects when stepping back onto Topamax, (didn't have that problem before but I have CHF and dilated cardiomyopathy) that got me admitted to the hospital for 40 hrs on IV lasix to get rid of the excess fluid I was retaining before I went back into heart failure. I was just stepping up my dose to 50mg a day, (I know, a very low dose) yet stopping it abruptly had me hearing voices, banging my head on a window repeatedly, rapid cycling, and visualizing launching myself through a stained glass window. FUN.. right??!! The nurses were aware of this, but since I was on the cardiac floor, where they just don't have experience with mental illness, they released me anyway. It wasn't feasible family-wise for me to stay, but part of me wishes I had because I'm not in any better state and now I'm here at home and floundering on my own.
To cap it all off, my fiancee of 15 yrs and I were having a discussion yesterday about how I just don't feel like I can open up to him about the stuff that's rattling around in my head, and what was supposed to be about me quickly turned into him talking about how much his life sucks and him crying about the general shittiness of his situation. Now, we live together and have 3 kids together, so it's really our situation, but as is most often the case, he was focusing on just how much the scales are weighted against him...that happens a lot. The situation only went downhill from there, he grabbed me by the throat, shoved me against the stove, terrified our 5 yo kids and our 13 yo, (she wanted to call the cops). He told me how much he resents my mental illness, how shitty a person I am, how much I don't care about him, yadda yadda yadda...he also grabbed a knife and wedged it between us, screaming at me to kill him. He'd been drinking and was jonesing for weed, (he's a real nightmare when he doesn't heve it) and finally I just decided to take the kids to my sister's for the night. He yelled at me about how he just expects me to run away, and that I should go ahead and call 911 so they could arrest him, then I'd be happy, he was just completely ballistic.
Now, as I said earlier, my parents were very abusive, my father more physically so, my mother very emotionally. When he was telling me about how I didn't care about him and how much he resents my mental illness, I was right back in that place again. I had my back to him and was just crying my heart out. I had a lit cigarette in my hand and just kept wanting to put it against my arm because causing myself pain was always a coping mechanism when I was in emotional pain and felt like I couldn't respond or fight back. He is a big guy...400+ lbs, and he was right on top of me...I was that little child all over again.
The point to all this ranting and whining is that, with my mental state in such chaos right now, I really don't know how much of this relationship drama I can take. I already feel guilty enough because my mania often manifests itself as impatience and yelling at the kids, I just have no tolerance and I get so angry sometimes. Then I get plunged into the guilt and depression and tears after that 'cause I feel like a horrible mom and person and that I'm a burden to my family. I'm rapid cycling so badly right now and trying to mange it as best I can, but I feel like I'm failing most of the time. I've also always been one of those people that once something has been said, is out in the open, I can't get it out of my head...the things he said, they keep playing on a loop, and even once this acute drama is over, I'm never gonna forget them...I just feel lost right now :(

I Hate Him...Why Am I With Him??!!

At This Moment I am angry...At this moment I am irrational...let me state that first and foremost...yet still I hate him...I want to be free of him...he feels he can say the most hurtful things in the name of sarcasm...in the name of humor..in the name of "I'm just kidding, honey" and I'm supposed to be OK with it...for the better part of 12 years I've taken this...rolled with this, laughed with this, endured with this, let my already battered self-esteem tried to moor up under this...and still it goes on...and I wonder how much longer I can hold on...I came into this partnership bruised and injured and he knew this, and in the beginning he handled me with kid gloves, sometimes, when he remembered, when it was convenient, when he wasn't too emotionally invested, when he wasn't himself inebrieated, or invested, but when he was, all bets were off...now, those days and thoughts are long gone...now ALL bets are off...really. I never meant for it to be this way...never understood what that would mean. I should have healed myself before I entered into this contract. A child still full of wounds had no business trying to shoulder the burdens of a woman. I still feel like that child so much inside, like I am playing house with half a deck of cards and spit in place of super glue...Abracadabra instead of real magic...just waiting for someone to call me on my bluff.
Our relationship has deteriorated so much with time...and I know that all relationships change...but it seems like this is more than that. He derives glee from tricking me, making me feel small and stupid, he likes being the quick and smart one. I come out in a an outfit for our night out and he tells me about the President's approval rating...I am not by nature disposed to men, so my patience with their quirks is relatively little...he knows this...he has pushed well past it. He is not physically appealing to me, has not been for a long time, his personality is quickly losing it's luster, the only thing left is the commitment of our children and the time we have invested in eachother...
I don't want to be cold...I don't want to be cruel...I am by nature a very emotional person and I do love him in my own way. He is a very hard person to love sometimes
though. He is abrasive, sarcastic, harsh, cold, self-absorbed, distant...he can also be loving and warm...and cuddly. However, he is more one than the other as you can see, though you'd never get him to admit it. Still, you might say I must love him a good bit or we wouldn't have been together for almost 12 years...but you must rememember that I was raised by a domineering psychotic bitch. I have a natural tendency to gravitate to dominant personalities. Although I do love him, in my own fashion. I also hate him now for the same reasons.
So what do I do?? When the House of Cards, so ill constructed,crumbles and there is no Fairy Godmother, what happens?? How does the fairy tale, or the nightmare, end??
I haven't been able to get hold of my therapist since Christmas, so I'm turning to a different outlet for answers...
NOW WHAT??

Love and stoplights can be cruel. - Sesame Street

I think the title says it all...it's amazing how profound it is...Sesame Street, you say??!! Amazing.
However, it is not love we shall be discussing here tonight, as the diagram above might show...but rather, girls...
I am a girl, (duh)...and as such, do so seek out the company of my kind...I am also attracted in a physical and sexual manner to my own gender, as much as that may complicate matters...and on Halloween of this past year was introduced to a beautiful, but married woman who I was immediately smitten with, by the name of Jolene. She had all the attributes I seek in a woman, fiery, intelligent, self-sufficient, oppinionated, long haired, curvy, wild, flirty, sweet smelling, the list goes on...she was also a wife and mother, and as far as I knew, straight...
I relegated her to the "fantasize about in the middle of the night" pile...I have become more than good at doing that after moving about unnoticed in straight society for many years...
We did not see eachother or speak again until she called me up to invite me to her New Year's Eve party. I agreed to attend. It was a blast and I met a lot of new people...she was as radiant as I had remembered and I felt blessed to get to see her again. I called her later New Year's Day to make sure she had survived the festivities and she asked me to come by that evening to hang out after the New Year's Football game on TV. Her best friend, Holly, and her husband were there, already quite drunk, when I got there. We sat around the table and drank and talked. We had a great time. As it got later, Holly left. Jolene and I got flirtier and flirtier. I found out that the attraction was mutual. In short, we slept together that night.
However, I also found out that she and her husband were in the process of splitting up...now, she is a completely different person...she is cold and aloof...I realize that her life is complicated, and I also realize that our lives are complicated in general, being that we both have families and responsibilities, and that nothing is as it seems...I am not looking for us to run a way into the sunset, nor do I expect us to make a happy ending together, but civility would be nice...
I guess I have come to see that she is a bit of a head case...but that is not new..I have yet to be with a woman that wasn't...that is where the equation above comes into play...every single woman I have ever cared about has been like this...all I have ever given is caring I want to help them...I just want to be a friend...that's all no commitments no expectations besides just being a decent person...one day I'll figure out why that's so hard to get back in return...AAUUGGHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Closet Expose'

I have been "tagged" by my friend Tess, (http://archwords.blogspot.com/) in a practice I have never heard of before known as "meme" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme). From what I can gather, this is similar to some blogging rite of passage or world wide web tribal bonding experience or some such thing...At any rate, I am to write a witty and urbane, gritty and grueling expose of the contents of my closet and then tag three more blogging cohorts to do the same, thus spreading the joy and allowing more literary juveniles to cross over into puberty with us really real bloggers, so here goes...

Three Random Facts About My Closet:
1. It is entirely too small.
2. It's doors have not been closed since we moved in.
3. There is no sense of organization to it at all whatsoever.

Three Items I've Never Worn But Still Haven't Tossed:
1. The fuschia prom dress I bought at a vintage clothing store in 1994 and never finished modifying to fit my boobs.
2. The polyester jacket my MIL gave me that I'm too afraid she might actually expect to see me in one day.
3. The black turtleneck MIL gave me 3 Christmases ago.

Three Items I'll Never Get Rid Of, No Matter How Ugly They Get:
1. My favorite corset from Frederick's of Hollywood tho my post preggo body will NEVER fit in it again!!
2. Camel hair long coat my mom bought me in high school.
3. Vampire doll pictured on floor of closet in photo.

Three Items People Wouldn't Expect To Find In My Closet:
1. 5 Barbie Dolls in their boxes
2. Victorian wedding gown I dyed grey and wore 2 Halloweens in a row.
3. Real feather angel wings.

Three items that made me go, "Oh Lord, what was I thinking?":
I don't really have any of these...I threw away most of the "oh Goddess what was I thinking" stuff when we moved to this house.

Three things that I have a surprising number of:
1. Long skirts.
2. Halloween decorations.
3. T-Shirts with lots of holes in them.

Three dominant colors in my wardrobe:
Black, black, and black.

Three items that never fail to put me in a good mood whenever I wear them:
1. Any of my long black skirts.
2. My new purple poncho.
3. My new red silk skirt.

Three people I will tag:
I will tag Natalie (http://looseendsknotted.blogspot.com/) because I love her writing style and she always makes me laugh. I will also tag Smander for the same reasons. (http://mayfamilytreestump.blogspot.com/). Lastly, I will tag Celena, (http://blog.myspace.com/Celena) because I bet her closet is interesting and she's also witty and darn it I'm just greedy when it comes to humor...I like people who make me laugh..I eat it up like Ben and Jerry's Phish Food at PMS time!!

SO.....TAG, YOU'RE IT!!

So in the midst of adjusting to the roller coaster of new medications...(see previous post) we also learned that my husband's hours at work were going to be dramatically cut (from 50 hrs/wk to 35)...this was quite a blow indeed, and our already tight budget got significantly tighter. Hurrican Katrina's effects were far reaching indeed. Bryan works as a temp for the Advance Auto Parts Corporate Call Center as Customer Svc Phone support and the storm destroyed and/or shut down several stores, as well as delayed shipping to several regions of the country. He's actually lucky he even has a job, the only kept 2 other temps besides him.
On the same day he found out about his hours being cut for the second time, our son was diagnosed as developmentally delayed. Chronologically, he is almost 16 months old...his adjusted age is almost 14 months...his language development is that of a 5 months old, and his overall motor skills are that of an 8 month old.
I had feared this kind of outcome for quite a while. It took a lot longer for him to be released from the NICU than his twin sister. He has always been smaller and also sick more often. He had to be hospitalized in May for dehydration. He has also had recurrent ear infections.
He has always been "high needs" and very sensitive, but I thought it meant I was failing him somehow...having never raised a son, I truly felt like I was the weak link in the chain.
The therapists that evaluated him assured me that is not the case, and that I am actually being a wonderful mom to him by getting him tested so early in his life and pursuing therapy for him so aggressively. He is going to have his hearing tested, have Early Intervention here at home 2x a month, Speech Therapy, learn Baby Signs, and probably some Occupational Therapy. I plan to take a very proactive role in his therapies and learn everything I can so I can work with him and integrate the techniques into our daily routines. I want to help him get the most out of his environment and be able to communicate better.

However, since this is my blog, my outlet, I can admit here that I am scared, freaked out, mad as hell, annoyed, and just plain not happy suzy sunshine right now!! It's a damn good thing I'm in therapy myself and on the right%2

Dumb As A Mud Fence...

So the Depakote Definitely didn't work...In the 2 months I was on it I lost 1/4 of my hair, got hemorrhoids, put on 25-30 pounds, couldn't stop sleeping, had worsening heart palpitations, (never good for someone who already has congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy) and was Still a moody mess. I slashed myself with a dirty razor blade and got an infection and started drinking again. I craved carbs and sweets and was binge eating, especially late at night.
I always try to be an informed patient, and when I made the decision to go back into counseling and back on medication for my mental illness, I found a website that to me is Mecca for lunatics. http://www.crazymeds.org/
I did a great deal of research there and went to my psychiatrist and approached her about Topamax...I had my arguments all prepared only to find that she agreed with me completely, (something doctors rarely do, or at least I have rarely had good doctors that treated their patients like they had a brain in their heads at all). She said she likes Topamax and prescribes it regularly and felt I was a very good candidate for it.

I left the office on this med regimen:
50 mg Topomax / 50 mg Zoloft / 300-500 mg Seroquel / 500 mg Depakote x 3 days
50 mg Topamax / 500 mg Depakote / 300-500 mg Seroquel x 4 days
100 mg Topamax / 500 mg Depakote / 300-500 mg Seroquel X 7 days
150 mg Topamax / 500 mg Depakote / 300-500 mg Seroquel X 7 days

I am supposed to return to the office during the last week of the regimen to re-evaluate and work on removing the Depakote and replacing it with something else while upping the Topamax, in order to get the weight issue under control.
Now I knew all about the side effects, having done my copious research...HOWEVER I did not know I would get lost in Wal-Mart!! I did not know I would lose complete track of time...I did not know that when my daughter asked me to spell characteristic for her while she was doing her 4th grade english homework it would take me 2 minutes and 5 tries to do it...I never expected to have to run "spell check" on this blog!! I can count on one hand how many times I have used spell check in 30 yrs!! It is all well and good to know a thing in the abstract and quite another to experience it first hand...
Then there is the experience of trying to talk anytime in the first 3 hrs after you've taken your Topamax/Seroquel cocktail...."No Occiffur...I..thswear imm nut dwunk...tsee...Imm wallkeeng finnuh...iyuh..justht..cannt..talk..." as you wander past the police benevolent association fundraisers standing outside Target.
Although, I am the happiest dumb mud fence I could have ever conceived of being, no homicidal rages, urges to bury perfect strangers in the backyard, driving need to demasculinate my husband on an hourly basis...So I know that the medication is doing what it is supposed to do...And the dumbing down is temporary...Or so I'm told...But at this rate...Soon...I'll be too intellectually challenged to care!!

So Much Pain...

New Orleans is a place close to my heart, 'though I have never been there. It is home to the Cajun people and culture...the heart of American Jazz...Anne Rice and her vampires...stately Garden District Mansions...The French Quarter...Rue Bourbon...Historic above ground tombs and beautiful architecture...or at least it was.

New Orleans was also the home of Loyola University, my first choice college, where I planned to study music. My lifelong dream has been to open a nightclub on Rue Bourbon, where I would sing each night. I started collecting vampire items in high school for the vampire museum I was going to have on the second floor of the club, then live on the third floor where I could look out on my adopted home each night from my balcony.

I have fought back tears so many times in the last few days...there is more pain in my heart than I can express. All the images of suffering, the scope of this massive loss, feels like more than anyone should be expected to bear. Hurricanes are a fact of life here in the south, but the horror and destruction in Katrina's aftermath is nothing I ever thought I'd see.

I am joining with multitudes of bloggers in the relief effort. I have chosen the American Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/ Please, donate whatever you can. If you cannot afford the listed pre-determined donation amounts, please call them at 1-800-Help-Now. No amount is too little.

"I got the ways and means
To New Orleans
I'm going down by the river
Where it's warm and green
I'm gonna have drink, and walk around
I got a lot to think about oh yeah"

Concrete Blonde "Bloodletting"