CONTENT WARNING: Death, Mental Health, Cancer
The wonderful world of mania. How truly astonishing, that something could feel so right, so good, as if nothing wrong could ever happen, could turn into a perpetual nightmare.
It started yesterday. Feeling out of the blue happier than usual (hypomania knocking at my door with flowers and chocolate) I looked at my bottle of Geodon that I desperately need on a daily basis and thought, HUH. I don’t need this medication! I feel great without it (with traces of it exiting my system).
What usually is me at 10 am eating five hundred calories to take my Geodon, turned into a “I’m not that hungry anyways and I want to enjoy my day.” Like as if my medication couldn’t allow that to begin with. Perhaps I was looking for a happiness that felt out of this world. And that I found. The whole day, I felt out of this world alive. My senses were tingling and clear, my thoughts were moving at a faster rate than usual, and I had the energy and strength of an ox. Feeling so superiorly and supremely the greatest thing to be alive, it was a feeling that I don’t encounter very often. It was a feeling, that every once in a while, popped out of no where before I was treated for Bipolar Disorder. That feeling, is honestly, the best feeling in the world.
Night time arose out of its home and sprinkled the sky with stars and a hint of humidity in this fine Floridian state. After cleaning my house for three hours, riding my bicycle for five miles at least, running around and performing errands and hanging out with my friends, I woke up at 5 a.m yesterday. It was 2 a.m this morning and I was still awake. Thinking that I felt great all day without my Geodon, my happy go lucky dumbass decided that it was a FABULOUS idea not to take the 40 mg at night. I decided that I wanted to be this happy for the rest of my life and that Geodon was my nemesis. Geodon, in my mind, was the stalker on facebook that was preventing me from enjoying memes and posting my shit about life. Geodon was the sock that was just too short to fit on the ankle and was sliding down my foot inside my sneaker. Geodon was the lagging update on a computer when you want to go online window shopping. Geodon is the card that declined at a grocery store simply because the chip on the side is old. Geodon was the alarm clock that you just didn’t feel like turning off because you are so comfortable in bed. Any scenario that one can come up with that makes one particular thing a nuisance, in my mind, Geodon was it. Where did this unfathomable logic come from? I HAVE NO IDEA.
This morning, its now 5 a.m. and I dozed off and on for two hours. I have a fitbit watch that helps me keep track of my sleep, and needless to say, the sleep tracker was disappointed in my sleeping habits, see to it that it labeled my sleep status as poor. Then, 6 a.m. passes. Still wired and awake. Then, I started to see shadows, but not fully formed ones. My vision started making colors and shapes float in the air and shadows that merely popped for a second on the walls. Several times, I opened my eyes sure of the fact that someone has broken into my home. Keeping in mind that I had a knife inside my dresser drawer, not realizing that it was noises from the rabbit that is next to our bed. Before you know it, its 7 a.m. and I have to wake up around 11 a.m. for work. Waking up Colton (my fiancé) and telling him what was going on, he suggested that I take my medicine like a smart individual. Feeling defeated and paranoid as fuck, I bit the bullet and took 20 mg of Geodon, like I usually do in the mornings. Nothing was happening, to my knowledge. My manic mind forgot the fact that it takes about an hour or two for it to kick in. It’s 8 a.m. and I still wasn’t falling asleep. So, I took a muscle relaxer and had a kratom tea. Sometimes the kratom tea makes me sleepy and helps me out from time to time. Thus my fiancé drinks it to relieve his anxiety.
Its 10 a.m. and my stomach is whirling into a fist of anxiety. Sweat is pushing through my skin, my eyes are dilated like a squirrel and my muscles were tense and extremely agitated. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t keep my body still. I felt like Tarzan running away from a pack of wolves that were running faster than me and getting closer. Thoughts of everyone wanting to get me were slightly arriving but not enough for me to focus on it. Then it was hard to breathe. My lungs and chest felt tight as though rubber bands were holding me hostage. My world was crumbling, and the ground beneath me was crackling and separating between two tectonic plates, and I was falling. Out of mere desperation, I went to the emergency room.
I got checked in, and in tears and a perpetual state of panic that I didn’t think was ever going to end, I laid on the bed in the emergency room just for the nurse to take my vitals and for him to walk away and suddenly….the air is still and fresh, and my body relaxes, as though the rubber bands snapped apart and I was free. My Geodon kicked in, and I became stable. He comes back into the room and I admitted whole heartedly that I had a panic attack and it went away. Pleased that my honesty reveals a problem solved, he has me talk to the doctor anyway and compassionately reminds me that everything is going to be ok. The doctor comes in, and as I admitted that I didn’t take my medication as I have should, he kind of tells me in a “told you so way”, “See what happens when you do that?” I didn’t blame him. I would of totally said the same thing. In fact, I would of added a “Bet you won’t do that shit again” kind of statement to that, but of course it would risk pissing off the patient and when a bipolar patient is pissed, WE ARE PISSED (Seriously, don’t piss off a person with bipolar disorder). He gave me a simple answer and prescription to my demise: Go home and take your medicine. And that I did.
After I took my Lamictal and Prozac, I immediately fell asleep. After my manic episode that thankfully didn’t last longer than two days, I had to call off of work, not just from exhaustion from lack of sleep and from horrendous anxiety, but just because the additional stress would of made it worse or made the panic attack return at bay. The last thing I want to do, is be at work, cleaning a room being surrounded by athletic students and for me to be in tears from a panic attack and have to leave to go back to the emergency room.
So, moral of the story: Why did this all happen? Because I wanted to be like everyone else. I want to thrive and be happy without having to take medications that occasionally make me drowsy and not want to exist from time to time (is that my medicine or my disorder? I have no clue). I also wanted to talk about my mother or deal with the pain of my mother (who passed away from cancer) without the aide of medications. I wanted to be able to have the energy that I once had when I wasn’t diagnosed and wasn’t being treated. However, what I failed to see and recognize, was that energy was the energy of a 21 year old who worked part-time and experienced an array of delusions, hallucinations and intense emotions that occasionally consisted of happiness and simplicity. I am now turning 26 in a month and I work full time. If anything, what I failed to recognize at that moment while not being on my Geodon, is that I am at my best right now, but the simplicity I had then of not knowing what was wrong with me and just sort of working with the ropes, tempted me. It tempted me to try to eliminate my reality and pretend that bipolar disorder didn’t exist. Simply put, it’s a reminder of my noncompliance due to lack of acceptance.
In conclusion-I won’t be doing that shit again. ❤
Recycled Hearts Records 