Adios 2007.

What a year. What a year. So many things have happened to me in the last twelve months that it's kind of hard to wrap my head around. Let's see if I can list it all.

• I quit smoking marijuana.
• I realized I was in love with someone.
• I quit smoking cigarettes.
• I was accepted to SUNY Binghamton University.
  
• I started smoking cigarettes again.
• I was accepted to Corning Community College.
• I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
• I got my first job.
  
• I told my best friend of fifteen years that I never wanted to speak to her again.
  
• I graduated from high school.
• I started dating.
• I saw Transformers.
  
• I quickly ended all notion of dating three weeks later.
• I started smoking weed again.
  
• I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
  
• I threw a wild graduation party.
• I quit smoking weed again.
  
• I started college.
• I made up with my best friend of fifteen years.
  
• I wrecked my car (miss you, 2001 Saturn).
• I got a different job (a better one).
• I finally got to dress like a pirate for Halloween.
  
• I started smoking weed again.
• I wrote off a few more friends.
• I got my first tattoo.
  
• I apologized and regained said friends.
• I turned nineteen.
  
• I cut my hair in a very drastic way.
• I spent $500 on Christmas.
• I was almost arrested on New Year's Eve.

Fuck, man...

My father... whine-ass extraordinaire.

I love how I feel like crap when I even think about myself, but my father... he clearly has no problem feeling sorry for himself. Hell, my mother doesn't either. They just... I don't know.

Let's just say I'm glad I work tonight. 4 to close. I always feel better when I go to work, so I'm hoping today is no different.

Since when did Shiny Toy Guns become so awesome?

Now, I'm sure almost everyone has heard of the band 'Shiny Toy Guns'. I'm pretty sure almost everyone has heard their song Le Disko (featured on Motorola's RAZR2 commercial with Chick and Dude fighting in a subway station using RAZRs). How come I didn't get the memo relating to me their awesomeness?

For some reason, I decided I was going to put my iTunes gift card to use tonight and legally download some music. However, I was at a loss for a song... until I remembered the RAZR2 commercial and realized I liked the song they'd used there. So I did some Google-ing, downloaded the song, then began to browse through some of the band's other stuff.

I like them. A lot. They rock some serious face in my 19-year-old life as of this moment.

In other news, Christmas was good, New Year's is going to be outrageously and insanely fun, I can't wait to leave for Binghamton next month (I move out the 24th), and I've made it past three months with no meds for the depression or bipolar. Hell, I even stopped taking my birth control... talk about a prescription boycott.

Probably the best news of all, though, is that I pulled out of my first semester of college with nothing below an A-. Go me. XD

So I'm back to dicking around online.

That paper is not going to write itself, and yet here I sit, not writing it. -_- Most would complain that it's midnight, and too late to work on it, but this is when I'm most functional. Usually. Today's an off day... I had another migraine last night and had to take a high dosage of hydrocodone to nix it. Then I only got a few hours' sleep, so I was like the living dead today. I swear to God, I was still high on painkillers when I woke up this morning.

So now I'm just going to have to set my alarm and get my dumb ass up early tomorrow and write that paper before work. I have to work everyday until Wednesday, so if I don't get it close to done tomorrow, I'm pretty much fucked. If I can just get to the conclusion and stop there, I can write the conclusion (or maybe another paragraph) Sunday night or Monday morning before class (or even Monday night after work, if things get really desperate). Still, most of it needs to be done tomorrow. At least six pages. Seven would make me feel more comfortable. Eight would be fabulous. Finishing it would be best.

After I finish that paper, I've got another one to write, not to mention a shit ton of back-work for my fucking Wellness class.

Who the hell has ever HEARD of a Wellness class? Geh...

I'm still trying to come out of my medicated funk. Today's really been quite the bitch, and the end of the semester is suddenly bearing down on me, full speed ahead, and I am not ready for it by any means. I don't have time for all this shit. If I didn't have to work, I'd be in decent shape.

But no.

I work everyday for the next five days.

Feck.

More than meets the eye.

Did I ever mention that Transformers rocks a whole lotta face? *clings to Optimus Prime* I wish my car was a Transformer...

It's been snowing for three days.

So I decided to skip class today. After forcing myself to enjoy a quiet night at home (it was awkward, what with fighting parental units), I figured I had no reason to go to English History. I already presented my research, the class isn't being tested on the course's content, and I have a huge paper due in one week that I haven't even thought about. My car's battery also threw a fit this morning, and I felt particularly inclined to go shopping, so I slept in, went into Corning to chill for a while, and now I'm home for 45 more minutes until I have to go to work.

I'm the one that gets to close tonight. Ick. It's supposed to start snowing pretty bad around nightfall and I don't get out of work until 9. Double ick. I don't know if anyone's scheduled until 6 or 7, so it's quite possible I'll be all by myself for five hours without an ounce of help. Triple ick. Oh, and did I mention I have a 45 minute commute to get home?

Good news is my car has a new battery and runs like a champ now, despite being... 12 years old. Poor little Lexus (it's not really a Lexus but a Ford Contour; I'll relate the story another time). I also got a new jump drive (my old one was getting quite pissy) and some kick ass Sony ear buds for my iPod (I lost the ones that came with it). They should kick ass. I paid $30 for them.

$30 for headphones... fuck. I have a spending problem.

And now here I am, playing around on the Internet, relating things about my life when most people could give a damn and I should be soaking up all my free time with work on my research paper (it's kind of 50% of my final class average). Somehow, I just can't bring myself to care. That happens a lot. Meh... I work better under pressure, anyway.

I don't have another day off for the rest of this week. Technically, I don't work on Wednesday, but I've got class until 6, so that's basically like going to work. I get home late, around 7:30 some nights, and either fall asleep, play on the computer for hours, or concentrate on ways to neglect my classwork. Tomorrow will be no different. My stupid paper's due on the 11th, so I'll have to get up at a reasonable hour this weekend and write it before I go to work, which really fucking sucks since I cannot write during the day. If I'm going to turn out anything decent, it has to be done at night, but I work at night!

Yarg.

I'm out... I'm just wasting time.

December. Cold, snowy, and dark, it is the month of my birth.

After delving further into my studies about bipolar disorder, as well as experiencing a few mind-bending revelations, I have decided to follow in the footsteps of countless others and focus (for now) on a blog that chronicles my day-to-day experience with bipolar disorder. It was only a couple of hours ago that I finally admitted to myself I had a disease, a true disease, though I have been on and off medication for nearly... two years now. I won't profess to knowing everything there is about bipolar disorder; there are many who are more knowledgeable than I, and who have dealt with it for much longer. However, I can give you my take on it, and how I've tried to manage what I've been dealt. Maybe I'll be able to help someone else understand this illness in the process, like so many other blogs did for me.

Let's see if I can begin this properly.

When I was 16-years-old, something rather odd happened to my family. A couple weeks before I was to start my junior year of high school, my parents (who had always had problems) hit a phenomenal bump in the proverbial road: the only woman my father truly loved died. This woman was not my mother. My mother has always been devoted to my father, though only God knows why, and seeing my father so bent out of shape for someone else really upset her. Hell, I believe upset is too calm a term. At times, she was downright hysterical about it. Moving forward, this created a huge rift between my parents and between my father and I. I had always admired my father, even when we fought or the one time he threatened to hit me. He was intelligent, ridiculously good at debate, funny, and (to me) a genuinely decent human being. In the ignorance of my youth, it was relatively easy for me to put aside all his negative aspects: he always yelled, he said demeaning things to my mother and I, he assumed he was more intelligent than anyone else, and he was obscenely selfish. It didn't matter, though. He was my father. Somehow, my mother instilled in me this unwitting sense of forgiveness, and I always forgave, no matter what the trespass.

That August, though, I found myself confronted with a looming question: could I forgive my father for hurting my mother so horribly, all in the quest for self-satisfaction? I was almost an adult, and in the span of a week, I came face to face with all the things that made my father unrelentingly mean. After several talks with both my parents, I came to a rather chilling conclusion: all else had been menial compared to this. This time, what my father had done was unforgivable. Upon reaching this decision, I felt things tear and give way in my heart. I had lost a role model, the one person I truly looked up to. My father's prized intelligence and humor were nothing in the way of his undeniable selfishness.

Rather rapidly, my feelings on the matter changed and evolved. I went from a state of shock and loss to blinding rage in about a day. For nearly a week, I wouldn't speak to my father except to say when I would be home from whatever it was I'd decided to do that day. He finally stopped me and asked why I was being so cold, and I told him the truth. I told him everything I thought, and how I was angry and disappointed in him and because of what had happened to our family, I couldn't shake the resounding sadness that followed in the wake of integrity's demise.

I suppose he was sad after that. I can't imagine any parent likes hearing that their child is disappointed in them, or that their parent-child relationship has changed. A series of events followed later, mostly consisting of my anger, irritability, lack of humanity. I became cold, almost unfeeling, and everything I did, I did with a vengeance.

Then, in what could only be called a moment of irrational thought on my mother's part, she went from wanting a divorce to simply wanting to fix everything. She and my father reconciled, my father and my grandmother reconciled, and I was the only one left that felt bitter about the entire situation. No matter how people cajoled me, or how I was urged to let it go, I could not forget the misdeed my father had committed. Who could? He nearly tore apart a family, the family he had wanted, to accommodate his own desires.

The next thing I knew, my family, the source of strength I had relied on during my turbulent adolescence, believed I was damaged. They believed I had inherited my father's depressive tendencies, and my grandfather's tendency toward clinically-diagnosed madness. Before I realized what was happening, I was on my way to a counselor. At the time, I think I did it mostly to please my parents, but there's a part of me that often insists I knew things were beginning to go wrong. I was angry and irritable all the time; my sleep patterns were growing more and more abnormal; and I became horrifically sad at the slightest word or touch. I visited a counselor once, declared I felt better, and no more was said about it. Everyone was content to think I was just fine, the prodigy of the family, and that my bitterness as of late had spawned solely from the desire to talk about recent events with an unbiased party.

Everyone last one of us was dead wrong.

About a month after seeing a counselor, all my old feelings of anger and betrayal slowly came crawling back, wheedling their way into every facet of my life. I had just turned 17, and the January after my 17th birthday, I was back in the doctor's office, taking tests and talking about my feelings. After hearing all I had to say, my doctor at the time diagnosed me with depression and prescribed me 50mg Prozac daily, along with weekly counseling and a trip to the psychiatrist to make sure I had no other mental health issues. Things, she said, would begin to look up for me.

I don't believe she anticipated my reception of a depression diagnosis. I went to one counseling appointment and lied through my psychiatric interview. Sure, I was sad, and I was even angry, but I did not have depression. I was sure that after the psychiatrist and counselor both said I was fine, and I said that I felt better, my doctor would take me off the meds. My father had been on medication every day of his life since age 20 for anxiety and depression. After seeing the person he could be, I'd resolved to be nothing like him. Taking medication for a mental condition was the first step toward being exactly like him. My plan was foolproof; I just had to make them believe I was fine. And I was fine. Just sleep-deprived and irritable.

Needless to say, my plan failed. My counselor urged me to come twice a week if possible; the psychiatrist said I hadn't yet developed bipolar disorder, but I exhibited bipolar tendencies and thus would probably have full blown Bipolar I by age 18; and my doctor told me I had to take the medication she'd prescribed.

The first night I had to take my medicine, I cried. I cried for nearly an hour before I finally forced it down my own throat. I felt as though I were truly going insane, and I felt weak because I needed a pill to help me manage my own problems. Furthermore, I felt positive I was going to end up like my father: in dire need of medication and unable to function without it.

The next day I took the Prozac, it wasn't so bad, and the next week, I felt lighter. I felt happy and relaxed and fine. I felt normal. Prozac and medication in general transformed from this looming, terrible monster to a friend, something that only endeavored to help. Months passed and still, everything was fine. I lost a drastic amount of weight, started trying to live a healthier lifestyle, and genuinely attempted to change.

About a year and a half into my daily Prozac regimen, I noticed that I was becoming irritable and angry again. This time, however, I was increasingly sad. Before, I had only experienced a terrible rage. Now, I felt both rage and a hopeless sadness. Not knowing what else to do, I went back to the doctor and explained everything. I was terrified: my fix-it pill had stopped fixing things. This meant I would probably have to switch to a different medication, and mind-numbing stories of changing medications thirty to forty times came rushing into my head. I had resolved never to be that person. I didn't want to have to take pills to manage life, but I certainly didn't want to be on six different medications by age 25. I hoped and prayed my doctor wouldn't change the my medicine, but after having upped the dosage twice already, there wasn't much else she could do. It was then I switched to Lexapro.

The worst month of my life thus far was experienced while taking Lexapro. Where Prozac had allowed me a little freedom with my developing mania, Lexapro crushed down upon it, stifling my manic creativity and leaving me, a born writer, with little or nothing to write about. I felt as though my soul had been stripped from me during that month; it was a torturous hell. Lexapro seemed to undo all the good work that Prozac had wrought, and it also failed to treat the half of my disorder that seemed to be increasing twofold every day: my depression. The longer I took that medication, the lower I found myself sinking, and I couldn't even write about my fear and sadness to help alleviate it. I was in the deepest hole of hell, and I couldn't get out, especially not with a demon's foot on my chest. I had changed doctors by this time, and went back to see my newest physician, demanding to be taken off Lexapro. She promptly did so, trusting my instinct, and put me on Zoloft.

Zoloft. Ick. I found that Zoloft barely helped with my depression, and though it was significantly weaker than the Lexapro, it still kept a tight leash on my creativity. It made me feel icky. I was an icky pill: it kept me stable, but a low, rather depressed stable. So I stopped taking it for a month. I realize now that that was a rather large mistake. In the span of one month, I completely transformed. I believe I lost my sense of humanity for a short time, and became something near to what Grendel must have been to Beowulf. All I wanted to do was destroy and devour those who crossed my path, and to hell with everyone else. When I finally discovered what I had become, I began taking my Zoloft again, but it kept me at a persistent low before it stopped working altogether. It was time for another change.

After yet another trip to the doctor's office, I was prescribed 500mg of Depakote to take daily along with my 50 mg of Zoloft.

Depakote. A mood stabilizer. The lowest of all mental health trenches, in my book. I felt like a broken-hearted failure, taking both a mood stabilizer and an anti-depressant. Both seemed to work fine together, but I noticed they gave me headaches. I'd suffered from severe migraines all my life, even when I was a little girl, but had managed to stave them off for the past couple years. Now, on these two medications, I experienced a blinding migraine almost everyday. The only way to stop the pain those headaches wrought was to take Hydrocodone; Tylenol, Advil, Excedrin, even prescription Ibuprofen couldn't make those monsters go away. Even Hydrocodone didn't make the pain cease: it simply dulled it to a barely manageable point and then forced me into slumber.

And now, my story is in the present. I am currently off my medication and have been for months, all of my own volition. I've been able to train myself to know when I'm having an episode, whereas before I couldn't really tell. After taking meditation classes and attending counseling once a week for eight weeks, I've managed to get a little bit of control over my mind without the help of medication. My doctor has urged me fervently to begin my Zoloft regimen again, but I haven't, and I won't. At least, not until the last minute.

I've found that recently, my episodes seem to be greater in number and closer together. Their frequency has upped dramatically since my car accident in October (an absolutely terrifying experience that has changed my perspective on life drastically, leading me into a deeper cavern of sadness and suicidal thought), and I fear I may be long due for a trip to the doctor's and a request for different medication.

And now that I've regaled you with the rather demented tale that has been my adventure so far, would you like to know the sickest, most ironic part of it all?

I'm ending up just like my father.