Storms

It's a little after 5:30 pm and I'm sitting on the front porch of the house where my apartment is located. The sky is confused. There is blue skies to the east and dark clouds to the west and a brisk wind to blow everything about.

I have tried so hard to keep myself together, yet, like the sky tonight, I am full of darkness (mostly) and light (very little). I feel the darkness pulling me down and I'm not sure how long I have until I just can't fight the demons anymore.

For years I have struggled to have a relationship with each of my sons and I have finally given up . I can no longer take the animosity from Connor, and Hunter wants nothing at all to do with me. Then there's Matthew. 

Matthew.

My first born.

Words fail to pinpoint everything I feel right now when I think of Matthew. I am both deeply disappointed and proud of all the things he did right.  I am nail-spitting angry and compassionate.  I love him with all my heart and despise him in the same breath.  The urge to punch him in the face and hold him in my arms are equally as fierce. I'm ashamed of him.

Matthew has turned into the type of person I have hated all my life: a child molester. I have always believed child molesters should be shot on site. No questions asked.

Then my son became one.

He molested HIS OWN CHILD.

He molested MY GRANDSON.

Of course I blame myself for all of it. I'm the one who split up our family. I'm the one making poor decisions, being selfish and self centered. I put my needs above all others. I had no right to do that.

Now I am a mother who has no kids. I can easily disappear into the abyss and they wouldn't even know it. Ha! Then again, I've never been very present in their lives anyway.

I have so many letters to write, to say my piece. None of which will matter to any of them because by the time they receive them, they probably won't bother to read them anyway, I will be gone.

Poof!

Unhappiness covers me like a wet blanket and the weight of all my mistakes, regrets and bad decisions has me bolted to the floor. There is no goodness or happiness left in me because I gave it all away to people who would not - or could not - or couldn't care less - to give it back in kind.

I loved only one man, with everything I had and, I can only hope, he loved me even a little bit in return. I will never know. It certainly felt as if he did and I will hold onto that sliver of sunshine until I am no more.

There will be no pieces to pick up, no memories, photographs or journals left behind for anyone to look through to try to figure out who I was, what really mattered to me, or all the hopes and dreams I held onto for so long just waiting to share it with someone. Anyone.

There will be nothing to fight over. No bequeaths, no instructions; nothing.

Only a letter addressed to each person I loved in the life that I lived, even if they never loved me in return.

The storm continues to rage...

Bi-Polar Stronghold

I can't decide if I should scream my head off, or cry. Maybe both?

One of my nephews attempted suicide and he is the eldest son of the brother I hate right down to my marrow.

My dad is the one who told me about this - then asked me if I "knew of anyone in the family who is bipolar?"

What.
The.
Fuck.

Seriously?!

Am I being punk'd here?!

"Well, Dad, YES I do know someone. ME."

Holy hell! I almost choked on the words because I couldn't believe that, still, after all these years, he refuses to believe (or acknowledge) I have mental health issues.

"They want to know what medication you are taking," my dad replied.

"Who's "they"?"

"Brandon's doctors."

I called my brother (who I hate the most) to tell him the names of the meds I take and, of course, he was SHOCKED that I, too, am bipolar and that I, too, have attempted suicide.

Where the fuck have these people been?!

I told my brother, "For all the people who think I'm just 'crazy' - well I'm not. I'm bipolar and it's a bitch of a cycle to be on."

I could hear the wind rustle his hair as what I said flew right over his head.

Another F*cked Up May

It feels as though I am in a constant state of turbulent emotions. For example, my birthday and Mother's Day were four days apart this year and I know, with absolute certainty, that my boys will NOT be calling to wish me a "Happy Birthday" nor will they be calling to wish me a "Happy Mother's Day".

First of all my kids have no idea when my birthday actually is, even though I'm on FB, where Connor and Matthew can plainly see it. Secondly, when Connor was in preschool/elementary school all his handmade gifts went to stepmom, and that set a precedent that still stands to this day. Not once - NOT ONCE - in 22 years have I received acknowledgement of any kind from Connor. Nada. Zero.  I couldn't even get his dad to automatically order school pictures for me (I would reimburse him when they were delivered), so I have no school pictures of Connor. No senior pictures. Nothing.

Matthew and Hunter, on the other hand, during the years they lived with me, I received their art projects for Mother's Day. Once Matthew moved to his dad's, at age 5, all that stopped. Hunter stopped when he moved to his dad's house.

Am I bitter? No. Hurt? You betcha. I played by the fucking rules where my kids were concerned by never speaking ill of their dads. (Although I had a LOT to say about Connor's and Hunter's dad. I still do.)

So, my birthday, followed four days later with Mother's Day, followed four days later with the 17th anniversary of the beginning of the HCA and I have a gun loaded, safety off, cocked and resting snugly underneath my chin.

All of the above doesn't even take into consideration how close I came to losing my dad at the end of March.

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

...and I am so damn close to completely folding up inside myself and putting a bullet in my brain. Then I no longer have to feel like such an enormous disappointment to my kids.  I won't feel like an afterthought or a last choice.  I will finally stop feeling guilty for trying to do what I thought was in their best interest when, clearly, now, I was wrong there too.

Never.
Ever.
Ever.
Enough.
For.
Anyone.
Ever.

The problem with my plan is, I don't even own a gun. I overdosed twice, on purpose, and failed. Miserably.

My kids hate me. They do. They won't admit it to my face though.  Connor's feeling were crystal clear when, in October of this year, he got married and I wasn't invited. In fact, I found out about it 2 weeks after the fact, when I opened FB and saw a picture of him and his new wife.  It would have hurt so much less if he would have just kicked me in the chest.

I don't know where Hunter is, or how he is doing. I am terrified for him and the anxiety of that worry is eating me alive.

Matthew and I stay in regular contact.

Please, God...if you have plans for me, now would be a really good time to reveal them to me. Because if you don't, I will be left to my own devices. And it won't be pretty.

An Open Letter to Robin Williams on World Suicide Prevention Day

By Dr. Keith Ablow

Dear Mr. Williams:

It is almost exactly one month since you are said to have taken your own life.  I know differently.  I know that major depression took your life, and that that illness had, on that day, completely obliterated the belief that your life could bring you--or anyone around you--anything but pain.  Major depression had made even you, someone who made millions of people laugh for decades, completely unable to believe that you would laugh, again.

So many people don't understand what you felt that day.  I do.  You felt as though every minute of every day had turned into the feeling someone has when told that his child has died--that very same level of gut-wrenching grief, panic and helplessness.  Every minute.

What's more, you felt as though those minutes would repeat themselves inescapably, infinitely and forever.  And in that level of endless suffering you felt entirely alone, as though no one could fathom it and as though no one was relevant to it.

It was so black and so deep that it was the entire horizon, the sound of the whole world laughing at you, not with you, drowning out any feelings of love from any other human being or for any other human being.

Depression wasn't affecting you; it had become you. It had stolen reality from you. It was airless and without exit. 

So many others feel or will feel what you did.  Millions suffer with major depression, and many thousands must be contemplating suicide around the world today.  Every day.  And, because I have listened to so many of them, I want to write them words that will reach them, even through the abyss of suffering into which they have fallen.  I wish I could have reached you, too.

Mr. Williams, I would have told you this:  As hard as it was to believe at the time, the grief, panic and helplessness you were feeling were the vicious propaganda of a Grim Reaper--major depression--attempting to delude you into believing that life itself was a scourge. 

I would have told you to look at every single negative moment you were experiencing that day as a cruel trick of perception, no different than if a kidnapper had spirited you away and drugged you.  

I would have told you to entirely discount any conclusion you had come to about when the pain might stop or life might brighten, to not rely at all on your reasoning, because major depression as deep as yours had commandeered your logic.  It had told you a nearly irresistible lie about yourself.

I would have told you to start talking back to your depression right away.  That would have given us a little hope of you noticing that your depression was a very separate thing from you, and stalking you.  I would have told you to literally tell it out loud to go f*ck itself, that it was a liar and a thug and that you were onto it, and you would see to it that it died before you.  I would have told you to tell it that you would bear anything to defeat it, and that you would defeat it, because it couldn't outlast you, that it would have to kill you with it's own bare hands, not take over yours. 

I would have told you to fight against the invader with everything and every resource, without pride.  Deploy every weapon.  And because the truth is the mortal enemy of every lie, I would have told you to get to an emergency room or call a suicide hotline or 911 and tell someone the absolute truth about all the dark thoughts you were having--yes, even the one about leaving the planet.  Especially that one.  Because that one is the big lie implanted in your mind by the Godforsaken charlatan, scum named major depression.  Your enemy.  And mine.

I would have told you to recruit soldiers to help you fight the war against depression and drive it from your the lands of your mind and soul.  

Remember, no pride.  Freedom is having nothing left to lose.  

Ask a family member or a friend to stay by your side, 24/7.  Walk into a psychiatrist's office unannounced and tell that person that you don't want to live another moment.  Stop at the local police station and turn in the thief trying to steal your life by stealing your ability to believe that relief might be just a day, or a week, or a few weeks away.  Give that thief no quarter.

This, too, Mr. Williams.  Because enough data is in.  I would have told you that your enemy--your depression--was a paper tiger, a weakling, a piece of crap, posing as the ultimate strongman.  I would have told you that every depression is a fighter pumped up on steroids, with a glass chin, trying to scare you into throwing in the towel.  Start punching back hard, and keep punching, and that loser will land on the canvas, with you standing strong, every single time.  No exceptions.  It could be the very next punch you throw that puts it down. 

I know it is too late for you, Mr. Williams.  I wish we could have talked.  But it is not too late for the millions suffering with major depression.  No, it is never too late when the enemy relies entirely on deception to do its dark work.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.

©2014 FOX News Network, LLC.
All rights reserved.

Random Thoughts

It seems I always think of things to write about when I am not anywhere near my laptop to actually write it down.

For instance today, at work, I was drawing up a flu vaccine when I started thinking about where I've been and where I am now. Kind of abstract, for the most part. As today progressed I zeroed in on more specific things.

Allow me to finish the following sentence:

"I never thought that..."

• ...that I would go back to school and I would finally be living a dream of working in health care.
• ...depression would wrap its chains around me so tightly and drag me so far into the darkness that I would survive more than one suicide attempt.
• ...that I would ever, in a zillion years, bury one of my children.
• ...I would have 11 Electro Convulsive Therapies. Nor did it occur to me the vastness of my memory loss because of them.
• ...my marriage would ever feel less than completely secure and that the turmoil currently surrounding it could be the end of it.
• ...I would be creating my own chaos. Again.
• ...my health, not my mental health, my physical health, would become so problematic and wrought with drama.
• ...Connor would still be so far away.
• ...my niece, Dayna, and I would become so close that I consider her one of my best friends, and like the daughter I never had, and have a daughter of her own that I feel like a grandmother to.

I look at where I've been and I look at where I am now and it boggles my mind that I'm still standing. I have these moments ~ a lot lately, it seems ~ where I feel like an outsider peering into my own life and the only reaction I can muster is to shake my head in disbelief. It's *that* mind-boggling.

Right now it's close to 1:30 a.m. and although I am tired as tired can be, I don't want to go to sleep. I have this overwhelming feeling that if I take time to sleep I might miss something important. Yeah, it sounds silly, but it's how I've been feeling for a very long time now. (The saying "you can sleep when you're dead" just popped into my head.)

My thoughts surf all over the place. All the time. As much as I try to, I cannot shut my brain off and I wake up feeling like I fought an army all by myself.

On the other hand, there are many nights that I want to go to sleep and absolutely never wake up. Thoughts of suicide are always rambling around in my brain, even though I don't speak about them. It's that "sleeping when you're dead" thing. I am 100% certain that a dirt nap will stop the whirling-twirling-spinning thoughts in my head once and for all.

Once and for all.

I'm Frustrated

I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated.

Did I mention I am frustrated? Mmmmmkay...

I am so tired in seeing the world in shades of gray. I am tired of being so tired all the time. I saw my doc last week and he added another med to my regimen, Lithium, which I have been on before. Trouble is that after having ECT's I cannot remember whether it worked or not so I haven't filled the prescription yet.

Sigh.

The only side effects I remember having from it are hand tremors, severe dry mouth and being more sensitive to the sun than I usually am. Having fair skin and a boat it is already difficult enough to stay out of the sun. Adding Lithium to my body will make it worse because it will take less exposure to the sun to fry my Casper-white skin. (Yes, I use sunscreen -- and I still burn.)

I tell myself every night as I'm falling asleep that tomorrow is a new day and when I awaken I will see the world in 120 Crayola Colors. When I open my eyes on the new day, I'm sadly disappointed.

The doc also adjusted my VNS a little so now instead of feeling like I'm being choked when it activates every three minutes, I have that awful feeling you get right before coming down with the worst sore throat of your life. Except it only lasts for 30 seconds.

Henry has complimented me a few times over the past six weeks or so about how I am better at handling my mood swings; that I am better able to keep my moods from escalating into a full-on BZ. I actually complimented myself on the same thing, except tonight it finally occurred to me that I really have no control at all. I just stuff it as far down my throat as I can and I clamp my mouth shut. Then I try to hide. Except I feel that hiding has not been an available option since May 1st.

Ending my life is always on my mind. It's never been about being dead so much as it is to have complete and total silence in my brain. I just want the world to stop so the millions of people like me can catch their breath and figure out what to do next without resorting to killing themselves.

What a concept.

Calculating Time

My oldest son, Matthew, came to live with Henry and me in early February and it started me thinking about the time that's passed...

• 13 years and 7 months since Matthew, Connor and I have lived under the same roof.
• 13 years and 7 months since I made a difficult decision to give my boys up because I wasn't sure I could take care of them and have a nervous breakdown at the same time.
• 13 years and 2 months since I tried to end my life with a bottle of prescription medication and failed and my first psychiatric hospitalization.
• 12 years and 8 months since Alexander Lee passed through my arms on his way to heaven.
• 11 years and 2 months since I held Hunter Nicholas for the very first time.
• Almost 9 years exactly since I walked across a parking lot and stepped into Henry and Jake's lives.
• 5 years and 11 months since my beautiful Grandmother died in my arms, as I whispered how very much I loved her.
• 5 years and 10 months since Henry and I said "I Do" to each other.

ThisClose

On June 5th my oldest son graduated from high school. The feeling I had when they handed him his diploma is indescribable. It feels like his life thus far passed in the blink of an eye. On the hour + ride home from the ceremony I cried at the thought of having come ThisClose to missing out on one of the most important days in a child's life -- graduating from high school.

I've written before about the overwhelming guilt I feel for hurting Henry and my boys by coming ThisClose to being completely swallowed by a black hole that came ThisClose to becoming my grave. I am having great difficulty accepting the fact that I cannot undo the hurt and make things right. There is no band-aid big enough to cover the wounds or enough words in the English language to apologize for the mistakes I have made. Oh, and there have been many.

A few of the mistakes I made led me to this moment, blissfully married to the love of my life, and the blessed mother of four boys and a stepson.

Even Alexander's premature passing through my body and my life had a reason. For a couple of years I was so busy searching for answers that I didn't see the reason for his being staring me in the face.

I look into the faces of my husband and my kids and I know I am right where I was always meant to be.

More Tears!

Saturday my husband, my oldest son and I were cruising in my new Jeep with all the tops off. My husband was controlling the iPod and before he played a particular song he turned to my son, shook his hand and said "this is for you, it's your time to take up the gauntlet". It was Toby Keith's "American Soldier". I started to cry. I cried because of how proud I am of Matthew and I cried because I'll be letting my son go to begin his life on his terms.

I cried again last night, wrapped up in my husbands arms as I apologized to him for hurting him the way I did when I tried to o.d. in 2004.

I have cried more in the past month than I have in the last two years and it feels good.

Tears!

Finally, Saturday night, I sobbed like there was no tomorrow. The breaking point was hearing my husband tell me that when I tried to overdose in 2004 that it was his son, Jake (who was 11 at the time), who got him through it. Henry went on to tell me that he hit the bottom where he wanted to die, too but Jake stabilized him and by focusing on that he was able to struggle through the chaos I created.

Once upon a time, tears came easily for me. For some reason (my guess is the medication) the past year or more I have not been able to cry at all. Well, with the exception of March 17th when I broke my elbow. I sobbed while walking the rest of the way down the hill.

Saturday night was the first night Henry and I really talked about my attempted suicide. (It wasn't much talk, but it was a definite start with an agreement to continue the discussion.) It's been this big elephant in the room for so long.

I have very few memories of my own of the six months following my overdose. (Henry has provided me with bits and pieces.) I remember mixing the drug cocktail, swallowing it, laying down and then....nothing. I have vague memories of a couple different psychiatric hospitals and ECT treatments -- Henry has had to fill me in on the rest. Except for the elephant in the room.

I asked Henry to take some time, however much time he needed, to put down on paper everything that happened that August night and after, especially how he was feeling. I have this very deep need to see, in black and white, how my attempted suicide affected him. I desperately need for him to fill in the blanks. I want a piece of paper that, when I am feeling that desperate again, (hopefully I never do) I can read to remind me of all the reasons I have for not putting myself six feet under. I have a tremendous amount of guilt inside my heart for what I put him through and I want that piece of paper to validate it and quantify it. Does that make sense?

I am truly blessed that this man answered my Yahoo! personal ad that asked for someone who was over 6' tall and had a crotch-rocket. He is everything I asked for multiplied by infinity.

Thank you God for another day.

Fore! Oh!

Well, my 40th birthday has officially come...and....gone. I feel like I am spinning like a top that can't stop.

So much stuff has happened in the last six months and I feel as though I haven't worked through all the emotional/brain aspects of it. My body, I know, is not completely healed from the broken elbow and staph infection and I've been staying up way too late. Like tonight. I have been awake since 2 o'clock yesterday (Friday) morning. About 30 minutes ago the last of my children staggered off to bed so here I sit in my favorite chair and it is blissfully quiet. The only sound is the faint squeak of my chair as I rock and type. And the occasional rustling of Snuggles the guinea pig hanging out in her cage behind me.

To be quite honest, I have literally been afraid to be alone with the jumbled thoughts rolling around in my head. I know there are things I need to sort out and try to make sense of.

Major mind boggling things I need to deal with are trying to figure out just how I truly feel about turning 40. On the one hand, a little more than two years ago, I had absolutely no intention of celebrating another birthday. Ever. On the other hand I am in awe? amazed? disbelieving? that I am sitting in this chair at 1:35 AM Saturday, May 5th adding a post to my blog.

One thing I KNOW for certain about this milestone birthday is that I really don't feel "old". A little chubby and out of shape, yes. But old, no. I am deeply looking forward to scuba diving again this summer and since we decided to put our boat in the water this year (she was in dry-dock last year) I am looking forward to spending time on her, too.

The next milestone occurring around me is the graduation of my first-born son (he's also the first born grandson for my parent's) in June and his deployment to San Antonio, Texas for Air Force basic training in July.

I can't quite wrap my brain around either of these two events because I am in denial. Yep, the big "D". I'm tremendously proud of him and, um, a little freaked out about being a military mom. What makes this step into the military for this young man so emotional for me is that, because of his age (17), his dad and I had to sign a waiver giving our permission for him to enlist. Matthew's recruiter drove more than an hour and a half to my office to obtain my signature. I remember the jolt I felt right in my gut as the recruiter handed me the paper and the sound of the pounding of my heart in my ears as I read what the paper had to say.

Matthew's enlistment in the military came as no surprise to me. He's been part of the ROTC at school and he's always wanted to fly planes. But, my God, just last week I put him on the school bus for his first day in Kindergarten. Last month he was learning to ride a bike. Seventeen years of memories, some very painful and some incredibly beautiful, have brought us to here. To this spot where I have to hold out my hand and let him go. I struggle to recall his face and voice the way they were before hormones turned him into a young man.

That ten-pound, twenty-three inch tall baby now stands almost 6'5". Matthew was my first and for the first five years of his life, he was all mine. It wasn't easy for us in the beginning. I was a single mom but insanely determined to provide him with everything he needed. I lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during those years so I would have enough money to buy diapers, milk, food and clothes for Matthew and keep a roof over our heads. To say I was anorexic at that would have been pretty accurate. Another chapter in my life that I look back on and wonder how we ever survived.

When Matthew was five, and just days into his kindergartner school year I had to surrender myself to the black hole of depression that had been gnawing at me for years. With the wave of hand I sent Matthew to live with his father then left my second marriage and my ten-month old son, Connor, behind.

Every time I think about the sequence of events leading up to that painful crossroads I get a sharp pain in my heart. Then I go round-and-round with myself about how the dreadful decision I made was the right thing to do at the time. I have never and would never hurt my kids and I didn't want one of them to find me dead in my bed from an overdose of pills. (Connor's dad likes to create opportunities where he can tell me how selfish I was to walk away from my kids and only a despicable mother would do something like that.)

I've been cruising a long the past three months with this stimulator in my chest. My mood is pretty stable and my thoughts are not 100% consumed with thoughts of suicide. Then today I receive news that my 14-year-old nephew was just released from the hospital for his SECOND suicide attempt in the last month. The first time he tried to hang himself and the second time he overdosed on cold medicine, among other things, and booze. That was definitely a cold, hard slap across the face. I know all about attempted suicide and just exactly what it takes for you to fall so far into the black hole that you just don't have the strength anymore to fight the demons that are clawing their way down your throat dragging what's left of you to the very bottom of the pit.

I've never been on the innocent family side of attempted suicide but my instinct kicked in and I called my nephew, J's, dad and left a voicemail imploring him to let me help him (the parents) and J. When I got home from work I spent a great deal of time dusting off my resources on how to get J help.

I have so much knowledge about mental illness from so many different points of view that it truly is mind boggling. I emailed my (younger) sister a very long email with an enormous amount of information. I pray that she finds enough useful information in it to give her the knowledge she needs to battle the mental health services maze.

My youngest son, Hunter, is 10 and his "billable" (for insurances) diagnosis is bipolar. Every aspect of the testing he has had during his numerous and lengthy stays in various psychiatric facilities points the arrow to "PDD" (pervasive development disorder) -- in the autism spectrum.

So many times over the past few weeks I've found myself shaking my head in half disbelief and half dizziness. I was hoping that blogging some of this stuff tonight would bring a little peace to my weary soul but instead I feel no relief whatsoever.

Tomorrow is another day. I mean today is.

I'm Bipolar and so is He

I’m a bipolar woman raising a bipolar child. Sometimes our moods swing in opposite directions, sometimes our moods swing together and I depend on my husband, Henry, to keep things together. Not an easy task – to say the least.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know there was something wrong with me. I was in junior high school the first time I sought out a guidance counselor and the visits continued until I graduated high school. I would not have made it without help. I thought of suicide more than once, but somehow managed to stay on top of the earth instead of buried beneath it. After I graduated I continued therapy with a community agency and this is when I was given medication for the very first time.

My childhood was upside down. Back then I blamed my parents equally for the chaos and abuse. I have too many memories of my father’s wrath and my mother’s silence. I have too many memories of my brother’s poor judgment and painful choices. Seeing the purple marks on my body and remembering their violation of my core.

I would like to say I know why all these things happened, but I can’t. I’ve heard the denials and the lies – and received compassion from an unlikely sort. The one person I thought would lose control rallied around me instead. Try as I might, I am unable to think of the triumphs without a black cloud hanging over them. The darkness is buried deep in my soul, along with pain, hatred and betrayal.

I no longer feel the losses of my childhood as deeply as I once did. I have been able to pack them away in a corner, like winter clothes. Or maybe they packed themselves away over time, because I grew stronger and became wiser.

I stopped blaming my family a long time ago, simply because I no longer wanted to be a victim. They no longer controlled my life because my life belongs to me. They did the best they could with what they had.

I finally took responsibility for my actions and reactions. I try to admit when I’m wrong and take ownership of my mistakes (and there have been many).

For as wise as I have become over the years, suicide is still in my thoughts. I have tried to end my life more than once, and I’ve had my share of psychiatric hospitalizations.

I was clinically diagnosed as bipolar in my late teens, early twenties. I have been on and off medication and on and off – ever since. I am currently on medication but I really want to be off. I want to stop taking pills that control my brain and (try to) regulate my emotions. Sometimes I think I don’t feel deeply enough and other times I’m in over my head. I can’t find the middle – and I can’t cry. Literally, I cannot cry.

My head hums busy-ness and my thoughts are scattered. I am reaching out but I don’t know what I’m reaching for. Writing this is quite difficult because I am unable to write down what I am thinking at the time I’m thinking it. I have to keep backtracking, rewinding my brain, and I keep going round and round.

I feel lonely, but I am far from alone. I have an incredible husband and four sons that make me smile. There is a deep feeling of unsettled and I have no idea where it started.

I also see my parents in me, and their inability to connect with me. I see it in my inability to connect with my boys. I feel like I’m standing on the sidelines of their lives, but I truly want to be in their game.

Being bipolar clouds my focus on the people who need me most. I have missed the first steps and loose teeth of one son. I missed a kindergarten graduation and the first day of high school of another. My youngest son lost all of his baby teeth while hospitalized. They were given to me in bright orange biohazard bags. I have missed teacher conferences, soccer games and school pictures.

My youngest son has missed more than half of his life to the illness we share. He’s missed more school than he has attended.

I think sometimes I need him more than he needs me. He manages to bring clarity and distraction. He gives me the ability to see a different side of our illness.

Once we were hospitalized at the same time – 30 miles apart. I felt helpless and hopeless and wanted out of this life so I tried to sleep forever again.

I’m good at being an advocate and champion for my son, but I fail myself.

Right now I cannot put one foot in front of the other and I am on autopilot. I know this is no way to live but I cannot have the alternative. I want to run and hide but I cannot go where I want to go. I am shackled to a world I want to leave behind.

After a 68-day hospitalization, Hunter came home. I pray this is the last hospitalization for a long, long time. I know there will be more eventually but for now I will enjoy the present.

UPDATE: Three months after his release he was re-hospitalized. This time his stay was 206 days. He missed Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas – we celebrated at the hospital but it was not how it should have been.

Hunter has been home, this time, for 12 months. Things are going reasonably well. We no longer use daycare and I have had to use FMLA to care for him. We are currently waiting for staff to be hired through community mental health so I can resume working a full-time schedule; something I long to do.

Hunter has good days and bad days and we just roll with them the best we can. He has not threatened to kill me recently and the times he bangs his head on a hard surface are fewer and farther between. He is still easily frustrated and transitions throw him for a loop – but he’s home. Where he should be.

I can count the number of holidays Hunter has missed and it makes me undeniably sad. Will he look back at his childhood and bear a grudge against me for the choices I made for him? Will he become an enraged young man and lash out at me for keeping him locked up? There are so many questions I wish I knew the answer to, but only time will tell me what they are.

I admit I have always been apprehensive about him coming home – actually I have been downright terrified. We have been down this road before so what will make this time different? How long will the honeymoon last this time? It lasted ten days before his first aggressive behavior reared its ugly head. At least this time he didn’t start it. One more episode of his physically aggressive behavior and he will be discharged from yet another daycare center. Check.

I look at him and I wonder how he will ever make it to adulthood. His fury and rage scare me; his strength astounds me. The words that come flying out of his mouth always catch me off guard and I wonder how we’ll make it through the day.

Getting to this point has not been easy. In fact, it’s been downright difficult, frustrating and extremely painful. Although I am bipolar, it in no way prepared me for raising a bipolar child. The doors I’ve had to force open; the hoops I’ve had to jump through, never letting ‘no’ stop me. Sometimes I wish I had the same dedication to my own fight. There have been many times where I could not put one foot in front of the other but I have been blessed with a man who will step in and fight the fight for me. Relying on somebody to balance me out is a first for me. I have never, ever relied on anybody in this way and it took a very long time to accept it as a good thing.

Treatment of any sort has always been difficult for me. I continue to go through periods of time where I stop seeing my therapist and I try to wean myself off the medications and go it alone. I have found that I am able to go long periods of time without my therapist, but I cannot function without the drugs. I know, I KNOW, that stopping and starting medication sets me further back each time I do it, but I hold on to the hope that maybe I can give it up altogether. At least I think I can. I recently requested the different types of medication be reduced and they were. Now I’m not sure if it was such a good idea.

12 years ago I hit bottom so hard I wanted to die. I had recently left my second marriage – and my ten-month old son with it. I sent my five-year old to live with his dad because I knew exactly where I was headed. I knew I could not take care of myself and I had no choice but to admit that I could not take care of my kids either.

The crash took three months, and then I swallowed a bottle of pills. When I woke up the next morning I drove myself to the hospital. A nurse put me in a room where staff quickly removed everything that wasn’t bolted down. I learned later that this is standard procedure for someone trying to commit suicide – they want to eliminate anything that could be used as a tool for death. Several hours later I was escorted to the psychiatric unit where I stayed for two weeks. I walked into a completely different world and I shut down.

When I wasn’t in group therapy or recreational therapy I sat in my room or I worked on a jigsaw puzzle. I remember not talking much to anyone. I was utterly lost – and I was completely alone. The doctor adjusted my medication and when I proved to them I was no longer a danger to myself they let me go home. I took a leave of absence from my job and continued outpatient therapy, even though I hated the doctor and talking to a clinical social worker wasn’t working for me. I just wanted to be left alone.

I immediately fell into a relationship that I had no business being in and the next thing I knew, I was pregnant. At the same time I was given supervised visitation, every other weekend, with my boys but it wasn’t enough and I wasn’t strong enough to ask for more.

Eighteen weeks into the pregnancy I went in to pre-term labor and it was determined that I had passed the point of no return. I could allow the labor to continue on its own or I could have it induced to speed it up. How does one make a decision like that? It is inevitable that the outcome will be tragic and I have to decide how to do it? Fast or slow? Am I in a hurry to hold my dead son – which I truly thought he would be delivered that way? It was a shock to all of us that he was born alive with a strong heartbeat. Our little warrior we called him. Had the pregnancy continued for a few more weeks would we be in the same situation anyway?

After I made the decision to induce labor – and the doctor I had at the time I had known for several years so he knew my psychiatric condition and the one thing I always respected about him was that he told me like it was. He didn’t mince words or tiptoe – he gave me his honest, professional, and sometimes personal, opinion – I called my sister. I didn’t tell her exactly what was going on, just that things weren’t looking very good. In that short conversation, later, she said she knew something was terribly wrong and drove more than an hour to be at my side when everything fell apart.

I miscarried and fell apart all over again. My son lived in my arms for five minutes but the grief goes on and on. I was in such profound shock that when my boyfriend, standing next to the priest, turned to me and said “Alexander Lee. I named him Alexander Lee” all I could manage was a nod.

Never before had I hurt so deeply and completely than the day I lost my son. Losing him was another blow to me and I told myself it was my entire fault. I had already given up two of my sons to an illness I did not understand and now I had to bury a child. I truly believed my life was over. Twelve hours after giving birth I was discharged and because I had been driven to the hospital in an ambulance, wearing only a shirt, I asked a friend to bring me pants and shoes and another friend to drive me home. As I was getting dressed I realized I was given maternity pants – and no shoes. I remember standing outside an entrance to the hospital, waiting for my ride, holding on to pants that were too big and hospital socks on my feet. I was standing in sunshine underneath a bright blue sky. It was fall and all the leaves had changed – and I was leaving the hospital without my son. I was no longer pregnant and my arms were empty. This is not how it should have been.

I found out later that there had been a sign on my hospital room door. It was a picture of a leaf with a drop of water sliding from it. It was a symbol to the staff that a family was in grieving. I didn’t notice that there was absolutely no noise outside of my room, even though I was on the maternity ward.

One week after the death of my son I had an appointment with my psychiatrist. I could always count on at least a two-hour wait to be seen so I flipped through magazines. Halfway through the long wait my milk came in and soaked the front of my shirt. There I sat, in a waiting room full of people, with a milk-soaked shirt. Sobbing and hugging myself I left the office and never returned. How could life be so cruel? I went downstairs to where my boyfriend was waiting and no words had to be spoken. He took one look at my face and my shirt and wrapped his arms around me. I felt like my feet were in cement because I was trying to move past the grief but every time I turned around there was something else to knock me down.

In order for a funeral home to become involved we needed a death certificate. But you can’t have, we found out, a death certificate without a birth certificate. A fetus less than 20 weeks old is not issued a birth certificate. “But he survived for five minutes” I screamed at the records clerk. “He was a LIVE birth.” After several minutes of screaming at this poor woman on the other end of the phone she finally understood that Alexander should have a birth certificate and a death certificate. To add even more pain to the whole situation, because my divorce had not been final for more than six months, the records department was adamant about listing my ex-husband as the father. This started the screaming all over again. Once it occurred to her that the fetus was, by the way, less than twenty weeks old Alexander’s father was named.

We had my little boy cremated and two weeks after his death we held a memorial service. Two weeks after that we returned Alexander to the earth on a piece of private property and named it “Alexander’s Place”. In the eleven years since his death I have visited that spot less than a handful of times. Alexander’s paternal grandparents tend to it for me.

Somehow I managed to crawl through the days without medication, grieving unbelievably and trying desperately to make sense of everything. I hurt so dreadfully on the inside, and because there are no guidebooks on how to grieve, I hurt myself on the outside. I would sit for hours banging my head on the wall trying to turn everything right side up but everything stayed upside down and I soon found myself in the hospital again. I kept asking ‘how do I grieve?’ but there were no answers. Just blinding pain.

I had stopped taking my meds when I found out I was pregnant with Alexander and the first thing the doctor did when I entered the hospital was dope me up. I could not think or talk or function. The pain was deeper than ever.

I tried a second time to end my life and for the third time I was admitted to a different hospital. Even now I’m not sure how, but I somehow managed to check myself out within the first twenty-four hours. So much for the seventy-two hour hold.

Still in the relationship I had no business being in, I found myself pregnant again. I was put on bed-rest but the fear of losing again ran deep. My moods were still all over the map so I focused on having a healthy, full-term baby. Six months into the pregnancy I went into pre-term labor and spent several weeks in the hospital – alone.

It was a long wait, but we succeeded and I had a fourth son.

Hunter came into the world screaming – and he never stopped. I can look back now and pinpoint some of his behaviors that were clues of what was to come.

Hunter didn’t like to be held or put down and he was mostly inconsolable. And he could scream for long periods of time. He didn’t sleep like most newborns do. Although he walked and talked at the ages he should have, his endless amount of energy was exhausting. The fast-paced world of Hunter has never let up.

It wasn’t until Hunter was two that his behavior crossed over the ‘normal’ into the aggressive and hurtful. At first we were told ‘he’s just a boy’, ‘he’ll out grow it’. ‘He needs more structure and discipline’. I bought books about ‘difficult’ children. I bought books about positive disciplining. I read everything I could get my hands on. I researched the Internet and shared our story with anybody who stood still long enough to listen.

When Hunter was two, Connor, six and Matthew, 10, I met a man that would – and did – change my life and the lives of my children. He had a five-year-old son. I no longer had to have supervised visitation with Connor and Matthew so I visited with them frequently.

At this point Hunter had been dismissed from three different daycare centers for violent and aggressive behavior. Something was definitely wrong. I poked and prodded my way into the intermediate school district where they agreed to test Hunter for a learning disability and he failed. Oddly enough this was the test that propelled him into a special education preschool. His violent and aggressive behavior was escalating and he was consistent across the board. School saw the behavior; daycare saw the behavior and we lived the nightmare at home.

Hunter was given a variety of tests over the next few months. He was interviewed by a neuro-psychiatrist and diagnoses started to fly. None of the doctors or healthcare professionals wanted to ‘label’ him. We didn’t either. We just wanted to know what was wrong. The more professionals I talked to the more they started to look at me for possible answers. They knew bipolar was genetic – could this be it? I started researching and reading and everything I read pointed to Hunter being bipolar. He exhibited all the symptoms, the mania and depression. Self-injurious behavior and violent aggressive behavior toward other people and objects. Once he chased me around our apartment with a knife telling me – quite specifically – how he was going to kill me and chop me up.

We had always monitored television, video games, movies and the like. We didn’t want to add fuel to the fire. Where was this kid getting all this information?

Disturbed. Is that what we are? I hear that term directed toward mentally ill people and it makes my blood boil. We are NOT disturbed. Imbalanced maybe, but not disturbed. The chemicals in our brain do not ebb and flow as they should and that causes us deep inner turmoil. The chemical imbalance causes bizarre events in my body. There are certain things – emotions, for instance – that I am unable to regulate or control. Unfortunately this aspect of mental illness can cause an immense amount of pain. Not only to others, but also to myself. There are so many facets to this disease that I do not understand. In an instance a range of emotions so deep replaces mania and it’s so all consuming that I am not able to function. I am uncontainable and breathless and grasping for something solid to keep from drowning.

I have tried drowning myself three times so far. I say that as a statement because I know, I KNOW, that there is a possibility I will try again. Drowning. Suicide. Death. Peace. It is all the same to me. I decided long ago that I want to be in control of my own demise. I make it sound so simple – my fixation on ending my life on my terms.

As a pre-teen, I found lies to be the best defense against others and myself. If I lied or stretched the truth it caused a detour around me. They became layers and the more I piled on the deeper I was hidden and the deeper I was hidden the safer I felt because no one could get close to me and the secrets I kept. I sought acceptance on a level I should not have been competing on from people I should have never known. Unfortunately the layers I hid under did not protect me from an insatiable need to belong. Nor did the layers protect me from myself. I always say that Hunter is a square child trying to fit into a round world, but that is true for me, too. I have never felt like I belong here.

I look at my children in disbelief. They are literally a part of me, an extension of physical attributes, yet I do not know them. Then I ask myself how is it that I don’t know them? I try to view me as my mother may have and try to understand all the emotions that my children evoke from me and wonder if I am feeling what my mother and father felt. What was their perception of me? I feel the need to tell my children everything I feel about them – all the good stuff because it’s more than just love and pride and respect. I want them to know it really is okay to express emotion, good or bad. I want them to feel. More than anything I want them to feel like they belong.

Waking up from all the lies was a long process. I first had to shed all the layers and allow myself to become vulnerable, something I don’t do very well. I had to leave what had become a comfort zone. The lies had stopped long ago but the layers remained. The secrets were revealed but never discussed. I am not sure if the topics are deliberately sidestepped or if they are simply misunderstood. I had to stop the chaos – self-created and otherwise. Chaos was comfortable to me for so many reasons. For one it was something I had always known. From moving and changing jobs and marriage then divorce – chaos was my life. I wasn’t comfortable with silence or tolerance things had to be completely out of control for me to keep moving.

Hunter is so much like his father (my ex husband) it frightens me. Henry and I receive no support from him when Hunter spins out of control. It’s up to Henry and me to calm the rage boiling over in this child. Up to now I haven’t mentioned that Hunter is medicated and the medication seems to have leveled him off. For now. Growth and hormones will eventually throw him off balance again, but for now he’s stable. I wish I could say as much for me.

I feel like I’m walking through a mine field and that at any second I could lose my balance and explode. What will I do then?