Note the mural of southern Utah’s lovely terrain?  You have to work to notice these things when you’re a stress-bucket like I am right now.  I am doing laundry to have work clothes so I can work tonight. Good news: one of my coworkers wants time off to watch their son play football, so I’m going in 4.5 hours early and that will offset the shitty schedule for THIS week. Bad news: I’m actually feeling like crap and was looking forward to a day with my hubby, which is cut short by this turn of events. 

I’m not feeling depressed persay, the way that many people use the word, to evoke thoughts of sadness…. but I know I am because I slept for 10 hours and am still exhausted, I’m not even enjoying laundry, which is usually my favorite chore, and the benign workings of the world are pissing me off unduly.

I want to curl up in a ball and go to bed for a week. I want to be rich enough to do that without ruining my life. I want a job where people actually say, hey girl, you doing alright? It’s ok to say no. 

Most of all I want the security that you can only get from having money in savings, and I want to have earned it through my intelligence, skills, talents, and experience. I want to be in an America where that actually happens for the people who deserve it. Instead of being an America where it’s all like, just get another degree, lazybones. And go into extreme debt to fund that venture. And if you want babies, well, too fucking bad for your career. Fuck. That. 

 I am NOT in a good place to be in charge of addicts. Sure they’re entitled, sure they’re aggressively selfish (yes that’s a thing), but they’re also vulnerable…so I better get my shit together. Check out that fucking mural. Yeah, mindfully and shit. Boom. 

Probably going to blog later, loyal reader, but thought I should put a bookmark in this page of my life. 

Everyone is stupid and I want to sleep forever. 

Really hoping the meds start working soon. 

  

Third day of Wellbutrin, not feeling much different. The Husband says it take about two weeks to really start showing. Two weeks= foreversville. 
Possibly collaborating with a writer who needs an illustrator, very excited for that.

Dying of exhaustion, so,good night loyal reader 

  I came home this morning from a long, previously described difficult weekend, only to find the above ‘gift’ waiting on my front stoop. 
Thanks, Dante. I guess I know what I’m making for breakfast. 

Perfect ending to a perfect workweek. 

Ugh.
Good night, loyal reader. 

  
I got an email today informing me that there was a NEW schedule for the week, and my hours were cut by 1/6. That’s about $185 dollars a paycheck. (Feel free to do the math and figure out how pathetically little I make, go nuts). That’s a lot of money I could really use. 

I’m trying hard not to be angry at anyone, especially the guy doing the schedule, but simply angry at the situation. It’s not his fault that the Boss People had him shave down my hours to part-time status. It’s not my fault, either, although I do feel guilty/shamed somehow. I feel as if I did something wrong and I’m being punished. Or I’m just plain old not valuable enough to get a good schedule. Or other bullshit crazy-brain-inspired nonsense. Whatever the cause, it feels shitty. 

Seriously, that’s my car payment. That’s money for the trip to Portland. That’s groceries and cat food. Fuckballs. 

On top of the schedule change, I had to pass out meds this weekend, and it was awful. I know, just fucking know, that I messed up the paperwork somehow. I know I’m going to get email and text message reprimands while I’m trying to sleep today. I know I don’t get paid enough for this level of stress and uncertainty. I’m pretty close to the edge of disliking my job. 

 I do like my bosses, at least the one who talks to me, I’m just sick of being asked to go over and beyond for a company who won’t give me enough hours to live on happily. The thing that pisses me off the most, however, is that I will -for certain- roll over and take it with a smile. I don’t have the ovaries to tell then to stop pushing me around, overlooking me for promotions, and expecting me to roll with the multitude of punches. I complained a lot about the job I had in San Francisco, but God damnit, at least there I was given a little respect. 

I’ll probably get crap from my mom about posting my displeasure, and I may even change the privacy of this post to password protected, but if I lose my job because I wrote about an unnamed company in an undisclosed location citing only my emotions and a vague reference to compensation….

Maybe I’ll password protect it. No point in doocing myself when I actually like the job MOST of the time. 

But really, dudes, did you NEED to take 6 hours? I deserve better than that. 

……

This is about as close as I get to losing my temper, loyal reader. Enjoy. 

  
When I was a kid, my grandma (on my father’s side) gave my sisters and I a book called Big Me, Little Me. At least I think it was called that, and obviously the Internet doesn’t exist so I can’t research it, ok smartass? Anyway, the whole idea was that you were the big me when you rocked Christ, and the little me when you went at shit solo. The book seemed a bit progandaist to me even at that age, but I think it’s actually a good, if a bit biased, lesson. You’re at your best when your actions align with your beliefs. You’re flailing otherwise.  

So what does one do when beliefs/intuition/your own damn brain acts against you? What if you can’t use your faith because you don’t have one, and your own mental version of the universe is stressful and anxiety-inducing? Find God? Not my cup of tea, thanks. Been down that road before. No offense, just not my thing. 

Instead, you fortify your positive emotions with input from your kin, you put all that pent-up faith into yourself, and you handle your shit. I can’t afford to go crazy again. I lost too much. Friends, trust, inches of adorable body fat, and it’s only lately, three years-and-change later, that I’ve gained it all back (and then some, in terms of body fat, thanks abilify)….mostly. There are friends and former friends who never came back over to the side of Trusting Jady. Bygones. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my ‘higher power’ lately, mostly because I work at a rehab facility and that’s kinda my job…to know the 12-step philosophy, even if I don’t wholly agree with it, and to be able to speak to addicts with intelligence and insight. So what is an agnostic’s higher power? What remains when you’ve burned your world to the ground? What is greater than you, but a part of you, guiding and comforting and generally doing what gods do? (My word processor automatically capitalizes ‘God’. 21-year-old Jady is deeply offended) 

I believe my higher power, and I know how freaking smelly hippie this sounds, is Love. My love for my family, especially my husband, saw me through the worst of my madness and keeps me working to be healthy even today. My love for my friends kept me trying to be social and cheerful when it was the last thing I wanted to do (I was much more into sleeping all day, after they gave me enough meds to break my mania and thus tranquilize me into submission) my love for this weird, glorious world kept me going when I felt totally alone in my disease. Love is self-fulfilling, multiplies the more you employ it, and goddamn useful. 

So today, when I felt like sleeping forEVER, I got up instead. Because I love my life. And as those of you who have experienced true love know, it’s not always easy, it’s not always fun, but it’s always ALWAYS worth it. 

Love you tons, loyal reader. 

  

Can’t talk about work. Confidentiality. Very stressful. 
Can talk about switching meds. The Plan:
4 days at 10mg abilify (from original dosage of 12.5mg….which is a bitch dosage because you have to split a 10 and a 15 pill in half and combine, and those pills are teeny)
4 days at 7.5mg
4 days at 5mg to establish a baseline
THEN add 150mg Wellbutrin in the mornings (staying on 5mg abilify), see how that shit works out for about 2.5 weeks, and THEN go see doctor on the 19th of October and if she thinks I’m doing well, drop the 5mg abilify and raise dosage to 300mg Wellbutrin. 
This whole time I’m also on 1050mg lithium, which never changes. 
Why are you being so frank and open about your med regimen, Jady? Isn’t that a deeply personal matter? Good questions. I’m sure you all remember why I started this blog. The reasons are threefold. One, it gives me motivation to write as often as possible. Two, my memory sucks and I have to remember these things. Three, because I want to be part of the movement to de-stigmatize bipolar disorder. This falls under categories two and three. Kinda also category one…because my brain is being a dick right now and I wouldn’t be writing otherwise. 

I’m not ashamed of being bipolar I. I’m not ashamed of needing medication to control it. I’m annoyed, sure, but that’s not the same thing. So I’m discussing my med changes as openly as possible to empower myself, maybe give someone else the boost of confidence they need to seek effective treatment, and FUCKING REMEMBER IT ACCURATELY. I forget the way these things go down, just ask The Husband. 

 Anyway, right now I’m on my….second? day of 7.5mg, and my brain is being a snotty little brat about it. She’s telling me I’m fat, and ugly, and my new haircut is stupid, and nobody likes me. It sucks. I want to be home in bed for, like, a week until the new meds kick in. Yet even the prospect of new meds is scary and upsetting, because what if they don’t work? What if I get worse than I’ve been in a long time? Words like HOSPITAL and MIXED EPISODE flash behind my eyelids. Fear is not the mind-killer, fear is the killer mind. 

Wish me serenity, loyal reader. 

  
I am taking the GRE in approximately 10 hours. My mother-in-law is visiting my house this afternoon and I can’t be home/awake to help clean it. The sky is falling, too, but who gives a damn about that part?

I have taken a few practice tests for the GRE and my math score did not bode well. Turns out that I don’t know crap about math. Which is so very important for someone doing a Masters of Public Health. So very important. God knows I can’t perform duties related to public health without knowing how to find the area of a parallelogram. That’s how you cure addicts, didn’t you know? Sigh. 

Originally I was looking at the University of Utah, but right now I’m more interested in Westminster, which has affordable tuition and less stringent entry guidelines. So my plan is to take the GRE today at 4, see how I do, and ask the folks at Westminster whether they’d consider someone with my scores. Then I either get them interested in me or I have to take the test again, and actually…bear with me now….study consistently the next time. Not just this late night cramming session that I have interrupted to write and tell you all about. (Naysayers, consider this my practice for the essay writing portion of the exam). 

But Jady, isn’t this week also your Husband’s birthday week/the anniversary of your first date? I thought you’d never ask. We have dinner on Tuesday with the parents, then in-home massages on Wednesday, the big day itself. My birthday gift to Chris is the massage, and my anniversary gift to him is that he doesn’t have to get me anything for the anniversary. 

HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BUY ME A THING!

  
Anyway, I hear an alarm going off in the bedroom beside my desk, which means the girl who gets up at 6:30 to work out every damn morning is slowly waking up. It also means I have an hour before the drive before the feeding dogs before meds before sleep before using the terrible directions I have to get to the testing place before signing in to take the test without a phone or calculator or scratch paper (not even kidding) before I take the GRE around the same time my MIL visits my house. 

NO STRESS WHATSOEVER

WHATEVER. When that bloody test is over, it’s all gravy. 

And by gravy I mean vodka tonics. 
Wish me luck, loyal reader!

  
I’m making the Husband a blanket for Xmas. 
It’s not a secret, he knows, mostly because I had to use the entire dining room to parse out the yard into measured piles (which I then tied together and rolled into balls) in order to get the multicolored look. He’s very, very aware. The sorting of the yarn will be sung about for years to come. 

I’ve never crocheted a full size blanket, it’s hard work and takes lots of yarn. But I’m excited about doing this blanket because I think hubby will love it dearly, especially if I pull it off the way I intend. I’m making most of it multicolored, from 4 different balls of faux chinelle yarn, then a stripe each of the main colors, brown, grey, and blue. I think it will come out looking awesome, unique, and not too grandma-esque. I have six balls of multicolored yarn now (made from 4 skeins), the first ball made about ten inches of blanket, so if:

skeins are x

Balls are y

4x=6y

y=10(inches)

So x=15(inches)

So if I want a 5’x7′ blanket, I need two more skeins of yarn….I guess I’ll go with blue and grey. I hope the damn thing is wide enough…but too late to start again now, I’ve got nearly a foot of length, and the width is my armspan. My hands cross when I hug hubby, so armspan should be wide enough. Right?

Anyway, it’s about 5.5 feed wide, and I believe that will be enough.
  
Lots to ponder, loyal reader. This blanket math is rough. 

I could never do this alone.

My Husband keeps me grounded, helps me fight my fights, and loves me unconditionally.

My mom questions my decisions in a loving way, keeps me on the path of good-person-ness, and loves me unconditionally.

My sister makes me laugh at myself, and tells me how it really is, and loves me unconditionally.

My father checks in on me, listens to my life as i describe it, and loves me unconditionally.

My stepfather is always there when i need him, and loves me unconditionally.

My friends are unequivocally awesome, and love me under the condition that I’m treating myself right. otherwise…oh the sassing that ensues.

these people are all arms of a the weird, ungainly octopus that is my life. I work with addicts, many of whom have damaged their relationships with their families and loved ones to the point which, left to their own devices, they may never recover. My job is to focus on the person in treatment, but part of that job is allowing them the option to make good decisions when it comes to their kin. I know from firsthand experience that you can’t always get back the friendships you have let go in your illness. I have Facebook friends who used-to-be, that I never got back after my hospitalization and treatment. Frankly, i miss them but rarely. Fair-whether and all that.

But when you lose friends, no matter how fickle, there is a period of mourning. I am sad that people lost trust in me, although they had every right to do so. I am sad that they chose to cut ties rather than fight it out, and I’m sorry i didn’t mean enough to them to battle along side me. I’m sorry for them being unable to see me now, happy, calm, sane.

I’m sorry my brain made me less valuable to you, quitters.

Good riddance.

Oh and my dogs and cat, keep me happy and loved, and love me unconditionally.

New friends are awesome, but they’re icing on a truly delicious cake. I’m set. I have a support system. My love and friendship is overwhelmingly taken care of. I’m a lucky, only-a-little-bit-resentful-of-assholes, beloved girl.

Thanks for being on the team, loyal reader.

  
I’ve been thinking about getting one of these. 

BUT

I don’t really need one. 

BUT

Why shouldn’t I try out prosthetic for longer than five minutes for once in my life? Sure there’d be a learning curve that most likely swooped down before it got better. Sure there are children without one of these babies who would be further down the waiting list because of me. Sure I mostly just want one because it would look so damn cool. 

BUT

Why shouldn’t I get one? I wouldn’t say I’ve been struggling my whole life, but that’s just because my tolence for bullshit and difficulty is higher than most people. I don’t struggle, I persevere. (Sometimes I struggle, goddamn button-up shirts and smooth doorknobs). 

BUT

Do I even believe in prosthetics for someone like me, someone who has at least 50% use of my hand? Isn’t the fact that I’m typing this right now proof that I don’t really NEED one? isn’t it selfish to take a free hand when I’m doing fine without one?

Sigh.

I don’t know. I really don’t know what’s the ethical move here. All I know is that plastic hand would look so sweet on this arm. And maybe I could carry two drinks at a time for once. Without using my boob. That might be really nice. Indulgent, but nice. 

What do you think, loyal reader?