The best thing about having bipolar is that I also have God.

I haven't been ok for a while... but given the fact that I went off of the Lamictal a week ago... things could be worse. I'm glad I went off the lamictal and the loopiness is passing. It wasn't curbing the depression much anymore and if I'm going to lean towards depressed ANYWAY... why take the yucky pink pills? The anxiety that I would face everyday at "med time" is gone. Now I can just toss back my lithium and my thyroid meds and be on my not-quite-merry-little way.

Ever since that last incident with the drive by blogger... I haven't wanted to post about how I was REALLY feeling. So I guess you could say I've shown SOME progress. I didn't go all BIPOLAR GIRL with moods swinging in single minute....but I did start to stuff my feelings. And that has helped me how??? So here goes...:

As much as I love my job and my friends... when the day is over I come home to my bubble and I am alone. The thoughts of my ex-boyfriend now happily married to my evil twin don't come in to haunt me often... but they still pop up. Last night I dreamed about them and I woke up feeling so down it was all I could do to pull myself up. Thoughts about my job performance have also obeen stressing me out... and all the mistakes I make... and the fact that I really DON'T like teaching. So many guilt messages come in from all sides. In the past the work messages alone that play in my head would have been enough to have me contemplating death.

"You have no purpose. Your are never going to amount to anything. You are useless... and worthless... " These were the thoughts that would pink from one corner of my mind to the other. "You are failing at this Christian walk stuff. How could you DARE to call yourself a Christian..." These thoughts jockeyed for place with the OTHER thoughts. Add in all the negative thoughts I'd heap on me about my looks, my weight, my intelligence..." Man, my thoughts were kicking my ass. Yet it was ALWAYS the mean and thoughtless words of others that always had me grabbing all my medication bottles and trying to figure out if I really had the guts to do it. Why do I let other people have that kind of power over me? I used to think about how I'd write my suicide note and name names. Yeah... I killed myself because of XYZ! Won't that show them! Uh... no, it won't show them jack... and even if it had... I would have been too dead to care.

I know I'm not the woman I was a year ago. I can see how God has strengthened me... but I'm starting to act like I've got my act together.... when I don't. I'm wearing the "I'm OK mask" at work because I hate being the lone mental patient in the ward. My depression affects how I do my job and the last 6½ years of teaching has been one really LONG depressed episode. I honestly can't look back and see that I've had more than a week or so at a time that wasn't characterized by low to deep depression. I don't know what I'd be like as a teacher if I wasn't depressed. But I know I can go in wearing my teacher face. Today I couldn't go in with the face in place. I TRIED. I really TRIED to put it on... and then the school's matriach gave here devotion.

We meet together to pray and share something inspirational. Today M shared from a book. I don't remember the title or most of what she said... but it was written by a teacher and she wrote about what students would remember about their teachers. Since that was my big question for the weekend it hit a chord. The one attached to my tear ducts. I am never going to believe the encouraging words that people tell me about my teaching b/c they are not in the classroom with me. But I'm going to stop trying to build the case for why I'm a bad teacher. I'm not a Nazi. Nothing that I've ever done (with maybe one exception) will ever scar any of my students for life. And from a lot of the comments I got to my last post, I know that what most of my students will remember about 3rd grade is that Ms. G loved them. I teach because I believed that God called me into the profession.

I try to do the best I can given the limitations that my bipolar puts on me. I try to understand the paradox that exists between loving my current situation and hating the teaching profession. It has not been kind to bipolar girl and there are too many memories of depressed episodes and suicidal episodes for me to ever look back on my years as a teacher fondly. I see the blessings that I have here in Maui. I look into the eyes of my kids and I KNOW that I am blessed... but I look at the current second grade class and I'm afraid. These kids push my buttons and they aren't even in my class yet... and the current first graders? My bipolar senses start tingling when those kids are anywhere near me. It shames me to say it... but I don't like kids. I haven't liked them for some time... and it is by faith alone that I can love my current students the way that I do. I keep seeing the next school year as a rapid descent into depression and I keep telling myself not to borrow trouble. Maybe those kids will change... mature over the summer....

So between feeling basically inept at my job and worrying about the future... I've been trying really hard not to let thoughts of the past with GS or thoughts of the future that he shares with somebody else get to me. I have twice fought the idea of going back to my old blog where Christian thought was the norm and I didn't have to worry about being attacked. But I know that I can't blog there... why would I want to??? His WIFE would be reading my blog no doubt blogging about how pathetic I am...

I used to use my blog to just pour out ALL of my negative emotion... the cyber version of a good cry. Now? I'm realizing that a secular website is not necessarly the place that I want to do that... so I've been journaling to God a lot. That has been giving me a lot of strength. Discernment. I've been praying for discernment. What do I need to share here... and what needs to stay between me an God. What do I really want to do? I want to write about and for God. Both of the blogs that I've written in the past two years have helped people. I didn't really set out to help people. I just wanted to deal with my own personal brand of crazy in a way that wouldn't prove fatal. The therapy was good... but it wasn't a cure. The meds were great... but THEY weren't a cure. In the midst of my deepest depressions I have cried out to God wondering what the hell I'd done to deserve something as hard to comprehend as a mental illness.

If I had cancer not ONE person would be telling me to stop whining I live in Hawaii. Nobody would be saying, how my cancer makes them remember why they divorced their first wife. Nobody would say half of the stupid mean stuff that people have said to me here... and that's where I have to remember who I write for and why I do it. He never said our life was going to be trouble free. He promised to be there with us through the trials. I wouldn't trade my bipolar for cancer or diabetes.... but all three can be fatal. In writing my blogs people who are still very much at the mercy of their brain chemicals have told me that my blog helped them in some way. Several people here have told me that they blog BECAUSE they read my blog.

I could sit in my bubble tonight and let the blues drag me down. I needed to blog all of this. I have NO idea how long this is... and I doubt that there is anything profound about it. My depressions don't equal suicide trip anymore and I'm glad. I give all the credit to God. The God. I can create all manner of false gods to try to make life more comfortable. I can twist scripture to say all kinds of stuff so that I'm not bothered by things that might give me struggles. One of my bigger challenges right now? Scripture says that I'm supposed to love people who persecute me... and honestly? I don't want to love the schmucks who have said crap about me here. I want to dash off a few private comments with a few choice words... and revel in the fact that I showed them a thing or two... but I can't do that and love God at the same time. I COULD do it... but I wouldn't be showing my love for him no matter WHAT the other person did.

So where does the change happen? I didn't get all depresso girl with suicidal ideations... I just kind of trudged through the day when my kids weren't in the class. They had no clue that I was depressed... and the tears never did really fall other than this morning. I think I've fairly well vented my spleen tonight... and I'm more tired than anything. BUT how do I walk this according to my faith? That's the good part. I'm not knocking myself for being depressed today or for all the things that contributed to the depression. I've been in various stages of depression since last April... and I've survived. Not ONE suicidal thought...

Change. I'm praying for even more change.... and that I will be able to discern what needs to change and that I have the wherewithal to make whatever changes I need to make. I feel like I'm a blank slate right now just waiting for God to write all kinds of new stuff and it is my impatience that is giving me grief. So I guess I'll be praying for patience too.... Ok.. I'm done. Rant over.

I feel better for having vented.

I was in class when the thought came to me. What do people REALLY remember about their third grade teacher. I've finally come to accept that no matter what I've done over the last 6½ teaching years, I've probably haven't done any irrepairable damage to any of my students even the ones where there was major conflict. I don't even remember my third grade teacher... but since I don't even remember what I wore yesterday I don't count. If people would care to chime in, I REALLY would like to know what you remember about your third grade teacher.

To help me in my current state of reading un-readiness... if you have a long comment please separate your paragraphs or I'll never be able to read it. It's easy. I got this type from a blogger named Renegade:

As to separating the paragraphs, it's a simple html code. You type a P between the paragraphs, with the angle brackets on either side, like this only minus the spaces.... < P >. That will separate the paragraphs.

She walked by me with her head down. Her hair was a wild curly dirty blonde mass that just sprung out, Medusa-like, in all directions. I don't remember what I noticed first about her... but I know what I won't forget. Her feet were in shackles.

They weren't big black ball-and-chain stereotypical shackles... but they were still metal shackles locked around both of her ankles that kept her from taking even the medium sized steps. Shackles. I've never seen a person wearing real shackles in real life.

We always tell kids not to stare... but it was pretty hard not to want to look at her. Muted green scrubs, left arm in a cast, "M.C.C.C" plastered on her back. She walked with her head down and shuffled along... it was her shuffling walk that had drawn my attention... and she sat two seats down from me. I wanted to talk to her but something on the guard's face told me not to even think about it.

You could tell that EVERYBODY in the waiting area wanted to stare... some were blatantly doing it. I felt so bad for her. The indignity of being paraded around the hospital in footchains.... it seemed to settle around her like a blanket. She seemed so shrunken. Two guards? Who was she? What was her story? All kinds of pseudo-profound thoughts danced around my mind as I looked at her feet. She reminded me a bit of "White Feather" from Quadrant whatever-it-was that I wrote about in the "Are Your Talkin' to Me?" post. But when you get right down to it... nothing really happened to me. We didn't speak. There wasn't some big "MOMENT"... I am no longer mentally in chains to my bipolar so that whole being in chains parallel? I'd have to think REALLY hard to work it.

Five minutes hadn't passed before the guards made her stand up and she shuffled away. I watched them until they were out of eyesight and then turned back to my book. CSI, a crime novel. As far as I know, Kathryn (that's what they called her) was the first criminal I've ever sat next to... and as hard as I try... there is just NO deeper meaning to be found here. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a dream is just a dream. Sometimes chains are just chains.

Ok... everybody seems to be having so much fun with the Friday Fun Facts I've decided to stop sidelining and post my own. It's interesting to see the variety of directions people have chosen to go off on... (Dazey I, too, have always wanted green eyes).

1. I see double out of my left eye.

2. My first dog was named Whiskey.

3. My favorite game in the whole world is Boggle followed by backgammon.

4. Movies that I like a lot: Groundhog Day, Chronicles of Narnia, Top Gun, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and The Pacifier.

5. I think APPLE PIE is the ONLY pie in the entire world worth eating.

...like a GIANT CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE.

I had to go do tests today. Upper GI stuff. They gave me two little cups to drink. One had little pills that were supposed to fizz when I drank the water in the other little shot glass. And then they pushed me down the rabbit hole.

Barium.

ugh.

chug it?

ugh.

gulp it?

ugh.

No other way around it... just suck it back and be done with it. Then they stand me in front of a table that moves. It goes all the way back until I'm laying on my back. The tech tells me to roll around. Evidently they need the barium to coat my stomache... so there I lay in that lovely "gown" sloshing around. When I'm finally allowed back on my back again... the TABLE starts moving.

They take x-rays and then make me drink more of the barium. I'm feeling like I'm going to gag so I can't drink anymore. More shaking (shaken. not stirred)...  around and around and around she goes.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and PRAISE GOD they didn't stick anything down my throat. Something really unusual happened before I went in for my tests... but I have to jet out so I'll write about it later. My head was MUCH clearer today. I was able to read several pages in my CSI book... and when I went back to school I was able to read/grade papers and do some lesson planning. I felt more like my old self. *yeah*