Category: Bipolar Disorder

Post 1765

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders

Post 1765

I only got a few hours of sleep last night. PTSD symptoms were set off around 2300 and didn’t end till around 0230 when I finally fell asleep. I woke up just a couple of hours later and have been up since. I tried to get back to sleep and would have if my damn phone didn’t go off on me. I had successive text messages and they drove me from sleep. One of the psychologists I am friends with was replying to my blog via Twitter so I was getting his tweets. It was constructive and he gave me a name of someone at BWH. I will look him up and see what he can do for me. My friend didn’t say that he was a doc or a surgeon as he didn’t give me his credentials. But I trust my friend.

I was going to catch the 0950 bus but I was too lazy to get out of bed. I wanted some writing time at Starbucks but was denied, least at the one at the Square. I went to South station and tried to find a spot for my therapy session. Soon as I found a place outside, it started to drizzle. I knew there was a Starbucks across the street so I went there and found a quiet corner. I did some writing while waiting for time to pass. My therapist called at the appointed time and we began talking about guess who? I told her I had PTSD symptoms last night brought on inadvertently by just deleting my father’s contact information from my speed dial. I didn’t delete him from my phone, just the speed dial. It triggered memories to come flooding back, something I wasn’t expecting. I wrote a short blog about it on Tumblr and sent it to her. I am still paranoid my sisters are reading my blog so I am careful on what I post now.

We talked about the symptoms and how triggered I was. I told her I tried distraction and other forms of grounding but I might as well have been blowing bubbles in the air for all the good it did me. I was tempted to call my psychiatrist but it was after 0100 and I was not really in the mood to talk. I had been anxious all evening because my meds got messed up due to the computer system and I didn’t want to bring it up or make her think I was calling that late just to see if she called the pharmacy. I wouldn’t do that. I just needed reassurance I wasn’t going out of my tree. The memories were so real and so was the guilt that I felt. Maybe if I stayed with my father a little more after I gave him his medication he would have died with someone in the room. I know my sister said that he wanted it that way, for us to be eating and for him to die at peace in his bed, which he did. There was no struggle. He just let go. And I just am kicking myself because I didn’t see it coming. Yes, I knew he was going to die that day. And I am grateful it didn’t take all night for him to die. But I just feel like there should have been more for me to do for him and I can’t figure out for the life of me what that was or what it should be.

If my therapist and I talked about anything else, I don’t really remember it. I told her the fiasco with the computer system and how my psych has to now call the damn pharmacy because it’s a stupid piece of shit. She did everything right (as far as I know). The shit computer just didn’t accept the changes she made. What a retarded system. Now I know why she is so aggravated with it.

I think we briefly talked about seeing a grief counselor but I really don’t want to be double talking. I don’t want to talk about grief with my therapist and the counselor at the same time because then I am just wasting my breath twice. I still haven’t called the counselor. I think I might email her. I am good with that. But I think I can handle things with my therapist. I don’t want to be in a sticky situation with the counselor because I feel suicidal at times or because I have PTSD.

This afternoon, I went south of Boston to visit friends and to see my friend’s daughter in a concert. The noise was unreal from the kids, not from the concert. The concert was pretty good for a bunch of 6th graders. They weren’t as off key as I thought they would be, though they killed one of my favorite songs that the Money Pit plays. I forget the name of the concerto but the kids butchered it. I am going to have to find that piece of music or see Money Pit again to hear it played correctly. I love Money Pit. It always makes me laugh even though I’ve seen it a million times and know it word for word. I did have a good time even though I wasn’t feeling good. I kept thinking about my father. I guess I was feeling guilty about having fun while I am still supposed to be in “mourning”.

Tomorrow marks one month that my father has passed. I have groceries coming in the morning that should make me tired enough to go back to sleep. I set my alarm clock for 0645 as the delivery is between 0730 and 0930. I hope they come around first thing. I then have therapy, again. After that it’s burger time!

TG Issues 7: Name Change

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders, suicide, transgender

TG Issues 7: Name Change

I have been struggling with my identity for the past two months because I had to play “daughter” while my father was sick and dying. Now that he is gone, I am still struggling because I keep receiving mail addressed to my birth name as well as on Facebook. Despite me kindly telling my close friends that I no longer want to be called my birth name, people forget and so call me what they always call me. They don’t know that it is hurtful. Even today while I was at my psychiatrist’s office it was apparent she didn’t know what to call me. She thought I was still changing my name to Alex when I made the decision to be called GC or G two years ago. I have never signed an email to her with that name so I am not sure where she got it from. I did go by Alex for a while when I was playing around with names. In my memoir, I think I said my name is Mike. I thought about Mike for a long time because it’s something that I always liked to be called. But I am so used to people calling me G that I think Mike would be a bigger transition. I do go by Mike on this blog. I might use it as my middle name as I don’t have one.

A fellow blogger wrote about her identity issues and that got me thinking of my own. For some reason, today my breasts feel so heavy and disproportionate to my body it’s not funny. They just seem bigger than they normally are and it’s driving me crazy because I just want them removed. And that is where the self-loathing comes in. I hate who I am. I hate having to play a female and now that my father is gone, I know I don’t have to but yet I still do because I haven’t made steps to be a male. I am kind of scared of going that step. I know that if I don’t, I will just kill myself, eventually. It’s bad enough that I am dying every day pretending to be someone I am not. I am not an uncle to my kids or a brother to my sisters. I am not even a son to my mother. Course she doesn’t know and I don’t think I am going to tell her. I have thought about it a thousand times but she thinks one way and I know she will think that someone is “influencing” me to be male. Just like they were influencing me to be homosexual. I love women. I have no idea how I am to have a relationship with one once I transition but hopefully it will work out. And if it doesn’t, I am fine being single.

I just feel really out of sorts right now. While I was in the hospital, there was confusion over my sex because one institution had me as a female and the psych hospital had me as a male since my last admission. It was so stupid and then the admitting psychiatrist asked me if I could be a female just for one night. Why not, I have been acting it all my life. Just shrink my heart a little more than it already is shrunk. Eventually I will have nothing left and hopefully I will die a heartless human being that is a female. It kills me to play a female part because I am not “out”. Like tomorrow when I am out with friends and with my friend’s kids. I will be called “aunty” because that is what I have always been called. I will be called my birth name because that is what is what they know by. It’s like I have to hide myself every time I am with someone that doesn’t know I am a male.

I am really confused by my identity issues. I know I am a male. I feel male in every aspect of my life. I wear male clothing year round except for that time of year when I have break through bleeding due to my biological cycle. I no longer have control over that but it doesn’t make me pure suicidal when it happens like it used to. I know that I have to have menses at least once a year or there will be problems. I just wish the problem, the uterus, can be taken out as it’s useless to me. I hear there are now transplants of uteruses. They can take mine for free if they want it that bad. It’s hasn’t been used at all for female things so I am sure it is viable! And if it’s not, just toss it in the pathological fireplace. I do not need it. I never wanted kids and still do not want kids. Men do not have kids.

Then I think this is all in my head and that I need conversion therapy or something but my therapist always reassures me that what I feel is what I feel. She gets me and calls me a guy, her buddy. We don’t hang out or anything (that would be too weird and awkward), but she accepts me. I just have a hard time accepting me sometimes. I hate myself because I am not who my mind thinks I am. And it hurts something awful. It hurts so much that I want to kill myself at times. I never put two and two together until I realized my menses were a huge part of the suicidal urges. Yea, PMDD had nothing on my suicidality. I had come so close to killing myself just before I would start bleeding it’s really a miracle I am still alive. The intensity of being suicidal was immense. And it was because I felt and feel like a man yet I was bleeding like a woman. How fucking confusing is that? Even when I got my menses so many years ago, I felt hatred because everyone was calling me a woman and I was like I am still a boy. It hurt so much and I am not talking about the physical aspects of the menstrual cycle. I wanted to die since I was eight years old. By the time I got my menses, that intensity increase triple fold. I so wanted a penis like my friend Tony. He is the male friend that I grew up with. I had hid myself and played the part of female for so long. Now it’s time to be a male and I am not sure how to come out. I am disgusted with myself. I hate my breasts. I hate myself period. I hate that I have to take meds to stop my menses but if I don’t it just kills me or will kill me.

The first thing that I am going to do is change my name. after that, I think I will be more comfortable going to the LGBT center to get testosterone treatments to become a male. I need to or I might as well join my father in hell or where ever you go when you die.

Dream

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders

Dream

I had the weirdest of all dreams last night. I was dreaming I was in a hotel room with my sister and I was going to check out. I made sure I had all my personal belongings before the maid came in to clean the room and went to the check out counter. Instead of using a credit card, I used a comp card of some sort. The clerk took it and off I went to the Station as my friend and I were going to the south of Boston to meet up with my friend. As we were waiting for the train to come in, we were approached by people we didn’t know and were weird. Not that unusual in Boston, but still, it was creepy.

The time for our train had come and gone and it still wasn’t in the station. I began to panic and my friend was becoming anxious. We were on a tight schedule because we were to meet our friend and then go to a concert. A half hour had passed without any indication that the train was delayed or cancelled. It was nerve wracking to say the least. Just as the weird woman that kept talking to me pulled out a belt, I woke up. I have no idea the symbolism of the belt would mean. It reminded me of the belt that my father had used to hit us with.

The freaky thing is that tomorrow I will be going to the exact same Station waiting for the same number train at the same time in the dream. I think I am a little nervous about this trip only because last week the train broke down and caused severe delays on the line. It’s an old commuter rail train so they break down frequently. It is also weird that I saw the same friend in the dream by the station I use to go home. Talk about coincidences.

I hope my trip tomorrow goes well and I am not nervous about the train breaking down or having delays. It will suck to miss my friend’s daughter’s concert. I didn’t make it to the concert last week for her son. I really want to see them as I haven’t visited them since January. That seems like years ago now as that is when my depression got bad and then my father got his diagnosis that his cancer had returned. It was all downhill from there.

Four Weeks

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders

Four Weeks

Today marks four weeks since the passing of my father. I have been tearful most of the day but have yet to cry. I saw my psychiatrist today and I said as long as you don’t jerk me, I shouldn’t cry. She agreed and said that wasn’t her job. I was thankful. I really didn’t want to cry because I am afraid once I start, I wouldn’t stop. I rather do it in the privacy of my room than public places. I have been trying to get used to the time I have on my hands now that he is gone. The worry is still there that he needs help with something or other, but I know it’s not really there. I don’t know if that makes sense or not. My schedule has suddenly been free of his doctor’s appointments, which I am glad because it took so much mental energy and physical to take him somewhere. Then of course, you had the wait and the longer you waited, the worse it was. Sometimes I wanted to take away his watch so he wouldn’t tell me the time, like I didn’t know it myself. Man, he drove me crazy.

It’s little things like that that I miss. For good or bad, he was still my father. I still remember the day he died like it was yesterday. The last image of him being alive is still with me because I stared at him for quite sometime before leaving the room. He died not too long after, maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes later. We’ll never really know the true time of death because although we were with him, we weren’t in the room when he took his last breath. The nurse that came an hour later listed the time of death as 1645 but I say it was an hour earlier. Course, I can’t pronounce people dead. But I did get to witness it. I hope I never do again.

My psych told me she is on vacation for a week but might not have access to email. If I needed someone, I am to page the covering doc. She is worried that the increase in sertraline is going to cause a hypomania episode. I doubt it will happen as it never has in the past when I was taking it. I still feel pretty low despite feeling okay at times. She asked how my sleep was and I told her I was getting 5-6 hours a night, which is my norm. She raised her eyebrows in concern. I told her I would be okay and will call if things escalated. I don’t think they will.

I got Pad Thai for lunch from my favorite restaurant. I haven’t had it in so long. It’s hard to get good Pad Thai outside of Boston. I live on the out skirts of Boston but it’s not that far away from me. I love the city with all my heart and soul more than the town that I live in. I hate the town I live in. It’s hard to get around because you need a damn bus to get you anywhere. And I can’t walk the mile to the station anymore. I wish I could but I would be paying for it and if I could, I wouldn’t be disabled anymore. I could go back to my job in the lab and deal with the fun of the labels being down every other day because of the new system. It sucks because although I saw my psych change the strength of the sertraline when she ordered my prescription, the system didn’t change it so I am still taking 4 fucking pills. She has to change it or send me another prescription for a higher quantity or I am going to be out of meds in less than a week. Fucking system sucks. Then she told me there was a front page article about it in the Globe. I am going to have to look it up and read it to see if it is positive or negative. I know it’s giving docs a hard time because it’s just so damn complicated. It really makes clinical work a bitch instead of making it easier. I have a feeling that is why my great PCP left the practice. It would mean more time on the damn computer than actual doctoring.

My psych wants me to send her my blogs. It’s been a while since I sent her one. Maybe if I write one later I will send it. It’s been a while since I wrote two blogs in a day. Maybe I will write up the story of my father’s last two hours. I might add to it if I write it out. I just don’t know if my movie will start being intrusive like it was a few weeks ago.

I think my psych now knows what I wish to be called. She thought it was Alex but it’s not because I changed it more than a year ago. I told her I would change it legally sometime this year because I really hate my birth name. I just need to get my birth certificate from the town I was born in as I have no clue where the one I had is. I told her how perplexing it was to be transgender at the hospital I was in. I had to play the “female” role for a while because I was in a double room. It was stupid. But that is because the hospital that admitted me doesn’t know I am transgender. My psych knows but that is the only clinician that does. My ex-PCP knew because I told him while I was in a hypomanic state during my last physical. I don’t know why it’s easier to come out during a hypomanic state than it is in a depressed state. I think it’s because you have a tighter grip of reality while depressed than when you are hypomanic. I got to get my haircut this week. Now that I finally figured out the way I like it cut, I think it will be styling.