Tag: bipolar disorder

No Sleep Wednesday

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

No Sleep Wednesday

I barely got any sleep last night and when I did, my alarm went off. My groceries were delivered early this morning. I put them all away and was savoring making a burger after my therapy appointment. I had some turkey breast deli meat with some dark chocolate almond milk for breakfast. The almond milk was so damn good. I think I like it better than the vanilla with honey.

Therapy went okay. She was late by almost ten minutes but I still had my time with her. We talked about my sleep and about my ankle. I finally found out what the lump is. It’s a bony formation called enthesophyte. It is really painful and will be needing surgery. I am not looking forward to that. There is also the chance my tendon may be damage from it. It is caused by stress. The ankle service called me this morning so I have an appointment in a few weeks. I think I am going to have to have an MRI to make sure my Achilles is intact. Until then, I will keep doing what I have been doing. Staying off it as much as possible so it doesn’t hurt.

I told my therapist I was sending my psychiatrist blogs left and right. I know I wrote one while I was up at 0230. I don’t know if I sent it to my psych or not. I know I didn’t send it to my therapist. There are somethings I will send to her and others I won’t. I did email my psych to let her know about my ankle. I have no idea what time it was. I know I also told her my sleep sucks but I don’t think it’s medication related. I just have a weird sleep pattern. My therapist kept asking me if I had a dream that woke me up. If I did, I completely forgot it. She must have asked me several times. I just woke up at around 0230 and that was it. After I fell asleep at midnight. I was up for a few hours before I went back to sleep around 0500.

Today marks a month that my father passed away. I keep thinking I need to go to his apartment tomorrow to do his meds but there is nothing I need to do. I have the whole day to myself. And Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. I need to get a haircut tomorrow so I think I will hold off on showering until then. I hope I get the same barber as I did last month. I got a real nice cut from him.

I ordered John Adams from Netflix DVD. It’s a 3 disc set but they only sent me the first disc. I am going to watch it tonight. I have been looking forward to this movie for quite some time. I hope I am not disappointed.

I fixed the problem with Amazon but they are still shipping my items separately as well as charging me individually. I am so annoyed. At least it’s free shipping. I just have to pay for the tax. I bought a new watch as the one I had is old and I think the battery is going to die soon. If there was a jeweler’s place that had watch repairs, I would just replace the battery but all those places closed in my area. It really sucks. I ordered a psychology book from a seller but it doesn’t look like they have shipped it yet. I expedited shipping on it because I really want it sooner rather than later. I figure I can read it when I go to Starbucks. I can have my study session there. I don’t know what else to do with my time.

can’t sleep 3

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

Can’t Sleep 3

I seem to be making a lot of posts lately because I can’t sleep. I slept for about 2 hours and then woke up due to pain. Now I am having a hard time getting back to sleep. I am tempted to email my psychiatrist but I don’t want to worry her. I know she is already worried about me. It was apparent when I saw her on Monday.

I am tempted to write out the story that I wrote while I was in the hospital. It will give me something to do and hopefully make me sleepy. I just hope that it doesn’t stir things up. I should read but sometimes reading wakes me up and causes my brain to think of things. I do my best work during these hours so I should be ok. I have nothing I have to do today aside from making sure that I am awake for my grocery delivery and then having therapy in the afternoon. I can sleep after therapy, like I usually do. I then can make my delicious burger that I am looking forward to. I hope I have an appetite by then. I am still full over the dinner I had at the Olive Garden. I ate way too much food, but it was so damn good. I had chicken piccata. The capers were mild and I liked it. Usually, I don’t like capers because the taste is too strong but these weren’t so it was good. The zucchini they served with it, OMG it was so good. I love zucchini. It’s one of my favorite vegetables, especially during the summer. My mother will either buy it or my brother in law grows it in the garden. She makes some good dishes with it. I love it when she fries it up like potato chips with bread crumbs.

I had dessert, cheesecake. I have been craving cheesecake for some time now and I finally satisfied my craving. My friend that I was with said they get it from the Cheesecake Factory. I am going to have to check it out now. There is one in the next town over for me at the mall. They also have my favorite limoncello cake. It is to die for, if you like lemon stuff. I haven’t had it in a while because the price for a slice is ridiculous. Last I checked, I think it was almost $10. It is worth it though, if you have the money and the craving. The nice thing is that you can order the slices without having to have a meal. I remember I brought my niece there one time for her birthday. We were so full on appetizers that when our meal came, we hardly ate it and we had to bring it home. We both laughed because the plates were so huge. We just looked at the amount of food and laughed. I think we each had a bite and that was all we could stomach. It was really funny. I think we ordered the same dish, too.

I was just thinking. Yes, that was me with the smoke in the air. Over the last several months, all I have been talking about in therapy is my father. I thought that once he died, I wouldn’t talk about him anymore yet I still am talking about him. Fucking bastard is taking up my life, even in death. The past few days, I have been thinking of his girlfriend. I think, if I am conscious and sensible, I might give her a call to see how she is doing. She loved my father and he loved her. He talked about her all the time and would sometimes call me her name instead of my own. I didn’t think nothing of it because he was old and stuff. He would correct himself and that would be the end of it. As I was thinking of my father tonight, I remembered how much he loved visiting New York City a few months ago when he was well. He went with his girlfriend. They had gone to the casino first and then drove up to New York. He really had a good time there. I don’t think I have ever seen my father more happy. I am glad he went before he died.

I still can’t believe the decline my father had. It was like in January he was in good health and then after his radiation treatments, he just went downhill. There were problems after problems after that. Then during one of his admissions, while he had some clarity, I became his health care proxy. I was really scared about being it because I was suffering under a deep depression and was afraid my mental status would cloud my judgement. But I did okay, with the help of my sisters. I don’t think I could have done it without them. Not that the decisions I made were that difficult. I just went with what my sister told me his wishes were and carried them out to the best of my ability. The most important thing is that the guy didn’t suffer. It was hard, so bloody hard, seeing him deteriorate. He didn’t eat so eventually became emaciated. It was terrible. He lost so much weight and so quickly. He lost muscle tone and became so weak that just putting on a shirt and pants exhausted him. He would go to sleep afterwards. It was really sad.

I placed a big Amazon order and for some reason, my payment was declined. Now I got to go to the rigmarole of retrying my card. It’s so stupid because the payment went in the first time or I would have gotten a decline when I first placed the order. It’s so stupid. I just hope they don’t charge me individually for the items ordered. I ordered 5 things. I will be pissed if there are 5 charges on my card for one fucking order. They have done this in the past so I am weary.

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.