Four days. Fours days of pacing. Four days of waiting. Four days of not knowing. Four days of hoping. Four days of crying. Four days of no sleep. Four days of no food. Four of the most completely torturous days of my entire life.
I guess I was lucky though. My husband's ex wife usually had to wait a minimum of seven days before she would hear anything from him.
The call came in to my cell phone. I don't know what time it was, I just remember seeing "Unknown" on my caller ID. I pushed "talk", weakly said "hello", and held my breath. When I heard his voice saying my name on the other end, I immediately fell to my knees and exhaled. I couldn't believe it was him. I could barely concentrate as he told me to take down a number, give him 10 minutes then call back. As I wrote down the number I saw it was international, but didn't know where the country code was.
I googled the country code of 91. I had to read the results 2 or 3 times before it really registered.....India. India????? INDIA!!!!! What in God's name was he doing in India? How was I going to get him home?!?
I attempted to call him back, several times, before I figured out that I don't have international calling availability on my phone. I then logged into my email account and saw that just a few minutes before calling me he had send me an email telling me to expect his call! This was how I could speak to him. I HAD to speak with him. I emailed him back that I couldn't call him and that I didn't know what to do! At this point I was in an irrational panic that I may never speak with him again if this email didn't work. I sat and waited for a response. Each minute that passed I grew more and more anxious. Then something wonderful happened! My IM blinked and there he was! I could finally speak with him.
We were both typing frantically, not bothering to wait for the other's response. I was telling him how I already knew about the bipolar diagnosis, how much I missed him, how much I just wanted him home. He was telling me how sorry he was, how scared he was, and how much he wanted to come home.
He begged me to help him get home. He had spent his entire paycheck (which was supposed to be rent) on his one way ticket to India. I had absolutely no idea how to get him home. I had $7.00 and neither of our families had a spare $1000.00 just lying around!
My husband was once a monk in a Hindu Yogi monastery here in the states. Just to anticipate any questions, my husband is not Indian. He is actually 1/2 German 1/2 American mutt. However, his once lifestyle allowed him to take food and shelter within the walls of an ashram in New Delhi. He met a "brother" there who he was able to tell his whole story to. I'll always be indebted to that monk for taking such good care of my love. Unfortunately, my husband was unable to tell anyone else why he was actually there. He couldn't even tell them that he was married or he'd back out on the street. This monk allowed my husband to gain access into the ashram office so that he could chat with me twice per day. This was really the only way we made it through the next several days.
To be continued...
india??!... oh this sounds like such fun... not
ReplyDeletei'm lucky when i really went hyper about 3 weeks ago it happened so fast there was no chance i could do anything too ridiculous (apart from chucking my stuff out of the window and starting a bonfire, which i wanted to do because my landlord is on at me for living in a mess) but i didn't do that. i feel like a parent looking after a wayward 3 year old child and that child is me
i'm pissed off that i was hearing voices and getting very paranoid, then extremely grandiose so i had ideas about "turning into pure energy" and yet my family want to believe nothing's really the matter and i get comments that because i was on drugs this is normal. the methadone clinic KNOW i'm drugs negative (i'm too desperate to fake a piss test and wouldn't do that, i've been 100% straight with them over what drugs i take (nothing bar the odd street bought valium) and how much i drink (the dr said it's not a big problem, he wasn't condoning he was just saying i'm doing ok and he knows i'm cutting it down iv'e reduced by a third in the past week)... yeah i don't even have a diagnosis!
lots of people think it's bipolar and it does fit EVERY ONE of those DSM criteria now but for years it didn't, i got "racing thoughts" but didn't realize my irritability probably meant i was hyper not depressed as I'd thought i was... only now can i look back and see this was happening without my knowing it
i've had depression since childhood and it's been a big issue since age 19
heroin worked as a mood stabilizer and muddied the waters considerably re diagnosis. methadone barely does anything to dampen my moods, so when i tried to just drink my methadone without using heroin on top i felt unbearably depressed
i got prescribed risperidone the antipsychotic about 2 weeks ago when i was on the tail end of this pretty severe manic thing... since then i've had days when i thought i was ok if still higher than normal, then i get flashes of symptoms that happen when i start going really really fast or get paranoia and i realize i'm not ok like i thought i was
last weekend i had some horrible side effects from taking the risperidone in the day (as directed; week one i was told to take it all at night) my sleep went back into a 48 hour cycle anyway... i stopped taking it and went hypomanic again
the dual diagnosis lady obviously found my behaviour pretty challenging and says i'm going too high
i think what has reallly happened is i was depressed, then i switched to a high very quickly, the very intense peak lasted just over a week and i went down into hypomania and i'm still in that hypomania now
of course i feel really good and i don't WANT to medicate something that feels fantastic. no voices now, no paranoia, only problem is i bought something like 35 or 40 DVDs in the last 4 days, spending all the money that was meant to go on rent... at the time i just did not care
i'm on sickness benefit and applying for another benefit you have to apply for separately which is for the long term sick. when i had it before i was depressed, it ran out and i had so little self esteeem i didn't reapply i didn't feel worthy or eligable
the treatment i got from drs (basially they weren't sure what the problem was) and the fact that in anything other than really severe depression i put on a pretty good mask, means nobody knows how shit i really feel (suicidal every day) and i feel like a fraud saying i feel depressed. if i can smile once in a day i tell myself i'm ok and just faking. i really got confused about what was wrong with me when i was really desperate and just wanted to die. i tried to get help and feel nobody listened
(ran out of space: part 2)
ReplyDeletenow it's got so bad i'm having psychotic episodes and i'm angry because i could have had treatment when it was nowhere near this bad
fair enough i was "self-medicating" ~ yet those bastards down the clinic offered me NO meds at all, knowing that on methadone without heroin i was basically suicidal or spent all day staring into space, only able to motivate myself when there was a chance a dealer might give heroin on credit
it got bad enough i could barely cope with scoring the heroin, let alone anything else in life. my life is a grade a mess, i am filthy dirty, my house looks like a rubbish dump, my debts are all in default, i haven't opened mail in months
i know you can't help me with any of this and i'm not asking anything of you i just wanted someone to talk to who actually believes i'm mentally ill
what these well meaning people don't grasp is that telling myself i'm ill is the ONE link with reality i have left sometimes and they want to take it away because it sounds like negative thinking
i want to yell at them JUST GIMME A BREAK
i know i'm lucky to have friends i just wish they'd gen up before giving opinions on stuff they so obviously know nothing about
ok rant over
i was so flattered to get a comment from someone who wasn't a junkie and who didn't know me, when i was really ill comments went nearly to zero because i was posting ga ga ga (what i was thinking i posted, as i said, if i edited this i'd be lying on my witness statement to myself, you know) my blog is my diary i don't keep a separate journal
it just feels very hard sometimes when all i'm doing is writing how i am and people want to judge me or try and reassure me and it feels like they don't believe what i say is EXACTLY how it is
i mean if i was faking this... i'd be even more sick than i actually am, know what i mean?
thanks again for your comment i'll let you breathe now!
ps if i do crash down bad i'm just going in hospital i'm fed up as it is, even though i feel "high" i'm very tired and very upset about this whole issue thanks for listening
o i just read through what i put
ReplyDeletewhen i say i got high so quick there was no chance i could do anything too ridiculous i mean i was so hyper i couldn't concentrate on anything at all, every thought i had kind of burst open like a firework and every eventuality of every possibility of meaning sparkled at me at the same time, so i was lost in detail
at some points i couldn't understand what people were saying literally couldn't understand them, they didn't seem to understand me either
i'm not trying to claim my experience was worse than anyone else's but having looked over a few bipolar forums my symptoms definitely seem to get more extreme than the average
and this is why i'm angry with those mental health professionals it had to get THIS BAD before anybody took me seriously
and they do thank God listen to me now, they don't like giving drug addicts sleeping pills but they'll give them to me because i'll go 2 days or more without going to bed then sleep maybe 5 hours worst, 12 hours best, but averaged out that's still way less sleep than i normally get (i need my sleep!)... o man this is such a mess, it really is a mess
i can tell you this here but at my place if i say this i'll get shot down for self-indulgence or being a junkie who wants to be ill to justify my drug using
i've gone far far past the realm of looking for excuses (of course there's always an element of that and for fuck's sake I NEED somebody to write to the council and other organizations saying WHY i couldn't even fill in a simple form)... this is such a mess
i'm sorry i'm not trying to depress you i just needed somewhere i an offload the bitter truth
i mean it comes to something when i cannot even say how i am on my own fucking blog doesn't it
i won't stop posting and i'm not lying for anyone, it just pisses me off when i slowly realized recently that certain people probably thought i was exaggerating i mean fucking hell i really do not need to exaggerate my feelings they're strong enough as it is
sorry i'm going to have to go now, i think we both need a break
i hope stuff is good your end.
i read "parents of an addict" blogs and those guys have my full respect i just don't know how they do it and stay sane if i had a kid on heroin it would kill me
as for being spouse of someone with bipolar... that's territory i know nothing about. it must be really ~"challenging" just to put it in lovely English understated terms. Or "rather inconvenient" as I sometimes like to say.
Well I'm off now I'm dying for a cigarette!
(Straight cigarette. No way in a million years am I toking that evil Psychosis Herb.)
See ya! Take it easy :-)
Gledwood,
ReplyDeleteAdmitting you have a mental illness is a step in the correct direction. The fact that mental illness still has such a terrible stigma attached to it is a shame. I believe that this may be the reason that your friends believe it to be "negative thinking." You need support right now. Not sympathy, not misunderstanding, not pity. I would highly recommend finding a support group. There are people there who understand exactly what you're going through. They may not have had identical experiences, but they've dealt with all the feelings that you're dealing with now. My husband and I went to a DBSA (depression, bipolar support alliance) meeting two days after he returned from India. He really didn't want to go at first, but once the meeting was over he was so happy he attended. It makes him feel so much more understood. From your profile it looks as if you're located in London. This is the only thing I could locate on the internet, http://bipolar.meetup.com/cities/gb/
I don't know if that will help you, but I sure hope it will.
PS- just a bit of advice, get back on your meds. Manic episodes, depressions and suicidal thoughts are ALWAYS more severe when you suddenly stop taking your meds. If you really don't want to be on them, request to be weened off of them.
I go to a thing I call Nutter Club but it's really a Dual Diagnosis Support Group for people with mental health and addiction (or just drug) issues.
ReplyDeleteOnly problem I'm having is when I'm too hyped up I let my mouth run away with me and I have a lot of anger at the drugs services for not listening to me when i said i was having mood swings and had had them for years, they wanted to believe it was a personality disorder
on the one hand nursey says i was self medicating with heroin (not methadone, methadone does nothing to help me except stop me being physically ill from witdrawal) and yes i was
i've seen people with bipolar on television who were psychotic but on meds, so the hyperactivity was gone but the high mood and delusional stuff still there
so why she could see i was self medicating and couldn't understand how i could genuinely be depressed yet present probably as someone with depression on medication ie the most obvious symptoms are disguised enough that i can pass as normal... i honestly think that's ineptitude bordering on malpractice
another one who was just my keyworker told me when i told her i had suicidal impulses literally hundreds of times per day "that's how people feel when they're in a bad situation"... well no it is not actually i must have been in a real mess to feel THAT suicidal and when i tell them i have an impulse hundreds of times a day i mean hundreds, not a couple of times and i'm an exaggerating lying junkie
i'm just very angry with all of them, i understand that i blanketed the worst of my mood swings with heroin. i also dread to think what would have happened if i'd switched to methadone only about 5 years ago as i was depressed with paranoia and "psychotic features" as they call it, which i thought at the time was just misdiagnosis (i was hearing voices etc and had weird ideas in my head but again the depressed mood was considerably blunted by the heroin) i cannot imagine how horrible it would have been to plummet down from my medicated state into THAT
at least when i did come off heroin and stuck to methadone only i went UP not down and this has been the main issue ever since early December I went up for about 10 days in a weird mixed up state then down for a week or more, blipped slightly up for just one day, heroin for another week (last time i used) which took everything away, then down into depression then up up UP about 3 weeks ago and haven't properly come down since though I was psychotic for about a week and i'm just hyper now
i was put on antipsychotics but they disagreed with me after about 2 weeks so i want to change over to something else like quetiapine Seroquel if they'll let me, so now i'm on nothing and enjoying having energy despite a terrible sleep pattern
(part 2 ran out of space as usual!)
ReplyDeletei'm in chaos with every aspect of my life i'm housed by the local council who are sending some vulnerable persons unit after me which makes me feel like a 3 year old but at long last people are actually listening to me and DOING SOMETHING i've been saying for years "I'M NOT COPING" and i wasn't. unless living in a room so full of rubbish there's no visible floor, unable to face a shower, dirty cigarette burned clothes etc etc unless that is coping then i'm in desperate need of help i don't know what to do
usually when you're ill you just go to bed but what am i meant to do?
know what i mean..!
if it gets bad i'm just going in hospital next time, it's not like i haven't had the offer a couple of times over the last 2 months. next time someone says that i'm going in because i just need a break it's like looking after a 3 year old kid who is me and it gets really exhausting
thanks for answering. i have a group, a consultant psychiatrist, a drugs key worker and a dual diagnosis worker as well as a social worker type person who is new and i haven't met yet and this vulnerable adult team so at long last i actually get help having asked for it for years and been traeted like someone who just wanted to shirk responsibility. nobody who judged me like that actually saw how i lived it was seriously degraded i mean worse than the cases you see on television i was in absolute mess then even worse than now
you know what made all the difference? kicking heroin out of my life. suddenly i get treated seriously because there's no substance they can pin it on. this is me. whatever fancy label they pin on it, whether they wanna say it's drug induced or not, there's no drugs NOW
and i need a proper diagnosis because these professionals ask for one and i don't even know what to say if i knew the word i'd yell it in people's faces i'm not ashamed i just want to know what the word is, know what i mean
if i don't know the word i can't even join a self help forum, can't get any help books can't do a lot of things i feel like they're messing about with me i know this is paranoia but it's how i feel i just try and be grown up but it's very very difficult sometimes
take care ;-)