Inside the Mind of a Bipolar Mom

November 12, 2009

Well, I feel great.  Probably teetering on the edge of mania but it is wonderful to feel good and have energy!  Lithium was not the choice of drug for me in my course of treatment for Bipolar nor was many other druugs. The feeling of nonstop nausea is gone!!  My doctor and I decided to try Cymbalta and Abilify.  Within two weeks of stopping the Lithium I have dropped 10 lbs.  The weight loss could also be attributed to the fact that I am now also taking a new medicine for my thyroid, Cytomel.  The energy it gives is refreshing.  I had forgotten what it is like to wake up and not be tired or to be awake and think of other things besides sleeping!!

The brink of mania is definitely on the horizon.  I am hoping my body just needs time to adjust to the new medication and mania will not happen all though in all honesty it’s probably here already to some extent.  Last week I decided to buy a new wedding ring.  So I did….definitely a sign of mania.  I also went shopping with my 4 year old and we bought $600.00 worth of clothes.  Definitely not reasonable but boy was it fun!  I can justify in my head that they needed the clothes but in reality and my nanny will attest to this they definitely did not need them, especially considering the fact that half of them are still in the bags.  It’s been a complete week since this frenzy though and I definitely am feeling more stable.

My Thoughts on Motherhood Today

It’s as if you wake up one morning and realize, “Oh, Shit! This is not where I meant to be with my life when I was 33.”  It’s not that you would do anything different because that would mean erasing your children and the love you have for them outweighs any other feeling.  But….you think….you think about where you imagined yourself at this age and for me it definitely was not as it is!

I imagined myself well established within my career and making good money.  Here I am with three wonderful children who I love dearly with a life that solely revolves around them.  As I guess it should for right now.  However, they limited my career choices and the course my life would take from the moment they were born.  The wisdom and experience I was lacking at the mere age of 21 when I had my first precious baby, Keely.  I would do all over again to have her in my life.  How blessed I am but it was the beginning of a new path.  A path I hadn’t really thought about.

People say don’t look back and that probably is the healthiest thing to do but sometimes you just wonder, what if….I would have waited to have children.  I guess secretly deep down there is a lot of resentment about what can’t be because of my choices.  I can’t be a self-centered career woman as I imagined.  That may not seem so bad to many people but it’s what I envisioned when I was little.  Early on I imagined being a teacher but from 2nd grade on I wanted to be a business woman with a thriving career.  Just verbalizing it right now feels lighter as if a weight I have been carrying around has been lifted and yet at the same time as if a brick has just plummeted into my chest.  It’s a secret you don’t want to share because you are ashamed…”Do I not have the perfect American life?”…  A family with a wonderful husband with a good job so I don’t have to work...I get to be a full time mom.  Be happy!!  I’m not.  But I guess the truth is with my disease and this is key…I don’t know if happiness would come with the other.