Rolling with the Changes

I want to thank Franklin's Pharmacy for having my prescription at a deeply discounted price. I was experiencing much anxiety as I did not have any more medication and neither did I insurance to pay for my $200 medication. On our way to Walmart to purchase five days worth of medication, we stopped at Franklin's on a whim, and it was only $40.00. I had noticed the symptoms of my old friend, Bipolar, creeping up on me, insomnia, irritability, anger, and I was getting really afraid that I was beginning to tip the scales towards mania. On top of that, I had been to see my doctor and he said that I was hypomanic. I have already learned in the past to trust him. I am so thankful that I was able to get the medication I need.

Even though I have my medication, I am still watching my symptoms. Also to help me track my moods I have been using Optimism online. It can be used online, and on your IPhone, with no syncing. Check it out....https://www.optimismonline.com/login.php.

There has been a lot of changes in my life, and I have been having difficulty setting up a routine. I am currently working at home. I have a writing and editing business. I have a few clients, but I need to work to acquire more.When I am relaxing, I feel like I should be working. When  I am working, I feel like I should be playing with my daughter. Also when I am working or relaxing I feel like I should be cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, or playing with my daughter. I am fighting the voice of failure.

The fact of the matter I can write and edit very well, and I know there are companies or clients that need assistance with writing and editing and I don't know how to find them, yet.

On a good note, something peculiar happened to me. I was in the basement one evening waiting for the washing machine to finish. I pulled out a box full of old letters and cards, and I found so many from my mother. I have not written much about my mother because I was very conflicted about our relationship. Especially, after I had my own daughter 11 years ago, and realized how flawed I am. Or should I say that every mother makes mistakes. Furthermore, that my daughter was going to put my actions and mistakes under a microscope, just as I had done my mother's actions. As I read the cards and letter, I just melted. In those cards and letters she told me how much she loved me and how wonderful, special, and talented I am. So I wrote her an email, and we have been communicating on a regular basis.

I have to admit that I am very isolated. I have no car. I have not invited friends over even though I have intended to do so. Very rarely do I call friends or family, and hardly anybody calls me. They probably think I don't want to talk to them. Since I am no longer in Taekwondo, I don't see all my friends from there. I sit in this house, day after day, waiting for my husband to come home. I think about the things I could do outside the house, but when I think about walking downtown, I just forget the idea. But living like I live is not cutting it. But what do I change and what do I change first because with Bipolar all changes should be done in moderation?

Where is my Resurrection?

Dear World,

Today has been a hard day. No cross that out. It has been a hard year. It's spring the sun has been shining. The birds have been singing. Easter has passed, and I have found no Resurrection. Let me just cut to the chase. Bipolar is to blame. I was diagnosed in 2005, and have led a fairly healthy life, and held a good paying full time job after graduating with honors in 2008.

Things just kinda started falling apart last spring. Was it the stressful job, the demanding boss, or the occasional forgetfulness with my medication? And when things began to fall apart, I requested accommodations for my disability. I took some time off work and my doctor added a medication to deter a visit to the psychiatric ward.

When I returned to work, I was greeted with a poor evaluation. With the evaluation was a performance plan, and if the performance markers were not met it could lead to termination. I was devastated. I had poured my heart and soul into that job. I was so hurt.

 I left work early and became so broken up I got a migraine. I had an hour drive home and had made an appointment  to see my counselor. I had convinced myself I was going to quit. My counselor appointment  was spent discussing this option between my sobs, and my exit to the bathroom where I vomited in the sink. I had come to the determination that I would stay and fight for my job, prove them wrong. I was hard at work for several weeks, when a simple car accident literally changed my life. I had no insurance on that car; therefore, no way to fix it. The job I fought so hard for, I had to resign from.

All this leads me to where I am today working midnights, still without a car, and now without a license, and feeling very depressed.I am a  tree whose leaves have withered and died. Spring has come the other trees have bloomed while my limbs are barren.

I have no motivation to write this but I wanted to participate in blogging for mental health. I would like to consider myself a stigma buster and a mental health advocate just because I speak out in this blog.

The reason I do speak out is I want us, those with a mental illness, to know you are not alone and you do not have to suffer in silence. I want to inspire others to speak out because stigma can be erased one story at a time. Most importantly I hope my writing encourages those who are suffering to get help.

I am  in flux, and I know my future is bright, and I know I will feel better. I plan to call the doctor soon...very soon.

Please join me on my journey and visit me again soon.

All my Chances Are Over...Thanks to Death

Daddy, Gary, heck I don't know what to call you. I don't even know who you are. I want to search for you on Facebook and try to reconnect, but reconnect to what?

 You were always like a brick wall, never giving anything back.  So rigid, so unloving, I don't understand how my sister got the other side of you, the side with smiles and a relationship. I don't know what I did wrong, if anything.

 I don't know how long I would search for you-maybe until I could erase the image of you lying in the coffin, or until the past was erased, but  the past can not be erased or changed. What's done is done. I can see the stark image of you lying in the coffin, and I know all my tries are over.

What I have left are scraps of memories, your obituary, and 2 Polaroids that somehow get plastered to the fridge, no matter how many times I take them down. In one of them I am kissing your cheek and your just beaming. You would have thought it was a beginning of a beautiful relationship, but I just couldn't let go of the past. That kiss, that moment, that high transformed into a dark valley, and that picture may be the only proof I have that you loved me.

I remember we were sitting at the bar at Applebees. You wanted to learn about my life, my husband, and my baby. All I could think is how ironic it was we were sitting at a bar, while all I could think of was transforming into a little girl, so I could finally sit on your lap and cuddle with you. I just couldn't let go of the past, and I asked you if you loved me. It may have been the millionth time you mentioned that the past is the past and it was just a soap opera. You abruptly paid the bartender and told me you were driving home to Buffalo tonight.

I begged you to stay. I promised I would be good. Promised I would tell you about my life, but you told me it was too late. I am so angry how could you leave? You were driving me back home and I just screamed, "I just want to know if you love me?" And you screamed back, "Of course, I love you." You said it like it was a given in a geometry equation. I sobbed all the way home, and I sobbed as you left. I begged you to stay. You left me crying on the doorstep. I stood there and watched you leave.

Did you drive all the way through to Buffalo? Did you get a hotel? Did you cry too? These things I can never ask you.

We didn't talk for years. When my sister got married, I called you and asked you if we could spend some time together alone. Your response was, "Haven't we tried that already?" When you became ill, you began calling me. I didn't know you were sick. It was my mom who mentioned to me that when people think they are dying they try to reconnect. I was so ecstatic to talk to you. I was going to invite you to my college graduation, but instead I had to settle for your class ring around my neck.

Did you know I missed the first few days of my last semester to be at your funeral? I would have rather made the trip to tell you goodbye, to tell you I loved you, and to hear the words," I love you, Kara."  You knew you were dying, even a phone call would have sufficed, but you just gave up and died.

If we really want to face the truth, you were ill, incapable of showing emotion, incapable of showing love. You were crippled by depression. You were punishing yourself, slowly killing yourself for letting us be given away, for allowing another man to give us his name. You have been killing yourself with drugs and alcohol for years, and that is the one thing that you succeeded with.

You just gave up. You stopped drawing or making anything artistic. You just sat on your leather couch with your cat and drank yourself to death. Good job Daddy, you did it. I wish you would have fought, if not for me, for yourself. No Daddy you didn't fight, you became entangled with your emotions. You let them strangle you, and you tried to drown them. You just laid down and fucken died.

Now I can search out my family tree, and see that beast, and I see it devoured you, and I vow it will not devour me. No matter how many times my emotions cripple me, I realize over and over again that even if I do not want to live my life for me. I have a child who needs me and loves me, and the time to break the cycle is now.

I have to be present and accessible for her. I have to take my medication to keep the beast at bay. I have to seek out help when I need it. I have to connect with her, and others. She needs me and I am not going to stamp her with my rejection.I need to show her how to live, especially if the beast comes and visits her.

Not only that I have to live for me. I need to be more than a shell that eats and sleeps. I am not going to give up and slowly die, slowly commit suicide because I am too much of a coward to end it quickly. No Daddy; I am going to fight.

Fighting to be Sane

The beast  is swirling and rising, trying to devour me, again, but I fight back. I have too much to live for, too much to fight for to let him win. As I sit on my bed sobbing, I feel so lost and utterly alone. I sob uncontrollably and loudly, I know I am losing control.

The beast is bipolar. Most days there are slight reminders of my disability, while other days the beast wrangles me to the floor, and I wrestle to break free.

It is Easter and my stepson dropped by to get some lasagna, while I thought he was staying for dinner, yet another miss-communication. He wanted to discuss his plans for the future, and one of his plans included living in my home. I just told him he couldn't live here.

We fought. He yelled. I screamed and sobbed. The argument ended with him sitting in the dining room ignoring my sobs. Shortly thereafter, he left.  My husband gave him a ride. I kept on crying. I was still crying when my husband returned home. I was hoping for someone to help me reason through my thoughts and emotions, someone sane, but my husband was too busy eating his lasagna and pretending nothing was wrong, his usual M.O. I really really need him.

I run upstairs and slam the bedroom door repeatedly. Then I run downstairs and scream at my husband. I declare my spiteful regret for ever loving and taking care of his hateful son, and I tell him that I feel like dying. I pick up my phone and scream that I am going to call a hotline, and talk to someone who cares. Someone who can help.


I hate, hate, hate myself;  I can do nothing right.  I want to die, and if I wasn't a coward I would do more than just have the extreme need to die.There are just some things that just rock my core. I have heard many call them triggers. I was literally brought to my knees by a visit by my 19-year-old stepson. Someone I dearly love. Yes, I have to look back at photographs of his youth to dissolve the anger and bitterness to see and open the love I have for him, but it is still there hidden.

I am so angry. I love him! I have loved him, and as he was growing up, I did my very best to be a mother for him. Maybe that is what the problem was, but I am not going to argue the dynamics of what a relationship between a stepmother and a stepchild should be. It is just so difficult loving someone as your own, and it isn't reciprocated.


I don't know maybe you have felt like everybody hates you, and nobody understands. But this pain was multiplied. My stepson has just told me the most dreadful words that I never wanted to hear. "But Kara, she's my mother." And it just wan't just the words, it was the tone.  What I really want to know is what am I? Did I imagine all those years I took care of him?

It's time someone finally spoke the truth, and it appears that only one that is going to speak up for myself is me. When his father wanted to run away, and reinvent his life, who was it that encouraged him to stay? Who explained to him the effects, pain, and heartbreak of divorce on a child? Who emphatically stated that weekends, holidays, and summers do make a difference in a child's life?

It was me. I have felt the lack of a father two times over. I was the engine in their relationship. If there wasn't a me, there wouldn't have been a them. I drove an hour each way to bring them together.

I had done this and so much more. And yes as the years wore on, and he moved in with us. I have never felt that he loved me. I have felt his anger bristling to the surface. I have felt his rejection when I asked him to eat a family dinner with my daughter and I. I have felt hurt after I pulled into the driveway and I saw his shadow ascend to the stairs so he could burrow in his bedroom. I suppose I have always wanted more, but maybe there is nothing more to attain.

Since my argument with my stepson, I vowed I would never go to his wedding, if he ever got married. I feel so displaced in his life, so much like a third wheel. Many people have taken the time to explain to me and my husband how I should have nothing to say about anything in his life. I fear going to the ceremony just sitting there. Not being invited to be part of any of the symbolic rituals because I am nothing. I am not his mother, and therefore I guess I am nothing.

I suppose that if he gets married i'll go; I am not heartless, and yes I love him. But I don't know how to take the rejection that I am sure to experience.

All I can say a week later after this experience is I am still raw, and yes I am sane. I could give you the boring details of how my husband and I finally discussed the argument, but instead I wanna know how would you react? Is any of your loved ones mentally ill? How do you handle it when things begin to fall apart?

Running with scissors...

This is a post I began after being released from the psychiatric ward late this summer. I went through a horrifying experience of my throat, tongue, and mouth swelling up. This swelling caused a 5 day hospitalization on the general ward. To relieve the swelling I was given steroids which resulted in a bout of mania, and a hospitalization in the psychiatric ward...

September 2011

Running with scissors...maybe that is what they thought we would do.

 While I was in the hospital all I could find to write with was a nub of a pencil and crayons.It amazing the freedoms we take for granted.Writing on this computer is such a privledge. Somethings we take advanatage of so much. I really wanted to take this time. To talk about these things while they are fresh. A wise social worker told me just because I was in the ward didn't mean I was no longer well that I just needed some help. I needed to slow some things done and help myself, not my daughter, me. His wisdom really shined through as I was crying. I was here for me, and there is no shame in getting help.

April 4, 2012

Hi.... readers. A lot has been going on with me the past 6 months and I am sorry I haven't been here to share it with you. A lot of things have held me back from writing, let alone blogging. Mainly I have been gripped by anger and fear of failure. I will do my best to  share my journey with you. Some posts may only be snippets. I can only offer what I have. What I have come to realize lately is that writers write.

My goal is going to write everyday - regardless if it is in my journal, on my blog or on scraps of paper - writers write and that's it. The only way I can truly fail, is to not write at all. If I am so talented, now is the time to test it. Living in this stagnation is getting old.

Please enjoy the ride.