Hiding my depression is exhausting

Yep it’s back the overwhelming feeling of anxiety and a low that feels impossible. There is so much going on around me with everyone who knows and helps with my illness I haven’t said anything. I don’t want anyone to know that I’m starting to get bad again. I don’t know if it’s because of the job change though I think that might have something to do with it. I knew at my old job I could be honest about my feelings and I can’t here this isn’t the type of place where you openly share this information. I made the decision not to disclose my illness and I still stand with that decision. I try to explain it to my husband but how do you put it into words even if I start there aren’t words it’s like my brain just stops working. I get up some mornings not knowing what to expect and I thought with all the medicine that I would have the ability to control the moods and know who I am in the morning but that isn’t always the case.  I know that it takes more than medicine for it to work but I openly refuse therapy. Therapy has do nothing over time but cause me more issues maybe it is because I can’t handle the issues and my coping mechanisms suck. I don’t know what to do I’m just so frustrated right now. This was really for me just to vent because I don’t know what else to do. My brain isn’t firing on all cylinders right now. Does anyone else have this problem or understand? 

 

Suicide Letter

TW: Suicide discussed (also I am not currently suicidal it is something that I have written just to get it off my chest.)

Hello,

I feel like starting these letter with to whom it may concern to be to impersonal also because it concerns a lot of people. I know why you are reading this and just know it meant I was ready to go and I think the Lord was ready for me as well. I do believe that regardless of how I go that I will still go to heaven and I made peace with everything before I went but I know that isn’t how you feel. I know some of you are going to be angry, confused, upset and ask yourself why you didn’t see it coming; where were the signs? I don’t have the answer to that questions because they weren’t really there. It started off at ideation and grew quickly from there. There are letters addressed to my daughter, my husbands, my two best friends but for the rest of you this is the letter. I’m not even going to try that bs don’t be sad or anything else because however you feel the need to cope with it is how you will cope with it. I just ask when you do yell at me to refrain from using GD. I despise that word. This letter is just a blanket statement that I feel I am required to give so they know how to correctly identify it on my death certificate. I feel like the whole I’m sorry and extra bs in these letters is useless unless you were close to me. 

-Tarsha

19%

I had my 6 month check up with my psychiatrist today and we were speaking openly about suicide after admitting that I was having suicidal thoughts. We were also discussing the differences in being suicidal and having suicidal thoughts (that is a different post.) He said that 19% of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder take their own life and that equals like 1 in 5. Those odds are shocking for some reason. If you think about the big picture 2.3 million Americans are diagnosed with bipolar disorder. If I did my math right that equals out to 437,000 people. That means there are 437,000 people contemplating suicide most with no support from anyone.I am one of the biggest supporters for the AFSP but how do we fix this? What can we as the mental health community do to combat these odds? There are so many people who can’t afford medicine, therapy let alone see a psychiatrist to properly diagnose and help them. This is something we need to recognize and help each other. We aren’t going to receive any help from the government and there is so much of a stigma attached to us people refuse to publicly support it unless it is a celebrity who claimed to “recover” from it. We need to speak openly and honestly about our struggles. I think we can be the change if we become more comfortable being open and knowing even though they might not understand we can make them care. 1 person loss to suicide is 1 too many. Let’s start the conversation and help decrease these numbers.

There is nothing grilled cheese and tomato soup can’t fix.

I’ve had a horrible cold the last few days and it sucks. I hate being sick but I hate more when my depression turns into something that makes me physically ill which I believe is happening right now and it sucks. I came home from work and put tomato soup in a yeti cup because I am lazy and would rather drink it like that vs sipping it out of a bowl. It really helped my throat and I will say being sick is distracting me from other issues. I sound like I’ve smoked 2 packs of Marlboro Menthol’s a day my entire life. (In my brief smoking period I would only smoke menthol’s). My moods have sucked and I am trying to power through it but it is hard to do. I spend the day with my daughter and husband when I got home from work. My daughter eventually went to spend the night at my moms house so the hubby and I laid in bed eating Zaxbys and watching Better Things. (I am now obsessed with Better Things.) I love laying on Wayne there is something about my head on his chest that is so relaxing. No matter what is going on if my head is on his chest nothing else in the world matters at that moment. I am worried about so much mostly money and all of this. I don’t know what I am doing with this and what direction I want to go. I’ve fallen in love with my book again and I need to publish it but it seems so surreal actually finishing it and letting people see inside. I have a blog entry saved here that I occasionally type on when I’m in the mood but I need to focus dammit get all the pieces together and create the magic that started so long ago. I just need to get there again.

Prince William reveals celebrities shunned his mental health charity- see link attached (copied from website.)

Prince William has revealed that every celebrity he asked to support his mental health charity three years ago refused.

The Duke of Cambridge was speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum when he admitted that “a lot” of famous people were approached to back his Heads Together initiative, but none wanted to be associated with mental illness (via BBC).

In 2017, William, Kate and Prince Harry founded the charity, which aims to tackle the stigma surrounding mental health.

“I still find it very difficult to talk about it.” — The Duke of Cambridge on the importance of talking #MentalHealth, and his own experience working as an Air Ambulance Pilot #WEF19 pic.twitter.com/2nimIAqwiQ

— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) January 23, 2019

The 36-year-old royal suggested that the wartime generation may have contributed to the stigma attached to mental health issues.

“For some reason, people are embarrassed about their emotions – British people particularly,” William told the audience of business leaders. “A whole generation inherited [this way of coping]. This was the way you deal with your problems: you don’t talk about it.”

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/culture-news/a26019349/prince-william-celebrities-shunned-mental-health-charity/?fbclid=IwAR2geQOlS9sSJxqf1_KqerSvp2GvPzq6fUz5m7VSV3UH5yFkRQum6qLQpxs

 

Bipolar Chronicles – Foreword

I will start with this and even as conceded as it sounds it is the truth. I was not meant to live an ordinary life and I honestly haven’t. I was never meant to work a 9-5 and have a simple life. There were gifts given to me writing and this illness. This illness is a struggle everyday but I found my voice to help others and so here I am in the early morning hours so excited to get this started. I know there will be a piece of me in every topic that hurts to remember even the terrible horrible awful thing I’ve mentioned before (but that one may take a bit longer to write.) I also know that this can change my entire life but I am willing to risk it. When I talk about people unless it is my husband or Tater they won’t be assigned a name or a gender. It is to protect those people even if I feel like they don’t need to be protected. I may quote people that will make you stop reading or not be able to take me seriously, but sometimes these quotes sit well with me for different reasons. There is a method to my madness and I hope you can follow along.

These aren’t in any particular order some of them randomly appear as they come to mind. There is so much I want to say and putting it all in words is hard. I know it might anger or upset someone but you have to remember that if it isn’t “what you think happened” it’s all a matter of perspective. There are parts of my life that I remember and pictures to go with it but there are parts I tried to forget but I will talk about those too and whether you like it or not you are all about to become my therapist. I am hoping doing this will help the fucked up dreams I’m having.

I feel like my mind is trying to tell me something, but I can’t figure out what it is.

“But the more I wrote, the more I understood myself and why I had made the choices I made, and that was the real jackpot. I learned that dreams don’t work without action; I learned that no one could stop me but me. I learned that love is stronger than hate. And most important, I learned that God does exist. He and/or She is right inside you, underneath the pain, the sorrow, and the shame.” Roseanne

Grateful Challenge Day 18- Bay window/Something in home

This is the bay window in our house. I love this window it signifies all the major changes in our life. We lived in a house that was free and my family owned which was great while we were getting our lives together and going through some major changes but in 2013 we decided we needed a change and moved into a condo that was way over our budget because we needed separation from everyone while we got the rest of our lives together. Our money situation was horrible. My husband and I weren’t used to rent. The last time we paid rent was in 2005 so it was relearning the process all over again. We wanted to buy a house, a house that was ours and no matter what we did it would stay ours forever. If you’ve ever tried to go through the process of buying a house you know how long and drawn out it is. We went through this process in 2005 as well while we were living in Athens and after paying for all the inspections and everything else the real estate agent made us do we could never get the loan. When we went to Bank of America this evil bitch made a joke about us going to Habitat for a house because it would be the only way we would be able to get one. Our credit wasn’t great; we weren’t really taught about credit or building your credit to buy anything. We had credit cards that were past due, over limit, and when we didn’t have money we just kind of said. “Fuck it.” This are definitely things we will teach our daughter, but we had to go through a ton of bad decisions to finally make a good one. The house we currently live in was a foreclosure and through some special circumstances we were able to move into this house. (We had a lot of help from family.) This house isn’t huge but for our small family it is perfect. We were able to make some improvements to this house and are continually finding ways to make it better.