Another Conversation With My Psychotherapist… Now With Less Mom Talk

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Gabriel...

The overarching theme for my past year in psychotherapy was my relationship with my mother… which seems not a little cliché, but it was something that needed to happen.

We only discussed my mother for a few minutes this time. There just wasn’t much to talk about. She has been staying in her lane for the past few months, and leaving me alone. Which has been a nice change. We don’t have a lot of contact, just dinner once a week, and I do maintain a website for our local historical society, which she’s in charge of… but I can do that from home.

Instead my psychotherapist and I talked about other things.

…like how my oldest son, Victor, who turned 13-years old a few months ago, recently told me I was a lousy father.

I heard him yelling at Quintin, his little brother. When I entered the room, Quintin was sitting on the end of the couch, looking up at Victor. Quintin looked confused and upset enough that he was getting ready to cry. Victor’s face was red with anger, and his hands were balled up into fists.

When I asked what was going on — in a loud voice (but not yelling), Victor kept going on about how Quintin was playing online with one of Victor’s friends. .

Victor kept yelling, when I asked him to calm down and just explain to me what was going on, he told me I didn’t understand, and rushed upstairs, crying. As I was telling Quintin that everything was going to be alright, there was a huge crash. I ran upstairs to find Victor leaving Quintin’s room, still crying and angry, but now panicked as well…

There was broken glass all over Quintin’s floor, I asked Victor what had happened and he told me he bounced a ball and smashed the overhead light. He showed me his ring finger, and there was a little blood from a small cut. I was still confused as to what was going on, and got Victor a bandage. I asked again what was going on, and the anger flared back up.

Quintin, he said, was playing with one of Victor’s friends.

Then he demanded to know if I was going to put him in a timeout. It was pretty much a challenge. I told him I still wasn’t sure what was going on, but because of the ball, him being in Quintin’s room, and the broken glass, I had no choice but to get him to sit in his room for five minutes and calm down.

He sat down on his bed, and yelled at me that “mommy is the better parent”, and that he didn’t want to be here anymore.

That’s when he started demanding to talk to his mother. He wanted her to come pick him up and take him to her place. After some back-and-forth, I finally made the call… I told her what had happened, and that I needed her support, and that I wanted Victor to remain with me so we could settle things. I told her I thought the main thing that was going on was Victor was acting like a 13-year old. He was upset about something small, and the puberty hormones were just driving it into something major. She agreed with me… then, when I gave the phone to Victor, the first thing she said was he could come to her place.

…so that was that. Except I drove Victor to his mom’s, after getting him to clean up all the broken glass. And that was the last I talked to him for the remaining three days of my week.

…during that time I had to go into Victor’s room for some reason. That’s when I found the photo of the two of us, that had been beside his bed since we moved in here, in his garbage can.

On… I think, the following Monday, Victor showed up at my door after school (his mom stayed in the truck). He told me that “as my father” I should have made sure he was okay after the glass fell on his head, and that was why he was so upset with me. I told him I didn’t know the glass hit him. We said a few other things, I knew he was waiting for an apology but I honestly thought I didn’t owe him one.

I still think that way. As he was walking away, I told him I loved him, he told me he loved me. As he was getting into the truck, I asked if we were okay… he said he guessed so. And that was that. I spent the rest of his mother’s week second-guessing myself… should I have just apologized and got it over with? He called on the Sunday night, asking if he could stay with his mother for one more night, which I thought was a good sign… that he was asking permission, not that he was staying there. I agreed. Then I asked if I was picking him up from school on Tuesday, and he agreed it would be me.

My psychotherapist thought I did the right thing by waiting, and not apologizing… and that 13-years of age was going to be an adventure.

We also discussed a few other things. Like how I’ve fallen behind on cleaning my home. The dirty dishes are all over the counter; the laundry hasn’t been done in a few weeks; I have to move piles of crap from my chair to the dining table to sit down, and back again so the boys can have someplace to sit when they eat. She suggested I get some professional help just to get things under control. When I told her I have something like 300 DVDs scattered around the house, she thought a ‘decluttering’ might be in order. I agreed to both ideas… but haven’t started with either yet.

We also talked about my Book Project. We’ve discussed it before, and she’s a big fan of the idea. I told her I had been reading the interviews that I had done, and that there was some really good stuff in them. And that it was all still relevant. But there’s just too much stuff that I’ve lost over the past few years… including a crap-tonne of notebooks, photos, and magazines that my Ex threw out.

And that was about it. She also told me that it might be possible for her to see me for another four or five sessions before she has to stop. Which will be helpful… especially if we’re going to start talking about the other themes in my life.

Posted in Appointment Day, Baby Quintin, Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Family, Health, Little Victor, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Photography | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Conversations With My Psychiatrist | The End Is Nigh

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Gabriel...

I have two more appointments before my psychiatrist retires. This isn’t a surprise, she told me when we started three years ago that our relationship would be temporary. She also told me I wouldn’t be left out in the cold, that I’d be referred to another psychiatrist and my treatment would continue.

But that’s not happening. After our sessions are over, I’ll be assigned a psychiatric nurse, who will monitor my medications for a few months, then my family doctor will take over. If he can’t, or won’t, deal with me, he can refer me back into the mental health system where I’ll have to wait for six months to two years for another opening.

If… or when he refers me, I’ll have to go through an evaluation again where I’ll be expected / forced to advocate for myself… again. Which is something very few of us are good at. The time I’m without hands-on treatment will be determined by how the evaluation goes…

My time with my psychotherapist is also up. I was only guaranteed, I think, twenty-six sessions with her, and those are done as of our last appointment. She’s doing me a favour though, and still seeing me every ten weeks or so, just to make sure I’m not entirely alone. But that’s only going to last until the end of the year.

So my safety net is being taken away again. The last time that happened was in 2018, when the psychiatrist who first diagnosed me as having manic depression retired. He decided that I didn’t need to be followed by a shrink anymore. That I’d be okay on my own. I don’t think I lasted more than a few weeks before I had to ask to be evaluated to get back into the system.

I’m not angry about the situation. She has to retire, I know that. And she believes I’m stable enough… I mean, I’m not suicidal, and haven’t been for a while now. At least not overtly. I still have some pretty self-destructive behaviours, but I’m not looking at the pills I have and wondering how many I should take to end myself. And it’s that perceived stability which is the reason why I’m not being immediately transferred to a new psychiatrist.

There are just too many people on the waiting list for both psychotherapy and to see a psychiatrist. Based on the last time this happened, I don’t think my family doctor is going to want to be responsible for my psych meds.

So back in the pool I go.

…one of the things my psychiatrist and I did talk about was my dreams. I’ve been having a recurring dream for roughly a year now. In it I find my friends — generally people I hung out with twenty or more years ago, in weird locations and we hang out and party for a while. Usually in a house or apartment I’ve never been in before. Then I turn my back, or get distracted, and when I turn back they’re gone. I spend the rest of the dream trying to find them.

For the past few months I’ve had a version of the dream at least four or five nights a week.

She asked what I thought was happening in the dream, but I’m not very good at interpreting dreams — but I don’t have a lot of IRL Friends anymore. I do see people I know when I do go out, I live in a pretty small village. But the time of getting together in the evening with Friends is over. Most of them have moved away, and the ones who stayed have their own lives to lead…

…we also talked about my Meds. She wanted to reassure me that I’d have enough refills for the year. She also bought up the idea of switching to Latuda, or maybe simply adding it to my pill diet. But I’m trying to keep my regimen to as few pills as possible, I don’t like the idea of taking pills to counteract the side effects from pills I’m already taking.

She asked about the Trintellix — it’s supposed to help me stay up during the day. I’ve been taking it regularly since, roughly, January. Recently, like the past week or ten days, I’ve noticed that it’s easier to stay up in the morning. Instead of going back to bed after I get the kids to school, then waking up at 2pm and rushing around, I’ve been getting things done before noon.

I’m still tired, I just can’t sleep. It’s a very odd feeling.

…I’ve been lucky to have the Doctor’s I’ve had — to have had the care that I’ve had, especially over the past few years. I just don’t like the idea of being on my own… of having to deal with this on my own.

Posted in Appointment Day, Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Health, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Photography, Psychiatry | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Conversations With My Psychiatrist | Dealing With The Aftermath

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Gabriel...

My psychiatrist prescribed Trintellix for me in October of last year. One of my problems over the past ten years and more, has been sleeping. Basically I do too much of it, and I’m still tired all the time. The Trintellix, taken soon after I woke up, was supposed to keep me up in the morning, instead of me taking four-hour naps after I got the kids off to school.

We started at 5mgs, with the idea being that we would increase the Trintellix over time, while decreasing the Abilify — dropping the Abilify from 20mgs to 17mgs made sleeping difficult for the first couple of nights, but I took a Trazadone on the third night, and I’ve been sleeping great at night ever since (I was only supposed to drop the Abilify to 18mgs at first, but I made misread the label on the bottle).

So I took the Trintellix for three weeks… maybe a little less, but taking it did nothing to make me less tired, it just wouldn’t let me fall asleep for a nap… and if I could nap, my head would be buzzing. So I stopped taking it, cold turkey. I’ve been sleeping a lot during the day recently, even for me, so I had been thinking of restarting the Trintellix. My psychiatrist agreed that it’d be a good idea, so I’ll start again tomorrow morning.

My Aunt died recently. I’ll write more about that, and her, later. I’m still trying to figure some stuff out. Basically she helped raise my brother and I, along with her two kids, while we were in the Cult. She had escaped early on in its existence, but was convinced to come back… she negotiated her way back in, with the criteria being she wouldn’t take part in day-to-day activities, and that she would live, with her kids, in a house separate from the Cult.

…separate but close. She ended up across the street and down a few houses.

The deal was, basically, if everyone left her alone, she’d mind her own business.

The reason she escaped the Cult was a decision had been made that, since no one person was to have a bond with the kids over anyone else, she would not be able to breastfeed her baby. So she saved up her pennies and nickels, hiding them in her underwear drawer, and when she had enough for train fare to her parents home town, off she went with her daughter.

She had only been a member of the Cult for about two years at that point.

When she came back she became our babysitter, and her home became a safe place for the kids to be in. After the Cult collapsed in on itself, she helped my mother escape with my brother and myself. So we were pretty close after that. For my mother, my Aunt was the only person she could relate to when it came to those years. In many ways, my Aunt was my memory-keeper for those years as well. We would visit with her once or twice a year, and she was always willing to answer my questions.

My mother took my Aunts death pretty hard. Because of the Pandemic, we hadn’t seen her since 2018. Basically the cause of death was ‘she just didn’t wake up’. She was a few years younger than my mother, and a confidant of my mother’s for many, many years.

About a week after we learned of my Aunt’s passing, I was driving my mother to and from her office. On the way back I asked how she was dealing with the death, and she opened up about it. Which surprised me. She said she’s at an age now where the circles are moving in… she’s losing friend’s to old age, and now she had no one to share her memories from large pieces of her life.

…the day after we found out my Aunt had died, one of my mother’s longest and dearest friends had a heart attack, and was in the hospital for a little over a week. Another long-time friend is in the end stages of ALS. So my mother is feeling her mortality.

A few days after the car ride, I sent a Facebook message to my mother asking her how long my brother and I had stayed with my Aunt. I was trying to write a piece about her (still am), and had a memory of being with my Aunt for a few weeks in a row. I was very apprehensive about sending the message, because historically, anytime I initiate a conversation about the Cult, it degenerates into confrontation pretty quickly.

But this time my mother sent me a long, rational, email in response. In it she described the early years of the Cult, how it all started, how we ended up in the city that we lived in for so long. Most of what she described I already knew from talking to my Aunt, and a few other people from the Cult. But it was the first time I’ve read my mother’s account of those very early days.

I’m not sure what to do with it… it’s the first time she has opened up about those times in years, even if it was just a few memories. The problem I have, is I’ve always had memories of my childhood, but I’ve never been able to discern if those memories are in order, if they’re real to begin with, and who’s in them with me.

Not only are my memories jumbled, but because those years were kept secret, I don’t have any recollection of things that did happen that I should remember… .

Anyway… I’m taking it as a good sign, and I intend to ask a few questions and see how it goes…

My psychiatrist and I talked briefly talked about other stuff as well… she’d like me to be getting out more, especially with my camera. But she was happy that I’ve started taking an interest in my book again. I’m pretty sure my book deal has expired — I haven’t talked to the Publisher in more than ten years, and I’m in no hurry to find out if I owe them my advances — but if it was a good idea once, maybe it’ll be a good idea again.

I’ve been reading interviews I did for the book, and everything is still relevant. I was really surprised at how coherent I was in asking questions. I also read the 30,000 words I submitted to the Publisher… I always have a hard time recognizing my ‘written voice’ after leaving a piece of writing for a long time, and this time was no different. But I like them. We’ll see.

Posted in Appointment Day, Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, Family, Father, Health, Memories, Mother, Psychiatry | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Happy Christmas And A Merry New Year… Or Something

Posted on December 25, 2022 by Gabriel...

We didn’t celebrate Christmas when I growing up. I knew about Jesus and Santa from school, of course, but one of my earliest memories is listening from the top of the stairs while my father argued with some other member of the Cult that “he can believe in Santa Claus or Jesus, but not both”. I think they were talking about me.

I had my first real Christmas, at least one that I can remember, when I was eight. The year we escaped the Cult. We had a small apartment in a tiny city and a tiny tree, but we spent the actual week with my mother’s parents hobby-farm in the mountains. The first gift I remember receiving was a small pair of cross-country skis.

I remember the best part of the Day was watching the wrapping paper burn in the fireplace. Somehow the flames would change colour depending on the colour of the paper.

I never had a real connection to Christmas other than it being a time to receive presents. The ‘giving’ part of the Day came later, when I was old enough to start dating but, although I respected the religious aspect of the Day, it was never the primary concern. Occasionally my mother had us write letters to Santa — even though I had stopped believing after listening to that argument, but we never went to Church. Basically it was never a Religious Day for my brother and myself.

My little brother has had a slow conversion, when he had his first and only child he started taking the religious parts of the Season to heart. He goes to mass every Sunday with his little family now. When I had my first son, I started to take the secular traditions around Christmas more seriously. I taught him about Jesus and Santa, and decided it was quite alright for him to believe in both. But we always have a tree (this year’s is a little on the small side), and there’s always cookies and Egg Nog for Santa. And there’s always lots of presents, and dinner with their Grandparents.

Anyway… there’s a YouTube video worth watching below. If all you see is a large blank space, maybe try reloading the page. If that doesn’t work, just click HERE. It’s worth it.

…so — even though there’s zero evidence Jesus was born in December; and that it’s pretty ‘Sus’ that Mary and Joseph would travel all the way from their homes in Nazareth to faraway Bethlehem by donkey just so they could give birth in a barn; and the fact that during the nine months of the pregnancy the good people of Nazareth would have had to buy into the story that one of their own was impregnated by a deity; and what about the Holy Bible’s Deuteronomy (20-21) which clearly stated that “[if] no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you…” I’m sure that little law played no part in a 14-year old Mary and the Virgin Birth story — from our household to yours, Merry Christmas.

Posted in Baby Quintin, BiPolar Christmas, crazy people with no pants, Depression And Christmas, Health, Humor, Humour, Little Victor, Memories, Old men in red suits, Punk | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Conversations With My Psychotherapist Are Coming To An End

Posted on November 22, 2022 by Gabriel...

“…our biggest trigger while I was growing up, was me asking questions about my past. Any questions about the Cult we grew up in, or anything regarding my father, or even anything regarding my father’s side of the family, were absolutely forbidden. Any conversation about either was predetermined to end up with my mother yelling at me.”
–‘Bonding Part Two: The Punishments She Did And Didn’t Hand Out.’

“Well, if I had my way
I had a, a wicked mind
If I had a, oh Lord, I’d tear this building down!”
–“If I Had My Way I’d Tear The Building Down” (1927); Blind Willie Johnson, ‘Dark Was The Night’

In addition to regular appointments with my psychiatrist, I also see a psychotherapist every two to four weeks. I’ve been seeing her for almost a year now. Which means our time together is winding down as the Government only pays for 26-sessions. I’m really not sure what I’ve learned over the past year.

When we first started out, she asked a bunch of questions about me and my life — she already had the gist of it from notes she received from my psychiatrist so I just had to fill in the holes… basically she wanted to know my Depression Triggers. Specifically what my relationship with my mother was like.

I told her about the Cult I grew up in, how I was raised by a Collective where the children were not allowed to have a connection to any one individual over another, so I didn’t know my mother until she escaped with my brother and myself when I was eight-years old. Then there were the years of her working odd jobs, at weird hours, which meant my brother and I were left on our own with babysitters in the beginning, and then just on our own as we got older. So my mother and I never had a chance to know each other, which means we’ve spent most of our time together arguing and misunderstanding each other.

So that’s what we’ve been talking about… for a year. It has gotten very, very tedious. For the first twelve sessions, we used ‘Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, or EMDR, to work out my Mother issues. And, for some of them, the EMDR seems to have worked. But overall I don’t think I’ve learned more than I already knew…

…she was raised by an absentee father, and an abusive sociopath for a mother. In an attempt to escape from her home situation, she ran into the arms of my Father, who turned out to be an even worse, even more abusive sociopath. When she finally escaped my Father, she had the option of going back to living with her original abuser, but getting free rent and school, or going off on her own with two kids who barely knew her.

It was an impossible choice… and I resent my grandfather for forcing her to make it. But she made her choice, and it was to be on her own. She decided being alone would be better for us than being with her parents. She was escaping abuse, and didn’t want to be abused again.

I think one of the points my psychotherapist has been trying to make for the past year is that it’s easy for me to say that, in hindsight, she could have dealt with it for another few years, to make a better future. But, having lived with her choice for the past few decades, it’s just hard for me to look at her choice and say she made the right one.

Like, instead of a ‘Sophie’s Choice’, there should have been some negotiation or something. Dammit. There was no ‘right choice’, so why not pick the one with the potential for a better future?

And back and forth it goes… if there were sides, I believe my psychotherapist would definitely be on the side of my mother. At least that’s how it seems. She has spent entire sessions recently going over what an incredibly hard decision it was for my mother to make. When I try to explain that I know that, that I’m aware of what a Choice it was, I just get talked over. I think we’re stuck on the wrong issue… yes, this Choice is the Root of our misunderstandings and arguments, but there are several branches that need to be dealt with.

It’s not like we have a lot of time left… my mother is 72-years old now, our relationship is one where we don’t talk to each other about day-to-day stuff, because we’ve conditioned each other to expect an attack of some kind. My psychotherapist wants me to bring up positive things then, instead of shutting down if and when my mother makes a negative or passive aggressive comment, to try and push through. Keep it positive. Put a positive spin on the topic.

…of course one of the problems is trying to find something positive, or negative for that matter, in my life to share. It’s not as though I do a whole lot, or have a lot to report. Her point is to share more with my mother, in an attempt to break the conditioning of the past thirty-five years.

The thing about conditioning though, is that it’s almost impossible to get the dog to stop salivating at the sound of the bell.

Posted in Appointment Day, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, Depression, Family, Granny, Health, Mother, Photography | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Bonding Part Two: The Punishments She Did And Didn’t Hand Out

Posted on November 5, 2022 by Gabriel...

“So for the first few years of my life my Mother wasn’t there, for the next five years of my life I was a group chore, with little to no idea who she was to me. Then, for the next six to eight years, I was a latchkey kid while she tried to make a life for us.
“So the question is… when did my Mother and I have time to bond? How much of the yelling and screaming and threats that we went through for my early-to-mid teens had to do with the lack of understanding who we were as individuals?”
–“Bonding Part One: Two Choices She Made That Made Me”… the one I wrote before this one.

.

“Yeah, you’ve got to help us Doc, we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
Mona Flanders, ‘The Simpsons’, “Hurricane Neddy”; Season 8, Episode 8, 1989

.

“I definitely don’t hate my mom, she was a complicated and nuanced person.”
— Jennette McCurdy, on ‘The Daily Show’; Sept. 17, 2022.

I was never really disciplined as a child. The Cult I grew up in believed that the Individual couldn’t have a connection to the children over anyone else. Therefore the care of the children belonged to the Group. We were on a daily chore list — on Tuesday, John was in charge of making sure we were fed and in school. On Wednesday it was Barry. But there was no list for what to do when I misbehaved.

I remember a few occasions where I was punished for doing Something by being put into a small room and being forced to transcribe books onto blank paper using crayons. But, really, that was it. There were also Criticism Sessions, where a person had to admit wrongdoing in front of the Group, then hear from the Rest of the Collective about how they were each affected by the ‘misdeed’. The children were mostly immune from the Criticism Sessions, but I do remember once having to stand in front of everyone and admit to having dropped a bag of milk. The adults, however, were constantly in debate mode.

…imagine a group of highly intelligent, educated young teachers and University students tearing into each other almost daily over things as random as whether French Fries are boiled or fried, to whether or not a young mother could breastfeed her own child. They were cruel to each other, as each one tried to prove to the others that they were the most pious, the most pure…

…anyway. Mostly I was just left on my own. This didn’t change after we escaped. After we left the Cult, and we were on our own, my mother did her best to keep us fed, showered, and in clean clothes, and she tried her best to be around, but she was receiving no child support from my Father, and working low paying jobs that usually had weird hours.

But she couldn’t be there and, over the years, what happened was things would build up and build up, until there was an explosion. Not at first, though. At first we were just gliding along, trying to get to know each other. Plus I was too young to understand anything that was going on, or what had already happened. All I knew was that we went from a house full of people, sharing a bedroom with six other kids, to a three person unit headed up by someone I barely knew.

The results of such a lack of discipline really began to manifest around the time I was entering high school. I was lost in school. Nobody was around to help me.

…our biggest trigger while I was growing up, was me asking questions about my past. Any questions about the Cult we grew up in, or anything regarding my father, or even anything regarding my father’s side of the family, were absolutely forbidden. Any conversation about either was predetermined to end up with my mother yelling at me.

The next biggest trigger were my marks in school… but it was a close second. I was never more than a C+ student, and that was never a major issue for my mother. But when I was sixteen I started skipping school. My marks gradually went into the toilet. By the time I was seventeen, I was failing everything.

There were never any consequences, just yelling on the day my report card would come in. But it wasn’t just simple yelling, it was a Criticism Session. It was her loudly and passionately telling me all the things I was doing wrong, but with no solutions, and me just standing there, speechless and with a cocked arm ready to hit her.

When I seventeen, this is how our triggers manifested themselves. Months of ignoring the problems, never mind finding solutions, then a nuclear explosion when confronted with the failures. This was her idea of discipline. This is also when my mother started threatening me with Foster Care.

But nothing worked because only Nothing was offered as a solution, and the occasional threats of her sending me to live with another family only pushed me further away.

…my marks continued to be bad, if not horrible. Instead of admitting to some culpability in the mess, and spending more time with me after school, and just fucking helping out with my homework, she took me to visit my uncle up in the mountains. My mother’s idea was to have “a man” talk to me. As if her brother, who was missing for most of my life, could suddenly become a father-figure. Someone who could influence my choices and put me on the right track.

Instead he sat us down at the kitchen table, and proceeded to threaten me with a beating. After examining my latest report card, filled with failure, he pointed to a thick paddle hanging on his wall and told me that for every failing mark I received in the future, I would get hit with it.

Of course it changed nothing. I never got hit, I kept getting getting shitty marks because I was on my own, I had always been on my own. I never failed a Grade, although I should have many times. I kept moving up in my Grades because my teachers saw potential. Or they were just lazy or clueless.

…I don’t remember what the conversation / argument was but, on the way back from her parents home, in the middle of the night, on a rural back road two-lane highway, we were discussing Family Matters… and I told my mother to go fuck herself. I was sixteen or seventeen. She dared me to say it again, so I did… much quieter, but still. So she pulled over and kicked me out of the truck. We were seven miles from home, on a chilly Fall night. I had been walking for almost forty-five minutes when the police found me.

They pulled over, and asked where I was coming from. I could have narced on my mother, but I didn’t. I told the police that I was coming from a party. They asked where the party was, and I waved my hand towards a dark house maybe half a mile from where we were standing. The policeman obviously didn’t believe me.

He asked where I lived, and I was honest with him. So they put me in the backseat, and drove me home… they followed me into the house when I walked in. My brother and mother were sitting on the couch, watching TV. My mother, seeing the police, bolted up from the couch. I do remember the shock on her face. But I don’t remember much after that, except going upstairs to my room.

Of course we never spoke of the incident again. Because that’s was how we continue to deal with our triggers.

Posted in Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, Family, Health, Mother, Photography | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments