Friday Conversations With My Psychiatrist | The all you can eat Rage buffet

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Psychiatrist Day

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During this appointment we mostly talked about my anger and rage issues, and how my responses to the things which encourage feelings of rage or anger in me are mostly impotent and misdirected.

My response to being bullied in my first two years of high school, for example, was to physically attack my younger brother once or twice monthly.

These were not brother-on-brother fist fights, I destroyed a door during one, and in another told him he’d never see the light again. These were attacks of rage brought on by a torn comic book, or not enough chips left in the bag.

These were attacks brought on by a constant build up of layers of anger, and triggered by tiny acts, only to dissipate quickly afterwards.

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Posted in Appointment Day, Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health | Tagged | 9 Comments

A couple of things about Me, NiN, Malware, WordPress and the letter i, plus a few songs

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Earlier this week I was downloading a couple of Nine Inch Nails albums, and an album by Godhead when my computer pretty much stopped working.

I’m blaming the Godhead because, other than a decent cover of “Eleanor Rigby”, it mostly sucked.

Of course I do have anti-virus software installed on my computer, it’s the free stuff from AVG, and it’s updated daily. But no anti-virus software will catch everything… a perfect mousetrap, after all, would put all of the cats out of work. Anyway.

I’ve had at least one malware or spyware incident before, so I recognized the symptoms. Hyper-long loading time even for simple pages is the main one. Constant Internet activity even when you’re not doing anything would be another. Hearing the faint laughter from the distant basement of a suburban home-schooled fourteen-year old boy is the dead giveaway there’s something wrong.

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Posted in crazy people with no pants, Facebook, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Mental Health, No Post Day, Technology, WordPress | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Drinking water from a tin cup

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I love drinking cold water from a tin cup.

One afternoon, when I was ten or eleven, my grandfather took my brother and I on a walk into the thick forest down the slope away from the farm house. He wanted to check some of the fencing on his hobby farm.

After about thirty minutes of walking quietly we arrived at a little, bubbling brook.

The flow wasn’t much more than a bathtub faucet, and it just appeared as a waterfall out of a bunch of rocks, then flowed quickly among some small boulders before disappearing again.

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Posted in crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Mental Health, Salted Truths | 6 Comments

Never Again

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I knew this would happen. I fucking knew it.

Months ago my grandmother sat me down and verbally attacked me, my newborn son and my girlfriend. I told my mother immediately afterwards that under no circumstances would my grandmother ever be allowed to be near my son again.

But for weeks my mother has been almost pleading with me to allow her to bring my son to my grandfather despite my grandmothers presence, and I’ve been saying no, no and no.

She has been trying to convince me every accusation my grandmother made about me, my girlfriend and our son, was the result of dementia. So, I relaxed a little. I told my mother as long as she made sure my grandmother was otherwise occupied, she could bring my baby to my grandfather’s retirement home.

When I first told my mother what had been said — for example, why we hadn’t had an abortion because of my bipolar… “who dare you have a child knowing…” — she was very supportive. She even said we were “on the same side”. But since then she has been treating my demand as if it were being made by someone who is mentally ill. Which, considering the number of times my mother has talked about the abuse she suffered from my grandmother, has become almost as insulting to me as what my grandmother said.

Every time I say “no”, she rolls her eyes, then waits a few days before telling me all about my dying grandfather, and how important it is for him to be around my son — which, of course, I agree with and will do anything I can to facilitate. In the meantime, I know of two occasions when my mother has lied about bringing my son to my grandfather’s retirement home, while my grandmother was there as well.

My grandfather had a mild heart attack two weeks ago, and as soon as he was home I brought my son to him for a visit. My grandmother was in the room, but I made it a point not to involve her in the visit.

But then last Thursday my mother babysat for us, and promised not to bring my son to my grandfather’s retirement home for a visit while my grandmother was there. Then she called to say my grandfather had popped in for a visit with Victor. So I walked over to have a visit with my grandfather, only to find my grandmother drinking tea in the living room.

She stayed completely away from me and my son so I didn’t say anything to my grandmother or to my mother, despite her having lied to me. Then, today (Thursday), my girlfriend and I brought my son to the retirement home for a visit — knowing my grandmother would be there. So I’ve tried, and I’ve ignored the bullshit going on around me.

But this was all a test, and the bitch failed, and it’s never happening again.

There’s no dementia. And there are no more chances. There is only an evil, abusive old bitch who has been cutting my family to pieces for her own enjoyment for the past sixty years.

One of the vile accusations and demands my grandmother made back in February was that my child was not mine. She demanded I take a paternity test.

She took a shard of glass and planted it into my brain. So now every time someone says “oh, he looks exactly like his older brother” (my girlfriend’s 4-year old from another relationship), I get the voice of my bitch grandmother running through my head… it’s like being told not to think about an elephant.

Well, eight minutes into our visit on Thursday, she commented on my son’s hair. My son has light brown and blond hair. So my grandmother starts making comments about his “red hair”.

As in “oh, he has a lovely head of red hair. No one in our family has red hair. It’s almost glowing it’s so red. I wonder where he gets that from.”.

…and I could give a flaming fuck at the possibility the light was hitting my son’s head in just a way to make his hair appear red. This is what happens when people who abuse are allowed to continue abusing with no consequences. Eventually, at best, everything they say or do becomes suspect and not to be believed. At worst everything they say and do becomes just another in a long, long line of attacks.

Never again, never again, never again…

.

...thanks.

.

Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Granny, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Mental Health | 5 Comments

Friday Conversations With My Psychiatrist | An alternate recovery tool and a psychotic Granny

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Psychiatrist Day

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I purposely missed my last appointment with my psychiatrist. Something happened, I was angry at myself and depressed as a result, and didn’t feel like talking about the incident. So I skipped. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve skipped an appointment because I didn’t want to talk.

My next appointment is Friday, August 13, and I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to talk about what happened by then.

Our appointments have been fairly infrequent this summer. Generally we see each other for seventy to ninety minutes every two weeks, but he’s had some deserved vacation time, plus a couple of conferences. Or something.

So, the last time we were together was July 16, 2010, and we discussed a lot of stuff… most of which had me ready to throw a chair through one of his large windows.

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Posted in Appointment Day, Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, CSG, Granny, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Psychiatry | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

The Death Of Beeping Things And Four Blues Songs

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Have you ever been prevented from concentrating on something by a repetitive noise, only you didn’t know you were being prevented from concentrating on something?

It took about two days for me to realize I couldn’t concentrate on writing because the sound beacon attached to the crosswalk lights outside my window was broken, and the electronic pulse had been repeating for thirty seconds out of every minute.

…every minute for twenty-four hours a day, for ten days before the municipality finally called the beeping repair guys.

So for ten days I was unable — even with the Seroquel — to get into a deep sleep. Plus I had to deal with County employees who had no idea what was going on.

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Posted in Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Mental Health | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments