OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 24: Out of the Attic

Outside

Unlock

Fling

Freely

Gape

The madwoman has escaped from the attic

And cut through the red tape

Unlock

Fling

Freely

Gape

Outside

She stumbles out into the sunlight

No longer will she hide

Fling 

Freely

Gape

Outside

Unlock

The people hide in the shadows

To see her in the open is quite a shock

Freely

Gape

Outside

Unlock

Fling

How dare she try to approach the good people?

She's such a hideous thing!

Gape 

Outside

Unlock

Fling

Freely

Surely she doesn't fancy herself equal to us

Who does she think she is really?

Outside

Unlock

Fling

Freely

Gape

The madwoman has escaped from the attic

And cut through the red tape

~Cie~

Note:

I have type 2 bipolar disorder which was not properly diagnosed until I was 38 years old. I first noted symptoms of bipolar disorder, then termed manic depression, in myself when I was taking a psychology class in high school. I approached the teacher with my thoughts, and she told me that I couldn't be manic depressive because manic depression was a psychosis, and I evidently wasn't psychotic.

Bipolar disorder has since been recategorized as a mood disorder rather than a psychosis.

Bipolar type 2 can be difficult to diagnose because it presents with hypomania rather than full mania. Bipolar 2 does not have psychotic features. Bipolar 1 may or may not present with psychosis.

I have experienced mania and psychosis when they were triggered by SSRI's, the darlings of the psychiatry field. It was terrifying and upsetting. While taking Effexor, a patient in the long-term care center I was working for at the time asked me why I was so happy. I wasn't happy, I was manic as fuck and felt completely out of control. I never experience mania if I don't take SSRI's. 

Just another reason why people suggesting that I should "try medication" makes me want to go all Norman Bates on their ass. I did, and the cure was worse than the problem. Having a psychiatric anomaly does not make a person stupid.

I realize that sometimes it can be difficult when dealing with people who do improve with use of medication and who then feel as if they have been cured and quit taking the medication. Psychiatric dysfunctions are not one size fits all. 

I do best using a low dose of Lithium Orotate. It short-circuits the irritability that is part and parcel of my condition.

I once had a doctor tell me to "just stay on" a medication (Zoloft) which made it feel as if my brain had developed tiny hands and was trying to pick its way out of my skull. To this day, I would like to know how the fuck he thought that was an improvement. That was a psychotic reaction to the medication. I normally do not experience psychosis. I knew it wasn't really happening, but it sure as fuck FELT as if it was really happening, and who the hell knows what I might have done to stop it if it kept on. 

These medications are not "happy pills." They change the brain chemistry. Some people are helped by them. For some, they don't work at all. For others, the cure is worse than the disease.

I think that one thing which desperately needs to change is the idea of making people who live with neurological or psychological differences into "normal" people, and to stop acting as if those of us who live with these conditions are "broken." 

It would have been nice to learn how to live with a brain like mine from the time I was in my youth rather than being told that I had to be "fixed," to be "normal." 

I will never be normal.

I will only be me.

Stop the stigma.

Haiga copyright The Real Cie

You are welcome to use it with a credit back to me.