Haunted Houses

Hi Old Friends, it continues to be dificult to find time to write. I actually have been spending a good deal of time reading and working. Maybe I have been sort of hibernating--and dealing with other family matters that I am not sure how much I've shared about before. I guess today is the day to share about those things. Mental Illness.

So, I know I blog pretty frequently about substance abuse and my own recovery from alcoholism. I sometimes write about my own struggles with depression. I dont think I write often about what it is like to live with a family member that has BiPolar Disorder. I actually hate the words, the diagnosis, the title and pretty much everything else that goes along with this insidious disease. What I think I hate the most is that you can't see it. When someone gets sick with diabetes you can test their blood sugar, you can read the numbers, you can help them change thier diet or take insulin. With this, and all mental health problems, family members are left trying to sort thru the emotional baggage of mental illness, denial, and (if you are like me) then you are in a nearly constant state of trying to figure out what is real.

When they said this was it them or their illness talking? When they did this was it them or their disease? And, by the way, how do we separate people from their illnesses when thier illnesses often seem to define their personality? I strange question maybe from someone who identifies herself as an alcoholic.

I am struggling. Can you hear me? Sitting here. Typing to myself, worrying, sorting thru memories, phone calls, events and trying to decipher the code that will help me understand just where this disease stops and my own Dad starts. I want to understand it but I it defies all of my attempts. All I am left with is the DSM defintions, symptoms, and prescriptions.

The DSM does not, for example, say what to do when your Dad is so depressed he wont get out of bed. It doesnt say what to do when he is so manic he calls and yells at you--saying things that are insensitive at best. I tell myself this is just his disease. I talk to my therapist, my mom, my sister, my husband. I tell myself this is not about me. I tell myself this is not my fault. I tell myself I cannot fix this.

Nothing I tell myself sinks in. I am lost, alone, and without one parent. I sit and wait for him to come back. Sometimes he does. Underneath the Lithium haze, behind the Imimpramine glitter, somewhere there is my Dad. The man who taught me to ride a bike in my backyard, the man who used to buy me hot chocolate at Dunkin Donuts and let me sit at the counter with him on early Saturday mornings,the man brought me to his office and let me sit with his secretary and learn to type, the man who was alive, funny, real. This was before the meds--maybe before the disease--this was a different time.

I dont have to tell you that I am older now. That of course things are different and of course I cant expect things to be the same. I dont have to tell you that it hurts or is confusing or even that it can be all consuming if I let it. I guess all I have to do is accept the pain and take it one day at a time. I lean on the AA slogans harder then before. I rework the same program that helps me stay sober. I remember that it is his disease talking not him. I truge along. I miss my Dad. xxK