Bipolar Disorder

I've had a kind of unique perspective of bipolar disorder. It's all been in retrospect. When I was in high school, my best friend was a girl named Lisa. I think it's important to point out that she has two older siblings (who are practically perfect in every way) who have a different father. Lisa's parents divorced when she was little and her mother remarried again. Saying she was always spoiled is putting it very mildly. She got away with SO much more than anyone else I knew. We were friends through our church because we were really the only ones who admitted to listening to "metal" (read: hair bands) music. She invited me to spend the night for the first time and all was fine. Then later in the evening, she started being really mean and making fun of me. It was odd. We remained friends, but that never left me and we weren't as close. After we graduated, it seemed everyone else I knew went away to college, but Lisa and I were still in my hometown. We got very close again. She became a bit obsessed with gay men and wanted to start going to gay bars, restaurants and book stores all the time. This was a positive experience for me, because I started questioning my own sexuality during this time. HOWEVER, she was OBSESSED. She said it was her goal to be a "fag hag". We were at a huge club one night and she saw a bad transvestite. Bad wig, bad makeup, bad clothes. She started flirting with him and before the night was over, was making out with him. The guy looked like the ass end of a horse and was about as intelligent. He was 54. She was 21. I could tell he was very proud of the young thing on his arm. It took everything I had to get her to leave with me. (We were an hour from home and only had one car.)

Then she suddenly became obsessed with dolls. She had an ugly doll she called Tracy, that had been her older sister's when she was a kid. She started taking this doll with us to places like the mall and buying it clothes. Honestly, I was so terrified of losing my friend, that I played along. I think it was mostly about losing the one person who I could go to gay bars with. Then she became OBSESSED with the band Dead or Alive. At some point she decided we would have a one car parade and since I had the convertible, I was volunteered. We all (me, Lisa and her three young nieces) dressed up in silly dresses of her choosing made posters for the side of the car, pipe cleaner tiaras and drove through the busiest parts of town, waving at people. My mother knew none of this, but Lisa's mother just laughed and shook her head. Next came her Anne Rice obsession. She legally changed her name to the combined name of two characters. Soon thereafter she decided to get a job at a strip club. Then she decided to go to esthetician school, where she met a BOATLOAD of gay men and our friendship lessened. She bought us tickets to see Boy George, but at the last minute said she couldn't go. She ended up going with one of my coworkers, a gay guy, that I had introduced her to the week before. I was pretty much done at that point. I realized that she wasn't really a friend and I needed to focus on me for a while. /end of codependency. lol

Well, 12 years later, I had never heard from her. I had thought about getting in touch with her, but didn't know how. I ran into her sister when I was back in town one summer. It turns out Lisa has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Talk about a lightbulb moment! Even through studying psychology, I never thought of Lisa. It all suddenly made sense. I asked if she had her number and she said, "Well yeah, you can just call Mama's phone. She never moved out." She's now 37 and lives with her mom. She's on 3 or 4 1mg Xanax a day, but a cornucopia of other meds. For two years she had agoraphobia, but then she got a dog. She has 5 small dogs that she's obsessed with. She takes them everywhere. She even took one to her niece's wedding. She buys them designer clothes, even though she's only collecting disability. She was saving for a $200 hoodie for one of them. She has a full baby nursery decorated for them complete with baby bed, baby carriers (like slings), toys and clothes.

THEN the doctors found the right combination of meds. Lisa came back, so to speak. She got out of the house for reasons other than her dog. She finished grad school. She was doing spectacularly well. We had long conversations about things that were important to her. (The self-centered thing must not be a symptom...lol) Then she decided that she didn't like the meds and quit them for a more holistic approach. All the obsessions came back, though the dog thing never stopped. When the oil spill happened, she sat awake for three days watching the coverage. She heard that the best thing for soaking up the oil was human hair. She went to the bathroom and shaved her head and mailed the hair to Alabama. Now we're just not in contact anymore. Her mother and my grandmother are friends, so I get updates when her mom needs to vent. It's really a sad situation.

THE POINT, and I do have one, is don't be afraid to stick with the meds if they are helping. I get the whole "I miss the mountains" thing. I have clinical depression myself, so I get the highs and lows and then suddenly feeling nothing. It's not an exact science, but they can help you feel relatively normal. People are in worse situations and they make it. Doctors know SO much more about the disorder now. Keep your head up and don't close yourself off from the people who care about you.

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Updated On: 10/19/11 at 04:58 AM

...how to live life all over again without constantly being in crisis mode.

ChiChi if you don't mind could you expand on "constantly being in crisis mode"? Describe it a little more?