Hello, y'all. I've already posted at the New Member Forun, but I want to intro myself here too. I hope that suits.
My recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder turned my world upside down. It came 57 years after my 1st psychiatric evaluation, which resulted in a label of "clinically depressed" that I've carried since I was eight.
My grandfather, who was also my BFF at that point, had just died. I believed that he came to me during that night & told me that he was gone from this life & that I would continue to see & hear him but no one else would & I should tell no one. I made the mistake of telling, my father F R E A K E D, & my dad reminded my mom that it was her grandfather who'd hung himself in the barn.
I married my high school sweetheart, against the fervent wished of his mother & my father. We married in college, because our promise to wait clearly wasn't going to make any difference in their objections. I lost Andy to the VN war on a Christmas eve, & our daughter to "crib death" (SIDS) the next fall. I gave up the next decade of my life to alcohol, bitterness, & an attempt to become an objective participant in life who would never ever be hurt again. Try as I might, that never did work very well for me.
I went through four careers, remarried & picked an abuser, lost friends as quickly & easily as I made them. Then one day the phone rang. My mother'd had a stroke. I flew cross-country 90-minutes later with only my purse as luggage (I expected to come straight home? That night? Really?!). By the time she'd died six weeks later, I was sure she'd been right: My dad had most of the signs of Alzheimer's disease.
I sold both business & home over the Internet & cared for him at him condo until his death eight years later from respiratory failure. Now 13 yrs later, while I deal with a variety of health issues, I'm trying to juggle all this into some sort of understanding of what my life to this point has been & take from that what lessons & strengths I've gained. One thing has helped immensely: shortly after my 63rd birthday, i was diagnosed as bipolar. Since then, I've worked out a few answers to life-long questions (like, why do I get so mad!) but most remain.
Thanks for listening.
the Roadrunner >>>BEEP >>> B E E P