Well, I do believe I'm manic.

Saturday I spent $40 on gifts for a toddler's birthday party. Then Sunday, 45 minutes before I was supposed to leave for the party, I saw a camera in a sale ad and decided I MUST have it.

I drove to the store, looked at the camera, and then chose a different one. It was a better one -- more features, better brand, higher original price -- but on sale for $200 ($20 more than the camera I had gone there to buy).

By the time I bought a memory card, batteries, and extended warranty, I had spent $250.

Then I drove 10 miles per hour over the speed limit down the highway to get to the party late, put the batteries and memory card into the camera, and took several hundred pictures.

Since I'm 100 lbs. overweight, there is no way in hell I'm going to buy a swimsuit (and I haven't bought one for at least 21 years), but I got into the swimming pool with the kids fully clothed.

Early during the party, I was talking fast and repeating "****" as much as possible during a conversation with a friend. She pointed this out to me.

Later, when most of the guests were gone, I stayed and talked with a couple of friends and I took the conversation into inappropriate areas, which is something I do often. I don't have an internal editor. I just talk about whatever pops into my head, whether it's poop or tampons or whatever.

When I got out of the pool, I noticed that I had missed MANY calls from my controlling, narcissistic mother. I had also missed a text from my grown son, warning me that she was on a rampage.

Her rampages are something I've dealt with my whole life. They usually involve her telling me how terrible I am, I'm an unfit mother, it's a miracle my child was never taken away by the state (and when he was younger, she would warn me that he was about to be taken away from me, when he wasn't), she brings up everything I've ever done wrong in my life, she brings up the fact that I "never" finish anything, etc.

She loves to tell me what a terrible person I am, and then sometimes she ends it with, "Why can't we have a relationship like other mothers and daughters?"

I observed one friend on the phone with her mother recently, and a friend today talking with her mother in person at this birthday party, and I thought, "Gee. These mothers and daughters are speaking to each other as if they were two friends. They're not yelling at each other. The mother isn't trying to destroy the daughter. They're talking about whatever is going on."

Gee, maybe we can't have a relationship like other mothers and daughters because -- oh, I don't know -- you're hateful as hell and I'm tired of leaving every conversation feeling like I should have been aborted.

What's really funny (funny???) is when she'll end these rampages and then call me at work the next day, using her fakey-fakey-happy voice, and ask if I want to go to lunch.

Lunch?

You want to go to lunch?

With me? The person you hate SO MUCH?

If I'm such a terrible person, why would you want to have lunch with me?

Now she is mad because I did not meet the deadline that she imposed upon me to have my house cleaned and spotless so she can have the AC/heater worked on. (We live in a house that she owns, and I make the payments. In her mind, this means she should have say in all of my financial matters.)

So when I saw the text from my son saying she was on a rampage, I decided to ignore her calls and voicemails. My cell phone is for my convenience, not hers. I don't have to answer it each time it rings. Especially when I started my morning by being awakened by her calline me, letting it ring 25 times, hanging up, calling again, letting it ring 25 times, and repeating this.

Tonight she started leaving voicemails.

"It's 6:30. I need you to call me immediately."

"It's 7:00. I called you a half-hour ago. Why haven't you called me back? I need a call NOW."

Now I'm wondering if I need to sit her down and give her a talkin' to, like she always does to me. Turn the tables. I'll do all of the talking this time and she'll do all of the listening.

Maybe she needs to be reminded of my diagnosis and give me a freakin' break once in a while.

I've managed to keep myself from being hospitalized for this, work full-time for the majority of my child's life, finish my bachelor's degree in my 30s, start a master's degree, all while raising a child on my own without any help from my ex-husband.

Back when I was diagnosed, she refused to believe it. "No, you're not bipolar. Things like this don't happen in our family. What would I say to people? We can't tell anyone. How bipolar are you? To what degree? To what level do you have this? Will you get over it?"

So on top of trying to:

* Get my meds figured out while my regular MD tries to get me in to see a psychologist and a psychiatrist

* Keep from getting fired at the job where I have already been reprimanded and now I'm walking on eggshells

* Trying to use my hours away from work to RELAX instead of answering my mother's every beck and call to do what SHE thinks I should do with my free time

* Work on getting the house spotless (and I am NOT a good housekeeper -- learned my terrible skills from my own mother) so the AC/heater guy can come, even though I'm sure the AC/heater guy has seen houses in worse shape than mine, and even though he can get from the front door to the heater closet just fine

...now I have to worry about her threats to evict us from this house.

I should have listened to my first therapist, 21 years ago, who told me if I ever moved back to the town where I grew up, I should actually live maybe 30 minutes away rather than in the same town with my mother because she would try to control my life.

Control my life is exactly what she has done all these years.

I haven't told her that I'm getting myself figured out with meds and working on getting therapy again. She figured the bipolar disappeared. If we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist.

Plus I was sick of her saying, "Didn't you take your meds?" anytime she didn't agree with something I said. Of course, if I disagree with her about something, it's the bipolar talking and not me. Because everyone knows there is no reason to disagree with your mother EVER.

It's 1:00 a.m. and I'm not tired at all.

Guess I'd better return that camera tomorrow. I'm probably going to need that $250 to go toward finding a new place to live.