Well, that took awhile...didn't it?

I finally snapped out of last weeks despair sometime this week. It coincided with Valentine's Day for the most part. My hotband took me out to the beach hideaway that we love so much. We went for a very romantic (read: EXPENSIVE) dinner at another little hole in the wall that we don't share with others. Then, we went back to the hotel and had absolutely incredible sex. No. Really. Incredible. I did something for him that I had not done in a very long time.

I played "dress up" for him. Yeah. Trashy lingerie. Big heels. Red lipstick.

The works.

Since being on my medications for bipolar disorder, it is not often that I feel creative anymore. Don't get me wrong. Feeling sexy is a permanent condition for me. I have really good self-esteem and have always been proud of my body, no matter how big or small it has gotten over the years. However, the medications, while sparing my overly active libido, have completely taken away my desire to have fun with my sex life like we used to.

Ah, I remember the days of giving my husband lap dances in funky little outfits. Yep yep. The products of manic episodes. Alas, those manic episodes, while they still exist to a certain degree, no longer possess the punch of a Napalm bomb quite the way they used to. Plus, we're together 10 years. There are only so many tricks you can pull out of your hat before you retire the magician, you know what I mean?

Anyway, after V-Day, he spent 9 wonderful days at home as the airports he usually flies out of were snowbound. I had this magnificent creature 24 hours a day for 9 days straight. What I have discovered is that he is a far better medication than anything I take out of a little brown bottle on a nightly basis. He's fun. Even when he isn't being funny...he is still fun to be around. He makes me laugh effortlessly. Even when I am being pissy and moody, he still manages to elicit laughter from me.

But, because he makes me feel so good...I tend to ignore my medications. I figure, I'm feeling pretty good. I don't need them right now. So, I don't take them. Three days will go by. Then, I will take one med here, another med there...not taking them steadily as I should and all of a sudden...

Thud. Depression.

I am trying to manage my brain. Really I am. I try to do the right things, but there is this little bit of defiance in my personality that doesn't quite let me manage my care the way I should. Fuck the medicine. I WANT to be manic sometimes! I want the energy to clean my house, go shopping, make some dinner...LIVE a little.

It's really hard having bipolar disorder. Really hard. Especially when you have the variety that I do, which is rapid cycling bpd. It's hard to keep up with yourself. Right now, it's nearly 4 am. I haven't been to sleep. I've been up reading stories on serial killers all night. I am positively obsessed with serial killers. This is not a good obsession for someone with a mental disorder.

People like me should obsess over kittens or little fluffy things. Sparkly toys. Shiny things. Not mass murderers.

So, okay. I'm back on the game again, though not sleeping. But at least I am not in that deep, horrible funk I was in last week. Sometimes, I go back and read my posts and think...who the hell wrote that??

I will look at this one next week and wonder the same exact thing.

I have a really good post looming in the back of my brain. I wanted to post it yesterday, because the timing would have been great, but alas, my fingers and brain would not cooperate. But it is a good story that needs to be told.

In the meantime, a bowl of froot loops is in order.

These past few days have been hell....

I don't talk too much about my mental illness anymore.

It's there. It's always there. And just when I think I have the right cocktail going, it always proves me wrong. I try not to think about the fact that I am sick. I make no pretenses about it. My bipolar disorder and schizophrenia is a very real thing. Sometimes, it sneak attacks me when I am at my lowest. There are days that I wish death would just come and take me away. I don't want to die...but the sickness in my head makes me pray for release sometimes.

This has been one of those weeks.

I lay in bed and just cry. I can't do anything. I can't shower. I can't brush my teeth or my hair because it is overwhelming. It requires care and lately, I just don't care. I struggle. I try to present, to live in the here and now, but sometimes it is out of my reach.

I resent my medications. I hate depending on them so sometimes, I skip taking them. I want to prove that I can be healthy all on my own. And for a few days, it works. I'm okay. I get through my days. But this past week has been hell. I swallow my Lamictal for the mania. The geodon for the schizophrenia. The cymbalta for the deep depression. The xanax for the anxiety. The klonopin for the restless legs that I suffer from all the time.

And then I wonder...am I me or am I a culmination of the medications that I take.

The medicines have stolen my creativity. I can't write the way I used to. I can't feel the way I used to. Those manic episodes, God, I used to embrace them. Use them to my advantage and write the most amazing poetry and prose. But when I take the meds to keep it at bay, I find myself to be a shell of what I am. My vibrancy goes away. I am plain. I am nothing special. I am just...whatever the medications make me. No one. Just an empty vessel simply existing.

All I feel is emptiness. Unloved. Untouched. Non-existent. Fading away from view.

I lost the ability to dance. To sing. To embrace the day. To feel.

I feel nothing. Void. With or without the medication...I either feel too much or way too little. There's no happy medium for me. I go to the doctor. She tweaks my medicine. Ups this. Lowers that. Changes another.

It never helps.

I can't get myself back. Then again, I don't think I know who "myself" really is. I don't think I've been myself in over 20 years. I wish I had a clue of what it is that I am searching for. I can't find her. She's no where to be found.

If anyone happens to find me, let me know. I'm looking.

Just when you think it's safe to smile...

something happens that just knocks the wind out of your sails.

Four hours ago, I was the happiest woman alive. My husband is home from California. My son is here. My daughter stopped by to visit with my two beautiful grandchildren. We laughed, had dinner together as a family; something we haven't been able to do much of since my daughter moved to her own home a few months ago.

I remember the absolute angst that I felt the day she moved out of my home with her husband and her daughter. Sure, they were only moving one town away, but never in 22 years have my daughter and I not lived under the same roof. When she left, the house dynamic changed. It lost a lot of life. My daughter is my shining star and that beautiful little girl she brought into my life only made my daughter that much more of an indelible force in my world. Now we are both mothers, together. Just another bond that keeps us close. Yes, I have an amazing son. He's bright, funny and a really good kid. I love him like mad. But, ask most mothers and usually they can all agree on one thing:

The bond you have with your daughter is like no other.

So, imagine my surprise, when after dinner my daughter informs me that her husband is getting a promotion. A big promotion. One that means they are going to have to relocate.

To New York. New York. 1200 miles away.

It might as well be another planet.

I drew in a breath as though I had been kicked in the gut. Things in my body that I never knew existed started to ache. Pain. Pain that I have not felt before in my life literally surged through me. My baby girl is leaving me in Florida while she and her family move to New York. Her family. MY family. My grandbabies. My precious, beautiful grandbabies are no longer a fifteen minute drive away. There will be no more cuddling on demand. No more kisses goodnight. No more picking up my granddaughter from daycare, watching with absolute joy as she runs towards me with her arms outstretched, reaching for me.

And my grandson. Dear God, my grandson. Not even two weeks old yet. He will never know me from anything other than a photograph. I will be a stranger to him when I go to visit. I'll miss Liam's first words. His first steps. His first everything.

I won't be there for Sadie's first day of pre-school. Dance recitals.

My head is absolutely reeling right now. I feel numb, dead inside. I am walking around like a zombie. I can't wrap my head around the fact that my children are going to be in New York while I am in Florida. I can't fathom it.

And there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Nothing.

I thought that in my 42 years on this planet, that I have experienced heartbreak. I was wrong. Nothing has felt like this. Not even the loss of my son 14 years ago felt like this. Does that sound melodramatic? Perhaps to some, it might. But right now, I feel like I am losing my daughter. Losing her. Losing Sadie. Losing Liam. They won't be here for holidays. For birthdays. She will not just "drop by" after work anymore. Our entire mother/daughter experience will rely on phone calls and emails. They will probably come rapid fire at first...and then, with time, they will probably whittle down to weekly. She will be busy with her babies and her husband making their new life in New York. She won't have time for dear old mom anymore.

My grandchildren won't know me. I'll be a photograph hanging from a refrigerator magnet, just like my mother is on mine.

My first knee jerk reaction was to tell her how selfish this was. How can you take my babies away from me? How can you just leave like that after living in my home with your husband for three years? I felt betrayed. I felt used. And then, I felt the anger turn to pain. Then, pain into sorrow.

I want the best for my daughter and her husband. I want them to have opportunities that my husband and I have not had. What parent doesn't want better for their children? I apologized to her for my initial reaction. I told her it came from a place of fear, not anger. The fear that I was being left behind. They don't need me anymore. They are branching out on their own, leaving the proverbial nest. I should feel some joy knowing that I have prepared her well for this...but all I can feel is sadness.

Watching my granddaughter playing in my living room tonight was painful. I won't have this anymore. Liam was curled up in his baby bouncer. Sadie came over to him and patted his head gently. She gave him a kiss. She said "Hi Baby" and then threw her arms around me for a big hug.

And I just broke down in hysterics. Literally heaving sobs.

My babies are leaving me and I don't know what to do. I simply don't know what to do. How can I just stand here and watch them leave?

My daughter. My first born. My heart and soul.

I don't even have the words to tie this post up into a neat little package. My world completely flipped upside down in the course of an hour.

How do you say goodbye to the very thing that makes you want to live?

Welcome to the World, Liam Edward...

This little piece of gorgeous is my new grandson, Liam Edward. He was born on January 25, 2010. He weighed 7.11 at birth and is 21 pounds, much different than his sister, Sadie who only weighed 4.14. My daughter, by no want of her own, had him naturally when the nurses decided she was too far along to have an epidural. So, she troopered through it as women have for all the centuries on earth. Sweetest mother/daughter moment came when my beautiful daughter held my hand, looked deeply into my eyes as she was pushing and said:

"Mom??? Did I just SHIT on the table???"

"Um, no, Sam. That was your son that just came out."

I know I shouldn't have been laughing as hard as I was, but it was really a defining moment for my daughter and I. We're not exactly delicate flowers...but she is very shy and reserved so for her to blurt that out during delivery cracked me up to no end.

My family is growing. I am now a grandmother to TWO beautiful little ones.



Happy New Year to my grandbabies. May all your hopes and dreams come true.

I love you both.