let it be me

Risk of Recurrence of Bipolar Disorder in Pregnant and Nonpregnant Women After Discontinuing Lithium Maintenance

Adele C. Viguera, M.D., Ruta Nonacs, M.D., Lee S. Cohen, M.D., Leonardo Tondo, M.D., Aoife Murray, A.B., and Ross J. Baldessarini, M.D.

Call me crazy (it wouldn’t be far from the truth amirite) but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether or not I should have children. I obviously possess the ability to have children, and the deep, haunting want to have children. But would it be responsible of me? After all, if I stay on medication to calm the turbulence of BP, it could cause birth defects. This is obviously not an option. However, if I get off of medication, this study shows that there is a high rate of re-occurrence of BP just because I would not be on medication, and there’s no telling what flunctuating hormones like that could do to a growing child, not to mention the genetic component of this disease that I would be passing on nor the higher risk of self-harming behaviors including suicide that would go along with being unmedicated. This is not a viable option either.

Adoption? Well. Would you, in good conscience, really give a child to a mother who has BP?

I didn’t think so.

My boss seems to think that, just because of the sheer fact that I think of these things, I should be a mother. I wish. I really, really wish.

NaNo starts in a few days, and I’m not sure if I’m participating this year. Maybe the complete frightening amount of work I’m already doing will just spur me on to actually finish for once? Wouldn’t that be exciting?

I went through today without my iPod. Say WHAT? (The battery was dying. I still don’t know how I survived.)

Do you know how many embarrassing songs came along before I could use one for the title of this post? A billion. A BILLION.

Just when I decided to start blogging again, my domain expired. Oh well. Maybe it would be good to write in this one.

Oh man.

eta: TSwift is the cutest thing in the universe. For real, though.

this is how I feel

Tonight I listened to Dvorak a lot to calm down. I will never understand why his music connects to my heart so well. I mean, Mozart connects with my soul, which is something that can never be beaten, but Dvorak is definitely a close second when it comes to composer best friends.

It’s so hard to be proud of myself, on some nights. I have gotten myself into money problems again. Tonight I spent a good while reading through old blog entries I had on LiveJournal.com. Not on my most recent LJ, but the one before that, the one with all the comments from people who used to be my friends. People who I have messed up my relationships with in only the past year. One of their older brothers told me that people come and go, that that is the nature of life.

I say I should fight for them. One of them will be easier than the other.

This is what I want to write to one of them:

Subject: the reasons why I am supremely lame

a. Because I have been jumping for joy that Trace Cyrus and Demi Lovato “broke up” because, you know, he’s twenty and she’s sixteen.

b. Because I have been reading through my old LiveJournals, including the comments, including all the comments you used to leave me.

It’s one of those nights, and I wish I could call you and talk to you because you would remind me that God is in control.

But maybe I shouldn’t send that. Or maybe I will.

I shouldn’t write when I’m feeling like this, except I need to have an actual representation of my flunctuating moods. So here I am, on the lower end of the spectrum, sighing.

It shouldn’t have to be this way. But it is. So what am I going to do about it?

splat!

It’s one of those nights. This is the kind of night where I know that, no matter how hard I try, sleep is not coming for me, so I might as well resign myself to the idea that I am going to be keeping my eyes open all night long. The good thing is that I am trying to spin my insomnia into inspiration, which is probably why I pointed over to WordPress; a blog isn’t much, but it is better than keeping these words in my head.

I’m not sure what’s been going on lately. I’m nineteen, but I might as well be thiry and fourteen, all at the same time. In four months my boyfriend is going to be twenty. Twenty! I know that you are supposed to have a mid-life crisis when you turn forty, that this is when you are “over the hill,” but I also feel that it is completely justifiable to feel the loss of your teen years as well. Twenty! My Lord, that number is so large. Two whole decades will he have lived. And then exactly six months later, I will have, too. Maybe it’s just me, but this doesn’t feel like one of those moments where you quietly contemplate the mysteries of life, it seems like the biggest “what the fuck” moment any of us have had to face as of yet, especially since, two days afterwards, it will seem like the smallest wonder in the world.

My therapist says that people my age are self-centered. Well, <i>duh.</i> Adolescence is the time in your life when it feels as though all of creation holds its breath in anticipation of your fate, whether it be glory or certain death. And for me, the latter part seems more of a reality than for many. I’m not being morbid, I’m just being realistic – as someone who is manic depressive, I am not exactly a stranger to thoughts of suicide. The good thing is that these thoughts are usually balanced out by times where the idea of time and space stopping for me and going on for other people is inconcievable. The irony of being bipolar – the idea of balance… I remember vividly, being a freshman in High School, preparing for the summer and becoming a Peer Leader, and my friend Lauren telling me to look for a girl named Kelly because she was “balanced” and that was exactly what I needed in my life, according to Lauren. And so I sought for balance, and prayed for it.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

I do like nineteen. When you’re eighteen, this is amazing for the precious few moments that you are still in High School; even if it is months, these are still moments in your mind. At this limbo in time, you are a rock star in the hallways, the royalty of your school, and there is a sort of immortality that you embrace every day. On the day of my class’ senior picnic, I still remember the fervored speed I savored with my friend on the highway home. We found out not a half hour later that, not far behind us, a few of our classmates who were also speeding had crashed and died. Maybe this is when being eighteen stopped meaning so much. Nineteen has been much nicer; you stop feeling so small next to your older friends that you have met in college, and you have a better idea of where you are going in life. Or, if you are me, you have finally come to terms with the reality that you will never truly know where you are going or what is going to happen, so you might as well enjoy what’s going on.

Not that I’ll ever be able to stop questioning things. But that is what makes life delicious.

And now that I have purged, it is back to watching Sex and The City. Who bets that I can get through the entire series in less than a week? Looks like I’ll be blogging more and more each night. Stay tuned, I suppose; I have a therapy appointment later in the week and a job interview, so words might just tumble away out of me.