Designer labels

I really have no medical proof of this, just my opinion, but it seems to me that illnesses just don't come one at a time. It seems that once the body and mind become ill it opens the door for many more. My husband has rheumatoid arthritis and is treated for depression. A friend of mine is bipolar and has anxiety issues.

About 2 years into the adventure throughout the mental illness wonderland I was sitting down with my third or fourth shrink. Getting in to see a psychiatrist is hard, and you do not get to see them very often unless you are high on the spectrum of crazy. He did not know me very well, and I am sure that he did not even read my file when I went in because he kept asking me questions that he asked me every time I went in.

By this point I had been labeled a Post-partum, Bi-polar, Obsessive-Compulsive, with rage issues. The doctor asked me some questions and decided that I also had Seasonal Effective Disorder. This made me a winter-hating, germ-fearing, step-counting, moody, wall-punching mother. Apparently he was going to prescribe a giant lamp which I was suppose to shove my face in and that would make my life a lot better.

It was at this point I realized that I could be caught up in the labels for the rest of my life. You can see that in the people around you that get stuck in the name of the sickness and the whole idea of being sick rather than looking for the path of being well. You see them get wrapped up in being a victim instead of being a person.

We all have that aunt who in 1987, her husband had an affair, and because of all the awful men in the world her life has been crap, and she is going to have to stay on welfare and have a bad perm, and if only 1987 didn't happen she would be 30 pounds lighter and have that job at the bank but the boss is a man, and probably in 1987 he had an affair on his wife and she would have to spend all day covering up her boobs because he is just a big perv anyways.

It was then I decided to stop living in the labels and start living for the path to get well.

Now this took a while. I felt sorry for myself and lived in the drama for quite a while, but the decision was still in my mind. I kept coming back to the main objective and I am getting closer all the time.

There are some things I know that I am. I am diagnosed Bi-polar. I know this because when I am off the meds for Bi-polar I am mega-crazy. I know I am diagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive and this is for a whole bunch of reasons which I will talk about later. Diagnosed is the key word, meaning it is something that can affect my day and my health but does not define me.

I am also a mother, and a wife. I am a leader, and a supervisor. I am a friend and caregiver. There are many labels that I can give myself, but I need to define myself by the better ones, the more productive and healthier ones. If I don't I can get sucked up in what the label is rather than what I can be.

So what are you? Have you been sexual abused? Has your ex-boyfriend hit you? Did your dad drink too much and spend his paycheck booze? Did your mom yell too much and hug too little?

It is exhausting to live as a victim. It is exhausting to live as title instead of yourself. It takes time to heal and it takes time to get better but we cannot let what happen to us complete us.

We are worth more than that.

Excuses, Excuses

Everyday that I get up I have to make a choice to have a good day or a bad day. Some days are harder than others, and lots of times I fail to make the right choice.

There have been days that I have been unable to take care of myself and I have to entrust other people to make the right choices for me.

Even though I am mentally ill, I am still responsible for my behavior and the choices I make for this behavior. There are times where my mind is uncontrollable. I am angry and unbearable to my family. I am a danger to myself sometimes. This is not my fault. The choices I make about how to deal with this is responsibility and the bad choices are my fault.

For instance, it is not a diabetics fault that they have diabetes. It is not that persons fault if their blood sugar gets low and they end up in the hospital. It is their fault if they eat what they are not supposed to, don't exercise like they are supposed to, and don't take their insulin.

When I get sick, it is up to me to let the people around me help me with this. I must get take my meds, get enough sleep, and do what I can to get through the bad times. I must say that this is not applicable to all mental illness. For some people there just isn't the ability to know that they are not well. For a lot of us there is and we owe it to ourselves and our family to take care of ourselves.

I read and watch in the news far too often people using mental illness as an excuse for the crimes they commit. I have learned that there is a host of things I can do and use my mental illness as the reason. I can be a school teacher and have sex with my students. I can hide my boyfriend in the closet and later kill my husband. I can gamble and shoplift. I can hurt my children and have affairs. I can spend all my family's money or have sex with many people.

Again, I know that there are people out there that these things can occur because their illness has taken over. I do not think that most fit into this category. I think that it is an easy excuse to get away with behaviors that they do not want to be held accountable for poor choices. If they do not think it is wrong would they try to hide it?

Killing Me Softly

Went I went for the Sleep Over I was amazed by the amount of ways there are to destroy yourself. As a society, it is assumed that suicide is a sudden, singular event, but I found this is not true. I found that people just did not try to kill their physical being, but also took on the task of killing their spiritual being. Sometimes the spiritual being became the primary target of destruction.

You can see spiritually destroying behavior in people around you. The promiscuous, the partiers, the risk takers. They drink too much, put themselves into large amounts of debt. Its the married man at work that is going for drinks alone with the new girl.

There was a young man I was in the psych ward with who was like me. He was bipolar but tended to run high instead of low like I did. He spent all his money, smoked doped, and drank like crazy. He had a wonderful girlfriend, but continually had unprotected sex with several partners. When he was doing these things, he knew that they were wrong. There was this hatred he held for himself that he set out to destroy what he had. You can see it in our eyes when we do it. You can see emptiness the day after.

I believe that there is a constant spiritual battle around us. There is Good and evil fighting in a continual battle for our soul. I know that this is dangerous ground to talk about it, because it becomes a defining line between the crazy and the truly crazy for some people. This judgment is fine with me. My defense is just because you cannot see it does not mean it doesn't exist.

Self-destruction is a weapon that evil uses to its favor. Evil cannot destroy you because your soul has already been bought and paid for; however, evil can convince you to destroy yourself. It can convince you to make your life on this earth as miserable as possible. If evil can get you to destroy your health, and spend your money or drink to much, then it maybe able to make you hate yourself. With that evil's can think that its battle for you can be victorious.

What evil doesn't want you to know it that it has never completely won. From every sexual encounter, every addiction there is a pathway back bought with the blood of Jesus. You are saved and you are loved by Love itself. You are created in His image. What is more esteem building than that?

You are Loved, and this makes you worthwhile. You are so loved that He has a name just for you in Heaven waiting for your arrival.

With every mistake you are already forgiven. There is always a path back from your mistakes.

The picture above is of my husbands addition to his sleeve. He wears it to remind himself of this battle for him. Sometimes the angel is on top, sometimes the demon, but ultimately Good is going to win this battle.