On Me - Part 1 of ?

Probably sharing too much with this but ...

As y'all might know, I have a nasty little illness called Bipolar Affective Disorder. I am not bipolar, I have a disease, there is a big difference. It does not define me and I had it long before it became a trendy way to excuse assholic behaviour.

And this is the place where you can feel free to stop reading if you don't want to hear the details of my life...

anyway...

In the last few weeks it appears that I have been going through a bit of a manic/hypomanic phase and then about 10-11 days ago the bottom started to fall out. I managed to keep it together for a couple more days but that was all I could do. The problem with being manic is that you don't think you are sick. You think that you are doing great as a matter of fact, that is the particularly nasty thing about it.

As my mood started to fall I first thought I was just coming down with the flu, it is that season after all. So I continued to work through it. A week ago that strategy failed completely and I have been basically lying on the couch since then. My blackberry has been off 99% of the time, I have not been writing anything or been actively online (and y'all know that isn't like me) except for two brief stints last weekend, saturday night when i was briefly cheered by my usual sunday night activity of posting youtube stuff on Facebook. The other brief period was when I spent about an hour or so reading through some of the blog/news feeds that I get and queuing up a bunch of stuff to post every half hour to hour or so over the next day and a bit. Both of those activities were attempts to make me feel better. Unfortunately it didn't really work and by Sunday I felt worse.

I have been to see my psychiatrist (let's not talk about high deductible, network based health insurance plans) a couple times in the last week and I will be seeing him again on Thursday. We know what caused it (no, I am not going to share that part), we know how to fix it and it appears to be starting to turn around.

I am pretty sure that I will be back at work on friday, if I still have a job to go back to (I can't yet bring myself to read the emails from my boss). I feel like I have let a lot of people down over the last month or so both personally and professionally and I have a lot of work to do to gain back their faith in me. Hopefully I will be able to do that.

On a positive note, I was just talking to the first ex-Mrs Wolfe. She is still just about my best friend (yeah, imagine that). We were talking about how writing always seems to make me feel better and keeps me leveled out so I am going to start doing it more. So beware, there will likely be lots more bloggy goodness coming out starting in a week or two. Probably won't all be about politics like it usually has been and there might be some more stuff like this that makes people uncomfortable to read (sure as hell is uncomfortable to write) so the facebook feed from my blog (which this is if you are reading it on FB) might be getting turned off, I haven't decided yet. I am letting this one go to FB because I know that there are folks out there that do care (including my family .. yes I know that I suck at keeping in touch) and I don't want them worried about me.

People have often asked me if I worry about being this public with my illness and I always have the same reply. No, I don't. If my being open it helps one single person go get the help they need or makes them feel less ashamed about being sick or makes one of their family members give them a hug and tell them that they understand how hard it is for them because they know of this guy named Rob Wolfe that they saw on Facebook, or on Blogspot or on IRC (back in the day) then it is worth whatever small price I pay in lost privacy. I don't mind being pointed at as an example of how it is possible to live with a significant mental illness and be a more or less functional, taxpaying member of society even if from time to time there are bumps in the road.

Feedback is welcome, in public or private (whichever you prefer), although I likely won't be actively back online very much until the weekend and the blackberry/phone is still mostly turned off for another day or so (until after my next dr's visit) but my email address isn't a big secret and I will be checking it off and on.

Anyone that read all the way through, I don't know whether to say thanks or I'm sorry for wasting your time. I do know that I feel a little better for having written this down and quite frankly that is all that matters to me at the moment.