Between Mind Medicine and Mind-Control: Forbidden Emotions of a Bipolar

I am highly irritable this week. Everything ignites irritability. I know it is because I am a schizophrenic-bipolar woman who is currently stressed out and broke. Knowing the underlying cause for this feeling does not help the irritability. It fact, it makes it worse because I am forbidden from expressing this irritability.

I feel irritable. Some random person posts something fiercely ignorant about race. I keep my mouth shut because I know I will over react due to my underlying mental illness. Somebody without a mental illness would have snapped and had some psychological release.

I, being subjugated to extreme scrutiny by psychiatrists, doctors, family, mental health technicians, and therapists, cannot express normal anger anymore. I have been denied the right to feel angry or depressed. These are "mental" issues that need to be addressed. In many ways, I feel emotionally spayed. I must remain neutral in mood for the rest of my life or risk being institutionalized or put on dangerously high doses of psychotropic medications.

There is a fine line between mental health treatment and mind-control. I have had my continuum of emotions deleted through medication and hospitalization.

These are emotions that are forbidden to me:

Anger
Irritability
Expansive Mood
Exhaustion
Resentment
Fear of persecution
Fear in general
Hatred
Introversion
Sadness
A combination of these that shift from one to the other rapidly.


I understand that it is "beneficial" to me and to society to put these restraints in place. It is just a bit like mind-control, that is all. I will live under constant scrutiny, constant monitoring by mental health professionals, for the rest of my life, and that is alright with me. However, if there is a better alternative, that would be awesome.

Moody on 3 Kings Day

It has been a long winter break. The bleak weather has done nothing positive for my bleak moods. Plus, I got dumped. That's always a bummer. Alas, my boyfriend transferred to a new college and left me behind. I was comfortable with him. I liked him. Still, he never had a clue that I was schizo-affective or bisexual, but now that is all moot. I no longer have to worry about him finding my stash of nightly regime of pills, or the adult videos that I keep in my underwear drawer---perhaps it is for the best. He might have been repulsed by my mood stabilizers and my passionate love of women.

Now I am bored, single, and moody until classes begin later this month. Speaking of moods, I got a new android app that lets me chart my moods. I believe it is called "emoods." It is an app that allows the user to input the level of anxiety, depression, irritability, and excessive energy on a continuum. This allows the user to monitor their symptoms over the course of a week, even a month. It is an excellent tool for bipolars and I highly recommend it!

Earlier tonight, the 6th of January, my family and I celebrated dia de los reyes, a Mexican religious holiday. It means, "Three Kings Day." What the origins are is a total mystery to me. To me, dia de los reyes is the day where I get a present and a piece of 3 Kings cake that may or may not have a tiny plastic baby Jesus baked into the slice. Tradition decrees that whoever gets the slice of cake with the tiny plastic baby Jesus must buy the entire family tamales the following month.

Speaking of cake...I am getting midnight snack cravings. Maybe I'll go sneak into the kitchen and get a slice of 3 Kings cake....

20 mg of Abilify later....

I feel much more at ease with society. I took my medicine last night (having accidentally skipped it for the previous two nights), slept until far too late, and woke up feeling refreshed and at peace.

I got a decent grade in my toughest class. I got a B+, which is not an A, but it's close enough to where I can feel proud about it. I got an A in an undergrad class, a prerequisite for my major, and I am still waiting on grades for the other three classes.

My medicine makes me sooooo groggy, but I guess the pay off is that I remain stable and functional.