Some more history
The earliest specific memory I have of a bipolar symptom is when I was 15 or 16. I had always been prone to the rages (though back then I just chalked it up to having a REALLY bad temper) and my boyfriend and I had gone down the shore (Philly speak for to the beach, lol) and I had gotten my ears pierced. A few weeks later I wanted to change the earrings and it was too soon and the holes closed up that quick while I was trying to do it. I FLIPPED. I was screaming, yelling, throwing things across the room, etc. My boyfriend was freaked out; he couldn't understand how something so minor could enrage me like that. Neither did I. But when you're in the grip of a rage like that you literally cannot control it.
I have *always* been very tunnel-visioned in some respects. If I have my mind set on doing something, I won't stop until I have it done. I can't think of anything else. I get obsessed with it. It can be a project, like when I did my first website. Or it can be something in the news. I remember a few years ago a little girl who was my daughter's age was murdered, and she lived about half an hour from us, and I was obsessed with that story. My daughter was with her dad for half the summer when this happened. All the major news networks covered it. Not only did I compulsively search the web every hour for like 15 minutes about new news, but I actually WENT TO THEIR HOUSE. I realize now that was totally, totally obsessive. I ended up volunteering to make these little "in memoriam" cards for the family and they allowed me to. They gave me pictures of this little girl and I put the and pictuers and her birthday and such and a prayer on business cards and then laminated them. I spent over $100 on this (that I didn't have) and literally an entire weekend with little sleep.
Sometimes I get overly "into" a project, only to drop it. When I caught the scrapbooking craze I spent $100 on supplies, and did maybe 5 pages of it. Or I'll get into an organizing frenzy and spend an entire weekend re-doing and re-arranging my house.
The most devastating effect the bipolar had on me was to destroy my finances. Sometimes I would get into these modes where I had to buy things. I'd spend several hundred dollars, never mind my bills, on all this.. stuff. And I'd set the bags on the living room floor, and there it would all sit, until later in the week when I had no money for gas, and I'd return most of it. I knew that was crazy, but that impulse to "buy" cannot be rejected.
In the year 2000 a lot of bad stuff happened to me all at once, and maybe some other time I'll write about it. But I made some huge mistakes and some huge decisions with no thought. I picked up and moved from New Jersey/Philadelphia to Missouri with next to no thought about it. All of my family is there, with the exception of the one half-sister that lives here in MO, and I just up and left. And my grandfather had died and left me his house. I took out a mortgage on it, and within a year, the entire value of the house was spent and I couldn't pay the property taxes and I had to sell the house. The fact that I literally blew $75,000 in a year and couldn't tell you where it went, and that I lost my beloved grandfather's house over it, devastates me.
In the worst of times of my spending sprees I would write check after check, not even realizing that many of them would bounce. So then I'd end up taking out a pay day loan to pay off the bounced checks and their fees. And then I couldn't pay my bills to pay off the interest on the payday loans. My car ended up getting repossessed as a result of this. After I got diagnosed I filed bankruptcy, and I am slowly building my credit back up.
So... there you have it. Some more history and some more of my symptoms and stuff. :)
I have *always* been very tunnel-visioned in some respects. If I have my mind set on doing something, I won't stop until I have it done. I can't think of anything else. I get obsessed with it. It can be a project, like when I did my first website. Or it can be something in the news. I remember a few years ago a little girl who was my daughter's age was murdered, and she lived about half an hour from us, and I was obsessed with that story. My daughter was with her dad for half the summer when this happened. All the major news networks covered it. Not only did I compulsively search the web every hour for like 15 minutes about new news, but I actually WENT TO THEIR HOUSE. I realize now that was totally, totally obsessive. I ended up volunteering to make these little "in memoriam" cards for the family and they allowed me to. They gave me pictures of this little girl and I put the and pictuers and her birthday and such and a prayer on business cards and then laminated them. I spent over $100 on this (that I didn't have) and literally an entire weekend with little sleep.
Sometimes I get overly "into" a project, only to drop it. When I caught the scrapbooking craze I spent $100 on supplies, and did maybe 5 pages of it. Or I'll get into an organizing frenzy and spend an entire weekend re-doing and re-arranging my house.
The most devastating effect the bipolar had on me was to destroy my finances. Sometimes I would get into these modes where I had to buy things. I'd spend several hundred dollars, never mind my bills, on all this.. stuff. And I'd set the bags on the living room floor, and there it would all sit, until later in the week when I had no money for gas, and I'd return most of it. I knew that was crazy, but that impulse to "buy" cannot be rejected.
In the year 2000 a lot of bad stuff happened to me all at once, and maybe some other time I'll write about it. But I made some huge mistakes and some huge decisions with no thought. I picked up and moved from New Jersey/Philadelphia to Missouri with next to no thought about it. All of my family is there, with the exception of the one half-sister that lives here in MO, and I just up and left. And my grandfather had died and left me his house. I took out a mortgage on it, and within a year, the entire value of the house was spent and I couldn't pay the property taxes and I had to sell the house. The fact that I literally blew $75,000 in a year and couldn't tell you where it went, and that I lost my beloved grandfather's house over it, devastates me.
In the worst of times of my spending sprees I would write check after check, not even realizing that many of them would bounce. So then I'd end up taking out a pay day loan to pay off the bounced checks and their fees. And then I couldn't pay my bills to pay off the interest on the payday loans. My car ended up getting repossessed as a result of this. After I got diagnosed I filed bankruptcy, and I am slowly building my credit back up.
So... there you have it. Some more history and some more of my symptoms and stuff. :)
