You want misery?!? You got it!

This (long) post quite possibly will out me to anyone from my department who reads/blogs here, considering it's rumored that our department's head has looser lips than Mrs. Duggar and Kate Gosselin combined. But I don't care. I can't care anymore. I'm beyond caring. And I'm sick to death of being afraid of a stigma.

We all whine and moan about "misery" - our misery from doing our jobs, our misery from having our youthful ideals trashed, our misery from working too much or too little, our misery from seeing the great institutions of academia turn to the fast food business model one by one. But just once, I want to talk about true misery - you know, the kind that makes you weep so hard that your gut aches from the pain of it - the kind that makes your face hurt from the strain of sobbing - the kind that makes you feel utterly alone - the kind most people rarely feel outside of grief from the loss of a loved one.

You see, as I've said before, the "Bipolar" in Bipolar Beth isn't just hyperbole. It's a diagnosis. So imagine, if you will, dealing with all of this college bullshit as both a graduate student and as a teacher while struggling with a psychiatric disorder. And just so we get this out of the way *real* fucking quick: I dare just one of you to say I don't deserve to be in grad school or teaching college kids because I'm "crazy." I'm not crazy - I'm ill. And there's no damn difference between an illness in my pancreas and an illness in the neurons of my brain. My brain works differently (hell, on a good day, my hyper-firing neurons give me a creative advantage over anyone with a "normal" brain). But there's a stigma about having a mental disorder, and I fear it. I fear that I'll be found out and outted and that students will avoid my classes and that professors will try to encourage me to take different graduate courses and do research in someone else's lab. I rarely "come out," but when I have, I have been blessed with kindness and understanding and even the occasional "boomerang outing" (you know - "OMG! Me, too!"). But I'm still terrified of that one day when someone recoils from my admission of being diseased in a physiological way that I can't control - I was just born this way (although a few nicely placed traumas at ages 10, 14, and then 20-24 certainly helped move things along). So I want to talk about my TRUE miseries - not the day-to-day stuff I/we usually whine about on here - but what really feels like is destroying my soul piecemeal term by term.

Imagine trying to hide it from your program director and advisor when your doctor's just changed your meds around *again* and you now feel about as in control of your emotions as Chris Crocker on a booze bender (and goddess forbid a student or professor catch you crying! My cat's cancer comes in handy when this happens...).

Imagine trying to write a paper on a complex, obscure, and obtuse neurological topic when your mind is racing with random thoughts like, "HA! It's hyterical that I...*I* am studying neuroscience! Maybe I have an unfair advantage, cuz I wanna know for my own sake as well as for my thesis. Hmm, what's the weight of a cat's brain? Cuz my cat, Star, can't seem to learn to stay OFF the fucking counters! I wonder if I'll live to see a supernova. Shit, am I meeting Grandma for lunch Monday or Tuesday? God I need a pedicure before I see her. Oh, look, a hummingbird! I ought to read about the fluid dynamics of their wing-beating process. Remember that time a hummingbird attacked me on Mt. Lemon......" (Seriously - that is how fast my train of thought runs and how often it spectacularly derails.)

Imagine grading papers while so depressed you can barely get out of bed, so you *feel* for your students and want to give them half-credit on 1-point T/F questions, because the world is evil and horrible and why should it matter if they know whether or not prophase is the stage where chromatin condenses? My life feels like a wreck, a bad joke, and the result of some kinda karmic debt unheard of since the time of Vlad the Impaler. But, I stick to the fucking rubric, all the while feeling like I'm crushing the souls of yet another group of students who were fucked by the public high school system and who couldn't find a clue if I slapped them across the face with it - and it ain't (totally) their fault.

Imagine that the next week, you are so hyper and manic that you want to flunk those same students for spelling it "deoxyriboSEnucleic acid" on the pre-lab, with a "Not on my watch, motherfucker!" attitude. So, just for spite and to release excess energy, you want to teach at the speed of sound and announce you're adding a topic to the syllabus for today because it's really relevant, recent research and it's ultra-cool! So, we're not just doing the DNA, replication, transcription, and translation today - we're adding in how telomeric breakdown can lead to spontaneous neoplasms (and I'm gonna use those exact words, bitches!). You want to, but instead you go surreptitiously pop a xanax, do some yoga breathing, walk youself through a "talk-down," and then tell your students you're a little hyper today - "Too much caffiene! Hahahaha! If I get going too fast, just slow me down!" and *smile*

Imagine trying to schedule weekly therapy appointments into the average grad student's schedule, while not wanting to ask for time off to go to the doctor - cause after that happens *every* week for a month, people start to think you're lying about seeing a doctor. That's usually when I'm forced to out myself - although I usually just mention the depression, because at least *that* mental illness is somewhat accepted in society.

Imagine having to go to every professor at the beginning of each term and hand them DSS papers that essentially say, "She can't cut it without help." So now, that 3.9 you earned as an undergrad and the 4.0 you're sitting on in grad school feel like they have huge, Time's-Square-display-sized asterisks next to them. I've never even used most of the "accomodations." Except the "less distracting testing environment" - I use the shit out of that. God forbid I start thinking about hummingbirds and supernovas during an Advanced Molecular Genetics final!

Imagine trying to survive college while taking classes and teaching classes, and while trying to maintain a relationship, also while taking medications with these side effects: marked drowsiness, somnolence, insomnia, nausea, dizziness, dry mouth, sexual dysfunction or lack of libido, glaucoma, hepatitis, random swelling of the skin, hives, low blood pressure, and fainting. And that's just ONE med - I have to take 4. The others add the following crowd pleasers: severe chest pain, temporary slurred speech, spontaneous hyperglycemia and Type II Diabetes, weight gain, weight loss, constipation, loss of motor control, urinary incontinence, anterograde and retrograde amnesia, short-term memory loss, inability to concentrate, lack of inhibitions, and jaundice. Yes, I can turn yellow while not remembering a damn thing as I dance on the hood of the College President's car in my skivvies, at least until I faint, fall asleep, pee myself, or vomit. And that's JUST THE MEDS. That has NOTHING to do with being bipolar. Actually, I kinda see now why people think we're nuts...

Imagine spending every day with that on-the-edge-of-your-seat feeling: whatever shall happen today?? Will I cry myself to sleep? Will I scream at my boyfriend for no reason? Will I be so happy I take all the lab girls out to lunch, my treat, even though I'm broke as shit? Or will the darker things happen.... Will the thoughts of ending it all come again... Will the hallucinations of bugs crawling under my skin and all over the walls start up again... Will the hallucinations of dead parents visit me again... Will the utter numbness that comes with total desolation start again... Today? Tomorrow? Next week? During finals? During my defense? When I'm interviewing for a job? When I'm working? When I, by the grace of the gods, maybe someday have a family (adopted preferably)? When my grandkids sit on my knee and want to hear a story?

That's my misery: when will IT (any of it) happen again? And will I be able to salvage my life afterwards?

I post here because it's fun for me - I can rant and rave about what really are "the little things" - copiers and admin and students and Blackboard and jackass colleagues. It's fun to pretend I'm just a normal teacher experiencing normal angst. But I'm not.

I'm being hospitalized tomorrow in the hopes of finding a better combination of medications and to undergo some really intensive therapy to address all my fears and phobias so I can hopefully have as normal a life as someone with too much dopamine and too little seratonin can have. I've never had to do this before. I'm terrified. I...am...utterly...miserable. The only thing that helps is a hug - from my boyfriend or my cat - I just need warmth. I have just one request of my fellow bloggers. Next time you feel your life is "miserable," hug someone you care about. It's amazing what a little perspective can do...