I Wonder What it is Like to be a Real Person (Daily Word Prompt is Center)

My journal entry from August 28, 2015

I just sat outside on the center of my back porch step which was all wet from the rain, but I didn’t care that the step was all wet and soaked the seat of my pants. As I was outside where real people are, I see them and wonder if they are truly real. I wonder what is it like to be a real person and to be alive.

I am breathing and my heart is beating, but I do not feel like I am living. I feel dead. I do not know what it is like to be feel alive anymore. I am not sure who I am or if I am anyone at all.

Am I alive?  Why can’t I feel alive? How do I continue to be alive and be a real person? When will it happen? When will I become real again? I wonder and hope for reality to hit me again sometime soon so I can come back to life and come back to this world and feel real and like I exist.

My symptoms of my Bipolar Disorder seem to be getting worse as I age and live with this illness longer with each passing day. Last night I watched television with my daughter Alexia as she played on her tablet not facing reality either in her own way.

Last night I felt more alive and I was able to talk with Alexia and even smile sometimes. I thought that was a good sign and I was hoping I would wake up this morning feeling good.

I was wrong. Always hoping and praying that the morning will bring stability and a feeling of normalcy but never quite knowing what my brain will decide to do. I have no control over my brain, never knowing what the morning will bring.

People think I do have control over my feelings and that I just need to think positive thoughts  and pray harder and I will be fine. That is not true and is not the way bipolar, a chemical imbalance in your brain and a disease in your brain works or behaves.

Believe me no one ever would choose to feel this way and choose to feel dead and feel like they are not even a real person in a world that is full of real people living a normal life. No one chooses to be the walking dead.

Two days ago I died only to find myself still alive today. For two entire days I laid in my bed immobilized from my brain’s inability to function not allowing my brain to tell my body what to do. I stared at the walls and television not really comprehending anything that was going on around me and unable to understand the words the television was speaking to me.

I could not move even to the point that I thought I would wet my pants and wet my bed as I did as a child. Even though my bladder was filling up and I was close to wetting my pants I could not move enough to get up to walk to the bathroom and empty my bladder. Eventually my brain worked enough to signal to my body to move and get my body to get up off my bed so I wouldn’t wet on myself and all over my bed.

I walked or shuffled rather into the bathroom, pulled down my pants and eliminated my urine. I was able to pull up my pants and walk like a zombie back to my bed to lay down. That was the most movement my body was capable of doing in a very long time.

I could think of nothing else other than the fact that I must die as I was all ready dead. What is the point of continuing to be here on this earth when I am all ready dead. The pain is too horrific and unbearable. I no longer want to be here. I have to die. My mind was full of suicidal ideations.

I eventually walked out to the living room where my 15 year old daughter Alexia was and I sat in my chair. I didn’t move or speak. Eventually she asked me if I was all right. I decided to tell her the truth and told her that I was not okay.

I told her more of the complete honest truth and told her I wanted to die. I wanted to be dead. It was time to go. I explained it to her that it was like the fact that I had stage 4 cancer. My illness had taken its toll on me over the last 20 years and I had reached the point that my illness was so severe that I could not live anymore. I don’t understand why no one can accept the fact that Bipolar is a morbid illness. I wanted to tell her goodbye like a person that knew they had stage 4 cancer would have the chance to do.

It would be hard to accept but people would understand it and have time to deal with the death of a loved one or a friend. I was not going to be alive much longer and I wouldn’t be here much longer. What is the difference. I wanted to say good by. I was fortunate and had the opportunity to say good-by to her before I left the earth and I could talk to her about what her future would bring.

She didn’t think I should be telling her this, but I didn’t know why not when I knew I had reached the point of my death sentence with my illness. We talked for a while about this.

I am not sure if Alexia texted my oldest daughter Kylie, but Kylie called me a little while later. I told Kylie the same kind of things that I was talking to Alexia about and that my life was over and it was no longer worth living. I told her I wanted to die and needed to die. The only reason for years I was fighting to stay alive was so that I wouldn’t hurt them, but I had no other reason to live.

Call me selfish, but the pain I was suffering with of such deep sorrow and inner turmoil and feeling dead anyway was too great. It was time. I told her how alone I felt as no one loved me and I did not have one friend in the world. My daughter Kylie then basically started scolding me that it was my fault and that people do like me. Really? Where are they? My family does not support me and they only like me and will talk to me when I am well. They can’t face the truth of my illness.

My cell phone is charging in the kitchen and I heard it ring and this caused me for just a very brief second in time to have a glimmer of hope thinking someone might care enough about me to call me. I walked to the kitchen, looked at my cell phone hoping it was my sister Melissa  calling me as she is really the only one in my family that does care enough to call me sometimes and does try to support me through this horrible illness and calls to check on me occasionally. To my dismay,  I  found out it was a bill collector who continues to call me and harass me. I ignored the call as usual.

I sat by my window in the kitchen looking outside and wondering if what I was looking at were really leaves on a tee. What are they? They don’t seem real at all as nothing does. This is a very scary feeling to have as if my brain is leaving me and slipping further and further away from me and from any type of normalcy, whatever that is.

Am I going to have psychotic features again? My brain is slipping further and further away from me and into an unreality. This is a very scary feeling. I continue to write and try to write my memoir hoping it will make my brain work and stay with me so I can at least be somewhat normal, as normal as I can be.

I was supposed to work at my silly part-time job, but I called them yesterday knowing I would not be able to work today. I thought it would be good to take the day off and rest and hopefully mend my weary messed up brain.

I need the money, but it is too difficult to pretend to be normal, real and alive when you are not normal, real or alive. Pretending to have a normal brain and be normal takes too much energy and effort. I couldn’t do it this morning. I could not be around real people when I am not real but a non-human fake person walking around in a carcass of a body empty and void of any feelings and any resemblance of what a real living person is like.

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M writing came from a journal entry and is not how I am feeling at this time. Praise God forever and always.

For those of you who do not know this, I am in the process of writing my memoir. My memoir may be two different books, as it is becoming quite long. I am including some parts of my journal entries to give the full impact and honesty of what it is like living with severe symptoms of bipolar disorder 1, when the symptoms are occurring.

I have saved most of my journals over the past 20 years and have over 17 in all. Most of them are written during hospital stays. As sad as that is to stay, I have been hospitalized at least that many times and probably many more. This is how sick I have been for over the past 20 years and more.

I write my memoir and my blog to give people hope and to know  they are not alone. I was so severely ill as long as I was and I survived and I survived well coming out strong and full of love of life.

I want people to know that they can do it too. Your recovery and survival may not come when you want it to but please be patient and in God’s perfect timing it will happen.

God saved my life. It was worth fighting for and surviving to be given a chance to live a happy and fulfilling life again.

I still have bipolar symptoms that I live with daily, but they are not usually so severe and frequent as they were in the past. I have learned how to live with most of my symptoms.

Praise God. I am so blessed.

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Another note. I know it is absolutely horrible and wrong that I told my children I wanted to die. That was just how ill my brain was at the time. That is not who I am or how I would ever behave when my brain is functioning correctly and I am healthy.

I am very sorry for that behavior and other inappropriate behaviors and thoughts I may have when I am severely ill and my brain is not functioning correctly. Please forgive me.

Hugs and blessings always and forever.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/center/

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