(In honor of National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week (Sept 14-20) invisibleillness.com has composed the following questionnaire.  If you have an invisible illness and/or disability and would like to help raise awareness, and you’ve ever been forwarded one of those “getting to know you” emails, then you know the drill.  Copy and paste the following, replacing my answers with your own, and post the completed questionnaire to your blog or homepage.  Then post the link to your page here.)

30 Things About My Invisible Illness You May Not Know

1. The illness I live with is: Bipolar Disorder II and Borderline Personality Disorder

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: 2006

3. But I had symptoms since: I was probably 13 or 14.

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: Being conscious about how much I need sleep.  I used to be able to get by on 5 or 6 hours a night; now I need closer to 8 or 9.  And that’s not always easy to do and still live a full life.

5. Most people assume: That I’m fine until I tell them otherwise.  To the casual observer I appear to have my shit pretty well together.  It’s once you break through my facade that you come to see the chaos that can be my life.

6. The hardest part about mornings are: Getting motivated to get out of bed.  Particularly if I haven’t gotten enough sleep.

7. My favorite medical TV show is: I absolutely love House.

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: My cell phone.  I’ve got a couple of good friends who text me on a pretty regular basis.  It’s a lifeline for me.

9. The hardest part about nights are: Not being able to shut my mind down so I can sleep.  And then stressing about the fact that I’m not sleeping – thus making it even harder to fall asleep.

10. Each day I take _8_ pills & vitamins. (No comments, please)

11. Regarding alternative treatments I: Would love to find something that would work; so far that’s not been the case.

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: I think in some ways it’s easier to have an invisible illness because I can hide it (for the most part) when I want/need to.  However, there are those people who have said this is all in my mind because they don’t know me well enough to have seen the very visible by-products of my illnesses.

13. Regarding working and career: I love my job and can’t imagine working anywhere else.  I think it’s important for me to work and stay active during the day so that I don’t give my mind a chance to wander too much.  I’d be lost without my job.

14. People would be surprised to know: How long I was actually sick before I finally got diagnosed.  I’ve been struggling with this since I was a teenager.

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: How I “managed” my life before I got sick and why I can’t just fall back on old habits.  And being tied down to a med regime twice a day.

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: Teach again.  I’m a technical trainer by trade and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to get in front of a classroom again.  But I have, and I still enjoy it as much as I always have.  It’s a little more nerve-wracking now, but once I get started I’m fine.

17. The commercials about my illness: I’ve not seen many commercials about my illnesses.  I think most of the commercials about mental health drugs are decent if a little too sugar coated.

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: My hobbies.

19. It was really hard to have to give up: My hobbies.  And my freedom.  I often feel like a prisoner in my own mind.

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: Unfortunately I’ve lost most of my hobbies due to having the shakes from the lithium I take.  All of my hobbies involved doing work with my hands and most days I just can’t manage that anymore.  However, I did start working on a filet crochet doily the other day that doesn’t look too terrible just yet.

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: Get a good sleep, do some intricate beadwork, not get angry about anything, drink a couple of margaritas, and just enjoy life for what it is.

22. My illness has taught me: Just how strong I am.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: When people use a mental diagnosis in a derogatory way.  I had a boyfriend once who, in talking to his ex-wife, asked her if she was “bipolar or something” because she was acting “crazy.”

24. But I love it when people: Are shocked to find out just how much of a struggle I’m living with – because they never would have guessed it.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: I’m a big fan of the Serenity prayer.

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: That life can get better with the right treatment.  But you’ve got to be willing to fight for that treatment sometimes.  Never stop fighting for your own rights.

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: How easy it is sometimes to forget that there’s anything wrong with me.  I’ve had periods of time – 2 or 3 days in a row sometimes – where the only reminder of my illness is having to take  pills morning and night.  I cherish those times.

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: Treated me like a normal person.  Being treated as someone “different” always makes me feel worse.

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because: I feel it’s important to talk about invisible illnesses, thus making them more “visible” to the rest of the world.

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: Special.

I wish.

Having R live with me has been… interesting.  He’s so different from any other guy I’ve ever been with and it’s taking some getting used to.  He doesn’t need as much sleep as I do, which was the same with the ex, but since we’re sharing the house with my parents it doesn’t leave too many things that he can do after I go to sleep.  And most of the things he’s found to do involve me waking up in the middle of the night.  Not good.  But I’m getting used to it.  And I’m sure it’ll get better once he has a job again.  He’s still been looking and not having much luck.  The economy just sucks right now and jobs are hard to come by.

R is by far the most attentive man I’ve ever been with.  He is constantly giving me kisses or touching me.  It’s almost a little overwhelming at times.  Don’t get me wrong – I am loving the attention, I’m just not used to it.  Hell, getting the car guy to kiss me at all took almost an act of god.  I went from constantly being kiss-deficient to being overloaded with kisses.  And R is a snuggler, which I totally love.  Every night before we go to sleep we curl up together and just hold each other.  It’s so sweet.

On the downside, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as jealous as he is.  He freaks out every time my phone rings because he thinks it’s another guy.  And he’s taken to questioning my love for him.  He keeps saying things like “are you sure you’re gonna be able to hang with someone like me?”  I think he’s very insecure because of how his other girlfriends treated him.  I don’t know how to get through to him that I’m not like they were and I’m not going to hurt him.  My mom even told him one day that I am the last person on earth he should be worried about fucking him over – if anything I’ll fuck myself over just to hold onto him.

In spite of all this, I can still totally see  myself being married to him.

I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I last posted.  Guess I’m letting life get in the way of things again. 

Life is pretty damn decent these days.  R is now living with me at my folks’ house.  See, he lost his job on Monday and his mom (who he’s been staying with) is moving out of state at the end of the month so he didn’t really have anywhere else to go.  He’s looking to find another job and is trying to get his own business started, too.  Things will be rough for a little bit until he gets back on his feet, but we’ll make it.

He’s told me that he wants to marry me – and I can totally see being married to him.  We just get along so well, and he treats me like a princess.  I’m not used to getting so much attention from a man – it’s heavenly.  We are very much in love with each other.  I can’t remember the last time I felt this way about a man.

Work has been super busy lately.  The new semester starts on Monday so we’ve been gearing up for that.  I worked until 8 last night and get to do the same today because of new faculty orientation.  It makes for one hellaciously long day.

The car guy is officially out of the picture.  We split up on Sunday, via text message.  I’ve found someone else who gives me what I need, and I’m hoping this one lasts.

The new guy is R.  He’s a little older than me, never been married, has a 12 year old daughter he sometimes sees on the weekends, works construction, and thinks I’m sexy.  We met on Saturday and, with the exception of yesterday, have seen each other every day.  He’s a gentleman, but ornery, too.  Definitely keeps me on my toes.  I love being with him – he’s so relaxed and laid back.  I think he’ll be good for me.  And he makes me laugh all the time.  I can see myself falling in love with him.

Life in general is going pretty decent.  My sleeping has been getting better.  I haven’t had a BPD episode in over a week.  And my bipolar seems to be pretty well under control.  I’m back in the stupid DBT class on Mondays, which I am hating, but I’ve really got no choice.  I can’t afford to lose my psychiatrist or my therapist.

So I told my therapist what he could do with the DBT class and he said that was fine, but he wouldn’t keep seeing me and neither would my DR.  WTF?!?!?!  Apparently, because they think this is the best treatment for me, if I don’t comply they’re going to cut off all treatment.  Now I see one of the best DRs and therapists in this area and it took me awhile to find them, so I don’t want to just give them up.  But I don’t want to take the classes either, so I am stuck.  And chances are good that even if I did find another DR/therapist they’d do the same thing to me.  So it’s back to the fucking class I go.  Needless to say, I am royally pissed off about this.

Things with the car guy have not improved.  I did get a short phone call last night, which was nice, but it’s not enough.  I don’t even want to try to ask him when I’ll get to see him again, I’m afraid it would just start a fight.  My date Tuesday went pretty good.  He’s a nice enough guy, very attentive, easy to talk to.  He’s just not my usual type and he’s not been overly communicative since I saw him.  So who knows what’ll happen with that situation.  I wish my love life would improve a little bit.

Tuesday I passed out in the shower and ended up hurting myself.  I’ve got a huge bruise on my ass and another one on my left arm.  Sitting is painful, as is getting up, and laying down’s not that great either.  It’s making it even harder to sleep, which is not a good thing.  My sleep lately has been very patchy.  It takes me a long time to fall asleep and then once I’m out I don’t stay that way – I wake up every few hours.  I couldn’t tell you the last time I got a good night’s sleep.  I’m starting to think that such a thing just isn’t going to happen for me anytime soon, which sucks.  I can’t even nap during the day anymore – I just can’t get my brain to shut down long enough.

The weekend was… miserable.  The car guy still doesn’t really have a working phone and so I only got to speak with him briefly when he was able to borrow his roommate’s phone.  And we didn’t get together at all.  I’m starting to wonder just how much more of this I can tolerate.  I’m a tad bit on the high maintenance side – I need to see my man on a fairly regular basis to be happy and that just isn’t happening.  I don’t know what to do about it though.  I mean, I really like him and like spending time with him, but those times seem to be coming farther and farther apart.

So I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands and tomorrow night I’m going on a date with a different guy.  This one is a little bit younger than I am – not younger like the kid was though.  He’s not as attractive as the car guy is but he’s here in town and he seems to be pretty interested in me, so we’ll just see what happens I guess.  Part of me feels guilty for doing this, the other part of me says it’s my life and I deserve to be happy.  I don’t know what to do anymore.

And I am so utterly bored at work that it’s not even funny.  There’s only so much surfing the web you can do in a day, and there are only so many smoke breaks I can take.  I’m really trying to cut back on how much I smoke because I just can’t afford it.  Cigarettes are so expensive anymore it’s ridiculous!  I’m paying almost $6 a pack for the good kind, $4 for the generics.  Today I’m taking my penny jar to the bank to see how much I can scrape up that way.  Money is not good for me right now.  I’ve got way too much debt and not enough money coming in to cover it all.  I’m gonna have to work on that in the coming months so I can get my shit in order before the conference in October so I can have a little spending money.

I’m supposed to hear sometime this week whether or not our proposal to present at the conference has been accepted.  I’m getting a little nervous about it – I hate not knowing.  Part of me says I should start working on developing the materials just in case.  The other part says don’t waste your time you aren’t going to get accepted anyway.  I hate always being so fatalistic, but I can’t help it.  With the kind of luck I have it just doesn’t make sense to be optimistic about this kind of thing.  Of course I did get the scholarship to go to the conference, so maybe, just maybe, this means we’ll get accepted and be able to share our stuff afterall.  Who knows…

Today I get to tell my therapist that he can take his DBT crap and shove it.  I talked to my mom and got her to agree that I could drop the class as long as I read the manual.  I am so excited by this I can’t begin to express it.  I hated that class from day one and it just went downhill from there.  The DR teaching it is a royal bitch – I can’t stand her!  I don’t think my therapist is going to be very pleased about this, but I really don’t care.  It’s my life, I’ll fuck it up if I want to, thank you very much.

I didn’t realize it had been quite *this* long since I’d last blathered on here, but damn, it’s been almost a month!  A lot’s happend in that time.  The car guy and I are still together and making a pretty decent go of it, I’m happy to report.  We’ve had some minor issues, but we’ve worked them out.  The “crisis du jour” is his phone is dying so he has to borrow his friend’s phone to call me, which means I don’t get to talk to him near enough, but he’s working on it.  At least I got to talk to him today – yesterday I missed him because I was teaching when he tried to call.

Anyway, life is pretty decent right now.  Got my man, got my health – sort of, got a good friend I’ve been talking to a lot lately…  what more can a girl ask for?

As for the dreaded DBT class, I’ve pretty well talked my mom into letting me stop taking it.  The DR who’s leading the group just totally rubs me the wrong way.  I promised Mom that I would read the stupid manual and do the worksheets on my own and she seems to be pretty satisfied with that.  Now to see what kind of reaction I get from my therapist, I’m guessing it won’t be pretty.  But I don’t care – it’s my life and I’m tired of wasting it on this stupid crap.

I’ve been having some trouble with my bipolar lately.  I just can’t seem to get enough quality sleep anymore.  The DR upped my one med, decreased the other, put me on a sedative, took me off the sedative, took me off an anxiety pill…  I feel like a damn chemistry experiment!  At one point – while the car guy was in the hospital with appendacitis – I got suicidal and the DR wanted to put me in the hospital, but I didn’t let her.  I told her I could stay safe on my own and I did, thanks to a lot of help from Mom.  I still have twinges of those feelings every now and then, but certainly not bad enough to be hospitalized again.  I told Mom that I finally learned my lesson last time I was in.  And I did.

The BPD keeps throwing me for a loop.  Just when I think I’ve finally conquered it, something happens and I open my big dumb mouth and insert my foot up to my hip.  Gotta work on the whole “think before you speak” thing.  Shooting from the hip is not always a good thing.

I shall endeavour to write more often now.  But probably not tomorrow – I’m going with my mom and my niece to the zoo in the morning before my psych appointment.  Enjoy the weekend!

There’s a new man in my life – the car guy.  He owns a body shop and is really into cars.  And me.  We met on an online dating site and hit it off really well.  The only bad thing is that he lives about an hour from me – same town the kid was in.  So we’ll be doing a lot of driving to  make this work, but I think it’s doable.  I spent almost all day with him Sunday and then he came up for dinner last night.  Tonight he’s coming up for dinner and a movie.  Hopefully we’ll be able to spend Friday together since I have the day off for the holiday.

One of the really cool things about him is he was married to someone who has bipolar so he understands me a little better.  Apparently his ex-wife doesn’t manage hers very well though.  So far he’s been very in tune to my moods and emotions, which is nice.  I didn’t tell him about the BPD – figured there’s no sense in it.  I’m doing much better managing it these days so it shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m still going to the damn DBT classes and still don’t feel like I’m getting anything out of it.  Mom says she can tell a difference though, I’m less quick to fly off the handle when things don’t go exactly like I planned.  I guess I can see that.

And I finally cut the kid loose.  It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  He called Sunday while I was on my date and I told him I was out and would call him later.  When I called him he asked me what I’d decided and I told him I’d decided to stick with the car guy.  He said, “so I guess that’s it, huh?”  And I said I guessed so.  I haven’t heard from him since.  Seriously it was a no brainer – the car guy has a job, a car, a place to live, much more potential for a future together.

The only potential downside is that the car guy also has 3 kids – one of which lives with him full time.  And we all know how I feel about kids.  But if it’s meant to be then I’ll get along with his kids and it’ll all work out.  I’m just not going to worry about it right now.

Still talking to the 2 guys I met online.  I’m actually going out with the one tonight after my support group meeting, and trying to arrange getting together with the other one tomorrow night.  I’ve gone from zero social life to social butterfly overnight it seems!

The kid is still kind of in the picture, but not for much longer I don’t think.  Yesterday I called him when I got home from work to see if he wanted me to come up and visit and he said no, he wanted to just relax.  Fine.  I got into my pj’s and went about getting ready for tonight’s big date.  Not an hour later he calls up wanting to know what I’m doing because he’s bored.  No way mister – you blew your chance to see me.  I told him this and then went back to doing my stuff.  I called him before I went to bed – not sure why – and he wanted me to come up tonight between work and my meeting AND bring him more chew.  To top it all off he had the balls to ask me if I’d sneak in some of my anxiety pills!  Now that’s the kind of shit the old boyfriend would have done and I am having no part of it.  He doesn’t know about the date tonight and he’s not going to know.  He’s supposed to call me sometime this afternoon, and I haven’t decided yet if I’ll answer the phone or not.  I’m thinking not.

All I want is to find a nice guy, who’s got a job and a car, that treats me like a princess – or at least not like a doormat.  That’s not asking too much, is it?

So I decided to get on with my life – my love life specifically – and talked to 2 guys last night.  Wouldn’t you know it, while I’m on the phone with one (and chatting with the other online) the kid calls!  I didn’t take the call but did call him back to see what the hell he wanted.  Turns out he’s sorry and wants to take another stab at it.  I said sure, but told him about the online dating thing.  He said that was fine just as long as I didn’t do anything more than talk with these guys.  Like he’s in a position to tell me how to live my life!  Anyway, come to find out he really wants me to come visit him so I can smuggle him in some chew like I did when he was at the regional center.  I’ve got really mixed emotions about this.  On the one hand I’ve got like $30 to last me until payday next Tuesday and I need to buy smokes for myself.  Plus it would be nice to have a few bucks to go out this weekend if things pan out with the new guy.  On the other hand I feel like I’m being used again, just like with the boyfriend – it’s not “what I can I do for Pip?” it’s “what’s Pip gonna do for me today?”  And quite frankly I’m getting tired of it.

To make things even more interesting last night, the old boyfriend did call me from wherever the hell it is he’s hiding out these days – just to “check” on me.  What he really wanted to know was whether or not I’ve gotten his name covered up yet.  What a loser.

Anyway, the new guy thing is going pretty decently so far.  We’ve been texting mostly, though I did get him to actually call me last night so I could hear his voice.  Sexy!  And he thinks my tattoos are sexy, so that’s a major plus.  AND I dropped the bipolar bomb on him (his ex wife has it bad apparently) and he didn’t flinch.  WHOO-HOOO!  We may have a major score here, it’s just a little too early to tell yet.  But it’s definitely got potential.