Day 13 "Just Ranting"

I slept really bad last night and it took hours again to fall asleep on 1mg Klonopin.  I have taken them as prescribed and they just seem to take the edge off a little but don’t make me very drowsy.  I do like that they’re smooth.  I have tried a Xanax before and they weren’t like that but I did sleep and it was a lot rougher waking up after taking one.  Anyway, my energy level today has been all over the place. I have also been irritable and depressed.  I just can’t get past the representative payee thing with SSDI.  I don’t know for sure that I would be required but I bet I would need one because of past money problems I had when I was manic.  I have done some stupid things with money in the past but the past is the past and I’m trying to do everything right so that I can get my life back.  I have dreamed of being able to take care of myself my entire life and this seems goes against that.  What makes me really angry and has my mood flared is that I’ve had signs of mental illness since I was a child and nobody ever did anything about it.  I was diagnosed in 1977 as ADD, in 1983 I began OCD rituals, there were times when I would stay up all night for days on end and I would clean and rearrange my room, I was made fun of and bullied from the 6^th grade on up through high school, I wet the bed until I was 15 years old, I had attention problems, did poorly in school, and I missed an average of 30 days of school per year from the 6^th grade on through graduation.  Hell, I can’t believe they let me graduate but then again in their eyes I was a failure who made the teachers look bad and they just wanted to get rid of me. 

This is probably a lot of the reason my parents didn’t really see the need to get me help or make me see someone.  Back in the 1980’s everybody said try harder and if you do the minimum we’ll let you by.  My Mom is having an easier time accepting my diagnosis now than she did when I was first diagnosed with Cyclothymia but I have to kind of laugh because she looked at me the other day and said I should have told them I was having problems.   Hmmm…they knew that there was this boy on the bus in 6^th grade who punched me repeatedly in the groin area until I puked, they knew I fail3ed just about everything, they knew I was missing 30+ days of school a year, they knew I was wetting the bed, and they knew that I almost didn’t graduate high school.  Oh I forgot to mention that my OCD was of the counting nature and I would stay up for hours setting my alarm clock saying it out loud and my room was right next to theirs . 

I’m not blaming anybody for my problems and I don’t want anyone to think that.  It just frustrates me because I feel like if this could have been caught 20 years ago maybe I could have gotten myself stabilized at an earlier age.  But now, I’m now 41 years old and looking at a minimum of a year to get myself stabilized on  meds.  I would love to go back to work but who is going to want to hire a 42 year old man who has been out of the workforce for three years and has a history of getting fired and quitting jobs.  Heck, my therapist and psychiatrist might say that it's better for me not to work full time.  I’m just frustrated about everything right now and a little depressed but I am going to continue my treatment and at least look at the bright side which is that my mania has went away.  So I guess I do have something to be thankful for!!  Its 414am and this Klonopin is sort of starting to work because I’m a little tired so I’m going to go to bed and see what happens….goodnight!