Devoted to My Deprecation

A Diary of My Dual Diagnosis Recovery

Posted April 18, 2009 by Pamela D. Hood, RN

I’m an adopted 45 year-old, Registered Nurse, with a family history of mental illness. It’s hard to tell if my grandmother had bipolar, but by her behavior, it sounds as though she could have been. She lived from family to family, never married, and one day she dropped my mother and uncle off in a Oakland Orphanage, never to return.

My mother never married, gave me up for adoption also. Right after my 18th birthday, she found me and wanted to resume a relationship. I grew up in a mixed home of a stable, loving, hard-working father, and an unstable, mentally ill/alcoholic mother who had serious anxiety issues, drinking and taking prescription medication daily. She was detached, isolated, and above all others.

My sister and I both were adopted from separate mothers and have now been diagnosed as adults with bipolar. We have been estranged from each other for over 5 years. My father passed away in 1999; our love and rock of reality gone. My father hid my mother’s illness from outsiders, except close family members, but nothing was ever said. He suffered so much with her. He protected her.

I had classic signs and symptoms at the age of 12 of pathological lying, co-dependency, inability to form friendships, and insecurity. I became hyper-sexually active upon my mother’s encouragement at 14. If I wasn’t in a relationship with an older guy, like 17 or 18, she thought something was wrong with me. She had me on diets even though I was not overweight and was very active. When I started having serious sex and relationship issues, like lying and cheating and physically fighting with my boyfriends, it was because I had been a “slut.” When I asked for help from my parents, because I knew something was wrong with me, and I told the doctor my family was “dysfunctional,” my mom said she would not waste money on a shrink, because I was selfish and just wanted my way, even though she herself spent thousands on chiropractors, Trazadone, Xanax, alcohol, and cigarettes.

I suffered so many years feeling bad, stupid, selfish, weak, undisciplined, lost, lonely, crazy, being in one bad relationship after another, making very poor financial decisions, writing bad checks for thousands of dollars, for no reason, changing jobs, moving every few months. I couldn’t settle down, I was restless, hopeless, stumbling from one big disaster after another. Living in chaos, drama was natural and normal for me. I knew nothing else. I put myself in some serious, dangerous situations with other dangerous people – prostitution, drug abuse, married men, pornography, getting married, getting pregnant, going to jail.

I’ve seen a lot. I was in some bad situations, but I never lost my faith or hope. I knew something would change and I would be a better person if I worked hard enough and did more than most to make up for my mistakes.

I have been married 3 times, and have 3 children. One I gave up for adoption. Two have bipolar. I put them trough hell backwards, but I can honestly say I truly did my best to give them all I could, which in some cases was not to their advantage. My oldest daughter and I have had a hard relationship; she blamed me for her bipolar. I never considered being sick, just a bad person. I took the blame my family believed I had caused her from my lifestyle choices of fast living, bad men, and drugs. Even though it was chaos, I always worked hard, went to school, and provided a living for my kids. I even went to night school and became a nurse, working full-time and being married to an alcoholic, who truly didn’t love me, but stayed with me because he felt sorry for me!

Mental illness and drug addiction for my family has been a generational curse. I learned my poor coping skills from my mom, and my kids learned it from me. We all have our drugs of choice from the inside out and all around us, when we have nowhere to turn to find sobriety to free us.

I have destroyed every relationship in my life. I’m friendless and isolated. I don’t think I could handle anyone right now from all of the destruction that has been endured. I was working 2 full-time jobs, paying 3 car payments and a $370,000 mortgage, buying $60,000 in clothes, jewelry and make-up, and have lost everything. I was manic for 3 years, non-compliant, in denial. I had severe anxiety and psychotic thoughts. I was alone, possessed, suicidal, unable to bounce back like I had before, unable to hide in my fake busy lifestyle, covering up the mess and the pain. I was so angry at God for this suffering, I would go to church for some answers, some relief. Everyone seemed so fake or so happy, why couldn’t I have just a little?

No one ever talked of mental illness; in fact, I didn’t believe in it. I believed, even as a nurse, it was attention-seeking behavior, selfishness, and that with some discipline and self control, they could get on with their lives and stop disrupting us who were working so hard to make ends meet. I was so wrong. After trying many medications, going to therapy, 12-step, AA, NA, rehab, doing it on my own, promises, lies, and chance after chance, I am just coming to terms with where I’m at in this life, and it’s at the beginning. Where I go from here is my choice. I am educating myself, learning the rules, and have come to understand what my triggers are, what it’s like to be patient, kind and to care of myself. To seek a quiet, humble, to live a balanced/paced life. To rest and take baby steps, day by day. To survive the setback and row through the good lesson of life. To take my medications so this long, deadly disease if you let it won’t run away with your you mind. Have boundaries, rules, support, and a plan.

I have a wonderful dog named COCO. She stayed with me through my nightmare every step of the way with love, loyalty, and quiet support throughout the darkest of nights. As I recover, I can look back in this horrific life I have lived so far, and accept that it’s ok to be alone, and that everything has its time, place, and purpose, perfectly prepared to get us where we have been to where we need to be.

If anything, my life has exposed or has been able to project, it is that my children have more strength, wisdom, insight, resources, and first-hand experience of what this life can hand you, whether it be tragedy, or a cancer, that comes with grief, that they have become more compassionate, diverse, and tolerant of other people, their situations, weaknesses, or their disabilities, which they can identify with it and offer their lives, in support and understanding.

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