Purple Rain

Yesterday we went on an adventure. On our way back toward civilization I saw off in the distance a cloud whose bottom half was purple. My husband pointed out that it was a rain cloud and while I know this already, it was not until he said that that I thought of the reference to Prince.
We laughed about it and I joke, "maybe it is an omen or a message from Prince."
I think it is funny.
...but also I am a bit curious
especially since a couple of days ago my very sober father said something about vultures in trees close to his house and joked or wondered if they were omens.
I am not really a Prince fan. I never was all that excited by his music so I really have no idea what the song Purple Rain is about. So when were back into cellphone range I look it up. The lyrics are pretty receptive and vague really, so I then look up what it means or meant to him and those who wrote the song. I find this: The Story of ... 'Purple Rain' by Prince and it says this:

"Prince explained the meaning of 'Purple Rain' as: 'When there's blood in the sky – red and blue = purple... purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain.'"

Another source I find confirms that this statement was made by Prince himself and this omen now becomes evidence of God's sense of humor with me...
That is until the lucid dreams of last night, that were putting together and making logical links to far too much evidence of how I really should lay down my life for the sake of others, that in this way, I am not just relieving the burden of me from those I have loved but that the important things I keep fighting to be heard but that are largely ignored are much more likely to be heard if I write it and seal it with my blood. And this little quote is repeating in my head; "Greater love hath no love than he lay down his life for his brother." Why am I fighting so hard to keep me a live when maybe I really do need to sacrificed for so many people that I love? Maybe I need to look at this differently and maybe that is what I really need to do...
And then my husband walks through the door.  I always feel nervous when he walks through the door at unexpected times. I think it stems for a time when his company was under questionable management and they were firing people left and right coupled with the time he came home early because my family had not been able to get ahold of me directly to let me know that my brother had died...
But today he came home for his lunch hour. He says he just came to check on everyone.
I am not okay. I am struggling to get ahead of the thoughts that are rationally adding up to the messages I had been fighting so hard to counter. My weird dream state last night confirming what I have been told to do by so many sources.
He asks if I am okay, sits by me. I start crying because I am not okay. I am confused and scared. I want to explain but I also do not. That is when his phone rings. It is one of his higher ups. He feels he needs to answer and I am fine with that. But then he says, "yeah, I'm on my lunch. It's okay, I got a minute." And he leaves me to talk with his higher up that, from my husbands response, sounds like he would have been fine to wait until my husband was done with his lunch break.
Reinforcing.... Emily Dickinson. Only heard after she was dead. She made the ultimate sacrifice, laid down her life, to be heard.
Maybe not so with her, I really don't know, but my conscience is saying "greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his brother" while the dreams remind me of he who I was supposed to be sacrificed for.  The shadowy whispers of my lucid dreams tell me only he can end this, and they remind me "you are the bad guy because you won't die." .... And the purple rain is just for me, the end of my days and a command that I just keep refusing to follow through with.. or to understand. Maybe the way to be heard, to help others, is to write it with my blood... and how, now, do I go about doing that?...
My husbands ease in putting me off for the phone call yet another confirmation...
When he returns I still try to explain some, after all he made an effort to come home and check on me.
He tells me it is "silly to think that way."  I try to explain that I did not go to bed choosing to connect all these dots in my sleep. He offers a sighing apology with hints of his annoyed disappointed. I close off and cannot look at him. The back of my head turns into a mirror as he asks "is there anything I can do to help?"
I reflect quietly, "I think it has already been established that you can't" and "you will do what you want" the later being his own words that he had so often used to excuse himself from discussing things with me.
He does not like that, curses something about trying to help and then leaves.
...so
what and I to do? I refuse to kill myself for the benefit of others...
Now what?
Should I reconsider this decision and prove my love people for people by sacrificing myself? Hoping to make a stately that cannot be  very ignored as easily as I am?
It is a hard place when logic and reason point to the same place as your insanity...

"I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted to one time to see you laughing
I only wanted to see you
Laughing in the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you
Bathing in the purple rain
I never wanted to be your weekend lover
I only wanted to be some kind of friend
Baby, I could never steal you from another
It's such a shame our friendship had to end
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you
Underneath the purple rain
Honey, I know, I know
I know times are changing
It's time we all reach out
For something new, that means you too
You say you want a leader
But you can't seem to make up your mind
I think you better close it
And let me guide you to the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
If you know what I'm singing about up here
C'mon, raise your hand
Purple rain, purple rain
I only want to see you
Only want to see you


In the purple rain"

-The Artist Formerly Known as Prince

Welcome to Murray Utah's Intermountain Neuroscience Institute where Victim shaming and blaming and intentionally misdiagnosing prevails

This quarantine time is bringing others around me down, which brings me down. I am hopeful and happy and have plenty of ideas but my significant others are often too cool, too timid, too boring or whatever to work toward goals or to act on my ideas with me. And I still absorb that energy. I also am  too easily dissuaded and I still value and credit people even when they devalue me or my ideas. So I think maybe they are right and I should quit trying. (adding next day when I am not feeling angry... I do know that for my kids, and likely some others including myself, part of what causes them (and me) to shy away from my ideas is the trials we have been through with others that just don't understand how I work and, more likely now, the manic turn of events that really made a mess of me)
I am recognizing these things about myself now but still struggling to overcome. Maybe a bit afraid that my personality pendulum will swing too far and drop me into the self absorbed narcissist land that is all too common in our societies.
It's a tricky balance, to value oneself and maybe that is why today I am feeling an elevated anger about victim shaming and blaming.
I read and answer question on Quora.com  from time to time and I have been wanting to write some about some observations I have made. I want to tackle the subject of victim shaming that is so heavily and grossly present in our societies and American culture. I want to explain how sometimes victims continue to be victims because they don't accept themselves that they are victims. We are taught not to be a victim and that if you are repeatedly a victim it is then your fault. "Hit me once shame on you hit me twice shame on me." But today I feel almost too angry to tackle this the way I'd like. SO maybe I will just try to point out that until we recognize and accept that we were in fact a victim and we stop blaming ourselves for the way others have used and abused us we can't get out of the cycles because we don't even see ourselves as a victim. We likely are accepting too much responsibility and people will jump on that band wagon happily so that they can feel quite free for ways they may also be using and abusing you. And you won't even realize they are - may even credit them with "trying to help." It's warped and I do not feel I am explaining well. I think I will post anyway and come back to read this later just to see if writing when I am angry makes any sense at all.... But then am I doing a disservice to what I really want to share?.. See, what they hell? Damn it self, quit listening to the internal and external bullshit that tells you to discredit yourself!!
...So giving myself some credit ...
I answered this question on Quora If you're a therapist and you've accidentally become attached to a client emotionally, what should you do? You can read it via the link but what I really want to share is the1st reply to my answer. The lovely Crystal says this:

 "Yes!! They get to tell themselves that the termination was “ethical" and all of their colleagues will pat them on the back for doing the right thing. Mean while the client is abandoned and going through hell, alone. Who will they turn to? No one will likely understand the very real pain of a therapist doing this to you"

And I want to share it because of how accurately and perfectly she describes what follow on this type of "ethical termination."
And I can can "and those who they do turn to will also get screwed up by the mess or jump on the victim blaming and shaming band wagon."
And for some reason I am hurting especially bad today and I find myself so angry at the abuses from a medical institution because they wanted to protect their own. There own that is being in patted on the back for his "ethical termination" and being "poor man"ed by his coworkers and colleagues when he was the jack ass that used me and then manipulated me to protect himself.
I feel so angry sometimes, knowing that there is no way in hell he, at no point, stopped and thought, "maybe she really is/was manic." There is no way in hell he, at some point did not know this, and yet he dismissed it. They all did. They dismissed and misdiagnosed intentionally to hide something.
And that IS very unethical and very wrong and yet, no one wants to listen, no one wants to understand and no one wants to protect the victim. And if I take myself out of the equation THAT REALLY PISSES ME OFF!!!
But that is wrong to, I am putting myself back into the equation because it is me and my equation and it is wrong that it happened to me and I am pissed that it happened to me.
And I find myself wanting to know more and more, exactly why and what they have worked so hard to keep hidden... just what I stumbled onto that is so that they are so afraid to face or have exposed?
What really is the Intermountain Neuroscience Institute and what are they trying to hide?

March Madness -Game Time

The medication game.
This is a fun reality that comes along with a brain like mine. I am just kidding about that, if you didn't catch my sarcasm implied by italics.
The medication game can be difficult. It is especially difficult for my dads daughter (me) that hates taking any medication for anything almost as much as her dad does.
But for me, at times in my life it is necessary- medication that is. Well, if I want to live any quality of life anyway.
So my recent and most complex cocktail yet has consisted of several vitamins and supplements including (but limited to) a thyroid support, biotin, and fish oil, and the perscritptions: quetiapine (generic for Seraguel) at 200mg extended release and 50-100mg regular release every night, dextroamphetamine sulfate (generic for Adderall) at 15-30mg's daily and escitolapram at 15mg nightly (generic for lexapro).
Prior to the second TBI causing car accident of 2017, I was managing well with only the vitamins, supplements, and Adderall at 10-20 mg's on most days, but not all. I did not take it on days that I had nothing going on or nothing I needed to worry about focusing for. I do believe I was coming out of a bit of a depression but I had not needed medication for it. I think out of 100% (100% meaning no depression or anxiety) I was about 70-80% fine in terms of depression and 90% good on anxiety. (90% of the time having none, 70-80% of the time, not depressed at all or only very mild symptoms of depression were present).
Then the blow to the head instantly flipped it. It was like someone took the thread that had me almost completely stitched together and yanked it unstitching me all the way down to 10% held together against anxiety symptoms and 20% held together against depression symptoms. I was an emotional mess.
After one week of working and trying to be fine I was a mess. I could not remember things, my brain was foggy, I was emotional and anxious, AND I had developed a sinus infection. After my concerned chiropractor diagnosed a concussion I scheduled an appointment with my regular family doctor (who could also treat the sinus infection).
He immediately put me on Lexapro.
I cried.
Like I had everyday since the car accident and like I would everyday until about day 5 of being on the new anti anxiety and antidepressant medication. The anxiety started to be a bit more manageable as well.
Fast forward to now. If you have followed you know the insane story that has me now on 3 medications for my brain. There has also been a suggested 4th; an anticonvulsant due to the possibility of  seizures that the EEG was suggesting.
While I have had some undeniable seizure activity now, they have still been very minor and only when I am asleep (with one exception that happened just after waking up), so I just can't do it. I can't add a 4th drug to my mix. At least not before consulting with a neurologist that actually treats and has experience with treating people with TBI's. But that appointment has taken months and I am still waiting.
So in the meantime - because I am resourceful and maybe also because I refuse to be be a victim or wait around for everyone else to figure it out for me- I have wondered if maybe dropping one of the three medications could solve the tiny baby seizure problem.
I presented the idea of dropping the Lexapro to my psychiatric PA. She is on board with the idea and guided me in how to proceed, making sure I know and will respond appropriately if I start slipping into depression and/or we find that the Lexapro may be "doing more than we think."
The team work is nice.
So I started the weening process a couple of weeks ago and last night made the big decision to not take the lexapro. I have been taking 5mg for at least a week and it has not seemed to be adversely affecting me.
... but today, with none in my system, I feel it; that I am once again playing the medications game.
Going off medications like this can be difficult. I actually went off the Lexapro for a couple of weeks back in March or April of last year when I was still under the care of the negligent Neuroscience Institute. At that point I was not on the Seroguel, just the Lexapro and Adderall (but Adderall only when I wasn't feeling high). I went off the Lexapro because I wanted to know what my baseline was since Dr. Concussion was being so... conservative?... in her treating me and kept wanting me to hold out to see if I would recover without changing or adding medication. (that was really stupid of her, btw, because I was literally fading, which in the bipolar brain IS dying -it'd be the equivalent of having a diabetic try to wait it out to see if their pancreas will magically start producing insulin again and balance out the glucose- probably not an intelligent risk to take)
Even though I weened easily last year, I felt an increase in irritability and a decrease in patience in addition to the mood instability that was still playing out so I had decided to go back on it.
This time, today, I feel a more familiar going-off-medication kind of feel. It is like a weird lightheaded feeling that comes on sometimes. Like in grocery stores. In fact as I think about it I am wondering if the weird lightheaded feeling comes on more in when their is an added element of stress. Not that stores are stressful but rather I don't seem to experience it so much when I am just hanging out at home working on nothing out of the ordinary or of significance. Of course this is only the first day off. I will have to pay attention to this. Sometimes these feelings can intensify, letting you know you went off too fast. Then the prudent and typical course of action is to try half of the 5's and maybe every other day. But if the lightheadedness does not intensify in the next couple of days I will endure until it resolves... or until  I tire of the weird feeling and start taking it again to try weening slower again.
Sometimes it can be pretty ridiculous, like with Paxil -holy cow, that one is stupid hard to get off of. This feeling is similar to that, but like 1 or 2 out of 10, Paxil being the worst weird lightheadedness at 10 ... Paxil has a world-is-shaking-and/or-spinning too. I'd be down to about the equivalent of about a lick but every time I'd stop the shaky world and lightheaded weirdness would start and not stop. I'd try to endure and out last it but after 2 weeks (or more) I'd cave. I finally was able to get off, but it took going onto a different medication, Welbutrin, to get off it.  Weening off the Welbutrin was nothing.
So it is medication game time again. As I am reflecting I think I do remember a bit of lightheadedness the first day or so when I tried going off the Lexapro last year.
We'll see how it goes this year.