The Thing that I Fear the Most

I haven't been feeling very well lately. I feel thin*, brittle, stretched to the breaking point. Every morning it's such a effort to get up, get ready, fix Sweet Pea's hair, supervise the putting on of socks, go to work, come home, figure out something to make for dinner, practice violin, put Sweet Pea to bed and then go to bed to start the whole damn cycle again the next day.

Did anyone but me read the fabulous children's novel "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L Konigsburg**? I read it many times and then we discovered that our library had a recording of the book on records. My mom transferred the records to tapes for me to listen to in the car, which is why I remember parts of the book so well. There is a line in the beginning that resonates with me right now: "She was bored with the sameness of each and every day, and with the monotony of everything."

Work has a lot to do with my unhappiness right now. I am just stuck on this never ending*** wheel of reviews. I feel like if work was better everything would be better. I found out today, quite by accident, that I have my annual review with The Big Cheese tomorrow afternoon. I have no idea what I'm going to say--I'm hoping something will come to me while I'm sleeping because there are several things that I need to say.

I can't tell yet if my feelings of sadness and listlessness are the start of another cycle of depression or just a manifestation of a crappy job. I'm going to have to wait it out. It is the right time of year for a depression cycle to be starting again. My first major bout of depression started just after Thanksgiving and the holidays have been hard for me since then--stress and unfulfilled expectations along with less light and dealing with relatives... My doctor is a big believer that light and circadian rhythms play a big part in depression and bipolar disorder and it does seem to be true in my case. I hate waiting and seeing. Patience is not one of my virtues.

Today, though, the thing that I fear the most happened. Today was Sweet Pea's conference at school. The school has performed some pretty rigorous academic and behavioral testing and we'll get the results of that on the 18th, after the psychologist observes Sweet Pea in the classroom one more time. Because that meeting is coming up, the conference did not focus on academics, instead Sweet Pea's teacher discussed Sweet Pea's mood, social interaction, and disposition. The teacher showed us several of Sweet Pea's journal entries where she had written about being sad and lonely and the teacher commented on how Sweet Pea seems like a loner at school and sometimes seems depressed. When you have a mental illness, "depressed" is the last word that you want to come out of a teacher's mouth, especially in conjunction with your second grader.

A lot of this could be related to academics. We're 99.9% sure that Sweet Pea is dyslexic and she's already been diagnosed with mild ADD by both my psychiatrist and her pediatrician. I'm sure that it's reasonable to think that if Sweet Pea is feeling bad about her school work that she could be lonely and sad at school. I am trying**** to believe that if we fix the academic problems that the other problems will go away too.

But what if they don't?

Although there is no definitive genetic research, there is a lot of empirical evidence that bi-polar disorder is genetic. My family tree is a great (or horrible) example of this. I have worried about passing this disease on to Sweet Pea from the moment I was diagnosed. My diagnosis was the final nail in the coffin on my decision to not have any more children--I couldn't risk anyone else having this.

Today I almost told Sweet Pea's teacher about my diagnosis, but I choked (almost literally) on the words "I have bi-polar disorder. I am terrified that she is depressed." Although I love Sweet Pea's teacher this year, and actually feel closer to her than any of the other teachers that we've had, I worry about gossip and I worry about this stigma of mental illness. I am very free with my crazy here, because I have to hide it in the rest of my life. The Husband won't talk about it, which is the main thing that is putting an incredible strain on our marriage. (That, and his horribly dishonest, life is happy rainbows, Facebook posts--but that's a subject for another day. It's amazing how much his Facebook posts can irritate me.) No one at school knows, and while I really think Sweet Pea's teacher would keep my confidence, I can't trust her. Not when I feel so guilty.

I hate being sick and I am so worried that I have passed my worst trait on to my daughter.

*Sadly, I am not thin in real life.

**Yes, I Googled the author's name. Seriously, if you haven't read this book and enjoy children's literature (or books in general) you need to read this.

***Actually ending on November 18, which I know isn't that far away, but it feels like an eternity, especially when you see how many reviews are left to be completed.

****"Trying" is the operative word. Anyone who has tried to do anything while depressed knows how hard that can be. Speaking of that..if anyone has ever wondered what my depression feels like, this blog tells it both better, and more humorously than I ever could: Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression