Things aren't going so well

Clayton's illness is getting worse, to the point he's barely able to work. I'm going to try my hardest to beg and plead for more work at my job, but I don't know how well that'll go over. He's having to take some time off work and we really need something to help close the gap. Not to mention my hours have been cut severely, so really we've needed the money for a while, but we need it even more so now. It's really hard watching him get worse and knowing there's nothing I can say or do to stop it. He's doing what he can... he's getting treatment with a psychiatrist, but the meds aren't doing anything to level him out as far as his bipolar goes, and his anxiety has become almost crippling and that hasn't really been addressed by his doctor. One thing that really worries me about him is that schizophrenia runs on one side of his family. Although his mom doesn't have it, she has bipolar and has a half-brother that's full-blown schizophrenic, so I fear that his problems now may only be the tip of the iceberg. I have been trying so hard to deal with it with as much love and patience as I have, but I find myself getting so frustrated and feeling so helpless because there's nothing I can do to make him feel better. I love him so much, but watching him fall apart is tearing my heart to pieces. I don't know what else to do. I take him to his appointments, I make sure he takes his medicine, I give him the best pep talks I can muster, I comfort him when he's sad, and none of it seems to make a bit of difference. All the while I'm trying to get my emotions under control, because I've been up, down, and all over the place lately. The instability always seems to hit during the summer. I've got to get it under control. I've got to keep it together. I can't go to the hospital... who would take care of him? *sigh* I don't know. It's hard being the stable one in a relationship when really you're not stable at all.

Just when I want to be mad...

Okay, so I really don't go out of my way to be mad at my husband, but sometimes he does things that really, really infuriate me. But it seems like every time I have good reason to be mad at him he has another stroke of bad luck. This time it has to do with my health insurance. My policy was terminated recently and I'm almost certain he was the one who terminated it. I realize it was costing him a lot of extra money every month, but he told me he'd keep me covered till our divorce. Thankfully I have Medicare and Medicaid to fall back on, but they don't cover absolutely everything and I'll be very lucky if I don't end up in a monstrous amount of debt. So I honestly had good reason to be pissed off. Then his house burned down. I am sooooooo pissed at him, but at the same time, it's hard to be too angry at someone when their house burns down. I really don't know what to say. It honestly seems like every time I'm pissed at him he has a run of bad luck. Shortly after I left and he hit me up for $800 I really didn't have he had a motorcycle accident. The girl he cheated on me with who was his "soulmate" dumped him after I went in the hospital the second time last summer because she thought what he was putting me through was cruel. I find out he's trying to move to New York over some woman and leave the company he worked with (thus canceling my policy), and although he ended up staying with that company, the girl cheats on him right before he moves up there and dumps him a month later, and now with the insurance and his house burning down. Either he just has really bad luck or karma's biting him in the butt.

It makes me sad sometimes

Clayton and I were talking last night, and it brought up something that makes me sad when I stop to think about it, which would be all the things I've lost because of my illness. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't necessarily change things because I love him very much and my illness led me to meet him, but sometimes it's hard thinking about the way things could have been. I had a full scholarship to a good school in a good program, and I was unable to finish because of my illness. Right now I could have a masters degree (which is what I'd planned on) and a job I really enjoyed and made good money doing. I could've possibly avoided my disastrous relationship with my husband had I not been so dependent on him. I'm not saying I would've been happy with my ex-boyfriend, but him breaking up with me might not have led to a nearly-successful suicide attempt. Not to mention all the years and years of misery leading up to my eventual breakdown and loss of functioning. I could've had been a functional member of society rather than someone living off government assistance unable to work a real job. *sigh* I'm not saying I'm unhappy with my life the way it is now. It's just one of those things where you wonder how things could've been different in a different situation. Some of it too is wondering how things would've been different had I sought help sooner. I went a few years without treatment while my symptoms just got worse... not smart. I just didn't want concrete proof that I wasn't normal. I thought I could handle my illness without meds and I was really, really wrong.

On another note

I checked out my credit report today. Not my score, but my report. Although I'm using most of my available credit, which isn't such a good thing, I have nothing negatively affecting my score right now, so I'm pretty happy about that. I've got a couple bills in collections, but I'm making payments on them at least, so that seems to be keeping my credit out of the red. Now I just have to work on paying off my credit card and those debts, as well as paying off Clayton's debts. I thought I'd always be content to live an an apartment, but really, having a house to ourselves is so much better, and one day I'd like to own a house. I know home ownership is down the road a ways, but I'd really like to have our credit repaired so we have the option of getting a mortgage rather than renting for the rest of our lives. As far as future plans go, I'd really really like to be able to get off government assistance and have a real job. I want a normal life... as normal as it gets for a person with my illness. I'm just really scared to go off social security disability, because there's no getting it back once I lose it, and what if I can't handle a real job?

Crazy idea may not be so crazy

For the longest time it's really gotten to me that I haven't finished my bachelor's degree. A lot of it has had to do with my illness. Okay, like 99% of it. When I started college I was a really good student and got nearly straight A's. When the illness became overwhelming and I started being heavily medicated, everything went downhill, to the point that I couldn't focus on school at all. It didn't help that I kept changing majors. I really didn't intend to. When I started at Clemson University I was a food science major, and I loved it and was really good at it. After I slit my wrist and had to move closer to home, I enrolled in College of Charleston, which didn't have my major. I made the switch to being a biology major, but I kept having to withdraw from my classes for hospitalizations and actually straight up failed one semester due to leaving school after the withdraw date on account of hospitalizations and lack of focus. I had intermittent bouts of academic success... a semester here or there with a 4.0 and then back to doing poorly depending on how long my focus held out. I transfered to a technical college for one semester as a human services major, did great, went back to the biology program at CofC and lost my focus again. I came within 4 classes of a BA in biology but couldn't finish, mostly because I was never stable enough to make it through a full semester. Then I decided I'd try culinary school and I LOVED it, but after a couple semesters it became clear that it wasn't the right program for me because I could never be a chef for a few reasons. A) I can't work a 60+ hour work week. B) I would get bored making the same food over and over. And C) I would never be able to get the healthcare benefits I needed to keep my illness under control. So... fuck. What do I do now? Well, recently Clayton got his VA benefits we've been fighting for, which should include his GI bill. He wants to be an electrical engineer, starting off at the local community college and continuing on to University of Nebraska at Lincoln. So I was doing some research into UNL and found out they have a food science program, and I was shocked at how excited that made me feel. That old longing to finish my degree came barreling back into my life, and the chance to finish my original major, the one that seemed to suit me so perfectly, seems almost too good to pass up. As far as funding it goes, I might possibly be able to get some scholarships through the state, and they have this reintegration scholarship for schizophrenic, schizoaffective (like me!), and bipolar people that I might be able to get. *Sigh* I don't know if my focus or my mental stability would hold out long enough for me to finish my degree, but honestly, with all the course credits I have, both general education and in the major, I can't imagine it'd take me more than a year or two. I dunno. I hope that I wouldn't have to start over from square one since I will have been out of school for so long. But finishing my degree would mean everything to me... it would make me feel a lot less like a huge failure, and hey, maybe I'll get stable enough that I can actually work a full time job. My dream job would be doing research and development... coming up with new food products for a big company like Kraft or something. I dunno. It might be a crazy idea, but maybe not.

Okay, maybe "normal" was a strong word...

I hear voices. Most of the time it's just random shit and they're not actually talking to me, but yesterday one was talking to me and saying some really mean things. It went away after I took my medicine with food. I'm supposed to take it with food every night, but lately I haven't been eating nearly as much and thus have neglected to take it with food most nights. It doesn't absorb nearly as well without food, so... yeah. But it's better now and I just have to be vigilant about taking my meds the way they're supposed to be taken. I still think something's not quite right with my medicine. Lately I haven't been sleeping through the night, and last night I only slept for about four and a half hours before I couldn't go back to sleep... been up since about 1:45. Bleh. I tried to go back to sleep, I really did, but after I got Clayton up for work at 3:30 and I'd been awake for nearly 2 hours, I decided there wasn't much point to getting back in bed feeling so wide awake. I'm seeing my doctor in two days, so maybe I can get this straightened out. I take medicine for sleep, but the last couple nights I've been taking NyQuil so I haven't taken it because you're not supposed to mix the two (benzo's + alcohol = bad). I'll forgo the NyQuil tonight though so I can get a good night's sleep (hopefully). I'm seeing a dermatologist tomorrow because I've been a little broken out lately and that definitely needs to go away. Honestly, I've struggled most of my adult life with acne, and the only thing that really made it go away was birth control, which I obviously haven't been on since I had my tubes tied. *sigh* I really didn't want to be up this early. I might have a photo shoot in Wichita later this month/ early July. It's focusing on cutting scars, and sadly I have plenty of those. I've had problems with it for about 11 years now, although in the past six years it hasn't been nearly as bad as it was. In my teens I would often cut every other day and I would never really give myself a chance to heal. I only had to get stitches once, but that one time nearly freaking killed me. That was almost six years ago, and thankfully it has never gotten nearly that bad again.

Life's back to normal

... or as normal as my life can be. I got back on the full dose of my antidepressant and feel soooooooo much better. Things had gotten a little rocky between Clayton and me there for a hot minute, but that seems to have improved with being back on my full dose too. It also helps that he's finally getting help for his mental illness (recently diagnosed bipolar). Huge relief. It was definitely wearing me down being his (nearly) sole support when he had his highs and lows. Of course I wanted to be there for him, but at some point it was starting to negatively affect my psychological well being too. I felt helpless. I've put so much energy into making him feel better that I've had to sacrifice some of my happiness. It's a lot to ask of me to be the stable one in a relationship, but that's what I've had to be. But I think now that he's starting on some mood stabilizers and going to therapy, some of that weight is going to be lifted from my shoulders.

Not much else is going on. I've finally got all my canning supplies together and ready to go, so I'm going to make some jam today. I got mangoes, raspberries, and blueberries. I was supposed to just use mangoes and raspberries for the recipe, but raspberries were expensive and blueberries were on sale, so I decided to go for a happy medium and get some of each. Honestly, I'm pretty sure I got way too many mangoes. I might see if there's a different mango recipe in my book that calls for more mango and just eat the berries. That would make me happy. :)