working through it

here's the fun part: let's talk about work. during my lovely life i have had 6 jobs. i got my very first job when i was 15 at an amusement park type place doing face painting and some other things, but face painting was my favorite. and the hand waxing was pretty cool too. anyway, i feel my disorder was a blossoming child back then and not the nagging, consistent monster it is today, so it didn't affect my work much. that was nice. i only worked there one summer because i was still in high school. my second job was at another amusement park in a different city (the job i got after dropping out of college the first time) and it was a pretty wonderful job. not the best coworkers, but the job was in an amazing spot, so that was fun. my next job was after i moved back home, at yet another amusement park (yeah i know, it's a pattern) but they didn't give me enough hours, so i got a second job at a restuarant. i hated that and quit. so i got a different second job at my favorite frozen yogurt place and worked there for a few months, then realized my boss was a mean mean woman and quit. i was back to only the one amusement park job, but by then they were giving me more hours and i loved it and i adored the majority of my coworkers, so i ended up staying there for almost 3 years. i eventually quit because of some stupid drama. i'll get into that in another post because yes, it had to do with bipolar disorder because a shitty person i worked with decided to manipulate mine and i quit because of the stress of being around said horrible person once i figured out they were intentionally triggering my increasignly frequent episodes and breakdowns. but i loved that job until the drama. now my current job is a much more professional one that has to do with that whole lawyer goal i spoke of in my bipolar and school post. but i'm going to have to leave it soon because--guess why!--my fucking bipolar disorder. so now that i've listed my jobs throughout my life i'm going to list how each job was affected by my disorder. like i said, my symptoms were much less severe when i was 15, so minus a few off days here and there, it didn't really affect my first job. the restaurant and frozen yogurt jobs weren't really affected by it either, because i wasn't at either one for very long. the 3 jobs it has affected are the 3 jobs i've actually cared about. let me start with the second amusement park job, the one from when i was away from home and had just dropped out of school.

when i first started that job i was living in an apartment near campus (across the street from all the frat houses, to be exact) and i had 3 awesome roommates. i loved everything but school. i quit school and started the most exciting job ever, and everything was great. i moved out of my apartment with the 3 awesome roomies and started renting a room from a married couple who rented out their 3 spare bedrooms (i rented one, then there was another girl in the second one and a guy in the third) because it was closer to my job and other circumstances that i won't get into. for the first while everything was great. i was pleasant as fuck and i was chipper and happy and doing great at work and at life in general. then i started getting a little homesick. basically, this is where things went downhill. i don't know what triggered it. actually, that's a lie. i do know one thing that triggered it. i didn't have a psychiatrist in that city so i only saw my psychiatrist when i went home on school breaks, but since i wasn't in school anymore and i had a fulltime job i didn't get breaks, which meant i didn't go home, which meant i didn't see my psychiatrist... i was running low on the prescribed dosage of my bipolar meds and, seeing as i'd been perfectly fine and happy lately, i decided to lower the dosage myself and take my stash of 150mg pills instead of the 200mg pills i'd been adjusted to, because i had run out of 200mg and i was fine, right? WRONG. so fucking wrong. but i was happy, i didn't need to see a doctor, i thought i knew what was best so i lowered my own dosage. this is where shit went downhill. i don't remember everything from the several months that followed this, because when i have severe episodes or breakdowns i have memory gaps. it sucks, but it is what it is. that being said, i don't remember how this all started or what order it went in or how quickly it progressed. all i know is i stopped being able to sleep because i started getting night terrors. i'd wake up having panic attacks, but at the same time i'd have sleep paralysis so i'd be flipping out on the inside but unable to move on the outside for what felt like hours, and the entire time i'd see this demon-like face staring at me from across the room until i could finally blink my eyes and move and sit up in my panic and scramble into the corner of my bed and sit with my back against the wall so i could see anything that came at me from the walls. this became a nightly routine: fall asleep, have a night terror, wake up with a panic attack/sleep paralysis, curl up in the corner where i felt safe and stare at the walls until morning. so i stopped sleeping. then i started hallucinating. i saw floating black cats meander across my line of vision, i'd see people walk by, i'd answer questions at work that were never asked, i'd respond to people who didn't exist, and i'd hear conversations between men in my head. i saw a dead body once that the people beside me couldn't see. i saw my own self laying in my bed one day and THAT shit was creepy as fuck. i started getting jumpy and paranoid because i wasn't sleeping and i was constantly seeing/hearing things. i started getting major bouts of psychosis. i finally got a psychiatrist in the city i was living in, and she re-diagnosed me with schizo-affective disorder. turns out i don't have that and i'm a clear case of bipolar type 1, but that's how severe the psychosis was at the time. i was not okay, not at all. and it showed at work. i was jumpy, i talked to myself, i talked to people who weren't there, i started scaring myself so much that i would have daily breakdowns in the bathroom at work. eventually i couldn't hold the breakdowns in and sometimes they would happen in front of guests or coworkers. people started to think i was weird. no one told me, but i could definitely tell. finally one day i completely lost it at work and my lead pulled me aside and i confessed that i'm bipolar and i was having a really rough time lately and i didn't know what to do and i really wanted to stop crying but i couldn't. she told me she understood. but she didn't. she started treating me like a piece of porcelain or glass after that. she had good intentions, i'm sure. but i was no longer human to her. i was bipolar incarnate. she warned all the other leads not to upset me, so everyone just tiptoed around me to make sure i was okay. that made things a million times worse. and during this all the night terrors and psychosis and sleep deprivation and paranoia were still going and i didn't know what the fuck to do, so my mom convinced me to move back home with her and get myself together mentally. and so i did. i must say, it was a wonderful decision. i'm doing a million times better than i was at that point (that remains the darkest/hardest few months of my life), but the point is, i left my job because of it. and that sucked.

now my next amusement park job, the one i was at for nearly 3 years, was amazing. i loved the job and the coworkers. we felt like a big happy family. albeit slightly dysfunctional at times, but still a big family when it came down to it. until all the drama shit happened, but that will be another post to do with manipulation and bipolar disorder. this one has to do with the jobs. i was hired at this job about 3 months after i quit the other job and moved back home. i had a new psychiatrist, an even higher dosage of meds than i was supposed to be taking before when i lowered it myself, and i was a little hypomanic. i was hired on the spot, i'd guess because of my cheerfulness and endless optimism. fits in well with amusement parks. anyway, i started this job with a bang. i was the new super happy but kinda weird and quirky girl who talked to everyone and just said random shit without thinking or having a filter and never ran out of energy. whatever, i was me. the voices and hallucinations were still going on, but this time they were happy ones. no more shrieking voices warning me of things as i tried to drift off to sleep; now they were happier versions of myself that kept me company while i worked (i later figured out these voices weren't normal either, but i'll address that in another post). i bounced around work talking with guests and coworkers with endless amounts of energy and i was always eager to help. this hypomania quickly turned into mania, and before i knew it i had stopped eating, stopped sleeping much, i was writing my stories for hours on end instead of going to bed, i spent hundreds of dollars (about $800) on freakin body sprays and lingerie within one hour one day and i could not contain my energy. this is what they knew at my new job: this happy, exaggerated, neverending version of myself. i had forgetten what it was like to not be happy. hell, i didn't know i'd ever been sad a day in my life. i just couldn't comprehend it. eventually my mania started to dwindle down, but there was no hard "snap" out of it this time. it just kinda slowly faded, i was like fuck where'd my money go and how many coworkers did i sleep with?! shit, oh well. too late now. and i lived my life as a relatively level-headed version of myself. i had a couple minor episodes during the first couple years of this job, some minor rapic-cycling, but nothing serious minus that major manic episode when i was first starting. no one suspected anything, and only my closest friends at work knew about my disorder and could tell when i had mood shifts. until the panic attacks started happening. there was this cash register that gave me the WORST anxiety of my life every time i was put there. i tried to tell my supervisors but they all thought i was exaggerating. they'd put me there, and i would manage to hold it off until my lunch or break, and then i'd go have a panic attack in a bathroom stall and fifteen minutes later come back like nothing had happened. i was becoming a pro at this shit; no one suspected i was slowly falling apart on the inside. until one day when i very obviously fell apart on the outside, right there at my cash register in front of an entire line of people and a handful of my coworkers. i literally ran away from my register and back to the employee section and had a full blown panic attack. they sent me on an early and long-as-i-needed lunch until i was ready to come back. and when i came back the supervisor who was on duty asked what was wrong, and said she'd never seen me like this before. i told her everything: the bipolar disorder, why i moved back home, the daily breakdowns i'd been having in the bathrooms when no one could see me. and she listened. she learned! she understood as best as she could! she told the other supervisors and leads (with my permission) and they made a collective effort to accomadate my occasional panic attacks, mood swings, and any other difficulties i'd tried so hard to hide before. they helped me so much, and for that i'm forever grateful. fessing up to my disorder at that job was the best decision i could've made, but eventually the breakdowns caused me to quit and move on to a new job. like i said, more on that in another post. my bosses weren't the ones who drove me to leave, it was one specific coworker. but in the end, it was my disorder that made me unable to handle it. so i left a job i absolutely adored because of it.

this brings me to my current job. i love this job more than any job i've had before. my work family is TRULY a family. we don't have conflicts, we don't talk mess (other than playful and hilarious insults that are all outta love), we don't gossip unless it's about netflix shows, and we treat each other with respect (usually. like i said, there are lots of insults). we have each other's backs and practically everyone there knows about my struggle with bipolar disorder. i'm super open with them because i trust them, and they all treat me exactly as they would anyone else, except sometimes letting me cry on them or vent to them or maybe pointing out the fact that i'm hearing things that aren't there again. really, i love them all and i love what i do. but i have to leave now. the frequent medication changes, episodes, and memory gaps are starting to take a toll on my work. i'm not consistent enough when i have episodes and it affects too many people. the level of responsibility i have can't be turned off when i'm depressed, and therein lies the problem. i've been depressed for a couple months now and my quality of work has gone downhill. it's happened before. i've had to take time off while my brain adjusts to a new medication, and again when i decided the new medication wasn't working for me and stopped it, and again when i tried a different new one, etc. i do bomb work when i'm manic, but that can't last forever. (if it did i'd literally have no money ever). i even do bomb work when i'm hypomanic or in a level mood, which is actually pretty rare. i don't feel normal often. but the meetings don't stop when i'm depressed. deadlines don't disappear when my brain is mush. work doesn't go away when i don't feel up to it, and this is a very crucial role i have at my work. people depend on me, and i can no longer fool myself into thinking i'm constantly up for it. because the truth is i'm not. i'm not always okay, and when i'm not okay i'm a shitty employee. i don't try to be. i try to do my best. i always do. i dont even notice i'm slipping until things start going wrong and i have that "oh shit" panic moment, but then it's too late. that thing i didn't realize in time, or remember to do, or do correctly, or submit to someone important, or write down as a reminder, or that meeting i never set up, those things don't stop happening when my brain stops working. and it's not fair to my coworkers or my bosses. i have to leave. and it kills me. i really love my job, i do. but i'm not what it needs me to be often enough. and i'm about to walk away from the 3rd job i've ever loved because of this goddamn disorder, and at this point i don't know where to go.

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