#prioritizing. i can plan but i cant prioritize for shit. i will spiral for hours doing nothing bc i can't decide what comes 1st. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tracedandreplaced-blog · 6 years

Text

Termination of Employment or the Time Lithium Exploded my Brain -bipolar storytime 2

I'd been working in the buying office of one of the largest high end fashion retailers in the country for about six months when everything went to shit, but let's hold off on that for now. It was the best job I'd ever had. It paid very well and exposed me to an exciting industry I'd never been apart of. I felt like I was performing at a high level (which I was at first), and it seemed that I fit in well. My coworkers were ultra high functioning people and fun to be around. They were sharp dressers and I learned to dress well too. Disconnected undercut, check. Skinny tie with tie clip, check. Overly shortened tight slacks exposing brightly colored "statement socks" under monthly shined wing tips, that too. I took the commuter train downtown everyday and read snobbish mid century east coast intellectual literature through dark sunglasses even in the tunnels to complete the look. I boarded buses and strutted, really strutted, down the Seattle sidewalks at a million miles an hour. My confidence was going through the roof, which was important after coming out of my last job, which I didn't exactly fail at, but never really did as well as I hoped.

It took a few months to come out of the "learning period" and really be expected to take on responsibility and perform. I did that at about the right time and for awhile there, my team was impressed. They felt lucky they landed one of the good ones to support them. I handled product set up and clearance promotion execution. It was the lowest rung on the ladder in the buying office, but still a lot of pressure, for if I didn't do my job right, no one else could do theirs. The products had to be in the system, and they had to be right. It was a shit ton of data. I probably got 200 emails a day.

But after I'd been really pulling my weight for a couple months, the headaches started. They didn't seem normal. They weren't I drank too much headaches, they weren't pop a few ibuprofens and carry on with your day headaches, they were ice picks driving into my skull and then being lit on fire headaches. Anytime they'd hit, usually in the afternoon, I'd be sidelined for the rest of the day. I'd stay at work and pretend to be okay, but I was really just sitting at my computer clicking back and forth to random emails and spreadsheets, doing absolutely nothing. I saw a doctor and she said they were cluster headaches. Migraines that came in cycles and caused extreme pressure and stabbing pains. I tried heavy duty anti inflammatories, steroids, and even oxygen therapy, but nothing worked. Until Lithium.

For some reason, explained the doctor, Lithium was able to usually break the cycles of these particular types of headaches and patients could cease taking it after a month or so without the headaches returning. They didn't really know why, but there you go.

My headaches went away about a month after starting the Lithium. It was a miracle. I assumed I would get right back on the horse after this minor bump in the road and fix what ever few mistakes I'd made during said bumps. Then I'd keep kicking ass. What I didn't foresee however, was that the undiagnosed and completely unknown to me bipolar disorder would erupt like Mount St. Fucking Helens when I quit the Lithium. It was a nightmare.

The first things everyone learns when getting to know manic depression is of course the mania and the depression. These cause the scariest and most damaging consequences of the illness. But what most people massively underestimate is the impairment in cognitive functioning. Inability to focus, loss of short and long term memory, decreased pattern recognition, terrible organizational skills, inability to multi task, poor follow through, disruption of routines, and no sense of prioritization. Simply put, I started fucking everything up. My product set up information was consistently wrong, if even done at all. I would forget or mess up live dates on essential promotions that went out to all stores and online. A dozen or so unanswered emails consistently filled my inbox for months. They were action items for me and always caused major fallout. For some reason, I always felt like they'd just resolve themselves if ignored.

I would take extra long lunch breaks almost every day and maniacally speed walk all around the city, headphones in and hopping buses back and forth in the train tunnels or wandering through shop after shop in Pike's Place Market. I became obsessed with music I would never have listened to previously, but like the snooty academic literature, it enhanced and defined this new identity I had adopted. I used it to induce near trance like states while working or commuting to and from. I would catch other commuters staring when I came to and opened my eyes, slack faced with my gaping maw practically drooling through incessant head bobs.

I was losing the company money. A lot of money. When you're in a position that essentially starts the process of getting goods from suppliers and vendors to customers, you can miss out on hundreds if not thousands of dollars with one keystroke. If the product isn't live, it cant sell. This happened over and over. My bosses boss became aware. HR became aware. I was given a horrendous review and put on a performance plan. The beginning of the end was when I simply forgot to tell my boss that I'd be taking two weeks paternity leave for the birth of my second son, not one like previously discussed. I told him a couple days before I was supposed to come back by text. That doesn't fly.

When it was obvious I was going down in flames and probably weeks away from getting fired, my wife suggested I try and get some help. There was definitely something going on here. I was a smart person, she kept saying, but something was causing it all to breakdown. I needed to go to a psychologist.

After a few visits, he diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. That's a story for another time, but I can at least say that I now had hope for the situation. I thought it wasn't too late to save my job, all I had to do was get on some drugs and go see a shrink. But it was too late. Ironically, I wan't able to get my Lamictal prescription filled for the first time until the day I was officially terminated. Initially I thought they wouldn't be able to fire me at all. Like that would be some sort of discrimination. I mean, I was disabled now, right? But in fact they have no legal obligation to continue employment if I am unable to do the job effectively, illness or not. I discussed welfare, disability, and leave of absence with HR when the first rumblings of action were taking place. I had a family to support. But HR couldn't help me with any of that. I hadn't worked there long enough and my situation didn't fit the specific requirements. I left and got a part time job in retail that didn't cover half of daycare costs.

During my very first appointment with my Psychiatrist, which was weeks after the first Psychologist appointment due to a patient intake administrative error, the doctor confirmed that my brief relationship with Lithium probably did in fact trigger a downward spiral of manic depressive cycling. It was because of this that my cognitive functioning went to hell. It also didn't help that I'd been on anti depressants for the last 15 years, ever since high school. That most likely caused many of the manic episodes, which I was having much more than depressive ones. She and my Psychologist estimated the illness had manifested in my mid twenties based on the past behaviors I described, especially the drinking.

My confidence was shattered after the firing. I questioned if I'd even be able to handle part time retail, let alone get a "real job" ever again. The schedule that had me working evenings and weekends in a completely random fashion put an incredible strain on my wife, having to handle child care alone and never connecting with me outside of stressed and resentful late night conversations after the kids went to bed.

We found a solution a few months later, thank God. I became a stay at home dad, which I still am today. It's the greatest and hardest thing I've ever done. She makes just enough money to keep us comfortably afloat, and since there are no daycare costs, we're not losing money for me to go to work anymore. I'm improving everyday with medication and therapy, and I think I can say my cognitive functioning is back where it belongs, but I definitely have a whole new set of fears. What if this illness gets worse, a lot worse, and I can't effectively care for them day in and day out? What if we have to send them back to daycare and I can't find a job? What if I get a job and fail miserably because of it? What if I can't do anything at all and have to go on disability? Or can't get disability? There probably is a good chance, a great chance, that none of these things will happen, but that doesn't mean I don't sit up at night playing the situations over and over in my head.

Maybe in reality getting fired was the best thing that could've happened to me. After all, it led to my diagnosis and has put me on the path to better mental health. Most days are pretty damn great and I now have the tools to work through the days that aren't. I definitely miss being a part of something so exciting, staying at home with the kids can of course get a little repetitive, but I know it wasn't the right fit for me. I remember my psychologist saying once that simply put, I can't do that type of job. A high stress, high performing office job where hundreds of emails with multiple tasks to juggle at once coming through daily will quite literally drive me insane. Even if it didn't, my brain is just not wired that way, and it is very likely I wouldn't succeed.

I have no idea what sort of work I'll do once the boys are in school, but I've got a few years to figure it out. I'm probably more suited to doing something with my hands, but have no training in any trades. Who knows, I might just stay home, cook and clean. My wife will probably be making even more then and we'll be just as comfortable money wise. Or I suppose I could just sit around and write stories no one will ever read about manic depression. It'll be like that Jimi Hendrix song, but with more trips to the doctor and less guitar solos. Thanks for reading.

#bipolar #mental health #long reads #nonfiction #prose #essay #writers

0 notes