I make no bones about the fact that I am bipolar. I make no bones about the fact that it is hard, and that sometimes all I do is sleep for 14 hours at a stretch. And that, of all things, my biggest bugbear is my meds. I dislike them and don’t consider them as necessary as perhaps I should. I’m not anti meds – I’m just anti meds for me.
I have tried though, to keep an aspect of our lives sheltered – that is, I try not to discuss the issues we have with parenting my daughter – who is very like me in some ways. A amazing, mathematically brilliantly creative soul who has severe emotional regulation issues.
These last four weeks have been an eye opener about how the system in the UK fails to help the vulnerable, that aren’t easily categorised. I do not neglect my children, so help via social services is nigh on impossible to secure – though to be fair, after close to four weeks, we are perhaps at a turning point there. I do not agree with the lax way mental health is handled for children and have recently discovered that ‘the experts’ in childhood mental health have no answers for us other than a waiting list. And though her school is helping, we do sometimes feel incredibly isolated and like we are never going to see the end of the struggle to find a place ‘just right’ for my very intelligent, emotionally volatile beautiful girl.So, I’ve struggled recently. I just lay down and gave in, in fact. And I have more meds to aid me right now than I care to consider – bitter little crutches that hold me under the surface of sleep like I’m drowning in the most blissful dream. I rarely give in – but I feel a failure as a parent – that I cannot give her that undefinable thing that she needs, sometimes on opening her eyes.We have hard choices ahead – ones that I really don’t know if I have the strength to make – but, I hope, that long term, our lives will become easier for them and that my precious girl will not fall between the cracks and become ‘one of those’ who the system failed. Mostly because, the horrid thing is, we can’t stop that – we have tried everything we can think of and have no solutions left. [Read more...]