I fully intended to write something light hearted today after the very serious sounding post from yesterday. Unfortunately, I’m not in a very light-hearted mood. I have started having some hallucinations again. Thankfully, they aren’t terrifying like the last bout but the mere fact that I am having them is disturbing.

I took a Xanax last night to calm down after a very long day. It was my daughter’s last day of band camp this month. She had to attend the freshman orientation camp and will go to the full high school band camp in late July. Two weeks after that, the kids go back to school. (Yes, the kids start school again on August 6th. My birthday is August 7th, so happy birthday to me!) It’s been a tiring week running her back and forth and I am worn out. That didn’t help.

Yesterday, I totally flipped. I usually don’t snap like this but then I normally don’t have people who provoke me in this manner. (The people around me know better than to pull stunts like this.) A friend and his girlfriend pulled into our driveway and said some lunatic was chasing them and trying to run them off the road. That lunatic stopped in the highway at the end of my drive and started yelling obscenities and threats.

I have a club. My father gave it to me when I first started driving for protection. It’s a tire knocker used by truck drivers. (For those who don’t know what it is-it’s a wooden stick with a thick metal band around the end that is capable of breaking small bones.) I didn’t know how much trouble this guy was going to start so I took it just in case I needed it for self defense and stepped out into the yard. The guy saw me and called me a bitch.

Now, I will call myself a bitch. If I know you, you can call me a bitch. If I don’t like you, those are fighting words. A series of black shadows whirled around my line of sight and I took my club and walked out to the road. When I got a few feet from him, he took off. It’s a good thing. I had already gotten so out of my head that I was seeing things. Have you ever gotten so mad that you start shaking and things get a bit blurry? I am sure some of you who have bipolar disorder will understand this. Way too much adrenaline pumping.

When he drove back by, he stopped in a neighbor’s driveway and was yelling for someone to step into his friend’s yard to fight him. I’m not a complete idiot. I’m not going to leave my yard and get arrested. He was told to pull up in my driveway. He was smart enough to know better than to do that and he pulled away. He drove by several more times and each time he did I called him “bitch”.

Normally I don’t act like that. I try really hard to be passive. At the time, I felt I was provoked and was acting appropriately to a potentially violent confrontation. Today I am not so sure of my reaction. I think I need to work harder to get my anger issues under control. There is no doubt in my mind that if the guy hadn’t pulled away that I would have popped him in his head with the metal end of my club. I was enraged and all rational thinking went out the window. If it had been a female, I probably would have let it go. Since it was a man (and I was married to an abusive man for several years) things were totally different. I always said I would never take anything off of a man after that and I really think that was part of why I was so angry. Any man who threatens me reminds me of many beatings I took years ago and I get mad about it all over again.

Regardless, I need to get this under control. I will have to take some time and consider a change in dosage of my medication. It was a freak thing that isn’t likely to ever happen again, but can I really trust myself to maintain control when I am angered? I am ashamed of myself and angry all over again. Ugh.

Related posts:

1. All About Bipolar: Making adjustments

2. All About Bipolar: Psychosis…again
3. All About Bipolar: Minor issues and a rant
4. All About Bipolar: Effective and Ineffective Management