Is there such a thing as a personality transplant?

We're going to get a bit serious again today, and it's going to come out in a long winded ramble so bare with me. 

When I first started blogging I was extremely open about the depression part of my Bi-Polar. I've never spoke much about the mania, but it's there too trust me. It just comes out as angry outbursts on occasion and SUPER HYPERNESS like I ate a bag of meth and hooked an IV of red bull up to myself. I've never really shied away from discussing it, but I just kind of stopped talking about my struggles. Winter went away and the sun came out and it wasn't affecting my life as much anymore. It's definitely still there, just not nearly as bad as it was. But winter is quickly approaching and I'm terrified that I'm going to fall back into the same vicious cycle of last year. Last winter was bad. Really bad. Like my husband almost left me bad. I don't want that to happen again. I didn't do anything last winter. I didn't cook, I didn't clean. I barely showered. I didn't take care of myself, my husband, or my marriage. I laid on the couch from the hypothetical sun up to sun down (you know, because it's dark ALL THE FUCKING TIME during winter here.) and did nothing. I spiraled down into a deep dark hole of just, nothingness.




(Source)
AMAZING explanation of what depression feels like by this lady.
Seriously when you're done reading this click on that link.
Don't you dare click it until you're done though. You were here first.


Then the sun came back out and I thought that was the magical fix. Suddenly I wasn't depressed all the time. I was getting out of the house a bit more, I was enjoying activities, I was getting along a lot better with my husband, but I wasn't happy. I'm still not happy. One thing that my Bi-Polar seems to do is make my mind race a billion miles per second. (Mania part of it) I jump from project to project, job to job, hobby to hobby, like it's nothing. I'll spend a bunch of money on something that I KNOW I'm going to stick to, and then quit it. I'll go into something with every intention of giving it 110%, and then I don't. I'm sick of being a quitter. I'm sick of jumping. It's exhausting. My marriage is the longest thing I've stuck to in my life that requires work, and I'm determined to not let my crazy affect it. But it is. I complain. All the time. I bitch about everything. My husband may not be the perfect husband, but he moves mountains to try to make me happy, and I'm not. It's not his fault, he does what he can. I can't blame him for getting frustrated and not wanting to be around me when all I do is demand. That's not fair to him. What kills me the most is that I know. I know that he feels unappreciated, I know that I jump from things, I know that I give up, I know that I give my 110 to things that don't deserve it while giving less than 10 to things that do, and I just can't stop. On my own.

I realized the other night after my husband and I got into another fight and I was crying and begging him not to give up on us, that that's not fair to ask of him. Why shouldn't he? I've said that I'll change time and time again but I never do. Things get better for a week or two, and then I fall back into the same patterns, same routines. (Sorry Eminem, couldn't help but bite your lyrics there.) Why would he want to be with me when I don't even want to be around me half the time? And then it hit me like a sack of bricks. All those times before, I didn't actually want to change, I was doing it for him. I was trying so hard to save my marriage that I'd do whatever he asked of me, but then that feeling of not giving a fuck would kick in again and it would be right back to square one. This time, I want to change for me. I really don't like the person that I've become. I used to be happy, I used to be confident, I used to not give a fuck what anyone else thought of me, including my husband, because I was just doing me. That's the person he fell in love with, and that's who I want to be again, but not for him, for myself. Over the past year I've watched one of my best friends go from having a negative outlook on life to being such a positive person and just genuinely happy. I could not for the life of me figure out how when she had so much going on she could still smile and let it roll off her back. She was being thrown in the middle of her parents toxic divorce, realizing that her child was behind developmentally, and dealing with multiple other things that life was throwing at her with a fucking smile. I'm jealous of that, I want that. I want to be able to not let the little things bother me, I want the bigger things to not feel like the end of the world. And I want these for me. Not for my husband, not for my friends, not for my family, for me. I am ready to change. Of course I want to be happy with my husband, but I want to know that if things (god forbid) don't work out, that I'll be okay. I came to this realization, and I told him. I was completely 100% open with him for the first time in a long time. And it felt good. I told him that I no longer cared what he thought as awful as that sounds. That I'm planning on making these changes for myself, and he could stick around for the ride if he wanted to, but if he didn't that was okay too. I wouldn't blame him, it's been bumpy as shit already. I'm not sure if he believes me, and I don't blame him if he doesn't but he's still here so that's a good sign.

Now how am I going to do it? I have a plan of attack. Everybody loses their mind here once the sun goes away. Everyone. Last year it took me almost three months to get an appointment at behavioral health. This was after I was at the point of losing my shit, it still took three freaking months. So this year I'm beating the crazies. I have my appointment to discuss my uterus with my new doctor on the third, and while I'm there I'm going to ask for a referral to behavioral health. I'm going to beat the crazies into getting there. I'm going to set up a meeting with a therapist, and I'm going to keep it. I'm going to make sure to schedule an appointment at least twice a month. I'm also going to request to be put back on my meds. I quit taking them last time because the doctor I had wasn't comfortable prescribing them to me, and when I went to see the psychiatrist he prescribed me one that of course I got the side effects of. I've had super bad luck with meds and almost always get the negative reactions. I'm going to beg and plead with my new doctor to put me back on the meds that I know I can take without gaining 500 pounds or overdosing on. Yeah. Been there twice on the prescribed amounts. I'm going to take them religiously. It's no longer optional. It's something that I NEED to survive. My husband recently started individual counseling, so with both of us getting individual counseling I feel like it will really help us on individual levels and as a couple. Once we're both comfortable with our sessions, we're going to try couples counseling as well. Even if we're doing great, it can't hurt to have someone else tell us that, or to have them tell us that we're delusional and need to fix certain things. I've gone this route before but always because somebody else told me to do it. My mom, my friends, my husband, but never, ever my self. I am ready to be a better person, I am ready to like myself again. I have a new job, I'm working on getting a new body, and now I'm going to work on getting a new positive and happy personality too. I guess what I'm trying to say is...