B is for Bipolar Bunny

I'm seriously fatigued and have been all week.  I'm often fatigued and it's usually for any one of a million reasons.  These week it's simply from broken sleep and stress.  I've upped my vitamins and did some yoga and am generally just trying to relax and get by.  I take lamictal, a mood stabilizer, once a day, every morning, and have been for years, and I often suspect that it might have something to do with the fatigue.  It's still light years ahead of how I was before I started taking it.  Fatigue vs. being totally loony?  Yeah, I'll take naps.

In writing that, I find myself thinking back to when I was younger.  I was officially diagnosed when I was 21 (official diagnosis is bipolar type 1), but have been living with the disorder since the age of about 11 or 12.  After diagnosis it took my psychiatrist and I a few years to find the right medications, most of that being because the current medications that are the most successful for treating bipolar disorder weren't even on the market until about then.  I still consider myself lucky.  Yeah, my formative years really sucked but at least I wasn't born any earlier than I was, like when the only drug they had was lithium (which made me fat and cranky and I broke out so badly that I still have scars from it) or like when they still gave bipolar people excessive electroshock treatments or FREAKING LOBOTOMIES.

Again, I'll take naps.

Sitting here today, on this lovely morning, I find myself thinking how funny it is that all of this used to be such a big deal.  I've been pretty stable for years now, with a few breaks here and there, which is normal even for those who don't have a major mental disorder.  I take my little pill once a day and for the most part things are fine.  When I was younger I thought things would never get better, but they did, so now, no matter how rough or frustrated I might feel, I always remind myself of those days, and other time periods that were awful, and tell myself that things will always get better if I can just keep going.

Glass half full, my friends.

My other B today is Bunny.  Bunny is my boyfriend's nickname for me, which is hilarious because if you had never met us, you would never suspect us of being that cutesy.

Bunny kind of naturally evolved.  Craig was being silly and thanking me for something one day, and instead of just saying thank you, he quoted this commercial:




I don't remember ever seeing it as a kid, but Craig is about eight years older than me so there's a wee bit of an age gap that we deal with every now and again when it comes to stuff like that.

Anyway, so instead of just saying thank you he said, "Thank you Easter bunny!" in this cute little kid voice, and it cracked me up so he kept doing it, and eventually it evolved into him calling me Easter Bunny, and now it's become simply Bunny, or the even shorter Bun.  As in, when we have conversations he rarely calls me Amanda. I have a nickname for him as well, but that'll have to come in a later intro since the letter B isn't even in it.