Having a kid with mental illness

Most of my life, I feel like I've been charmed. I've certainly had enough shit fall on me to make me know what pain is like. It's not as if I've encountered no real problems. I really have, but I've always been able to handle them. I'm a silver lining kind of person. Give me a problem, and I'll give you the silver lining.

About 20 months ago, my middle son had a meltdown. We woke up to a perfectly normal day, and by the end of it, he was in a psychiatric facility being drugged to calm him down. I really think that day was the end to my charmed life.

How do parents handle having a mentally ill child? It's been almost two years and I'm still utterly lost. My son cycles so fast, from manic to lethargic, euphoric to depressed, and I can't keep it all straight. It's breaking my heart and I can't find a silver lining anywhere.

He has a real problem with authority, so almost any rule we put in place is seen as a challenge. Okay, so we're not really "rules based" anyway, so that should be easy to navigate, right? Wrong. Things that have never really been considered rules are suddenly seen by him as oppressive. And let's just be honest here. In my home, I'm the alpha bitch. I win. Period. I don't ask a lot from anyone in my home, but what I do ask, I get and it's hard for me to try to adjust that very basic part of my personality, to not get into pissing contests with this boy. Even if I win, I lose because of how much it hurts him.

And that's the worst part. The way my heart aches for him. Forget how much trouble it causes in my otherwise rosy life. I hate that he struggles every day of his life. I hate that when he wakes up from his drug induced stupor, he doesn't know if he's going to be up or down or sideways. He doesn't know if he's going to be able to pull a reason to live out of the air. Every single day. I know by a lot of standards, my life wouldn't be considered "easy", but compared to what my son deals with, it's been a cake walk. And that makes me want to cry.

When he had his first "episode", everyone at the hospital was convinced it was drugs. When we found out he was bipolar, I wanted to go up to the fucktard tech who was so rude to us when my son was in the ER with a self inflicted head wound and jam the diagnosis up his ass. I want to scream at him and tell him I'd take that imaginary drug problem over bipolar disorder any day. A drug problem can be dealt with. You find a lot of recovering drug addicts. I've yet to hear a good story about someone getting over bipolar disorder. And my son deserves a good story. He deserves his silver lining.