One special son

I am the mother of a child with a disability. My son, John, has bipolar 1. You may wonder what this means to the rest of the world. We are blessed that John does not have the kind of bipolar that makes him dangerously violent, sexually promiscuous, darkly suicidal or manic. He is rather even most of the time, with a few exceptions. But perhaps that is the medication.

We first found out that John had bipolar when he was thinking suicidal thoughts. He was fourteen and had written a will and had a plan that involved knives. We had to wait overnight to get him hospitalized (I still wonder if he will be dead or alive when I wake him up some mornings) and it was there that he got his diagnosis. Once they put him on medication to ease the depression, he became manic. So the doctors put him on another medication to ease the mania. Today he is on three medications, one for the depression, one for the mania and one for the ADHD that he was later on diagnosed with. The medicines have some side effects for John, like weight gain and the chance of liver damage, but they have served him for the last three years.
He still has his manic moments, and he doesn't think things through to their conclusion. He is also very grandiose in his thinking. For example: He is seventeen and doesn't have his driver's license or permit yet. There is a reason. He is convinced that he doesn't need to study in order to pass the driver's written test. I have given him the driver's education book three different times for him to study. Each time I don't see him studying it but he insists that he is ready. He isn't. But, he does not listen to me when he is convinced that he can do something like this. So, the only thing that works is to let him do what he thinks he can and be there to help him pick up the pieces. This scenario has played out hundreds of times.

John also has a tendency to be very focused on one project to the point of not seeing potential problems. As I am writing this blog John is creating dragon busts from baked clay and then is painting the fired sculpture. He is so convinced that he can make money by making these and then selling them on the internet that I let him buy some clay and model paints. He was so focused on painting the art that he didn't put the lids back on the paints when he was done and he spilled paint all over my dining room table. Some simple preventative steps would have helped him to avoid the mess. But he just doesn't think that way.

There are some definite positive aspects to his condition. He has a wicked sense of humor and can make me laugh like nobody else can. He is also very creative. He draws, paints, writes, sing, acts and now sculpts with quite a degree of accomplishment. We just need to get the two balanced out to make him a bit more rounded. All the great art in the world won't do us any good if he ruins it by not thinking things through. All the great acting won't get him a part in a play if he is so obnoxious with his jokes that nobody will cast him. I love my son so much, there is no other person in the world that makes me laugh, cry and growl so interchangeably and so quickly.