It's another night...just like any other night. One, two, three glasses of wine makes the night move with a smoother pace. I wonder as a get another glass what will become of this night. What will become of me? I love to wonder...can spend hours just wondering...
I'm not unhappy today...just kinda floating in life. As if a breeze is moving me rhythmically and I'm a flag on the top of a sailboat. I can feel the emotions whipping me back and forth and I just want to dislodge my self from the line that holds me and let myself float in the wind until I fall to the ocean, then the waves will carry me away.
I want to feel something...anything, just to feel it. I want to feel the bumpy surface of a shell at the beach..the sand moving through my fingers like velvet - or maybe just the softness of velvet itself. I want to feel the jostle of a roller-coaster with the wind jolting my body and whipping my hair in my face. Feeling - the essence of life is feeling.

All aboard?

When depression hits, it's like a train. The clickety-clack rhythmical beat of the wheels on the tracks reminds me of the feeling of depression - the rhythmical waves of despair that flow. It's not like a breeze that happily blow across your sweaty body on a hot day to cool you - it's like a whip, rhythmically beating until you finally crash to the floor. Depression feels like waves of bleak black bare bone - cold, like the rocks.

I have not been to this blog in almost a year, and felt the need to visit again. I'm not sure why - because I'm not sure why the black hole of despair chose to hit me today. I wish I knew why I felt the need to write when I am down. Why not when I'm flying like a kite in the sky?

I think this is all for today - Maybe with more time I can write something to make the world smile...when I feel like smiling again, that is...

Don't let it

I came to the conclusion as I was washing the dishes...I was always treated like dirt because I allowed myself to be treated like dirt...hell, I laid down on the floor begging to be walked on...Is my sweater furry enough like a red carpet? Am I too lumpy...ok, I'll suck in my gut so you won't trip when you are walking on me. Oh, the mud between your toes...let me just take care of that for you. It happened because I let it happen, I let it happen, I let it happen. With my old lovers, I expected to be abandoned so I said nothing when I was abandoned - at least I was right because I caused it. I let it happen every day when I can't make a request even if I was dying...even if I was hanging on the side of a cliff from a branch broken to the width of a twig - instead of screaming for help,I'd let go to tie someone's shoe, falling to the rocks below and maybe taking the poor passerby with me. I let it happen. I let it happen. I used to let it happen, but not anymore. I deserve to be considered special, unusually exciting, important, strong and feared. I deserve to be feared because I am stronger than I seem. I won't let it happen. I won't let it happen. I won't I won't I won't I won't I won't!

Too Much Pie (what bipolar is like)

It's been a very long time since I've visited this old site. What a thrill to write to the world again. Like slipping in an old, familiar pair of jeans - writing to this site is an outlet of comfort for me. I only miss it when I'm healthy, though.

Bipolar - the word was used multiple times by my doctor, my therapist...from before I even visited my doctor, I noticed my ups and downs seemed a little extreme, a little pathological...I knew it was there, but it was so hard to hear that what I feared was true.

As I read about bipolar mood disorder, I imagined it with a lesser intensity. Everyone gets depressed, talks about being depressed and depression seems so mainstream compared to (ooo...yikes!) bipolar, but it's very simple... there's UNIPOLAR depression and BIPOLAR...well, I'm the bipolar type (type II, if you want to be technical). But, when I'm well, I feel a sense of peace about it...as if I understand myself for the first time.

Of course, that's when I'm well. This medication - whew, it only seems to work sometimes and when it doesn't work I'm not well...not well at all. The mind - what a crazy labyrinth of emotion and thought. When I'm unwell, I lose my self control...as if I'm watching myself make mistakes from outside but can do nothing about it but curse myself after. When I'm unwell I think of myself as scum, grit, dirt, and any of a wide array of worthless, despised garbage. Last week, I could not send out the thought from my head "I am a waste of space"!!

The picture of the pie - this is what the "up" is like. It's from Thanksgiving - I couldn't decide on which piece of pie to try, so I had to have a slice of every one. Of course, afterward I felt the physical effects on the bowels of too much pie, and guilt from too many calories. That's exactly what bipolar type II is like - TOO MUCH PIE!!!!!

I'll just keep telling myself "jump tomorrow" - tomorrow everything will be different...and it always is!

A Better Next Time

It's strange to look in the mirror and realize that maybe you are not the person you thought you were...To look into your own eyes and see a stranger. Who is this person looking back at me? I thought I was someone else - I thought I was brave! I thought I had perseverance! I thought I was true, real, strong, honest...who is this person I see in front of me?

When I face the things I dislike most about myself, such as my frenetic and uncontrollable style, my poor filter between thought and voice, my fear of conflict - when I have to face these things, it feels like I'm looking at another person...but I'm not - not at all! This is the me that I would rather ignore.

We all make mistakes and sometimes allow things important to float away or get lost in life's shuffle, and it's hard to stop and look closely at those mistakes. Why did they come and where do they come from? Is it simply thoughtlessness, or deeper - dark feelings hidden that emerge with an ugly head. Mistakes, like accomplishments, have incredible value because they teach so much. Mistakes sting the memory like poison ivy, creating a constant reminder that we can improve. Imagination is the artist painting the picture - showing how that improvement can come. Imagination changes the scenario in the mind, so one can do it better next time.

Will there be a next time to do it better? Maybe - or maybe imagination will help a novel situation. Regardless of whether it is the same situation or a new one, mistakes create the drive and imagination carves the picture for some kind of better next time.

Matter and Anti-matter

Confusion – what an utter disarray of an emotion! This is the emotion I’m associating myself with today – absolute, utter confusion. I don’t know when I walk forward, whether I’m traveling forward or backward. When I turn to look behind me, am I leaving my destination or my origin? All paths to the sides of me seem equally tempting, but off the goal path…which way is the right way to go and where on earth am I going, anyway?? It’s like being lost in an unfamiliar city in the fog, but a city I should be more familiar with. Each image seems almost familiar, but yet, not and the fog hides each detail so every sight looks the same, even though I know it isn’t the same as the last. I’m lost in a dream land.

This is also how I view my depression. When depression and anxiety come, in such a wave of intensity, I can't tell the difference between a rational and an irrational thought. They all seem equally valid, logical, and important enough to require immediate action...but since all thoughts are fleeting, flying, and spinning, they are all out of reach, unable to be inspected and action comes as illogically as the thoughts do. The net effect is complete confusion. Which thought was the logical one? I'm not even sure, myself. Which action was the logical one? Well, at least actions have effects and the answer is sure to follow, once action has been taken.

Depression hits with no warning and it consumes me completely with fog. In this fog comes confusion, since I feel my emotions are like my movements in the dark...bumping into furniture and walls and leaving a stinging bruise because I couldn't see where I am going. And, in the dark, I can't see where to go to next...I just keep continuing forward, albeit cautiously, but without direction so, inevitably, I bump into something again and bruise myself...like living in anti-matter, but in constant (and unintentional) contact with matter as I hurt myself on it.

How ironic that my last post was on happiness, and this one on the opposite side of the spectrum - depression...Depression is feeling broken - I feel like the posted picture - cut in pieces without the glue holding all the pieces together. I now know that depression does not equal sadness. Depression is completely different - depression is confusion in the dark...the effect of being matter, and crashing into matter, but living in anti-matter.

The Many Roads to Happy

I used to think that the route to happy was like the twisted walk up a mountain to the peak. The trail - beaten, sometimes invisible. Only a few paths would make it to the peak, and each path a different length. Some steep paths shoot straight up to the top, with every step painful and every breath heavy, but with the shortest steps possible, the shortest time, the shortest distance. Other paths may zig-zag up the side of the mountain at a leisurely incline, and may double or triple the distance, but with less pressure on the system,and may get the hiker to the same peak with less energy. Then, I thought, some paths could wind endlessly in the woods with no progression to the peak, only to leave the hiker lost and unsuccessful in his or her quest.

This analogy, although flexible in theory with different paths, woods, rocks and cliffs, denies the seeker much choice. There are only choices in a few forks in a hiking path. For the most part, a hiker makes a choice in a path and follows the path to the end. Once the choice has been made to take the wooded route, the zig-zag route, or the steep route, the hiker is inevitably bound to the trail until the end.

I now see the road to happy with much more flexibility and choice. I see it now, more like the winding roads of Paris leading to the Eiffel Tower. There are probably a million combinations of roads which could be used to get there, depending on what a person wants to see on the way. There is the direct route, the meandering route, the lost route, and the "oh, never mind - I'd rather go shopping anyway" route. But, if a person walks long enough, and continues to make turns within the city limits, the odds are in the person's favor that, eventually, that person will pass the Eiffel tower. When I was in Paris, I preferred aimless wandering in the streets to fanatical site-seeing, so you might find me on the meandering route - stopping for croissants and coffee, a nap in the park, and maybe eavesdropping on some one's dinner party before finally reaching the destination of the Eiffel Tower, or reaching happy, because I enjoyed the trip along the way as much as the final destination!

I see happy as something you find maybe when you are not even looking for it, because one day you notice that you just feel good. This week I heard the birds for the first time this season, and after such a bitter, cold, icy, snowy winter - the song of the bird most definitely sang "happy".