Lack of control
By moonflower | December 31, 2008
Some time over the holidays, I unlocked another box in my psyche. I like to think this process helps me move forward.
Holidays are usually a big mess for a lot of people from an emotional perspective. I was relieved when i realized that others suffered with the holiday blues like I’d done for many years. A problem shared is easier to process then a problem kept in solitaire.
A situation came up that involved travel plans, one that would change the dates of visitors from out of town. I was not pleased especially with the short notice. I struggled with it, making my partner aware of my displeasure in the most diplomatic way that I could.
Having a few days to process, I tried to figure out why this was a problem for me. I phoned a friend who suggested that I just suck it up and ride it out. I responded to her that I was so tired of sucking it up and riding it out, REALLY tired of that. I wasn’t angry with her about it, and I did call her because she has personal insight into the situation and she doesn’t sugar coat stuff.
Shortly after that call, it dawned on me what my opposition was really about.
There are so many situations in my life right now that I have absolutely zero control over (beyond typical issues). I realized that I am trying to grasp for something I can actually control however small it is. As a recovering person, I learned that I am powerless over most situations, which isn’t to say that I do nothing with my problems. We do what we can, but sometimes there is no action to take. And, worrying about it over and over only serves to enslave us to the problem. It’s no easy feet, this acceptance for what is and taking my hands off the wheel. I have to tell you that this actually works pretty well, when I am able to pick it up and use it.
I know I am not alone in this desire to have some form of control in *some* way. People do the craziest things in order to cling to some sliver of control. This is why people develop eating disorders, addiction, compulsive gambling, self harm, and in many cases behaving like the child within that most emulates the loss of power at any particular time in the formative years.
I guess the key to receiving an insight, is what I actually do with it. My aim is to try and find the balance. Don’t go too far to the left or too far to the right, try and find the just right spot for it.
Topics: addiction, moonflower, relevant life | No Comments »
Sensing out signs
By bipolarlawyer | December 8, 2008
I’m on my way up. And there are signs—if I look for them, listen to them, use all my senses to detect them—if I don’t, then it’s the lurch in the stomach on the down curve of the rollercoaster that’s often the first sign.
If I’m really paying attention, then I hear it when my assistant says “Aren’t you Miss Polly Productive” when I leave him an enormous pile of dictation tapes, written motion and discovery work, and all the other legal detritus. If I look at my time sheet, I can see that I’ve billed a week’s worth of work in three days, though there’s no need to—I’m just blowing through everything, double time. It’s good work, too. Productive, concise, and necessary. The air’s clearer, the brain’s faster, and I feel more creative—am more creative. I write really well, and a lot, because I sure as hell only need about three hours of sleep.
If I miss that sign, then the next one is this. I’m still Polly Productive—except I’m now Misanthrope Polly Productive. I hate everyone—they’re all out to get in my way, talk with their whiny, annoying voices, bother me with inconsequentials. Every Little Thing They Do Is Enraging. I have road rage. I hate every cashier in every store everywhere who doesn’t blow through the things on the belt with superhuman speed. My critical voice snarks on each person’s shoes, haircuts, grocery selections, each one more worthy of hate than the last. My family and my husband bug the crap out of me, and I can’t understand Why Won’t They Leave Me Alone. There’s no objective perspective on why I’m so irritated.
The physical sensations start as I’m just about to crest from Misanthropic Polly Productive to Downward Spiraling Deirdre Depressed. The strange crown-like feeling on my forehead. That pushing sensation under my sternum. And the sweat. This is weird—but after three or four of these post-diagnosis, post medication episodes, I’ve realized something. When I’m in a high mixed state, and just about to start the long, long slide to the bottom? I sweat. Profusely. And it smells strongly. And my feet stink to high heaven.
Yes, that’s more about me than you want to know, really. But it’s a sensory sign—one that’s so weird that I notice it, even as I’m in the process of that catatonic withdrawal into my head, when the extreme productivity, the crazy irritability, slide by. Crazy has a smell for me, a clear, last-ditch signal. I might not be able to follow my mind all the time, but I can follow my nose. I wouldn’t have noticed it, maybe, if I hadn’t been serious about writing EVERYTHING down in my symptom notebook, but after talking it over with my shrink when I had my lithium toxicity episode, she said… tell me more about the sweating thing. Would I recognize that as a physical sign, even if I’m ignoring the emotional and mental ones? Turns out, I can.
Animals can smell fear. I suppose it’s not as weird as it could be that crazy has a smell that can wake up my animal brain, can trigger that self-preservation instinct that crazy makes it so easy to otherwise ignore. That smell says hey, put the brakes on this thing, slow this roller coaster car down– right now. I should be looking and listening and feeling for signs—but I’ll take the smell if that’s what it takes.
Topics: bipolar, bipolarlawyer, meds, self-help | 5 Comments »
Raking leaves
By bipolarlawyer | November 24, 2008
Some memories are like early fall’s leaves. Red, coral, gold. Yellow dappled with green. Round, smooth- edged birch leaves, almost lemony-yellow. Jagged-edged, tough golden beech leaves, veined and oblong. The classic, red/gold/orange sugar maples, the kind of fall leaf children draw when asked to draw the Platonic Fall Leaf. Blood red, delicate Japanese maple leaves, straight out of a Hiroshige woodcut print. Red oak leaves, the more delicate, branch-like arms of the leaves a deep, almost maroon red in some lights. These leaves, on and off the tree, are cause for rejoicing—they’re ready to be picked over, collected, set into pleasing arrangements of happy colors and thoughts of when they provided you shade in the heat of summer, green-shielded you from rain in early spring and during late August’s thunderstorms, dappled you with warm sunlight in the breeze as you lay underneath, admiring the view. There are as many memories as there are early fall leaves, each one distinct, and colorful, and welcome. The whish-whish-whish as you walk through the leaves piled along memory lane, admiring the ones on the ground and the ones overhead yet to fall is a sensory experience, almost an overload, with the colors, the cool air, the warm smell, almost like baking.
They’re pretty, on the tree and on the ground. We like to admire them where they fall—they’re pleasing to the eye, a reminder of how as time marches on, there are some things you can count on, like colorful leaves in the fall, and memories of how they were when they were younger
The leaves of late fall are a different matter. Dried, leathery white oak leaves, bloated indistinct shapes like a brutalist artist might draw—those leaves are dull brown and tough. The other leaves, other types, are now dried up, their colors faded, their supple texture lost. These memories are no longer malleable. They are what they are, and you’re stuck with them. They must be cleaned up, or the things underneath them will rot, fail to grow, fail to thrive. It’s only after you’ve cleaned them off, scratched the surface underneath, that new, better memories can be made. These dried up old leaves smell almost like urine as they become sodden and wet with November’s cold rains. They bog down, hold in dirt and detritus, unpleasant flotsam and jetsam of the past and the present intermingling with their breath stealing layers, their weight. Leaves and memories are ephemeral, we like to think—they shouldn’t be so heavy, so permanent. We should be able to rake them up handily, and throw them away. But who hasn’t been surprised, shocked, even, by how heavy a seemingly simple bag of wet leaves can be? If you overload it, don’t clean up carefully, assessing the weight of the memories as you clean them up, measure them out into their proper receptacles, then the bag, the bough, the bin breaks, and all the work that we’ve tried to do to clean up spills back on the pavement. The sodden, malodorous memories spill all over our shoes, into the edges between our pants and our socks, all over the area we’ve just cleaned.
There’s no magic leaf blower, no all encompassing rake that will haul these old leaves away with a single, cleansing pass. There’s no old leaf killer chemical to make them dissolve in an instant. Instead, we have to rake each individual leaf with our small, handheld rakes, combing carefully to make sure we get them all, and put them into piles that we can then gather into their proper final receptacles. There’s nothing for it. Each individual leaf has to be dealt with on its own terms. Sometimes they’ll gather with others under the gentle pressure of the rake. Others will yield to more forceful scraping, gathering with the other stubborn, ground clinging leaves once more attention is brought to bear upon them. Some, though, will require us to stoop over, inspect the individual leaf from the ground, pick it up with our bare hands before we can be rid of it.
Putting our now-raked leaves in piles isn’t enough, though. We need to protect the piles, deal with them as we work, rather than leave them alone, trusting as we move on to another pile that the last one will stay organized. There’s no guarantee. Some person with no regard for all the work we’ve just done will come along and jump right into the pile while our backs are turned, scattering all our hard work and leaving us to clean up after them, because we let them in by not keeping an eye on the pile, or cleaning it up before they could come along and do damage.
Predictable, inconvenient, boundary-ignoring, work-disrespecting, pile-jumping people aren’t the only thing to worry about. Random strong gusts of wind, out of nowhere, unpredictable, uncontrollable, are always an option—maelstroms of unexpected force coming in, snatching the leaves out of their piles and scattering them, whirling them into a cyclone that blinds us, obscures our view of what’s in front of us and the work that needs to be done in the future. The swirling, scattering leaves in great masses make it impossible to move forward, to do more work raking leaves until the wind has passed again. And when it does, the leaves are scattered all over again, leaving us to look on in dismay at the scene now before us, once things calm down again. All that hard work, scattered, and now we have to start over again, though our hands are sore from the rake handle, our backs and the backs of our thighs tired from leaning over to stuff armfuls of leaves into receptacles, our hands and feet muddy from digging up the stubborn, smelly wet bits.
It’s harder to rake up leaves that second, or third, or nth time, if we don’t learn our lesson about taking the time to dispose of each pile of leaves as we go.
Topics: bipolar, bipolarlawyer, relationships, therapy | 3 Comments »
The Ones
By moonflower | November 19, 2008
Part of the process of falling in love, one person makes an agreement with their object of affection, pledging their undying loyalty and love.
One agrees to shelter the other from the storms of life. They will prove their love by fighting the others battles, standing up to the monsters and vowing to never leave their side. Loyalty becomes an extreme sport.
You’ve heard their history, their stories, the failed relationships in the past and you know without a doubt that you can be the one person they can count on. You will be the one to fix them.
In that very moment, the ones who are willing to seal the deal, in blood if necessary, in order to prove themselves, do so without one word spoken.
This is an agreement made without specific words from the other person involved. The agreement is made through body language, hopes and dreams, whispers of love in the heat of passion.
Sadly, neither party realizes this at the time, they do not realize that in reality, they are crippling the other person. Cutting them off at the knees, not allowing them to fully realize their own human experience.
I suspect we are not meant to be aware of such things, why else do we experience the release of heavy chemicals from our very own bodies during the early stages of love.
You do not realize, until years later there actually were red flags but something in your brain pushed them to the side. They were there, they are always there. They are best viewed using your hindsight lenses.
We seek to protect our beloved, believing it to be the honorable thing to do, in order to prove ourselves to them. In order to prove just how much we love the other person.
Until one day you are sitting in a comfortable chair telling someone the full story, not understanding how it came to this. Realizing that you can no longer carry their burdens, and it was never your job to begin with.
The love you used to cloak your intended with was merely a reflection of your very own lack of needs. You realize that those brave promises you made for the one you loved, were in reality the proclamations your heart longed for. You, were the one that needed saving.
We project all of this onto our partners, our husbands, and our wives. We act out the very role we wish someone would provide for us. We love them in the manner in which we want to be loved.
And, they do the same.
Topics: caregiver, moonflower, relationships, therapy | 1 Comment »