Resentments
By moonflower | May 14, 2008
My meeting tonight was about forgiveness and the other side of it, resentment.
I’ve been taught in recovery that if I resent someone, in order to release the resentment I must pray for that person. Even if I do not mean it, which sounds a little like “god bless that stupid cow”.
Praying for another person that I resented was very foreign to me in the beginning and I hated it. Sometimes even now my resentments seem justified enough so that I can sit out on that whole praying thing. And then I’m reminded that I will be the one who suffers.
I have learned that a good way to not get a resentment in the first place, is to not have any expectations of other people or situations. Better yet, to not get attached to an outcome for any situation.
As a recovering alcoholic, resentment is my number one offender. If I hold on to a resentment, it makes me sick inside and could eventually lead back to active addiction. Because of this, it is extremely important to me to always try and keep my side of the street honorable. (I’d like for you to believe this is due to me being a good person, but in reality, it’s a matter of life and death for me.)
As the topic was carried around the room, and each person added their pieces I began to have a very clear thought about resentments.
People build their lives around the resentments and their anger. Resentments keep you from being your true self, they suffocate you, and somewhere buried in there they comfort you. (Note: using “you” in this context figuratively.)
It dawned on me that part of who I am is made up of my resentments. The thought of them actually being a comfort to me, I wondered why I would choose to hang on to them.
All I could come up with was, “they are MINE goddammit”. They have served me.
As I continued to listen to people share, I pondered this aspect of resentments, and created an exercise for myself to do later. The exercise would be to treat my resentment as a pair of lenses. I
would put the glasses of resentment on, and take note of the things I saw or experienced. Not just feelings, but actual scenes that I’ve created in my own head that feed the resentment monster.
My hope is that by seeing these more clearly through the resentment glasses, I may be able to let them go on a new level and gain more insight. And, to let go of those layers that no longer serve me in a positive way.
Topics: moonflower, relevant life | 1 Comment »
Mornings are better
By bipolarlawyer | May 12, 2008
I’ve been having allergic reactions to lithium and abilify recently, the abilify added after I had to quit lithium, cold turkey. The abilify was even worse, and made me feel really crazy for the first time ever– manic, mixed, unable to concentrate, on the verge of rage. Even my worst depressions never left me doubting myself so much. Fortunately, yet again, my great doctors spotted what was going on at an early stage, and now I am off both drugs and going through withdrawal. The withdrawal’s been more of the same, just only slightly less severe each day, and slightly better after each nap, each liter of water, each massage, as the poisons slowly leach there way out.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Mornings are better/a mostly full night’s sleep/or at least two or three chunks of several hours at a time.
When the antsiness is replaced by weird dreams if you’re lucky/bad ones if the ativan and tylenol and benadryl name brand saviors fall behind the poisons.
With your nocturnal naps under the belt of your bathrobe and some light reading from three to five a.m./and a good liter of water to wash down more name brand saviors/I can mostly function well/well/except I have to pee constantly/pace like a tiger in the zoo/clench dystonic jaw and neck and shoulders and hands into claws of rage and rictus of anxiety/I feel like an animal/in a bad way./To talk wildly/drum fingers constantly/shift and squirm in my seat like a kindergartener/to want to run around the table until it’s time to take an early lunch and walk around the building eight times/more pills/more water.
All day stretching your poor sore stiff self as poisons leach through your pores your pee your sweat/I swear I smell like salt all day/all muscles poisoned, protesting, screaming for relief, especially when you are so distracted you miss the next dose signaled by that cell phone alarm you forgot to answer.
Sitting still is bad enough/talking to someone is worse/keeping in the hypomanic bursts of speech/words burbling like water over stony brooks at icemelt’s bursting./It’s worse after lunch because six hours is really all you’ve got before the name brand saviors cease to be so effective and you need a three hour nap interrupted by a ten minute pee and more nap to feel human again and keep your thoughts from running together like hot caramel overflowing the pot, sticking to everything burning hard to peel away taking forever to cool.
Touch your tightened jaw/your knotted neck/use the sensory trick of touch to tame the tensioned parts momentarily/petting/stroking/pressing/smoothing/soreness frantic when will this stop when will I feel better/maybe I should take just half of the dog that mauled me? to ease it?/but you know that will slow it down, stop it, reverse it, increase it, make it longer harder even worse/unimaginable, unendurable.
You know it can be worse/you know you’re not that bad/you’re home, not at hospital/and while you’re hyped stressed bummed exhausted hurting talking and oh it’s all too much at once/but still you see the light at the end of the tunnel/can say, with reason, that mornings are better/tomorrow will be better than today/and you hope pray wish cry weep for tomorrow to come sooner/soonest for those who don’t know can’t know/deny/relapse/refuse to see/to feel/to believe each morning can be a little better.
Mornings are better, at least for me.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
There was a thought-provoking article in the NYT about the “Mad Pride” movement– about proclaiming our craziness publicly, about being examples of adaptation and function despite it all. Like any movement, any blanket platform, there are lots of threads, some of which are more provocative of thought and agreement and disagreement than others. I’ll try to assemble some thoughts on it next week.
Topics: bipolar, bipolarlawyer, meds, relevant life, she's losing it | 5 Comments »
Wished for death, glad it didn’t come.
By moonflower | May 6, 2008
Last Friday, one of my son’s classmates lost his father.
The boy is a kindergartener, having only recently turned six years old. I read the letter the teacher sent home and I immediately began to sob. I do not know much about this boy, other than he frequents the principal’s office, and is well known for his antics.
That isn’t all he is, he is well known for his big and beautiful heart. He shares, he is loving.
As I am wont to do, knowing he was prone to trouble, I want to know more about him. To try and see inside his world, to determine if there is something more that should be addressed other than his negative behavior. It took me some time before he would really talk to me, this isn’t usually the case since I love kids and I always vie for their approval. Over the past few months, he’s warmed up to me.
Through the whole weekend, my thoughts kept turning to this boy and his loss. I am not sure that he will fully understand this situation for a few years. I worried if his Mom had other family, insurance, or anything to help ease her burden. These are times in which I wonder if I think too much about other people and if it really is none of my business. I subscribe to the quote, “it takes a village to raise a child”, and I fully believe in it’s power.
A few years ago, my daughter’s best friend lost her Mother when was only 9 or 10 years old. Her Mother was a friend of mine and we’d just spoken the day before about grabbing sushi at a new restaurant that had just opened in our area. She headed for the bathroom that Sunday morning and an aneurism burst in her head and she was gone. My daughter and her friend began to drift apart after this and we rarely ever see her. I miss her Mom every time I drive past their house.
All of this got me to thinking about my youthful dreams of wishing my Mom would die. I know how terrible this sounds, and I wince a little now when I think about it.
I would design horrible accidents in my head that she could be killed falling down the stairs, driving home drunk, whatever. When I got older and discussed this with my siblings, they too had wished for her to die. She was mean and she beat us. Who wouldn’t want the person who beat them dead? The woman she used to be, is not the woman she is now. She has become weak, fragile, and only has select memories. I am learning to make peace with this, she was always the pillar of strength and self control in my youth.
Putting these scenarios together side by side in my mind; my wishes for death, and the children that have actually had death at their door. I can say that I am glad that my deadly wishes never came true.
These quandries have always intrigued me, turning them all around in my head for years trying to unlock the secret of the why.
Why do the families that actually want children, are capable to raise them and give them a loving home cannot get pregnant? The parents that beat and destroy their children, live on so that the child is constantly reminded of their pain and suffering into adulthood, knowing that the truth will never be revealed.
Why do the good parents die, but the bad ones live? I’ve never solved this, but I have adopted a theory that our children choose us. Even if those children did not come from our own wombs, they choose us.
To make peace with the abuse that happens every day to children, even in my own neighborhood (and yours) I have to believe that on some level the children choose their lives before they are born. For me, it is how I make peace with the fact that I cannot save every child that I come into contact with. Throughout my main healing process, I was always told to watch children to “really” see them and how beautiful they are. This was designed to help me to understand that the abuse was not my fault. A six year old does not “want” to be touched by a grown man.
There were people along my path that reached me, inside where the pain lived when I was a child. I remember them, I remember their kindness and I believe on some level it gave me the hope I needed to rise up out of my experience, not to regret it, and heal. This is why I try to “see” children, to let them know that they are important and beautiful.
That there is more out there that will be revealed, they are not alone, they can survive and then pass it on to those that come after them.
Topics: moonflower, physical abuse, relationships, sexual abuse, therapy | 6 Comments »
Brave, sad girl
By bipolarlawyer | May 5, 2008
A story from my local paper about a teenaged girl suffering from bipolar and the push in Massachusetts for better funding for youth mental illness treatment.
Topics: bipolar, bipolarlawyer, depression, meds, self harm | 5 Comments »