Unknowing

The only thing I know for sure about my flavor of bipolar disorder is that I know nothing for sure.  On days like today, when my mind feels cool and friendly, I can marvel at the potential this unknowing offers.  Living without answers keeps me in the questions.  It makes me curious, willing to experiment, and to move on if the experiment fizzles.

Unknowing can be a great relief.  When mixed with mindfulness, there’s an untethering that happens.  My attachment to being functional, to plans, even to my concept of Self loosens.  Unknowing helps me accept whatever is in the moment.  Unknowing allows me to accept all of me as my mood, energy and cognition rise and fall.

These rapid cycling, mixed states plant barriers that force me to cut a new path.  The first step is to sit with the beauty of the barrier.  I imagine touching the rough, unyielding surface and see an Irish megalith—part of my DNA and a complete mystery.  It requires respect and acknowledgment.  If I don’t see the barrier, I can’t dream a different trajectory.

This weekend I came down with a bad cold.  Over the course of a day, I lost my voice and terror drowned out all other sound.  “I just got over pneumonia.  In a couple of weeks, I’ll be driving across the country.  I can’t get sick now.”

And the monolith rises up, demanding attention.

I am sick, so I need to tend that.  I leave for ArtFest in three weeks, and I’m ready.  As I sit with this old stone, I can see that I’ve been pushing too hard.  Because I was accepted as a vendor, I’ve been cranking out my most artful, most outrageous cards.  I refurbished a display unit my friend loaned me.  I wanted ArtFest to see a particular side of me—professional, laid-back, confident.

And the craggy rock cannot be moved.

I am all those things, but my illness makes me much more.  My moods, my energy, my capacity will swing on my trip.  I could keep my fingers in my ears and pretend it won’t happen, but then I’ll crack my head on this immovable menhir.

I need to be quiet now and listen to the silence of my DNA.  As I breathe in the mystery, I can feel my grip loosen.  Expectation.  Ego.  Fear.  Judgment.

I’m fine.  And now it’s time for a cup of tea.

Phoenix

∴

As part of my quest for living a better life with bipolar disorder, I spent this past weekend in Minneapolis/St. Paul, reweaving connections with old and dear friends, and sending out a few new runners.  These are the kind of friends who will make me stand in their kitchen until they understand the difference between rapid cycling and mixed state; the kind of friends who find a restaurant for lunch on the other side of town because it will accommodate both their Paleo diet and my vegan preferences; the kind of friends who make me laugh until I have to hop to the bathroom to avoid leakage.

And when I have a melt-down (as I did on Saturday), these are the kind of friends who let me bolt back to my hotel without offense, who will hold my insecurities and shame like a porcelain bowl until I can shake the ashes into the trash.  We can say to each other after a morning of coffee and gab, “Are we done?  I’m done.”

These are people who allow me to be myself, who are honest and clear, who look at me with compassion and see all.  They are the keepers of my history since I can’t remember it.  They fit forgotten pieces into place.  They restore me.

This is a difficult time of year for those of us with Seasonal Affective elements included in the bipolar disorder.  Spring brings chaos, fluctuations in mood, and, for me, warp speed cycling.  This is the time of year I am most likely to be hospitalized.  I need the support of people who love me, but my tolerance for stimulation and novelty is severely limited.  It’s a quandary.  But my friends are willing to walk this weird tightrope with me.  And when I can rise up from the ashes, I am grateful.

Saying Yes

The last couple of weeks created a lot of thrashing around for me.  In IPR, I was required to recount my history—something I’m loathe to do as it is only painful and seems to trigger the dark side of my bipolarity.  At the same time, I cast off my life-long dream of ever controlling my compulsive eating enough to lose weight and started seriously working on accepting myself as I am.   Self-love and PTSD may be strange bedfellows, but they seem to be making progress together.

I had a Bathroom Revelation—you know, when you’re in the shower or on the pot, your mind blissfully drifting, and BLAM! the Next Great Idea materializes out of the ethers (so to speak).  E=mc2 came to Einstein this way, so who am I to question a loo’s creative holiness?

Anyway, this simple thought came:

Mindfulness is Not Enough.

And from that, I understood that nothing would ever be enough.  Nothing I do will ever cure me of this mental illness.

Of course not, right?  Everyone knows there’s no cure.  But everyone isn’t me, and I was sure I could crack this nut.  I would find the Key—my own, personal Incantation—that would unlock this prison.  If I worked hard enough.  If I followed every lead.  If I…

But, suddenly, I understood what Luke Skywalker tried to tell me this summer about striving, how there was no way to win that game.  Working hard at managing my bipolar disorder became another club to bludgeon myself over the head.

What happens when I let go of that dream as well?  What happens if I really accept all of who I am—obese and bipolar, creative and destructive, intelligent and compulsive, single and romantic, mindful and delusional?  What happens when I relax into all of that?  Allow all of that?  Say, “Yes” to it all?

So far, it means pulling back from the rigidity of my routine, from documenting every gnat’s ass detail of my brain flatulence.  It means trusting myself a little bit more, following my instincts a little.  And crying a lot.

This is new territory for me, this saying “yes” business.  It’s different than galloping after compulsions or riding a manic wave.  Saying “yes” comes from a loving place, a place of plenty and safety.  When the depression was darkest last week, it meant holding myself and saying, “Yes, this is part of me, too.  I’m not broken or wrong.  I am simply this, too.”

There is benefit from a Plan when the illness is raging at either end of the spectrum or when I’m sliding into those two extremes.  That’s when I forget what helps.  That’s when I can’t remember “yes,” and a Plan is needed to wade through to the other side.  But I’m trying to live looser in the between times.  Instead of scribbling out a Daily Plan, I look at this on my way out of the door.

Nurture

Create

Connect

 

And maybe that’s enough.  We’ll see.

Because I’m still On an Adventure.

“Muddle, Muddle, Soil and Scrubble”

“By the ticking of my gums! Yon convicted speaks in tongues!”

This reads like Shakespeare to me.  Just an example of how my brain is functioning these days.

It’s a comprehensive mixed bag, this version of my life.  Enormous gifts and luxury garbled with great loss strangled by stress and cracked open by success.  I don’t have a map for this place.  I don’t know the language.  I’ve given up looking too closely at it because it just makes me pukey.

What I’ve decided to do is just stand still.  If I’m giddy in the morning and too depressed to move by lunchtime, I try to just be that.  If I touch a client in some way or receive a compliment, I try to just feel it.  If I get into my mom’s car and weep when I find one of her nail files (she had millions), I sit with myself through the wave of grief.  If I try to eat a whole pizza for supper and end up getting sick, I listen for the fear that wants to be buried under food.  If I feel a glut of old trauma pushing at me when I work with Ben (because he’s a boy, and I’ve had trouble with boys who “help”), I let it come.

It’s too hard otherwise.  Too violent.  Too disrespectful.

I’m worthy of kindness and attention.  I deserve to be considered.  I don’t have to be anything other than me in this moment.

This lesson is not easy to learn.

Which is why I keep getting the chance to try.

Maybe when I get on the other side of this uncharted, alien landscape I’ll have a better idea of what it was.

Or not.

It really doesn’t matter.

This is what matters.

I’m what matters.

Ninja Ballet

It’s been a good week.  Holy Harmonic Convergence, Batman!  How long has it been since I’ve been able to say that?

These lovely in-between places are where I used to pull out my Bad-Assery and get into training for the next bipolar campaign.  But my mindset has shifted a little.  I don’t need to train to be a Bad-Ass any more—I am one.  The training has become more and more internal—acceptance, awareness and experimentation becoming as important as routine and discipline.

Part of that is due to my therapist.  I have a partner now, someone with experience in going deep, someone with an even bigger arsenal.  It feels very different fighting this battle with someone at my side, someone whispering a plan of attack I never considered, someone with Ninja skills.

These slow, subtle movements are hard.  I’m teaching my mental body to move in different ways, ways that feel foreign and beautiful at the same time.  I keep thinking of a ballet dancer with blistered, bloodied feet.  It takes practice.  And hardening.  And more practice.

Yesterday I drove to the city for a mandatory meeting at the psych hospital for all the support group facilitators.  Dan, the social worker who recruited me, told me about the meeting a couple of days ago.  He didn’t know what the meeting was for, couldn’t be there himself, and apologized for yet more chaos as the Center tries to reorganize and align with health care reform.  So I showed up at the appointed time and place—to find I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.  But the Psych Tech who was helping with the meeting said she’d go over the material with me then and there.  I signed a confidentiality agreement (which I’d already done with Dan) and answered a ten-question True/False quiz on the role of facilitator.  The whole encounter took fifteen minutes.

I had issues when I left.  Since thought generates emotion which drives behavior, it could have been the start of a very bad day.  Or week.  But my Ballet Ninja skills surfaced.  I was able to acknowledge that I’m out of practice dealing with workplace miscommunication.  This stuff happens all the time.  It’s not personal.  And there’s no need to get trapped in it.  All I have to do is show up on Wednesday nights, sit with whoever else shows up for group, and see what happens.  Management stuff will work itself out.

Then, I was able to watch the emotion drive my behavior.  I had already planned to find a frame for the beautiful print my friend Rob send me, so I watched as my internal agitation pushed me to add more things to the list.  And then to snatch up stuff as I wandered through the antique mall.  There was a graceful slowing down as I watched, a deceleration, and a returning to center point.  I bought the frame.  Nothing else.

And on the drive home, I felt the residual effects of emotion spinning out possible lunch scenarios—where to eat, what to eat, how much I to eat.  I felt the familiar spin and shove of using food to calm down, using food to feel normal, using food to make the rest of the internal discomfort stop.  I watched and allowed all that mess.  And then I went home and made lunch.

My brain feels bloodied and blistered from pausing.  It’s so much easier to let the thoughts and emotions run, to just get out of their way and tag along.  But each time I practice, I build a little more stamina, a little more mental body memory.  These foreign maneuvers of acceptance and interruption may always be difficult to perform, but that’s part of what makes it art.  It’s part of what makes an audience gasp.

So, today I’ll try again to stalk myself, to be stealthy and nimble.  A Bipolar Bad-Ass Ninja in toe-shoes.

Talking to Myself

Cycling again, and trying to experience it differently (My endless mantra—”Let’s try this…”).  Working with the practices in Radical Acceptance, I breathe and notice how the despair and sorrow feel in my body.  I try to give all that pain room and accept that this is my experience for now.

I’ve done this work before, realized that I feel nothing in the belly when depression is deep, constriction in my chest, constant pressure of tears trying to escape.  The new piece is acceptance and compassion for the whole of my experience—being kind to it all.

It’s too hard to do alone, so I’ll ask my new therapist to help me when I see her on Monday.  I want to run from the pain, numb it however I can, find diversion to keep from noticing it.  And that’s standard psychological practice—when symptoms are too overwhelming, find healthy diversion.  So, I wonder if I’m going too deep, trying to offer space when I should be sitting at the movies being distracted.  I’ve done both this week.

One thing Tara talks about in her book, is compassionate self-talk—telling yourself that you care about the suffering that’s happening.  When I read that passage yesterday, I realized that’s something I’ve done all my life through my stories.

I’ve always been a little embarrassed by my fan fiction.  It’s not considered “real” prose by literary types, just obsessive verbal stalking by lonely fan-girls.  To counteract my shame, I try to write well and develop a solid plot.  I do research and all the other things “real” writers do.  But they still feel like dirty secrets.  I’ve often wondered if my fantasies are pathological, even though every therapist I’ve ever seen says they’re good for me.  I go there, the place in me that holds and generates my stories, when my symptoms swamp me.  I feel ill and desperate when I go to that Haven, so I question whether it’s healthy.

But the stories that spin out are always loving, kind, supportive and validating.  The characters who show up tell me the things I can’t tell myself.  They are the friends who always  have time for me, the lovers who “see all my light, and love my dark.”  They take care of me, which reminds me of what I need to do to take care of myself.

Take the story that followed me around all day yesterday:

I was at a party at Tom Hiddleston’s house with my boyfriend, Benedict Cumberbatch.  Tom hosted the party because Chris Hemsworth and his family were back in town (London) as were Anthony Hopkins and his wife (he lives in the US now).  David Tennant and his wife, and Simon Pegg and his wife, were also there.

These are all characters than have inhabited my Haven before.  It’s an ongoing stream, like real life, where people come and go.  Acquaintances become friends, friends become lovers.  We meet, part, meet again in different circumstances.  What we share and learn about each other carries over to the next scenario.  Sometimes these streams become solid enough to write.  Mostly they just live in my Haven and wait for the next development.

At this particular party, Tom asked if I would sing for them (I sing a lot in these stories—always beautifully and with stunning effect).  I didn’t want to.  In the story I was sliding into depression and didn’t know some of the people there.  But I agreed anyway.  After singing the Alanis Morissette song “Everything” (which happened to be playing on my iPod), David and Simon wanted to set me up with a music producer they knew.  Their insistence was too much, their enthusiasm pushed me too hard.  I escaped out the front door to the street.  I was overwhelmed, embarrassed, worried that I’d ruined the party, worried that I’d wear out these new friends like I’d worn out everyone else in my life, worried that Benedict would leave me now, and basically felt wretched.

Sir Anthony came after me.  I’d never met him before that night, but enjoyed his company at dinner.  He brought a jacket—I’d run out without one—and asked if he could walk with me.  He asked what happened, and I told him.  He asked gentle questions that gave me space.  He talked about his own struggle with alcoholism and depression.  He understood.  He reminded me that my friends’ enthusiasm was just their way of loving me.  We talked about acting, and music, and living fully with mental illness.  He’d seen work I’d done (of course, I act in these stories, too), and said he had a script at home that he wanted to send me. He thought we’d be brilliant in this piece together.

When we went back into the house, Benedict was waiting.  Not worried, just present, ready to provide whatever I needed—comfort, acceptance, steadfastness.  Tom was worried that he’d caused me distress (because I think that’s what Tom Hiddleston would really do).  The rest of the party didn’t pay much attention to Tony and me going out—they had moved on to other conversation and high-energy story-telling.  And I was fine in my vulnerability, cocooned in love.

This story played out all day yesterday.  I was in a lot of distress, and when journaling and movies quit distracting me, the Story would come back and a new piece of comfort and space opened up.

I think I’m done being embarrassed by my stories.  I think I finally understand how important they are to my mental health.  When I need love and acceptance the most, I give it to myself through them.  And, really, I think that’s pretty cool.

That’s All, Folks

ο

After a week in ICU, Mom was getting better.  Yesterday, we moved her into a regular hospital room with a nice view.  She was alert and making her wishes known.  Unfortunately, her wish was to die.

She told the nurses to take away her heart monitor.  She refused food and all medication, even a Tylenol for pain.  When her oxygen saturation levels dropped, she refused oxygen.  At those low levels, her brain will become oxygen-starved soon, and after that, the rest of her organs.

As always, Mom attended the details.  She waited until my brother left yesterday morning before starting her refusals.  She wanted him on the road and unreachable.  She will take a few sips of ice water, but makes us fill the cup where she can watch.  She doesn’t want us slipping her any medication Mickeys.

As someone who has tried suicide, I should understand this better.  As someone who knows first hand my mom’s fierce need for control, I should have seen this coming.  Maybe it’s just that we spent the last week wrenching her back from an accidental death, watching in amazement as her 88-year-old body rallied in ways that shocked the medical team.  Strong-willed, she just chose to point that will in a different direction.

My sister and I tried to wrap our heads around this, flipping from anger to despair to resignation.  But, my nephew reminded us that this is what Mom wants, this is her choice, and that all we have to do it stay out of her way.  I can do that today.  I can watch Mom meet death the way she met life—on her own terms.