Category: Mental Health

Mental Health

When Was The Moment You Became What You Thought You Never Would Be?

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on When Was The Moment You Became What You Thought You Never Would Be?

My hands and wrists and arms looked more like an art store after some great explosion than the limbs of a high schooler. It was some time o’clock in the day and I was once again somewhere in the hallway taking whatever scene in front of me and attempting to capture it on paper or canvas. I didn’t have the attention span to capture all the details, but in lieu of that I found I had a knack for capturing the emotion of whatever stillness it was I was drawing or painting with each rushed stroke.

I never saw myself as an artist, just someone who made art that occasionally was considered good by those who didn’t know any better. I knew GOOD artists—many my age who participated in a once a week arts high school program that I somehow was accepted into. My “art” was not like their art. I don’t know how many of them went on to be great artists but I assume none because statistically it’s still likely they all decided a life as a starving artist is far less desirable than one in law or medicine or even after years of art school settling for teaching art to the students we once were who would repeat the same pattern.

Or maybe some of them went to art school and lived that dream, perhaps showing in galleries in Chelsea and hob knobbing with the who’s who of I don’t know who is who because I’m not a who at all. That world is so foreign to me, as are so many worlds. I don’t fit in any world which might be part of the problem. But the art world was never a fit. I had the luxury of attending summer courses at the great art and fashion schools in NY in my high school summers, and there I spent time with kids far wealthier than myself with far more talent and far more confidence. They would speak names of designers and artists and walk in a way I never could. I couldn’t imagine myself to be someone who found art the most important when the world had so many other issues to solve. Not that I was doing anything about those either. I was a depressed loner who didn’t fit in there, and I didn’t know where I’d fit in, though a little bird in my head reminded me artists often are depressed loners so maybe this is where I belong after all.

I participated in choir and the school play and attempted to find myself on stage making others laugh. In college I had a massive auditorium cracking up to my rendition of the dominatrix monologue from The Vagina Monologues which required me to go through a series of orgasms to show the variety I encountered in my profession. It was in those moments—far and few between—in making people laugh when I felt most alive and at peace. A stint as Jeanie in HAiR post college similarly gave me a day when something came over me and my monologue was particularly hilarious, as my fellow actors noted. Most days I felt disconnected from it, but on that day something clicked. Even one of the original Broadway cast members who our director had conned into coming to our show asked me what I was on that day because it was so good. Probably not like the performance a few days before where I forgot half of the lines to my song and half played it off as my character is always high therefore how would I ever know what I’m saying or when a song should end?

But theatre also never felt entirely right. For starters, I never had talent for it, from my inability to mimic accents to finding it impossible to be in the moment and get out of my head, all while remembering my lines. It became something I did for fun—because it gave me something to do with something to look forward to that was meaningful enough to distract me from my depression and meaningless enough to generally offer a heaping dose of drama outside of my personal life that checked the box for my unfortunate need for crazy or at least a heightened state of being where things seem more important than they really are so I feel energized in the mornings to experience whatever is to come vs being swallowed by the monotony of most any life.

There were years I dreamed of making a career for myself in Hollywood—perhaps not as an actress—but a director, cinematographer, something. Screenwriter. Designer. Producer. Something. But this requires fitting in there with people who generally view themselves as highly as the moon and spend more on Botox than I do on my rent. I briefly had the opportunity to interact with some Hollywood folks in my 20s in a tech job that collaborated with A list creatives and I was both star struck and envious and at the same time wondering what makes ME different from THEM outside of they clearly believe wholeheartedly in their ideas and themselves and I have not one ounce of confidence. I got to participate in some of the creative brainstorming (honestly I’m not sure what my job was at the time outside of social media promotion of the project so I tried to make myself useful.) I thought what fun — this is the world these people live in. One where budget and reality doesn’t get in the way of bringing ideas to life. Where you can take over the River Thames for a live action boat chase that fits your storyline. Where people say yes to you because they believe whole heartedly in you and your vision. Wouldn’t that be nice.

The years have gone by quickly and despite making a life for myself in California I managed to make that live on the other side of the state. And like most here I have been swallowed by the tech industry. I work in tech. For many years I had trouble saying this because I’m not an engineer or support lead or anything like that. I’m a marketer of tech products. Software, to be specific. Software in the cloud which now is somewhat the norm but I witnessed coming to be in my now long 15 year career, from the early days of my peers reporting on SaaS in 2006, back when I too for a blip of time was a reporter. I didn’t realize how revolutionary the cloud was, and thus when it came time for story assignments I requested a thing but SaaS. I preferred to write about hardware innovation and green technology and new social sites and mobile. Nothing seemed quite as boring and uninspiring as business software.

The tech world never felt home either and it still doesn’t. I am grateful it has welcomed me with half opened arms. As a reporter at 22 I failed miserably—unable to go up to those who matter at conferences and mingle and get scoops. I felt maybe there was a place for me in tech in creating products. I liked giving feedback on UI and features. I wanted to work with CEOs and help them make their products better.

But no one was interested in a writer’s ideas on product. So as I needed a job and I was at least on paper a writer I continued on that path and found a job writing copy for a startup. I thought maybe it would be a stepping stone to product. Maybe someone would give me a chance.

Instead, 14 years or so later, I’m still writing. Marketing, to be exact. About software, no less. I find it much more interesting than I did at 22 and I’m grateful for my job and feel like my weird background actually allows me to think about how to solve problems differently which sometimes is appreciated. But long term I wonder — is this it? In our society we are defined so much by what we do and it seems like just yesterday I had so many dreams of being an artist or some creative person that makes something meaningful and that petals culturally can outlive me. Little me with my little time left as life goes ridiculously fast once you pass 25 and I hear it gets even faster as time goes on. To think I’m almost 40 is like a jackhammer dancing on my brain. 30 I could handle—it was a sign of making it through my youth and extended youth. But 40–isn’t that when all dreams of the past are laughed at as memories that will never become reality (with the exception of the few who we invest themselves in mid life or old age.) When you have a family and need to pay the mortgage your dreams must be laughable, you are now an indentured servant to the life you created for yourself. Dreams are for your children, not for you. Your dreams are reserved for paying off the mortgage early or affording a nice hotel at Disneyland or a trip to Hawaii to distract yourself from reality for a week or so before being flung back into it – until you retire, if you are lucky enough to do so, and then you leap at those dreams and realize there is far too little time or health left to make any of them a reality.

But we all know the grass is always greener. And I admit I never felt like I fit in anywhere, especially in those ridiculous dreams. All which made me more important than I am or ever will be. With our current morbid existence in a pandemic that kills the unhealthy but can also take the healthy without warning, the amount of time left to dream feels all the more truncated. And yet, on the other hand, this upside down world makes everything practical seem appealing, anything that enables one to survive each day. If you have a job, you are lucky. Those artists you longed to be are now possibly actually starving. People are unable to go out and pay to experience art or theater. The same artists who seemed immortal are no more safe from this virus as any mere mortal like myself. And even unrelatedly many celebrities have lost their lives recently—some of old age, some of drowning, etc. In a godless society our celebrities are our gods that make everything somehow seem ok. Yet they are just as vulnerable to all the things that make all of us human. And perhaps the desire to be an artist or creator of some sort is to find a false sense of immortality. Of some transcendence beyond being an ant like everyone else who may get squashed now or in 100 years, but eventually.

And I wonder if it is healthy to still dream, or if the greatest plague of all is desiring something that isn’t real, or that doesn’t make sense anymore, and that perhaps never did. If anything has changed in terms of my sentiment I used to want to be known as I felt even as a loner and outsider if people knew me and respected me for what I did/created, I’d finally feel like part of the world. Now, that all seems far too exhausting. I embrace my anonymity. And so maybe being a nobody is where I belong, in a sea of everybody else. Maybe they fit in somewhere, or maybe they are faking it better than I ever could.

Mental Health

In Trying to Stay Above the Surface

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on In Trying to Stay Above the Surface

Option 1: ignore the time and space continuum and try to let it all blur into ad nauseum and add nausea and try to be a mom wife employee best of all worlds and keep it all spinning so fast you get lost in it until it never was and you’re slid 6 feet under because that’s how fast it goes and in those last moments you realize regret and wonder could there have been another way or are you always you and any way would have been no better and so you take your last breath and again let your life pass before your eyes just as it always has.

Option 2: Stop and feel everything, the good, the bad, all of it. Try to embrace each moment of these fast fleeting days. Each discovery your son makes. The excitement in his eyes conquering a new skill. Remember the good more then the bad. There was good, wasn’t there? You’re so negative. Surely there was good. Long days and nights of a youth that went on and on. Looking forward to things—there was a time when you did that also. You can do it again, perhaps. If only you stop expecting the moon and start embracing the flickering overhead lights that life offers. They’re still light and if you squint enough and/or drink enough maybe they too will look lunarly lovely. Won’t they? If only you could see the glass not only half full but imagine a few more inches of liquid there. Why waste all the little time there is lost in the time that was?

It is almost July. Time is no longer relevant. Moments are everything. Days and weeks and months and years and decades are, well, they bookend the moments many or few, they remind us of the lack of forever in forever as does the skin that crepes slowly on our hands and crows that line around our eyes and pigment that escapes our worn and weary hair leaving nothing but silver white. And so I ponder the options and question my free will and in all that thought another year goes by and I wish I made faster choices or something but I’m just here trying my best to stay above water and I guess that’s worth something I mean I guess that’s worth everything even if it doesn’t mean I am satisfied or content or happy or in some state of acceptance or anything. It is just is, as it is, as it always was.

Mental Health

When the quiet comes.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on When the quiet comes.

When you’re you but you aren’t you, your mind racing and all the world alive with possibility and excitement and shouldn’t but should, you feel whole yet like a thousand pieces of you flipped inside out and upside down and stuck themselves back together to be whoever it is you are in that moment, electrified. Days, weeks, months later you look back at it and wonder who that was.

When the quiet comes it’s as if you’ve been running, running, running and then all the sudden everything is still–still–still. There is no more motor running, your boat is just there splashing about, barely staying afloat, ignorant of how it already is filling with water, preparing to sink deep into the dark blue of the depressed sea.

When the quiet comes, you wonder who you are if who you were wasn’t her and who you feel like today may be no more her than who you were then or who you will be tomorrow. It’s not as if you are multiple people, you’re you but you’re not you you are you on fire and you unable to move and you basically functioning and you embarrassed by all the things you said when you were you but you weren’t you.

When the quiet comes, you express your gratitude for not crash breaking the fragile state of stability that you’ve grown to love and need and take for granted. You wish you could take back so many things but you can’t and so you decide it’s best to move on and try to pretend you were never that, then. You invest in your health and trying to get into a routine and trying to socialize and be yourself but not too much of yourself that you scare off the people you’d like to get to know.

When the quiet comes, it is satisfying to throw out the trash that has been piling up and go for long walks under hazy blue skies and lie in grass and let sunlight sink into your skin. To be the mother that you are and the wife that you’ve been and the employee that you want to be. You can think straight for once in so long and try to pull all the pieces back together that fell apart in their hopeless exhaustion and manic mood melodies up and down and up and up and up and down again you went, but now, the quiet is here, for now, and so you embrace it, you cautiously cradle the calm.

Mental Health

Restraint.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Restraint.

Inside our skulls we are wired for pleasure. Robotically we seek out these highs which do their best to ensure both our survival and the survival of our species.

But, what if we can actively retrain our minds to no longer seek pleasure?

This is a central theme to my 2020 and my immediate consolidation of all of my resolutions—pleasure, in its simplest form (all and any comparable to ingesting refined sugar) is hereby and as of 1/1/20 banned from my existence. Dopamine and serotonin will no longer control me. I will have as much free will as a human can have, and that starts by releasing oneself from the chemical desire for a momentary high of any sort.

Some who I have shared this idea with have said this seems unhealthy (everything in moderation my dear) but as I’ve learned with intermittent fasting and a strict 1400 calorie diet with 1-2 high calorie days a week followed by a restricted 500 calorie day, I have the ability to retrain my mind (and quickly) to no longer seek the quick and empty pleasure of a morning muffin or secretly eating a dozen candy bars because they simply exist.

In removing simple pleasure, all that refined sugar, from my existence, I can retrain myself to experience pleasure from subtlety and perhaps heal my addiction to it and replace it with something far more productive and positive.

For example, when you stop eating refined sugar, the natural sweetness of vegetables is much more noticeable on the tongue. We need to eat but we do not need ice cream or chocolate bars or muffins to survive. And, by removing quick highs from our palate, we can eventually taste so much more.

I am applying this to my entire life this year. Yes, it is a drastic shift, but it is much needed. This will help me stabilize this year, simplify and repattern my values. Pleasure is a vice and one worth experiencing but not necessary to repeat or desire. It sounds very Buddhist of me, I guess, but I’m not here to be one with the world. I’m here to teach my mind and the chemicals therein that they do not own my actions. They’ve had 36 years to prove themselves worthy of this power and have only led me into the darkness. In taking away that power, I am here, ready to lead myself into the light.

Mental Health

It would be nice.

by Life With Interest2 Comments on It would be nice.

There are people in this world who do not feel like they are walking on a fragile tightrope everyday, always on the verge of disintegrating beneath their slippery feet. It would be nice to know what that’s like.

It is difficult to be simultaneously grateful for all the wonderful everything that is my life and terrified of losing it all–knowing how easy it is to fall. I can’t imagine feeling confident enough to live life without worrying every single day–to be able to commit to something like a mortgage and not be one failure away from losing everything.

Maybe there’s a life out there where I don’ have to live in a constant state of panic. Maybe it’s the life I live today with a much more positive outlook and repatterning the way I think. There has to be a better way. Mentally, I’m sick, and physically, well, I’m certainly not healthy. I’m committed to fixing all of this in 2020 and yet here I am, eight days into it, and unsure how, and falling back into making the same mistakes. It’s not only embarrassing, it’s frustrating to feel so out of control when all I want is to be in control.

It’s that death spiral I know so well. Down, down I go, accepting my fate without it being necessary. Being sucked into a whirlpool of catastrophe that isn’t even there and kicking harder than anyone would ever know just to stay afloat. The tragic thing is that I fail to, at a bare minimum, be a likable person. The few people who give me a chance give up on me eventually and again I’m alone to pick myself up from the bottom of the ocean, drifting in the dark, my flesh scraping against the forgotten sand.

It all needs to stop. It needs to start being sustainable and routine and productive and stable. It can’t be a life trying to stay afloat in a whirlpool and swirling and swirling and swirling until I’m so dizzy I can’t think straight and my actions are the result of confusion and fear and a deep self hatred that stems from the earliest days I can remember, when I learned that I’d never be good enough. That I was broken and annoying and needed to stop being so sensitive and hyper and sad and scared.

How much have I really changed these last 36 years on this earth? Not much. But maybe I can change over the next 36. I have to keep the hope alive that I can. It seems like it should be possible with the right tools and tricks. The appropriate guidance and people who understand that I don’t mean what I say or do sometimes and I regret it immediately and I’m working every day on being a little bit better until I’m acceptable. I have to believe that somehow I can get there.

Mental Health

Drift.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Drift.

Grab the wheel tight, though all control is long gone. Since the day your eyes first were introduced to light and the world appeared before you with all its people alien to you from the start. And now, at 36, you’ve accepted, or try to accept, that you will never find a path to feeling like part of it all—you won’t just grow out of not knowing how to relate to or respond to others. This is you at your unenviable core. You will not change. Your best bet is to numb. Medicate.

You are drifting yet again. Floating on some field hockey table as a particular puck being slammed against everything. Life moves so fast, especially now, it’s hard to catch a breath. And the hunger to be seen and understood grows with each passing year as the potential to be part of the surrounding world diminishes rapidly.

My value is questionable. I exist to exist. I offend, shock, but rarely awe. I am a mother and that should be enough. Even as a mother there is the shame of not doing enough, not connecting enough, not sending thank you or holiday cards enough.

And I cherish my friends but am a horrible one. I come up with all these ideas and plans that I fail to see through—and I don’t know why other than self diagnosing beyond the depression that every psychologist assures me, along with anxiety, is “all” that I have.

Is it the mood instability or is it the craving to feel connected and consistent which causes all of the instability? Does it even matter anymore?

I am never right or in the right. This is where I disintegrate into myself. I throw my mind at the wind towards anyone who might understand and relieve me from all of this, but it is something I must do on my own. For a person as absurd as myself the only means of survival seems to be slipping deeper inside myself, fighting every thought with rethought, with a giant grin plastered across my face so no one notices. Pure survival mode for now and maybe forever until the end of it. Because no one has time to care about or deal with a 36 year old woman who is so utterly lost she barely can find her own breath.

This is not just being over dramatic or immature or what have you. Look at my words and actions and awkwardness and how I fail daily to come across as an acceptable specimen of acceptable humanity. If I stop talking I am saying too little but if I start it’s only a matter of time (count the seconds) before I say something regrettable, blurt it out and grasp at the vibrations of voice wishing I could swallow them back. The shame of merely existing becomes far too great sometimes.

There lies the conundrum of why or why bother but there is plenty of it in motherhood and the alternate unanswerable question of why not? This is all a big game where every single one of us loses in the end, but I guess it’s still worth playing to pass the time.—if only its chutes and ladders weren’t so isolating and rough.

Mental Health

Undoing.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Undoing.

Where I am right now, finally, I guess, is willing to accept that childhood trauma can and does impact the brain in ways that are chemical and physical. I’m talking to a new online therapist who has a history working with those who have far worse trauma then I’ve ever experienced, I find she immediately understands why I think the way I think, and it’s refreshing to not be fed the same basic CBT lines without a solid understanding of the way I react so sensitively to everything and why.

Maybe it’s not bipolar. That’s a self diagnosis that could be wrong. I’m just looking for something to explain this energy and all of my mistakes, and specifically how there are months where I am clearly depressed and others where I feel like I can take on the world’s biggest challenges and solve them by being so raw and real that people will be inspired and turn to exploring their own psyches and find out that we are all pretty much the same in our bitter-beautiful mortality.

And yet.

There is a problem with how I am. A problem not with who I am but the consequence of it. I am, apparently, an adrenaline addict, which is a thing childhood trauma and PTSD can do to a brain. I’ve been using the word “addict” a lot to describe my challenges so it makes sense.

In my preliminary reading on the subject matter — attachment disorder with adrenaline addiction — I feel myself nodding as I read the content. Basically stable life is boring and I crave chaos. I create chaos. Others do not understand this. I don’t really want chaos but it is an addiction. It is that self sabotage that happens over and over again because I’m way more comfortable with turbulence than smooth skies.

This is something, I’ve read, that is etched into my mind, but that can be mostly unwired. I hope that’s true. Because the gist of it is that the things that today have the potential to make me “happy” are the same things that trigger my next demise.

I’m told I should go jump out of airplanes to fill this need for adrenaline, but I’m not the skydiving type. But one can also do things like performing or running (30 seconds beyond feeling like you can’t run anymore) to get that dopamine in healthy ways. That makes sense—I’m happiest when I am regularly exercising because I’m burning through some of the addiction cravings temporarily. Once my back issues are resolved I’ll be making exercise a priority. I already planned to in 2020 but now it’s part of my treatment plan.

I really wish I could know what it’s like to live without any history of trauma, and can only imagine how hard it is for others who experienced far worse. I feel like somewhere in all of this there is a guidance to my future career as a therapist/author, maybe, helping others with similar pasts and making sure they understand that their brains have been altered from a young age, they are not crazy, they are just addicted to things that are not healthy in that they impact the chance to be truly happy and stable, if that’s what they want.

In the meantime, this adrenaline junkie has to stop with the involuntary self destruction and find motivation to strive for the status quo. I think my new online therapist will help me with tactics that work for PTSD which will hopefully alleviate my cravings for the ugly high of self combustion.

And, I think it is fall-winter too, that triggers the worst of it. Historically so. The fall winter turbulence followed by deep winter depression and by spring I’m ready to pick up the pieces but it’s far too late. Maybe because it’s my birthday and every year I got older the expectations to fit into this idea of the perfect little girl grew exponentially. All I remember from childhood outside of feeling like an outsider, longing to be accepted by others, is getting into trouble, being whipped, and apologizing for being a horrible, broken person. I’m pretty sure that isn’t everyone’s childhood experience.

And I relate only to those with similar childhoods, it seems—the high functioning of us, anyway. Those of us who rebelled against it. Because we want more than this and yet we aren’t sure if happiness is actually achievable in a state of stability. We have the choice between medicating away the highs that drive us (to both the good and the bad) and experiencing the flatline of emotions, or we try to get a handle on the madness etched into our minds with every gaslight comment, every burning snap of the belt against our flesh, every moment that took away our confidence and our understanding of who we truly are or how to make that person happy.

I guess it starts with accepting that SHE (he) deserves to BE happy. Not in an epic, adrenaline-inducing, self destructive sort of way, but in a calm filled with gratitude and acceptance that transcends the day and becomes a natural part of being way. There is a path to recovery and I’m going to find it. I will undo the toxic mind and somehow give birth to a woman who respects herself and believes she is worthy of her own happiness. And, that, ideally, happiness need not be synonymous with emptiness and instead actually, somehow, feel good.

Mental Health

How are you doing?

by Life With Interest1 Comment on How are you doing?

It is a nicety and essential question of small talk: “how are you doing?” Variants of this question include “how was your weekend?” or more directional “don’t you feel amazing today, the weather is just perfect?”

Well, it becomes challenging to answer “how are you doing” with the socially appropriate response when you are challenged in your current state of mental health. The “correct” answer is always “good” or “great” but here’s a list of alternate answers that may be socially incorrect but a bit more accurate…

  • I’m horrible at the moment, thanks.
  • Ok. Why in this context does Ok sound not Ok? Like anything less than good is not Ok?
  • I was just contemplating the most painless way to put an end to my existence but I’m doing great! High five!
  • Didn’t sleep much last night. I have a toddler.
  • Didn’t sleep much last night. My mind was racing. I had a thousand ideas and wrote two blog posts. I’m tired now gosh darn it.
  • Didn’t sleep much last night. Was crying for hours then binge watched some series on Netflix then the sun came up.
  • Numb. Like. What are feelings anyway?
  • I think my feelings are better explained in an impromptu song and dance. (Starts to sing)
  • Really shitty. But I’ve come here to binge on candy and chips so I’ll feel worse soon, don’t you worry.
  • Spectacular. I just finished something and I think it was good. But don’t ask me later because I’m sure someone will tell me it wasn’t as good as I thought and then I will feel the opposite of spectacular.
  • I don’t know. I thought I was ok. But then I just remembered that Trump is president and our cops are shooting innocent people and getting away with it and the world is filled with horrible selfish people and I think I’m pretty horrible and selfish but at least I’m not a republican. You?
  • Like the Bay Area is too fucking expensive to live in. WTF?
  • Restless. Like I want to start a fight. Any interest? Oh wait I don’t know how to fight. Want to punch me in the face? That would be exciting. No, seriously. Punch me.
  • Sick. (Oh do you have a cold?) Mentally (said staring back blankly into the asker’s eyes.)
  • I plead the fifth.
  • You don’t want to know. If you do, read my blog at…
  • If I told you I’d have to kill you.
  • Like I don’t fit in here or anywhere else. You?
  • Hyper as fuck.
  • I do not have an HR-appropriate response to this question.
  • Let me send you my Spotify playlist that answers this appropriately. Think lots of Radiohead and Coldplay.
  • Can’t you tell by looking at my hair?
  • Unsure if I’m actually here at present or this all a dream or reality split in two this morning and if so I hope other me is faring better.
  • Well, I gotta pee. That’s why I am walking to the bathroom. Can we discuss my feelings later or else I’m going to feel something else and I won’t want to tell you about it but I promise you it will ruin my day.
  • Like an idiot because I overshared my overthoughts again and made things awkward and potentially harmed a friendship that means the world to me and I’m so mad at myself right now and want to erase the entirety of last week. How’s your morning going?
  • Great. (Starts to cry.)
  • Feeling sad because I don’t know if I can or should have more children and being pregnant is hard and having young kids is hard and I work full time and need to be employed for a year at one place to get maternity leave and my mental health challenges make that very difficult and I’m terrified I’m going to lose my job at the absolute worst time so I probably should not have another child but I want one and I’m getting older and… oh, you didn’t want to know all of that? Why did you ask?
  • Am I awake? Are you awake?
  • My back and arm hurts but I accidentally overdosed on Aleve so feeling great!
  • Like the world’s worst mom.
  • Good. I think. Wow. This is what feeling good feels like. Thanks for asking!
  • What are feelings? Why are feelings.
  • Pinch me and I’ll tell you.
  • Fuckkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Fine.
  • Confused.
  • Good. Good. Good. So good.
  • 36
  • 16
  • 8
  • 2
  • 82
  • Like an imposter.
  • Generally ok.
  • Fleshy.
  • Maybe alright?
  • Hungover. From 5 days ago.
  • Horny. I’m feeling horny. You?
  • Embarrassed. Chronically embarrassed.
  • Like I wish I was someone else.
  • Better than yesterday.
  • From 0-10? About a 2.
  • From 0-10? About 1000!
  • From 0-10? -1000. Can I leave now?
  • So excited! Isn’t it amazing today?
  • Fearful that life has no meaning.
  • Like my bones can feel the heaviness of the season and are cracking with each step.
  • Infatuated.
  • Extremely apathetic.
  • Mildly sociopathic.
  • Hypersensitive.
  • What?
  • The best I’ll ever feel.
  • Like a magnet.
  • Like a magnet that repels everyone around me.
  • Like a human.
  • Like someone slowly dying and existing in a meaningless void of space but appreciating that existence nonetheless because why the fuck shouldn’t I, you know, it’s all pointless so I’ve got to make it all pointy to feel anything at all. So, how’s your day going? How do YOU feel?
Mental Health

When You Meet Yourself Again Somewhere You Were Before But Forgot Exactly Where It Is

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on When You Meet Yourself Again Somewhere You Were Before But Forgot Exactly Where It Is

Undiagnosed with the highs as I only report with the lows. To therapy, that is. And so, After watching episode 3 of Modern Love I thought, hmm, I get it. Not that specific depiction of bipolar disorder, but of these two realities as one person—one depressed, unable to function, and the other with a sense of grandiosity, of being able to do anything and having this imagined magnetism and a thousand thoughts and ideas racing through your mind, then back to the depression. 

These (mood not tv series) episodes don’t come on suddenly for me, I think, as they do Anne Hathaway’s character. They ebb and flow with the seasons, the stress, and the scents around me. There is no clear pattern, though, but fall into winter tends to trigger the worst of it in either direction—something about the heavy clouds that I can feel compressing my skin and the weight of shortened daylight. 

I don’t actually know for certain this is bipolar—I’ve never been formally diagnosed with it (just depression and anxiety) but I know the questions asked to diagnose it and I know the answers align to not just this moment but a series of hypomanic episodes throughout my life. 

I never like to admit I am beyond the ability to control my thoughts or actions because that is terrifying. But I’m in control enough to know right from wrong. To stop myself, generally, from the worst of it. I can try to present as a normal high-functioning individual and hone in on the energy of the episode to be super productive. Unfortunately, the racing thoughts and ideas often are my downfall. It becomes near impossible to focus on anything except some grande scheme like staying up 24 hours straight to learn piano. 

I think it’s important to talk about mental health issues because they are as real as any other health issue. At the same time I know manic me is writing this as performance art—not so much as a cry for help, but a cry for connectivity with others who get it. Because it can be so isolating to exist amongst a sea of people who surely have their own issues but who don’t understand what it’s like to not know yourself, or, to meet yourself again. Not as a schizophrenic but as a person who has two ways of reacting to the world — both with great sensitivity, but one with a sense that anything is possible and the other who fundamentally believes nothing is.

Neither person sees the world in a healthful way. Others who haven’t been there often like to offer advice. If I had a nickel for every time someone told me to meditate I’d buy a meditation studio. Don’t get me wrong — meditation is a tool that can help, especially to calm down a racing mind temporarily, and I should do it more often. But this isn’t about transient stress or situational sadness. This is baked deep into me so deep no amount of headspace can clear my head. 

It seems the other M word—medication—is the only answer. Bipolar meds are very strong and they scare me. If I’ve ever held one belief close to my heart on who I am it is that I always trust my gut-based intuitions to lead me to what’s right. I feel so intensely it is hard to accept that feelings are just reactions to thoughts that are filtered through the altered state du jour. But I’m starting to accept that medication may be the way to go, hopefully not forever. I’m afraid to say goodbye to these moments when I feel like life is filled with infinite meaning, yet I know it’s unhealthy to live in that world now or ever again. 

But – waking up at 1am and then 4am with a surge of energy racing through my veins is magnificent, especially for someone who lives months of her life barely able to roll out of bed at 8 when the alarm clock goes off. The world is electric and moments extend so that days no longer blur together as a sea of grey nothingness but instead are each their own days in and of themselves. Sensations are so heightened and pleasurable even an accidental scratch feels good, or the hard edge of an uncomfortable chair cutting into your back. Because feeling everything is everything in this state. Feeling and experiencing and connecting.

Of course, others don’t live in this world, so you must be relentlessly cautious. There is madness in the splendor. A longing for plot where story doesn’t exist. Scripting plot points in the subtle arch or an eyebrow, the slight exhale of breath, the way the light catches the temporary truth hidden in anyone’s eyes, that longing and loneliness that some of us feel, that emptiness and want for more, found in the insatiable yet isolated, intellectual, often introverted, and inherently introspective.

And here is the downfall of the mania—because the world of possibility is the me that feels fucking fantastic momentarily yet also is aware of every action and reaction and understands that people don’t exist in the same world and then after impulse acting gets these mixed states with jolting lows, a quick cycling depression, embarrassment, shame, questioning ones own judgment, uncertain one deserves life at all (disappearance seems to be the best strategy to protect others), leading up to what inevitably is falling apart and slipping into the dark depression you know too well where all those highs of the epic life before feel like they came from a dream, from someone else’s life. It’s not like the plot points disappear then, they just become little silent self deprecating jokes along the way. You wonder how you ever thought people could consider you attractive or interesting or worthy of interaction.

The depression inspires a different kind of productivity as it tells you that you will never be good enough and you must constantly prove you are. The mania tells you that you will never be good at the things you ought to be good at anyway but there is so much more to be and do and feel. It’s probably why many artist types are manic depressive. Because in these states you can just create and you aren’t self doubting so much that you might create a work of genius or you might spin out the comparable of horse manure in a critic’s eyes and yet you put out something from start to finish and that’s enough for a shot at creating something meaningful. 

Or, you do what you have to do to survive and fight the urges and silence your mind and run your fingers across the pliable edge of the lemonade cap and feel where it compresses against your skin while listening to music’s rhythms shift and harmonies and discords meld into your eardrums and your play songs on repeat or moments of songs on repeat because they know your soul far better than you do and get inside of it. You write and write and write to scrub your mind empty as fast as possible and in the intervals of exhaustion-fueled silence try to focus and be productive and just survive. You try to exist as if nothing is different but of course everything is.

I don’t know if this is how other people experience mania, or if this even is mania, but it sure feels it. I’ve seen this all play out before, now time and again. I know how the story ends, and where it’s going, if I’m not more cautious. Yes, I ought to pick up a daily meditation practice and do whatever it takes to power through this, and do it on my own, to protect myself and others who may be impacted from my behavior and cravings in this beautiful terrifying heightened state of existence that will surely fall hard back to reality all too soon. And I’ll hold my breath this time and try to make it there without acquiring or gifting too many scars along the way.