thoughts – Page 2 – life with interest

Want.

April 23, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

There seems to be a cliff dropping down to a gorge so deep it’s impossible to know how deep between reality and another reality that seems to be on the other side of it. And, in this time of coronavirus, my side of the gorge is shifting backwards, not forwards. It becomes particularly enticing to make a running leap despite knowing that there is no way the laws of physics would allow me to safely land on the other side.

Maybe it’s time to leap. I’m getting older by the second and making so little progress. I asked earlier if progress is really productive and yet I want to keep moving in some direction, ideally forward. I guess it’s just as a woman of great dreams my heart is saddened by moving away from the edge of the cliff and resolving never to even consider leaping again. To avoid falling, certainly, to the victim of my wild imagination, my constant hunger for something greater than or other than this side.

I should have leapt sooner. If I fell, I’d have fallen, but now it’s too late to try. Life is no longer about chasing that reality across the chasm it’s about sinking into routine and silence and hoping to save for the down payment on a house you will be outbid on anyway so why bother?

See, I’m an escape artist. A master of disguise so masterful I don’t even recognize myself when I look in the mirror anymore. So it goes. I long to be reminded of who I am or once was, but don’t we all. For all the years of our youth we spent preparing to become ourselves in adulthood the cruel joke is that we actually were ourselves all along and ran out of time to pursue whatever it is we really wanted. So instead we are stuck, toes tight around the edge of our cliff and looking out into what is now all but an impossible leap to the other side which we can’t see anyway.

That doesn’t keep me from imagining what is feels like to be there, rolling in fresh soil, burying my toes deep, curled against the softness of how I assume it all might be, that other maybe, a thousand million miles away, instead of the actual exactly, the here and now and tomorrow that can be easily estimated and played out well in advance. At some point the desire for suspense and surprise becomes too strong. At some point she turns towards her demise and starts to sprint ahead towards that impossible leap.

Politics, Etc.

It’s all going to be ok. Right?

March 22, 2020March 22, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

People who do not have anxiety disorders may understand a smidgen of similar panic these days—that deep sense of dread that no matter how hard you try and plan you just are not in control of anything in this rabid little big giant world of ours.

I know I ought to stop reading the news, devouring every qualitative and quantitative data point about this virus. I hadn’t spent a single minute becoming the world’s expert on the flu or other causes of death at scale so why do I find it so impossible to look away from the many articles about infection spreading across the world?

Maybe it’s the tightness in my chest that hasn’t fully dissipated for two weeks despite a full course of strong antibiotics. Maybe it’s knowing that many of my loved ones—my mother, in-laws, and grandmother—are in the at risk category which means things could get very scary if any of them got infected. Given worst-case projections that 75% of us many get sick it’s hard to not worry.

There is also a chance this will all blow over fairly quickly. Maybe the rates of death are much lower here than they have been in other countries. Maybe medicine will soon keep the worst of the disease at bay. It doesn’t help much to be a pessimist, though I wonder how much it helps to be a realist in this situation. I mean, it is important to take necessary precautions and isolate, but beyond that what can we do? How panicked do we want to be?

I don’t understand those who don’t feel the heavy weight of anxiety right now, but I envy them. Those who are in the what will be will be camp seem to accept this may get pretty ugly, but they aren’t particularly worried about it. Then there is the camp that thinks the entire situation is being hypersensationalized. That the media is playing up our fears when the data is not yet available to get an accurate analysis on what is really going on. That this is all not worth shutting down our economy over, despite acknowledging that some people will die from this who weren’t otherwise ready to meet their proverbial maker.

But it’s challenging to pretend everything is business as usual when it so clearly isn’t. Ignore the news—fine. Don’t engage in conversation and social media chatter about hospitals becoming overwhelmed and people of all ages becoming critically ill and unable to breathe. Got it. I just don’t know how to tune out how dramatically life has changed, in an instant. How we can no longer see our friends, or anyone really. We go for walks and sprint to the other side of the street when anyone heads our direction. We do not have a moment to look a stranger in the eye and exchange a friendly silent hello or an awkward accidental glance in anyone’s direction.

Two weeks of this is certainly survivable. It may be longer than that. How long? So many think it won’t be long at all. It doesn’t make sense for this to be a month or two and then we return to normal. To defeat this thing it seems we must accept it will seriously disrupt our lives for quite some time. Months? Years? Certainly not weeks.

There are positives to the isolation as well. It forces us to return to simplicity, in solitude or with our close family. We cannot go out to be entertained, we must entertain ourselves (or at least cozy up on the couch while watching Netflix.) It provides pause to a modern life that sprints ahead with no retrieve, and gives us the opportunity to think, create, and, if we can quiet our minds enough, sleep. So I’m trying, I’m really trying, to focus on the positive and not expect the worst. The focus is to keep loved ones safe, keep ourselves safe, and take everything one day at a time.

Isn’t that what the non anxious folks do?

Mental Health

Restraint.

January 13, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

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.

Random Musings

2020.

January 4, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

Maybe I’m just in an uncharacteristically good mood today, or my post-massage “toxins” are intoxicating my mind, but I have a good feeling about 2020. I know the change from 12/31 to 1/1 is an arbitrary a delineation of time from one period to the next as any, but for some reason, everything feels different. I am thinking in five year chunks right now, and 2020 is the beginning of this chunk. A new beginning.

2019 was the end of trying to be something I’m not and letting that turn me into someone even worse. I am still scared but I am accepting now that failure is not only ok, but that it no longer means getting on the same horse and expecting not to fall again. I am not meant to ride a horse. I’m maybe meant to surf on starlight or fly a rocket ship. The world is full of possibilities and I’ve been so limited by fear. Fear is there for a reason but I’ve realized what is really terrifying is that 15 years into “adulthood” I still feel as lost as I did in 2005. Maybe more so, in some respects. For someone so lost, I acknowledge I’ve managed some level of achievement in all areas of my life—but everything is slightly off kilter.

The next five years are about finding my balance. Split nearly in two, the first half is dedicated to simplification and productivity. Semi-minimalism, reduced social media use, sleep, intermittent fasting, pescatarian mostly plant-based diet, daily movement, high-value time with my family, saving (not spending), and focusing through stretches of time are the themes of these 2.5 years. At the end of this time, I will be 38.5 and prepared for the next phase, the entry into my 40s. For the second half of these five years, I will add to the now-routine simplicity and healthful way of living and add substantial change. This change will lead to a 40s of fulfillment where I can build and create on a daily basis (exact meaning of that is unclear, but through phase 1 I will identify my objective and work towards acquiring knowledge to empower this transition.)

Everything starts with simplicity and sleep, starting tonight. Starting now with these “toxins” sweating out of my flesh and breathing in the fresh air of one of my favorite Bay Area towns as I take the time to walk around and fully reset. I became toxic in 2019 and there is no going back to undo my thoughts or actions. But I can change everything going forward. I can stop projecting my own lack of control into trying to (and failing to) solve everyone else’s lives. I need to love myself, as cheesy as it sounds, and truly accept the things she isn’t good at, and provide room to grow where eventually she can add the most light to the world. That light is there, at the end of the proverbial tunnel. She sees it. She feels it burning hot on her flesh. The warmth embraces her with possible possibility.

creativity

I should probably

January 1, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

Think of a character and plot so unlike me they would be both interesting to write about for hours on end and intoxicating to escape into. Escape is what I need, not from any one location, but from this mind which is like a forward-loading washing machine churning the same load of clothing over and over nonstop for eternity.

There is really nothing more to be said about *me* as much as I’d like to imagine my life is so interesting millions would gather to hear me read a few pages of a memoir I’ll never write — the one titled “I’m not funny. I’m hilarious.” Or my very-far-into-the-future best-selling self-hurt book “fuck zen: embracing your inner and outer anxiety.” All the books I’ll never write because I really don’t have much to say and what I do have to say is not as interesting as what everyone else has to say and so I might as well not say it.

But I still dream of figuring out how to write fiction. It seems awfully delightful—as one flings from childhood and its imagination allowance its easy to forget how to think up all the things that could be while buried in trying to resolve the things that are. Maybe in that imagination somewhere is a story that is meaningful enough to make readers gasp and sigh and feel and understand their own behavior and wants and needs a bit more—it always astounds me how little most people think about the whys of everything. So stories gently remind them of themselves and prod at those ignored vulnerabilities. The sore spots festering beneath fresh cookies made for bake sales and their accompanying smiles and social niceties and hiding behind office desks and in conference rooms where people turn into robots to perform their roles to find some meaning in all the meaninglessness, as well as to pay rent. I’m not very good at *that* kind of pretend so it would be helpful if I could find some talent for the other kind.

But alas, I too have no imagination. Or, I lost it a long, long time ago, somewhere in the fading wallpaper of my childhood home. I think it’s there somewhere, in me too, still. I’m curious at the least. So maybe there is a story in me, somewhere. The world has millions of books written and many are horrible and many have only been read by the author and her mother and her two best friends but they at least are books that were written!

This writing of fiction requires empathy not just for real people but for fake people as well. I’m unclear I have either. Though instead of loving my protagonist(s) I think I’d be served better as an author to hate them, or have a cold indifference to their choices, irregardless of how kind or evil they might be. The empathy of not judging ones behavior in knowing that all action is in reaction to something that at some point one had no control over. A general acceptance of the philosophy that free will is an illusion and we are all a chain of dominos tipping over in the direction we ought to, in response to other dominos tipping over on us.

If one day some critic writes about my writing, it should say something like this—she writes of humanity’s ugliness and beauty through the lens of sociopathic wit. No person’s vice is judged by the author, and even the reader finds themselves relating to the darkness of humanity, seeing how we all slip sometimes, at least mentally, into places we prefer not to admit even to our therapists and diaries. Not necessarily to the depths of her complexly fractured characters, but in their thoughts and impulses which seem to translate somehow to all of us in a personal way which guts us reading any of her many works — she will go down as one of the most prolific and thoughtful authors of the century.

Or, perhaps, she will go down as the woman who never accomplished more then blogging about all the things she would like to accomplish because her only talent in life was coming up with ideas of things to accomplish that she never would.

Oh well, maybe 2020 will tilt me towards prolific productivity or, at least, a plot, or person to write said plot about.

Random Musings

Spilled.

December 31, 2019by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

If it was the cancer, I’d be devastated, still, but not living with this dripping open wound. When someone is so stubborn, it’s nearly impossible to change their behavior. Maybe entirely impossible. But still, his cause of death does not sit right with my heart, and it certainly didn’t sit right with his.

With a pacemaker put in just a week or so prior, and a box not set up properly by the rehab home that was supposed to notify the hospital in case of any problems, and a man alone with no one to help him, screaming deliriously into the night. How fast did they go to him? What happened in his last hours? He called my mother and told her how frightened he was, they were taking him on a ship. She told him to go to sleep, he was just having a bad dream. It wasn’t a bad dream. It was the worst dream. The end dream.

In my own deliriousness just a week after having my son and pumping all hours night and day to keep my milk supply alive I received a call at midnight—a few moments after going to sleep for my needed hour—that my father was dead.

All the calls and trying to coordinate doctors and convince him to accept treatment when he wasn’t in the right state of mind and beg him to eat a god damn banana to increase his potassium levels were useless or maybe caused more harm than good. I was the one who recommended the rehab by his mother’s home—I should have instead pushed for one closest to a hospital.

And yet rehab was a joke in that he was not being rehabilitated. His heart was failing. He couldn’t stand up without his blood pressure dropping to dangerous levels. I couldn’t go see him in my third trimester. I knew the end was near but did not think it was quite so near as his cancer was not spreading so fast and maybe we at least had a few months left—some time to say goodbye.

He pushed himself too hard in physical therapy to stand and no one stopped him. The last video of him my mother sent was him standing and smiling and taking a few steps. He thought he was getting better. Getting out. Maybe that’s a good thing. But if he hadn’t pushed himself so hard that day… if it wasn’t a Friday and then the weekend with less staff… if the rehab wasn’t in the middle of a big move to an entirely new building distracting the workers from their other duties… if we pushed to figure out how to get him seen by a specialist even though insurance wouldn’t cover medical transport and he couldn’t sit up… if we had yelled at the specialists to see him now not in a month and yes we know they are busy but this is an emergency… if we listened to him about not trusting the doctor at the rehab who was changing his blood pressure mediations… if he ever had a primary care doctor instead of only cancer specialists… if only healthcare wasn’t so disjointed and managed as if our bodies were one connected system instead of parts to be managed by specialists who don’t speak to each other… if only doctors at hospitals who changed out on shifts understood what the doctor on the prior shift said or recommended. It only there was some consistency and sanity in all of it.

He was a very sick, dying man. No one would question that. In his delirium his worst cake out—and the nurses and doctors did their jobs as they do, but their empathy if they had any drained with their patience. But after all of that… from the first day in the hospital in June until his passing in August and my body aching with third trimester pains and heart aching wondering if I’d ever see him again and if he’d ever meet his grandchild then breaking when I was told at midnight that horrible night that he never would… I’m a mess of a human. Crippled, more than before. It’s not like I had such a perfect relationship with my father, but I felt a responsibility to him, to hear him, to help him, to ensure he had the most peaceful death possible when it had to happen, and I achieved none of that.

Some nights he shows up in my dreams. I don’t believe in an afterlife, they are just dreams. But still, they are so real. He is there with my son and they are so happy together. And then I wake up and I remember reality. My mind slips to imaging his corpse, nearly two years buried, and the moment at his funeral I saw him dead, though I shouldn’t have, as it isn’t something Jews do, but my mother had to identify the body and my non Jewish aunt recommended I put something of my sons in his casket to bury him with. So I put the frog hat that I took my son home from the hospital in on his shoulder and looked at him dead for a few seconds but those seconds etched themselves into my mind for a lifetime and I see them each time I awake from these all-too-frequent dreams.

But death impacts all of us and we all lose our parents sooner or later. And other loved ones. And ourselves. So I try to lift myself out of this broken state and use it to fuel a drive to make the most out of every moment. I’m trying. But failing. Maybe now, nearly a year and a half later, I’m starting to truly dig out of it. To accept he’s really not coming back. That time is never enough. That memories fade no matter how hard you try to cling to them. And no matter what freezes your heart, life moves on, cold and emotionless. It doesn’t wait for you or anyone.

Mental Health

Drift.

December 20, 2019December 20, 2019by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

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.

December 17, 2019December 17, 2019by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

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?

December 16, 2019December 17, 2019by Life With Interest1 Comment

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

December 13, 2019December 13, 2019by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

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.