Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively. - VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)
it's so challenging to be in the throes of a chemical imbalance and feel in balance. no matter what is happening on the outside, what goes on inside can easily be equated with hell. there is no real rhyme or reason for the ebb and flow that happens, but it does. when the darker side, the depressed side- i suppose the flow- it is the hardest.
i was having a conversation with a friend yesterday about this very thing and she pointed out that of all the people she knew with bi-polar disorder, she never heard one of them complain about the mania aspect. they all loved that piece. tis true for my experience with bi-polars as well. it seems that when they are "in their cups", at high tide and filled with inspiration, it is a difficult feeling to beat. everything feels so connected then and one feels almost invincible.
but when the tide starts going back out it is a much different story. waves of mistrust and self doubt flood the brain and confusion about what to think and how to believe. it seems such a long distance from the former that one can almost not remember ever experiencing that.
this is an ongoing process. sometimes, so busy with life, this recurring revolution is hardly noticeable, but sometimes it is so evident that nothing else can be seen. how does one not drift into madness? how does one stay grounded? it is said that medication softens the process, but does not remove it. it is a neverending story that may always have new twists and turns.
i am roughly at the 4 1/2 year mark of sobriety and i am learning new things about myself with each year. this year has really helped me focus on my mental health and my skills at careening the ups and downs that accompany my days.
i have discovered that i am visited with a self doubting, self-battering mindset that comes on with alarming regularity. and on these days, i am busy re-living many previous interactions (both recent and ancient) with others and deeming myself (silently of course) as being completely without worth and immensely inappropriate. naturally, this is nothing new for me, but what has changed is that i no longer have the antidote to this condition i once had- getting high. what now happens is that i isolate and white knuckle through these rough patches.
as you may have guessed, today is one of those days. it's almost as if a little bell went off in my head this morning- ringing with the phrase- you're judging yourself today. it's not necessary to get wrapped up in the drama of this. but my thoughts return. it is very much like painting myself into a corner- ergo the keith haring photo. i am encouraged today however, as i slept quite a lot last night and i am hoping that this will affect the entire situation benevolently. most likely i will be staying at home today, cleaning and nesting. it's pretty dangerous for me to leave the safe zone on these days.
fun day off, eh? still i am thankful not to be going where i used to go when this happened. and the amazing gift for me is understanding that some things just don't go away. i cannot take a pill or a drink to alleviate, i only have to learn to accept and endure. this is truly a lesson for me in this life.
today's sound choice is my beloved dashboard confessional with "remember to breathe"
this would have been around 1978 or 1979... i called myself a homo named spike.
We lived life from the standpoint of victims. Having an over developed sense of responsibility, we preferred to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. We got guilt feelings when we trusted ourselves, giving in to others. We became reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative..... part of "the problem" of adult children of alcoholics... from mental health matters
another monday, another week, another end of month, another last month of the year. the cycle goes on, the spiral continues, as the earth moves around the sun. i have discovered myself in new light so many times as these last few rotations have happened. i am more surprised and less shocked with each revelation.
being bipolar, although a lifetime companion, has only just begun be seen and recognized by me. i am now discovering things about myself that perhaps i have never been grounded enough to recognize. i take medicine to counteract the imbalances that flow within me, but i realize they do not erase but a bit.
i can see now some of my patterns. i become inspired, passionate, motivated, and directed in cycles. i have a tendency to make decisions in clusters about tasks and projects i like and will take on. during these times, it all seems so simple. i will just do this and just do that. but then, it's challenging to put the brakes on. i perhaps overestimate my abilities and shortchange my personal downtime.
the flip side of my inspired periods is my overwhelmed or depleted periods. it is sometimes not possible to leave the house for the weekend. this includes not answering the phone, and not interfacing much at all. luckily, it does include napping, but it also includes some overeating and very little exercise.
this cycle has been persisting for a while and i don't think it can sanely continue at this pace much longer. i have to teach myself about boundaries and limits. i'm sure i have them, but i'm also sure i'm not in touch with them. and i believe that this is a new lesson for me. this is part of where i need to guide myself in order to know peace.
this is honestly not meant to be depressing. more so, it is me telling on myself so that i don't harbor this like a secret. and frankly, being aware of this has become a true blessing for me. i can so easily see how i used to use through this. i would party during the inspired times and spin so much that i never really accomplished anything. my brain was twirling too too excessively. and the depleted periods were really exaggerated due to the coming down effect. the fact that i'm not trapped in that same hell i endured for years is grace..
i hope this holiday season brings light forward into this area of my life. my intent is to keep in touch with how i'm feeling and how i'm dealing with those feelings. and i'm curious to see how true to my spiritual program i can remain. i am ready to grow.
I remember the first time I heard about the committee. Someone shared that when she went to sleep, the committee in her head got together and started going over all the things that were wrong and why her life was never going to work out. They collected evidence, put solid cases together, and then reached their decisions. When she woke up in the morning, they handed her their verdict - guilty and sentenced to a miserable life!
there is a pattern here. i haven't quite figured it out, yet. my intention was to consult with a psychiatrist, but i have "forgotten" the last two appointments. i finally just cancelled my future ones because i can't see myself being ready to look into this really and forget my scheduled appointments.
i find that when i have a job, a purpose, a reason to be somewhere, i am basically fine. but when i just try to do something with the only purpose of having fun, or i just do nothing, i spend a good deal of time going around in circles berating myself for ridiculously insignificant things. so any downtime i have, i spend flogging myself mentally.
please, make no mistake, i have a mental health issue. i am taking medication for that and am under a doctor's care. but i think what i am writing about might be something else. i think that i have probably always been like this my whole life. i just always medicated it before. i think i might be glaring at another of my character defects.
i am not looking for validation here. i am not asking for reassurance of any sort. i am mostly just telling on myself. i am speaking out loud that this is a way for me to ask that i recognize this in myself. and i will do the work to be ready to have it removed. or better yet, i ask that i become better equipped to handle these incessant thoughts and find the blessings they offer.
One day, a boy asked the trainer, “How come your elephant doesn’t break that weak chain and run away?” The trainer explained, “Elephants have a brain that excels in memory and Big Bertha remembers how the chain held her fast when she was a baby; she has stored that remembrance in her brain and will not have any thoughts about attempting to test the chain now.
So, the question and the moral is…are you letting a weak chain keep you tied down and do you not want to break away and be free.
Don’t let childhood memories keep you chained to the past!
i have to just say today, how very grateful i am for the grounded quality of my life. i have lived in denver for almost 20 years, and for most of those i have been miserable. mainly, that is due to my own instability. i have always felt that this city was too small, that it was too unhip, that i would never be happy in such an environment, that there is no self-sustaining artistic community, and that it there is not really an atmosphere that supports creativity.
although most of those descriptors can still very much be viewed as truthful, my personal happiness is no longer tied to where i am living. this is a sign of personal growth for me.
a good part of my recovery has been to attend to my bi-polar characteristics. these are a natural part of my being, and have been a crucial and integral part of the successes and the traumas throughout my lifetime. living with a chemical imbalance does not necessarily come with a manual. for me, it's not always easy to turn off emotions and yet still feel. i think it's an individual experience, as is the case of addiction. it requires personal experience, observation, and tenacity to learn to co-exist comfortably with the ups and downs.
medication helps, but doesn't erase the effects of the mood shifts. practice is the only thing that is helping me recognize and learn new reactions to life.
this is very much a part of my recovery experience. i am doing the best i can. sometimes it is so far from perfect that i am embarrassed. but sometimes it is completely acceptable. and it is these times, without the use of self-medication, when i find a way to live through uncomfortability, that i can truly feel, from the inside, the benefits of living a sober life.
me with my younger brother(now estranged) notice the ford fairline peeking in....
this is me at 19- employed as bartender and in relationship with peter (who was 27)
"I am constantly talking in my head all the time except when I am sleeping. I am always thinking, thinking, thinking." from Susie on our About Bipolar Disorder forum
my birthday is really part of a bigger celebration for me. it is the anniversary of my coming out as a gay man, too. in 1974, at the age of 16, i decided to kick down the closet door and declare my lifetime allegiance to being queer. i certainly don't think i would do it the way i did now, but i don't have that luxury.
i am bipolar and was in the throes of learning to not cope with mania and depression, sexuality and desire, as well as rules and conformity. i would say that i really didn't do that well. the adage about the traumatized person continuously putting themselves into harms way just to be re traumatized would describe very well much of my first 25 years. but when i was 16, there was no way to saddle the bull in the china shop approach i had to life.
i told my mother (also bipolar) i was gay and she became disgusted and depressed. she took me to a psychiatrist who tried to compare her emotional reactions to the stages of grief. i interpreted that as "i might as well have died". she began to drink, party, and sleep around more than before. i felt responsible for her unhappiness. it was too much to bear. i left home.
i moved to downtown chicago and started hanging around a puerto rican drag queen named danee. she was living with a doorman named jimmey looney. jimmey had a sugar daddy (also a doorman) named peter gigley. yes virginia, looney and gigley. i moved in with them. i started hustling a little to make money. we partied all the time. danee was lifting money out of gigleys wallet and tried to blame me.
i somehow survived all the parties (and multiple traumas) that ensued over the next 5 years. i definitely developed my relationship with self-medication in this period. i moved quickly from hustling to go-go boy. i used to dance in bikini briefs at a bar called "the take it easy inn" when i was 17. i still have fan mail from a college age boy who used to come in and watch me dance. welcome to the blue iguana.
i danced at another bar too, for a while. i met my first serious boyfriend at that job. he was a bartender and i cannot even remember how we hooked up. even more perplexing is how we ended up moving in together. he had two female roommates (both nurses) and it was very much like "three's company" adds one. i became a bartender too, the his job changed to a restaurant on rush street. i caught him having sex with another fellow waiter one morning in front of our house in a car. i was devastated, but would only show anger and erected an emotional wall that became impermeable. our relationship withered and dried up like an african violet in full sun.
wow- i didn't intend to delve into much of this gaga. but there it is. this is perhaps a bleak picture that does not include much of the bright aspects. i did laugh and smile in those times. i developed a sense of kindness that was instilled by grace and the influence of others. i grew up in an eclectic community of gay men. i bounced around between circles of friends and learned how to survive and worked toward a more sophisticated sensibility. friends came and went, sexual partners came and went(wow-pun intended) and i became urban through osmosis. my wit and my tongue sharpened, my mania came and went, and i survived. i wished for love or a lover, but didn't think i was capable. i had failed at it before, after all. and if i was in love, i had to be in love forever. and i had no idea that relationships could end in healthy ways.
in retrospect, i now understand how my out-of-balance emotions set the pace for my life. i made my decisions for my future based upon my feelings, probably because my feelings were so pronounced during manic periods. i had been introduced to sex at way too early an age, so did not have a good sense of personal boundaries. with that lack of parameters, i found myself in compromising situations physically and emotionally time and time again. but i am sure that a protective energy has been accompanying me on my journey and kept me going. how and why this is, i have no idea.
enough diary today. please take the time to check the sidebar. i have posted the finetune playlist "around 1974". that is the year of my 16th birthday and that is the year that this manic bird took flight. it seems to have rained for more than forty days and forty nights, but everyone probably says that. i can honestly report that dry land has been found. and after all these years, it all seems surreal. someday, someway maybe i'll understand it all a little better. until then, i try to do the best i can. and every birthday, i learn i have a little bit more to give back.
so i read a completely moving post from my blogbuddy staggo today: it opened my heart a bit and had me thinking about my life and the parts before lithium finally slowed down the universal pendulum i was stuck on.
i then visited another of my regular online stops and i want to thank child abuse survivor for the link to this vid. i love visiting his site, because he has brought light to some things in his life that must have originally been excruciating. i know similar occurrences were like tons of bricks on my soul for most of my life.
i really haven't ever seen this documentary, but watching this clip creates a reason to watch the entire thing now. i vibrate completely with the demonstrated urge for self-destruction. it's an inclination that moved into my neighborhood when i was about 12 or 13.
this also gives me much more insight as to my unexplained and over-emphasized attraction to robbie. most of the people i admire the most in my life and have become truly close with, have a chemical imbalance of some sort. those friends are usually the only ones that can keep up with me or understand the stark contrasts in my moods.
it also shows me that ceasing this catty gossip about the likes of lohan, spears, and ritchie might actually be in order. after all, could they just be in pain underneath all the parties and papparazzi?
oh and i don't think it's simply welcome to hollywood, i think it's welcome to planet earth. we are everywhere, after all!
