Evening Poem

Island

Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:

I see the island
Still ahead somehow.

I see the island
And its sands are fair:

Wave of sorrow
Take me there.


-Langston Hughes

Telephones

I think people like us struggle a lot with answering the phone. We panic. Who is it? What do I say? Do I fake it?
When my phone rings, my brain goes berzerk. There's a whole thing that goes on.
First I have to check in with myself to see if I'm awake, feeling okay enough to talk, too depressed, irritable, or too brooding. I don't want to answer if my voice or tone says that I am really truly sick. Next I check the caller ID. Immediately I wonder: FAMILY? DAD? I feel relief when it's not them. I don't want to have to pretend with them if I am in one of those moods I just described. I plain worry about how to talk to them anyway. Next option, is it a friend? Who knows about my illness and who doesn't is a huge concern so I have to clear that up before answering as well. Finally, I wonder: what in the world I would talk about, what updates would I give, what about the dreaded "how are you?". After these 2 or 3 seconds I silence the stupid thing, wishing I could have answered.
Anyone who knows me knows that calling me won't really get you anywhere. Most of them even skip leaving a message because they know I hate my phone and I won't really call back.
But our phone fears get worse when we give our fears the power. We've got to just answer the damn thing to keep from being isolated, bored, and lonely. I'm doing it, and my contact list is expanding!
In 12-step meetings the Telephone is an official program tool. They pass around phone lists, and ask people to stay afterward to exchange numbers. And people call eachother every single day, and part of the whole deal is being sober and accountable and healthy enough to chat on that phone. Well, that is a great thing, and I think we should try giving this some thought.
One of the beauties of life is choices. Choose to extend your intimacy by answering the phone. I think getting close to others takes the pain away. Anyway, 12-steppers also famously say "Fake it 'till you make it". That means that when you're feeling your absolute worst and your phone rings, fake a smile and have a chat. I'm open to the risk! Are you?

A Risk for Family

The discussion between people who suffer mental illness mostly ends with an agreement about family life: we just want to be given permission to be who we are.
There is no element of choice here. We don't ask for this mental illness. We just find out we have it...it hits us like a truck, blindsides our brains, confuses our loved ones naturally, and freaks us out too! We may go to the Shrink, get thrown a bunch of medications, and not even be told a diagnosis or explanation of what we are about to go through for the rest of our lives. How many of us do know enough about our condition that we can help family get it?
Like I said, it's a conundrum. I want my family to be there for me and understand my life, but I also need to understand my own self and my own condition better so that I can help them. Solution? Each person has to put in work.
The only way we're going to reach an understanding is to put our family emotions aside, and step up to the educational plate. Even if you're not connecting with them right now, encourage your family to read, go to a meeting, or do some research. Do plenty of this yourself. Or simply be open enough to let them read your blog. If you take the risk first, you might be surprised that they'll be willing to risk something for you and your recovery in the future. Or, like me, you can look in the past and see that they really already have. Either way, it's one step closer to your family loving the person you are.

To Med or not to Med

Now I'm getting suspicious. I've had several symptom-free days in a row. I'm basically right in the middle of the road, not hypo-manic, not depressed. Just being and doing. Being and doing, my 11th grade Philosophy teacher's definition of "time". So if time is passing without symptoms, something must be working.
I'm currently not taking a mood stabilizer due to an awful experience with side effects and also in part to a new doctor who made me want to kill myself for several days. I take Mirapex, I take Klonopin. That's it for now. A light load for me, for I'm used to the fistful of pills taken twice or three times a day.
Since January, I've undergone nearly 30 medication adjustments. Now that it has been a month without a single adjustment, I feel good. The creeping suspicion I allude to is of medication.
I've always been an advocate of meds. Yes, they make me want to roll my eyes, and I do. But I know I need them, and know I want them. My husband wants me to have them, can't blame the poor guy, and my therapist, well, her opinion aligns with his. I'm outnumbered!
It's been almost ten years and I have yet to find that great cocktail of meds that works for me. It's hard to keep the faith in these doctors, these prescriptions, these changes. But it is easy to have faith in the idea of being well, the notion of symptom free days. Not that I am a person of faith, just desperate want. I trust the professionals because I need them, and I want the meds because I love myself and want more days like this.
This post has no resolution, no answer of its own, and medications can't provide that either. We can't go around looking for a solution to Bipolar. All we can do is remain curious, try new techniques, and we evolve. My final thought? Progress, not perfection.

Caveat: I would never discourage anyone to discontinue meds without a doctor's help!

An Evening Poem

WAKING

Get up from your bed,
go out from your house,
follow the path you know so well,
so well that you see nothing
and hear nothing
unless something can cry loudly to you,
and for you it seems
even then
no cry is louder than yours
and in your own darkness
cries have gone unheard
as long as you can remember.

These are hard paths we tread
but they are green
and lined with leaf mould
and we learn to love their contours
as we learn to love the body branching
with its veins and tunnels of dark earth.

I know that sometimes
your body is like a stone
on a path that storms break over,
embedded deeply
into that something that you think is you,
and you will not move
with the voice all around
tears the air
and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes unawares
those sounds seem to descend
as if kneeling down into you
and you listen strangely caught
as the voice moving closer
halts,
and in the terrible silence
now arriving
whispers
without pity or persuasion.

Get up, I depend
on you utterly.
Everything you need
you had
the moment before
you were born.

Anon.

On Staying Visible

I love to adorn myself with jewelery. I like big chunky pieces, not flashy things but a lot of tribal jewelery and pieces from India. I like to wear my fat smokey quartz ring, some Baliwood earrings, my thick wrist cuff, and most importantly my fabulous wedding rings. I'm totally into it, and the more the merrier.
But it hasn't always been that way. For the past two years, I rarely wore a single piece of jewelery. My whole collection sat in the beautiful box in my bedroom, shut up tightly. I would remember my college days all decked out in beads, all the while unable to even entertain the thought of wearing a necklace let alone my dozens of personally made bracelets. There was something holding me back from being myself: a desire to be invisible.
Invisible. Wanting to disappear. I didn't want to go outside and be seen, didn't want any neighbor to know I existed. I was barely able to leave the house most times, and refused to be out in daylight. So the jewelery disappeared. I thought if I wore something pretty, someone might see me, and that was exactly what I didn't want. This extended to my clothes, my hair, my face, and my hygiene. I was purposefully making myself unattractive in order to remain under the radar of the people I saw each day. I wanted desperately to not exist, so I took myself to a place where I actually felt already dead.
Today, I am slightly flamboyant. How did I turn it all around? I surrounded myself with people who also suffered from mental illness. I made friends in the hospital, and joined a hospital program where I got support from others struggling with Bipolar, Anxiety, Depression, Suicidality, and Voices. Just by getting to know them, by forming a community, I learned from my new friends, and from my treatment team, about how to feel validated as a person with mental illness. I began my own questioning - my own investigation into truth. I discovered my own unique truth through my own experiences of what was liberating for me. I learned to think about how it would be possible that I would DESERVE a pleasant experience.
We all have painful experiences that seem unmanageable, and result in avoidance of emotions. When we become invisible, our emotions die. All we have to do to break this cycle is stop trying to escape emotions and start trying to attend to pleasant emotions. Put simply, be curious about what's happening on this inside!
I've come a long way since this phase of my life, but I can't count out the idea it might return again. Being Bipolar is about flexibility. We want to respond to daily change with understanding from the heart - knowing that there is no one way it "should" be. I think maybe living with Bipolar is easier if we can learn to embrace opposites, to be able to hold the contradictions in our life with love in our hearts. Kindness is based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance, so be kind to Bipolar self, adorn yourself and announce your presence to the world.

Sick as a Dog

I'm sick. My dog is sick. My husband is sick. We're quarantined up in our home. But what a change for once, a sickness that you can actually witness. You can see my sniffle, cough, and hear me talk with a deep man's voice. With Bipolar, you can't always see me suffering. Often I think those around me might not even believe it's real, for they can't see what happens in my head. They don't know the craziness of my thought patterns or the distortions in my memories, feelings, and reactions to events. Lucky for them, but how do I get them to understand what I go through?

With mental illness, someone is always asking, "How are you doing?", or saying, "I'm so worried about you". Besides the fact that that gets SO old very fast, what am I supposed to say that would really explain where I am in the Bipolar Spectrum? My latest M.O. is to say that I'm right in the middle. Then I don't have to explain my mania, my depression or suicidality, and the person asking seems satisfied enough to shut the hell up and move on. And that's working for now, because presently I am right in the middle of things. For those of us educated in our long hospital stays, we might know this as the "Sweet Spot".

The "Sweet Spot" is also known as the three "B's". Boring, Buddist, and Beneficial. Boring because, as we know, mania can be a hell of a ride, quite fun an interesting at times. Buddist because we may feel a little bit, as usual, that all life is suffering. Beneficial because we are neither bouncing off the walls or trying to kill ourselves. This is a neutral place to be. Here I am today, and that's good enough for me. So let's be thankful for the three B's today. And maybe my 3 family members can each get another B by the end of the day, one that stands for "Better".

Toast to Good Friends

Bipolar sleep is a funny sleep. Not happy funny, twisted funny. I have finally smoked enough that by the end of this night I am comfortable enough to be real on this website. I'll go into the smoking another time. So I am close to sleep and that feeling of being plunged into the ocean, swirling around in the dark, seeing random snapshots and not knowing which way is up. There is always a situation that is somehow my fault, involving family. I've done something wrong. What a simple little message. Not that I believe that, or maybe I think most people do. How much do we feel that we have failed our families? How many times of day do we wish we could have done something better to make it right and make it all work out? I think a million times what I or he or she or we could have done together to fight for our solidarity. And so now, with no sense about what solidarity and loyalty means, I wander about with distrust and suspicion. I'm sure it comes across, I know it does. I can't imagine having this mental illness and not having a tough skin when it comes to letting people in. But I'm trying, and finding some people really are miserable to be around and you can't trust them. But then there are gems, rare and precious just like that, who don't come around often but stay when they do. So let's think about the one or two people in our lives or maybe more if we're lucky that will run this long haul with us. Think about them as you are falling asleep, be in a safe lovely place with them. Have your favorite dog there, for he is surely one of them. We'll toast to them, we love them.

In The Beginning

You don't need to hear it from a doctor to know that you have a mental illness. If you think you might be a person suffering from a mental disease, listen to your heart and tune into the patterns in your brain. You might feel that your emotional center is always hurting, always wounded and crying in pain. You might recognize a change in your brain where ideas and events that used to make sense it all seems crisscrossed and mixed up now. If you are like me, you probably look around you and wonder how life, jobs, families, and friendships seem so easy and effortless for everyone else. This is the beginning of depression, and for me, the beginning of my mental struggle.

Where to go from here will be the topic of my blog. How to cope with daily life is a special skill we have to hone, and I will be sharing my daily struggle to defeat the disease, hoping it helps other people like me. Stay tuned!