Thrive

Everyday seems to be a new adventure. I think some people may feel that bipolar is foreign and they couldn’t understand it unless they had it. One way I’ve found for people to have an idea is that everyone has moods, everyone feels the same way that I do at one point or another. It’s just that when I’m in an episode it is the most extreme of that mood. Also, it lasts a longer period of time, in most cases taking over my life or at least the functioning. Unfortunately, I have found that the only way to get through it is to go through it. There seems to be no way to work around it, to take a shortcut or to stop it from happening. The way you learn how to control it and live with it is to go through the episodes and learn how to prevent them from happening again. For some people that takes less time than it took me with far less traumatic events but for others they never get it under control. There are really sad cases of people with bipolar disorder and I am very blessed that even though the struggle was real, it isn’t anymore. My psychiatrist and therapist believe there is no reason I ever have to go back to those times. Even though I am working on not to be so much of a pessimist, I think that’s great but because of what I’ve been though I tend to look at it as a realist. Yes sure, I’m doing so much better and I have all the tools and support I might need but I’ll never be able to truly believe that. Maybe that’s ok because it keeps me grounded in the fact that it’s always there and it’s up to me to make sure that I don’t go back. I am also very blessed that I didn’t go through periods of denying that anything was wrong or refusing to take my medicine, I always knew something was off and wanted help. Even though that wasn’t enough and it still felt like forever until I got it under control it is something that holds a good percent of people with bipolar disorder back from being able to function. I guess the point I’m trying to make in my current rambling is that even though many times having bipolar disorder has felt like a curse, everyone has something that feels like a curse, in varying degrees and specificities and the only way to get through it is to go through it.  

I learned about this exercise from the Rachel Hollis Made for More movie. I thought oh please I won’t fill up one notebook page of writing a letter to myself from my persistence. Turns out I filled up 4 and I couldn’t have come up with some of it if I had been writing it to myself. Very interesting, looking forward to her next book. 

I’m at a strange place in my life right now. I have more control over my life and what I do with it than I ever have but I only feel lost. Not the lost in depression, out in space type of lost or even the scared I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself lost. It’s the I’ve never done this, I don’t know what I want type of feels. I do, admittedly feel confident in my ability to move forward, just that I don’t have much history with that yet. I stayed stuck for a really long time, some days that pushes me forward and others makes me want to take a nap. I feel like I might have a good idea of what could work, starting out. I think taking steps, whether they work out or not would be a good self confidence builder. In the past I always felt the opposite, unless I knew it was going to go well I shouldn’t even try. When I started pushing myself I saw that even if things went bad, I was glad I did it anyway and was stronger for it. I got so used to trying to protect myself from something bad happening that there was nothing happening. It’s frustrating trying to have a life after you honestly didn’t for a very long time. So yea it’s weird but lifes weird and I’m finding it’s best just to go with it. I’m not fighting it, struggling, trying, giving up-I’m just doing it. Everyday I’m just waking up and doing it. 

  Today I woke from some strange lucid (very real,detailed) dreams. I felt disoriented and not sure what was reality and what was a dream. I also realized/remembered how many years I spent feeling like that all day, all week, all month, all those years. My psychiatrist as likened my experience with bipolar disorder as falling asleep and waking up 10 years later. I felt like I was waking up trying to figure out how to be 30, being lost in the grips of a mental disorder is very disorienting. I felt like I missed out on my 20s, that I was so behind everyone my age because I wasn’t able to go through all the trying and failing and figuring life out. How was I supposed to move forward in life without starting over and feeling so behind? It took therapy, it took coming to understand what others could see and what my therapist had to convince me of. I had figured something out, it had not all been a waste of my time and now I was lost, behind and wouldn’t be able to catch up. I figured out, although it seemed like it took way too much time to do it, how to live and thrive with a disorder that I will have my entire life. There is no cure or magic medicine that can make it go away but that doesn’t mean it can’t and doesn’t get better. I also don’t have the answers or the cure for bipolar disorder. The tricky thing about mental disorders is there is no one cure or medicine that works for everyone. It is a journey you have to go on, a lot of the time alone to figure out what works for you. Once you do though, once you can get even a small amount of control over something that has had control over your life, there is nothing like it. No experience with jobs, relationships or things I felt like I missed out on in my 20s could compare to getting my life back. It took a long time to get to that realization to stop living in the past wishing things were different, which often left me in depression. It took everything I’ve been through to get to where I am now. I tend to beat myself up and not give myself credit but I do have to acknowledge that I am doing better than I ever have before. It’s not a waking dream anymore, it’s real stability and I get to chose what comes next. 

I read this quote a long time ago when building the new seemed so impossible. I realized that a lot of the time I was focused on fighting the old, which left me just fighting. Not moving forward and building the new. It really stuck with me and will pop into my head when I’m struggling with how to move forward. It happened earlier today while playing with my nephew, I couldn’t remember the exact quote but a few words and the feeling it gave me the first time I read it. My favorite thing about quotes is that you can learn something life changing, something that touches you and stays with you always, in just a few sentences. That is powerful, Socrates wrote this in what feels like forever ago and all this time later it touches my soul. Helping me see I need to stop fighting the old and build on the new. I have quotes tattooed on my body, that have been so valuable to my sanity in some really tough times. I’ll share those with you and the reasons that, what some people see as silly tattoos, are lessons I most needed to learn. They are badges similar to the ones I earned in Girl Scouts as a young girl, they earned their place on my body. Each day, regardless of where I might be or what is going on- I have them there to remind me of what I know is true and what will keep me moving forward. 

Nice to meet you. :)