Day 42 Reflection: Truth

Truth sets us free, but often in a way that feels like a wrecking ball. Or the silence just before the tornado hits, with its gut-crawling suspense. The silence after the crash, after the storm, shelters the whisper of two words: “What now?”

My truth: I have been struggling for seven years, ever since my diagnosis with bipolar and the loss of my original department. I have struggled with depression when my medications fail and when I face major setbacks. The tricks I’ve learned (cognitive journaling and meditation) bring me to zero but not above. Some days, I cycle through contradicting my negative talk and affirmations almost constantly. I believe that, because I make mistakes, that I am worthless.

My truth: I need to go back to counseling for a spell.

The silence left by the wrecking ball. I, a shell of a building, waiting for the materials to rebuild.

Day 24 Reflection: Understanding

We nod our heads and say “I understand.”

Do we really understand those around us — friends in crisis, strangers in need, people surrounded by injustice?

Too many times, we use the words “I understand” to mean something quite opposite — something along the lines of “Please stop talking, I can’t really handle this.” It’s easy to tell when we are saying “I understand” to stop the flow of a difficult story, because the words come out of a sense of rising panic.

We can’t understand until we open up and sit with someone’s words and feelings. We need to listen without prejudging to get the message. We need to make meaning of their words to understand. If we can’t do this, we need to find someone else to listen.

We might be tempted to offer solutions — we can’t truly understand if we’re doing this, because we’re searching for the problems to solve. We’re not using the silence between words to understand, but to select what we think is the big problem to solve.

To truly understand is to accept what the other says — not accepting it as universal truth, but accept it as that person’s truth. This can be sobering, frightening, or terrifying at times. But understanding is the first step to bridging the gap between people, to healing hurts, to changing the world.

Day 13 Reflection: Search

Humanity searches.

The poorest search for sustenance and shelter. The disenfranchised search for justice. The lonely search for love and belongingness.

We all search for meaning in a harsh, capricious world.

It’s hard to live in such a random world, where one’s life can be turned upside down by a natural disaster or a crash of the economy. It’s harder to live in a world where the wicked game the system and come out on top, where structures that disadvantage people by race and social class keep people down.

We all search for something beyond ourselves, for comfort, for meaning. Some find it in a Supreme Being, others find it in nature or music, still others find it in service to higher ideals. Sometimes our attempts to order our world yield injustice, as when we decide that those who are advantaged deserve their status by order of a deity. Sometimes, when we realize that what we thought was natural order are actually the structures of injustice, we make meaning of the need to right wrongs.

We define ourselves as the seekers of the Mystery — followers of the Book, calling ourselves Christian, Jew, or Moslem; Hindu or Buddhist or Zoroastrian; seekers of Truth. No matter how far we travel on our path, the Mystery of life will always be just beyond us, hiding in a random world.

I’m getting back into meditation again.

For a long time, I couldn’t meditate — I would instead fall asleep, which is something that very quickly shuts off your meditation session. Then suddenly, I knew how to do it again, and I could go on that long walk to my inner self who knows more than I do.

That’s the guided meditation a long-ago therapist taught me, and it works well, because it cuts off all the “what ifs” and (for someone who sometimes goes hypomanic) the mildly grandiose thoughts:

I am walking along the edges of a steam, where one side is woodland and the other side is clearing, with meadow on the other aide of a road. I can see the forest plants on one side, and on the other, the meadow plants (which this time of year are mostly yellow). I hear the stream burble and the occasional call of a bird in the trees.

Just as the forest subsides, the road starts going uphill. I step across rocks in the stream and take the road, it climbs upward on a moderate slope, and then winds around the side of the hill, I go partway up and see a cave entrance. I have to slide down the slope just inside the entrance of the cave, and then I am in this cozy vault. There is a fire burning, and I put a log on the fire.

My wiser self shows up, many years later, with my face much older. She gives me a hug and then we sit down.

“Tell me what you’ve come to ask about,” she says.

I ask her questions about things I’m unclear about, and she answers with things I know to be true.

If i break the sky

If I break the sky,

the sun behind the sun will stream white light

and all will be known,

yes, all will be known;

and the words cannot be erased

when they’re held in the naked light,

and you will know all,

and the sun behind the sun will die

if I break the sky.

Personality and a Mood Disorder: Questions in my Mind

The musing below is something that might eventually get edited for the creative/nonfiction book about living with bipolar. I feel I always take a chance writing about being bipolar in this blog –I don’t want to be considered a lesser being just because the jilted fairy godmother showed up at my christening and said, “Just for not inviting me, this little girl is going to have MOODS!”

Thank you for reading.
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When I first got my diagnosis in 2012, I was devastated in a way I hadn’t been when I was earlier diagnosed with simple depression.

There’s a certain degree of difference between being diagnosed with depression and being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In the former, the disorder can be separated from one’s personality easily. People talk about being followed by the “black dog” when they’re depressed. The “black dog” is described as outside, not inside oneself.

In the case of bipolar disorder, however, both the ups and downs are exaggerated by the disorder. People tend to view their positive moments as their genuine self, even saying “I am genuinely happy right now.” If one’s highs are held suspect, the natural reaction seems to be “Who am I? Who would I be without this lifelong disease?”

I estimate my bipolar became active when I was in high school, if not sooner. My mother described me as “an exhausting child”, and I wonder if that was my bipolar ratcheting up back then. My bipolar has had plenty of time to affect my personality:

People describe me as extroverted, outgoing, and a bit eccentric. However, the things I love to do most are more introverted — writing, puttering around in my grow room, and having one-on-one conversations with people. I think the “bigger than life” me — the one who teaches classes, the one who participated in theatre in high school — came from my feelings and experiences while hypomanic. I’m pretty sure my hand and facial gestures come from there as well.

I say what’s on my mind, even when most people would stay quiet. If I don’t, I feel a pressure — figuratively, not literally — in my brain demanding to let the thought out. Is this why we call it “venting”?

I’ve developed an internal censor and some tact over the years, because when I first came back to the Midwest after five years teaching in New York state, I scared my students. (For the Americans in this readership, think “Consumer Economics by Gordon Ramsey”. Isn’t it “Dave Ramsay”? Not when I taught it.) I still deal with that pressure, and that mindset that if we would just drag things out in the open, we’ll all feel better.

I get crushes because beauty strikes me like a stab to the heart. Richard finds my crushes amusing because he trusts me not to pursue anything past friendship. He’s right to trust me. I used to tell people I had crushes on them and that I didn’t want to do anything about it. (Yes, they were flattered. Yes, they thought I was strange. No, they never had a crush on me back.) Some of my poetry is an attempt to relieve the pressure. I’m pretty sure that crushes are not hypomania themselves, but a high I learned from hypomania. When I become hypomanic they become extremely painful rather than amusing.

Depression has not really shaped my personality, because as it is for other people, depression is not me. Depression descends upon me and separates me from all I love with a black shroud. But I’m sure my unleashed imagination, my curiosity, my optimism, my straightforwardness, and my occasional flamboyance (and bold choice in lipstick) were gifts — yes, gifts from hypomania.