Even I am getting tired of hearing myself say that 2010 was a difficult year for me. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that it was.
Along with my DH's unemployment, and my long term immobilization by surgery, I started to have mood swings, and was frankly mildly depressed through the part of the of the year when I was most immobile.
And like some other people with bipolar, with the changes in the season and the changes of light, come more mood swings. In the spring, I become hypomanic. In the summer, I tend to have a mixed episode. Then hypomania returns sometime around Xmas (yes, I'm keeping an eye on it, but it can still creep up on you). Solstices, in particular, do not tend to be happy times for me.
I began to worry that discussing every troubling thought that crossed my mind with my DH was not healthy for either our marriage or us. But even if I wanted to go to therapy, which I did not, I was trapped in the house by my foot. I needed someone who could listen to some of my more crazy thoughts without freaking out.
So I turned to an online bulletin board on which I had lurked now and then, CrazyBoards.org. (CB) For the first time, I stopped lurking, and began to venture forth into the discussions, commenting, comparing, sharing my experience. There are people with all types of illness, and all levels of suffering. People living with anything from ADHD to psychoses (although I don't want to imply there is a hierarchy of mental illnesses). I have mentioned I am bipolar, and have migraine. My official diagnosis is Bipolar NOS, which is when the illness doesn't quite fit into either the Bipolar I or II compartments.
One of the great things about CB is that we don't have to play nice. It is accepted that sometimes people are crazy, and other times, someone might need a stern talking to, to get help. People don't hesitate to say what they think, however unpleasant. The oft repeated mantra is "we don't have to walk on eggshells here." That is in contrast to most of the other mental illness support boards. Those boards will ban people for confrontation or being negative. The average board for the mentally ill is a much more strictly moderated, polite, non-confrontational, warm and fuzzy place.
One of the first rules of CB's user agreement stipulates, "You won't find that your every post is responded to with feigned warm fuzziness and cyberhugs. Frankly, we think cyberhugs suck." Definitely the place for a mentally-ill cynic, who has dealt with too much shit in her life.
For that reason the CB boards are considerably more real, helpful, genuine, and brutal than the average milquetoast site. To be honest, it is a fascinating place. The population is generally very bright, and the more idiotic people tend to get run off rather quickly. The focus is on mental illness, and the forums are divided and sub-divided into conditions, or medications, but threads can and do take sharp detours. We discuss our relationships. We discuss our hobbies. We fight, we form cliques. And we confide and admit to each other our hallucinations and delusions.
My favorite feature of Crazyboards.org is the community blog. One of the really bad, crazy things I do when I am hypo-manic, manic, or having a mixed-episode, is I post information that is very revealing about myself, but also about other people interacting with me during these frenzies. I embarrass some people, and piss other people off to the point they break off friendships. Sadly, this is often to my benefit, even when I handled the situations anywhere from poorly to thoughtlessly. But until accidentally freeing myself from some of my relationships, I never realized how much I had been tamping down my personality, not to mention opinions, around people I considered friends. It is only in retrospect that I see that those friendships were already fraying at the edges, and the biggest red flag should have been that I no longer felt like I could be myself around them.
CBs provides a safe place to blog. One can control who can and cannot see with much more precision that one can on Blogger. I feel like if I am indiscreet there, it is a little safer. It is definitely a form of self-therapy.
Next year, I hope to dip my toes into the Medical Marijuana activist community. I know from prior activism that that is going to mean inserting myself into the community of activists working on that problem. My fellow dirty hippies. 2011 is definitely the year of Cannabis.
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