Love and Spontaneity #reverb10

Dec. 16 Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? -Martha Mihalik

Dec. 17 Prompt: Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? -Tara Weaver

Perfect.  Just as I sit down to write this, another headache is coming slamming in.  The barometer is changing, and like many migraneurs, barometer changes can give me headaches.  More often than not they do.  But I had gotten away with the first 24 hours of this storm, so I had hoped maybe I would be spared.  Sigh.

I couldn't decide how to approach the friendship prompt.  I feel like I have endured a lot this year, but most of it was spent in our duplex, just my husband and myself.   It was much more a year of physical and emotional stress than it was of perspective change.  I know that stress and mayhem are supposed to build character, but my character can only be built up so much before it topples me with its weightiness.  I know how to get through shitty times, because so much of my life has been shitty.  That sounds awful, and I should make it clear I am very happy.   But that is almost entirely because of my marriage.  This is not to disparage my friends.   And perhaps it is just a way of pointing out how dear of a friend my husband is to me.  But he was the person's whose shoulder I sobbed when it all became too much.   And vice versa, frankly.  

We have become better friends this year.  We both talk about it a lot:  It is as if we have just met each other again, 10 years later.  Again, a horrible year in terms of events, a fantastic year in terms of my marriage.  Our family is mostly on the East Coast.  I have a sister in Dallas, and a sister in Australia.  We are a pretty self-contained unit, and both being shy introverts, we aren't the most social people, so we really rely on each other.  I actually am more of a social person than he, which is almost scary.  

Although I do think my sociability would be enhanced if I felt I could confidently accept invitations in advance.  But I always risk being sick the day of.  Which cleverly segues into my lesson learned in 2010.  Heh.

It is hard to get me to do things at the spur of the moment.  Yet I have more "memorable" moments when I say "Fuck it, let's do it," than when I try to plan ahead.   I mentioned in an earlier post that I plan compulsively, and while I do not have OCD, it is considered something I need to pay attention to as part of my overall mental health.  Of course, keeping an eye on over-planning is kind of a Catch-22 for me, but I do as best I can.

Whenever I say, "Okay, let's do it," I have fun.  Always.  Whether it is to run to a restaurant at the last minute, or catch a movie, stuff that may not seem very bold to you.   But I can't even be sure I will be functional the next day, so planning for things is no good.   In fact, I know I use the obsessive planning as a defense mechanism for my lack of control over my health.  

And I also have a tendency to "hoard" the hours I am not in pain.  Sometimes I just enjoy hanging out doing not much, when I am feeling all right.  Add that time to the times I am down with headaches, and that leaves not many opportunities for spontaneity.  

Spontaneity for me could mean deciding on the spur of the moment to order a fun dinner from Whole Foods for New Year's Eve.  Then ordering it two weeks ahead of time.  But hey, I ordered it as soon as I thought of it!  And some of the joy I do find in planning comes from exactly this type of anticipation, so I actually was not being as much of a freak as usual.

But it can also mean moments of truly plunging in, and challenging myself, such as sharing the communal showers at the Oregon Country Fair, and overcoming just a little bit of my body-hatred.  It also meant I decided to go to a class on the Medical Cannabis Industry.  And at the moment, I am annoyed, because I had another great example of when taking a chance did something positive, and the migraine has knocked it out of my head.  Grrr.  Planning does have its place, I guess.

I will never be able to stop planning entirely.  I see the same behavior in other family members!  But I am trying to take risks, however tame they may seem to others.  

In fact, I just decided to let my hair grow out its natural color (with plenty of gray), and made the hair appointment for early next week!   And earlier that same day, I am going to stop off at my favorite tattoo shop to discuss my next tattoo.  Wheeee!

Baby steps, people.

5 Minutes of Appreciation #reverb10

December 14 prompt:  Appreciate.  What is the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do express gratitude for it? -Victoria Klein

December 15 prompt:  5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in 5 minutes.  Set the alarm for 5 minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010? -Patti Digh


I once again have been having health problems, so I am combining some prompts, and may do so in a couple of days again.

I received the Dec. 14 prompt, and I was beginning to feel like I was being asked essentially the same thing over and over.  What did you like best about X?  What was the best thing you did?  Where did you have the most fun?  I know it isn't quite that simplistic, or overly gooey sweet.  I understand it must be hard to come up with prompts.  But I wonder if the authors aren't becoming too engrossed in making their prompt as "deep" as possible.  I can keep only mining that single, "deep" vein for so long.  I thought about skipping the prompt outright.

But then I received the December 15 prompt.  These kind of timed exercises have always helped me; as I have said, I do best with a line in the sand.  Plus, I felt like if I just started spewing memories, the things I appreciate might naturally rise to the surface.    So I set my smart phone's timer for 5 minutes, and these are the memories that "pushed through"
-
Oregon Country Fair-Avocado Dream Boats-The Ritz-spinach and cheese turnovers-glitter-Mount Shasta, the halfway point to Veneta-Driving near Corning for olives-Trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park-Mud Pots-Almost brain surgery-More and more seizures-More and more migraines-Violet and the root canal-mixed episode-hypo manic episode-Foot Surgery-Life on a scooter-DH gets new job-Quitting daycare-S, J and H-Emptying our savings-We end the year in the black-Making it through the tough times-growing closer-planning for our 10th anniversary-Job interview at a dispensary-coloring books-shopping for jewelry-Eni-thing-It's a Girl Thing-thrift shop hunting-starting to read again-learning cribbage-Happy 9th Anniversary-DH turns 40-Niece turns 3-"Sister3" turned 40-Oaksterdam University-Medical Cannabis-activism-Violet in the yard-riding a bike-car breakdowns-Crazyboards, and blogging-Blogger, and blogging-Told my mother to back off-My mother aged significantly-My father is sick
-
Now, I did corrects some spelling, and re-organize the list so it was a little more coherent to me.  Out of the 49 I quickly counted (which means the actual count could be anywhere between 47 and 51), 16 (about a third) of the memories I came up with had to do with my husband's and my health and finances.

You can see by the things I italicized what was going on in our personal lives:  Fears about health and money, surgeries, disappointment, and just overall stress.  I know a lot of marriages are pulled apart by money and health problems.  I have watched it happen to friends and enemies alike.  Maybe it is because we have both spent our lives since puberty struggling with illness.   Maybe it is because we both know what it is like to have negative worth, and that it is survivable:  At one point right before I met DH, my finances were so bad, the FDIC wouldn't allow me to have a bank account.  He had almost as bad a history.  We have worked hard to build up our savings in our marriage, because we are both late to the land of "financially responsible adulthood."

For 11 months, we watched our savings dwindle.  We actually were starting to think of selling parts of our 401k.  I hate money. Hate. it.

So when my husband was suddenly hired at the end of August, literally days before he was scheduled to have brain surgery, it blew a hole in our plans, and I hate when there is a change of plan.  Suddenly, there was not going to be brain surgery, but there was going to be income.

Much to my shock, I was torn.  I had spent the entire month of August being tended to my psychiatrist, preparing myself for my husband's surgery.  I wasn't intentionally trying to make it "all about me," but I just fell apart at the idea of something going wrong.

Yet when the surgery was postponed so he could take the job, I was angry at him for not doing the surgery instead.    Since then, the threat of surgery has reappeared, but I have come to accept I cannot make this decision for DH.  He will have it within the next year, it is just a matter of whether it is sooner or later.

So all of this depressing stuff has ironically made me appreciate my husband and my marriage more than ever.  I am bad at expressing gooey emotions towards my husband.   But we have had so much time together in 2010, that we were able to talk about our relationship and our marriage a lot, and no matter how difficult or thorny the topic.  It never seemed to take a negative turn.

So this is not exactly riveting, but I show my appreciation for my husband and my marriage by keeping the lines of communication open, and trying to be brave enough to say things I am nervous about saying.  So far, it is working.

Body Integration: Where I end, is where I begin. #reverb10

December 12 prompt:  Body integration.  This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body?  Did you have a moment that wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?  -Patrick Reynolds


I thought long and hard about this prompt.  I was beginning to feel as if I was going to have to talk about the same thing I talked about for "Moment," which I had already cited again in my post for yet another prompt.  Next I tried to think of one of my rare athletic moments.  The few times I exerted myself, there was not any particular moment I got into some kind of zone, where mind and body melded.

Suddenly the phrase "mind and body" leapt out at me.   How could I have missed that?

One of the dilemmas of being bipolar is determining the point at which one's personality ends, and the influence of the illness begins.  Mental illness is a biological illness, but it manifests in our behavior and mood.  Are our "real" personalities and our bipolar symptoms, which are, after all, largely behavioral, too intertwined to be teased apart?  It certainly can feel that way, especially when you are in the midst of an episode.  The fact that sometimes a particular mood will really bring out a troubling personality trait fills me with trepidation that I am directed more by my illness, than my own volition.

One of the things I have found on Crazyboards (which I mentioned in the "Community" prompt blog post) by listening to other bipolar patients' experiences, from childhood to the present day, so much of my life is an echo of theirs.  From similar yet unusual childhood mishaps, to relations with our parents, to our delusions and/or hallucinations,  and how they spill over into our day to day lives, no matter how rational and responsible we try to be.

So is the startling similarity of so many bipolar people's lives just a correlation, or do precursors of our first "official" mood episode start appearing way earlier in our lives than one would think?  The traditional age of onset for bipolar illness is late teens, or early 20s.    But while we may not have an acute episode until after our childhood, sometimes it seems as if our early behavior and personalities are strikingly similar.

And because bipolar illness is a genetic one, our parents offer suffer from mental illness of one type or another.  So many if not most of us had unstable and chaotic childhoods.  If anyone needs structure, it is bipolar people, and that kind of tumultuous upbringing often causes us to find ways of sabotaging and undermining ourselves.  Crazy parents are often unable to provide the support and nurturing we need, through no fault of their own. The more regular our lives,  the better we fare from day to day (although I will admit that I am very unlikely to impose structure on myself).  I don't really know how a "normal" family interacts, but our family gatherings are almost always tense affairs, involving a great deal of teetering on egg shells.

Unfortunately, the mood episodes that make me feel most alive are mixed episodes, which are widely accepted to be the worst and most dangerous episodes in terms of the risk of a patient harming themselves or others.  Rages, sobbing, over-sensitivity, self-loathing, sensory overload; the sensation of my body trying to crawl out of its own skin, the pacing, the inability to sleep.  Things taste awful, so I stop eating.  My frustration threshold is non-existent, and I can feel anger coursing through my body.

Mixed states are the most visceral and terrifying periods of my life.  I hope that no one ever judges my overall personality based on my behavior during such an episode.  But I would be disingenuous to tell people that mood episodes are somehow not a genuine part of me.

Just because I haven't added any media for a few days, and this is supposed to be a post of the uniting of body and mind, here is a picture I took of myself during my last mixed episode, in the early summer of 2010.  Most of you of course have no idea how I normally look, but here I am drained of color, my face is set and furrowed with anxiety, and I look exhausted because I had probably gotten about 12 hours sleep in the last 4 days.

Flounce

This is a total and complete whine, so if you want to maintain the illusion that I am more mature than a three year old, please skip this post.

Sister3 celebrated her 40th birthday this year. Sister2, who is very well off, took her to Africa. For a long time, I couldn't understand why that upset me, because while I do hope to go to Africa at some point, sub-Saharan Africa is way down on my list of places I want to go.

Well, of course, I realized while looking at the pictures (which are totally cool) what my problem was. It wasn't really Africa, it was the 40th birthday trip. Sister2 got a birthday trip that all the sisters were required to attend. Sister1 got a last minute exemption, because the baby she adopted unexpectedly became available, and she wasn't allowed out of NY State, but she had been expected to attend. She also got a birthday trip for her 40th birthday.

Oh, plus during Sister1's birthday trip, I arranged a special "sisters" spa trip to celebrate Sister2's engagement (Sister 1 was in on this, but did not pay), which Sister3 and I paid for We rented out the salon. S2 was totally pissed about it, because in spite of her prior insistence that she was footloose and fancy-free that weekend, She had made plans, and we fucked them up, and she made sure we knew it. I told Sister3 we shouldn't surprise her, but hey, I've only known them since birth, what would I know.

She still could have been a little more gracious, she never apologized for the way she acted.

So add to all of this expense and resentment on my part, my 40th birthday was totally ignored by all my sisters. Of course, at the time, it didn't even occur to me to be bothered by it. It was only after being forced to pay for Sister1 and Sister2's trips (and shower) that I began to realize what the deal was. I wondered if for my 45th, there would be some acknowledgment, but no.

It is under 3 years until 50. If it isn't acknowledged, I am serious, I am not celebrating any more 50th birthdays. The trips for my first two sisters were NOT as expensive as sister3, just to Sonoma. I don't expect to go to Africa, although I wouldn't mind going to Sonoma, and having my portion of everything paid for.

I know this is infantile, but if I don't get acknowledgement, they better not expect me to go on any trips or go in for any big gifts for them. This is a huge pattern in how I have been treated by my entire family my whole life. Even Sisters 2 & 3, who are cognizant that I got a raw deal from my parents (it was as if they were raised by different people, no emotional OR physical abuse), are willing to pile on.

I am sure I am annoying to be around, especially when I was depressed a lot. But their personalities are not so sparkling that I particularly want to spend huge amounts of time with any of them, either.

So this is a huge infantile rant, but it is my blog, and I have nowhere else to throw a fit about it.

By the way, if this post didn't give it away, I am labile, and irritable as hell. As bad as the spending is, I would rather be manic than in a mixed state. Let's hope this is due to mania, and is short-lived.