A Mind Divided

Back in Tune

27 May 2012 4 Comments

by Sandy Sue in bipolar disorder, mixed-media art, music, gratitude, exercise, friends, depression, distorted thinking, pain, distraction, self-worth, poverty, Bipolar Bad-Ass Training, obsessive/compulsive behavior, TOPS

As the depression gradually lifted yesterday, different parts of me started to come back online.  I made some cards for my sister that only the day before seemed like an impossible task.  I walked the seven blocks to the post office, mailed some bills, walked to my coffee shop, journaled and walked home.  Moving again felt like heaven after avoiding the Y on Friday and skipping TOPS on Thursday.  Moving with pain, still, but moving nonetheless.

I tidied up the apartment, did laundry at my mom’s house, and considered how I would manage this last week in May with little in my cupboards and $20 in my billfold.  After two long depressive episodes this month, the financial well is pretty dry after bolting in my truck when I didn’t really have money for gas and all the take-out I brought in because I couldn’t force myself to cook.  Then, there were all the movies I went to in order to distract my twisted brain from thoughts of self-harm.  Even with help from my family for medical bills and an overhaul on the truck, I’m at less-than-zero.

There’s no despair in that.  I know I’ll be fine.  It’s just the way this illness works in me.  It doesn’t matter how intelligent I am, or how many coping skills I accumulate.  I train and prepare the best I can, tuning my instrument for the Dark Concert to come.  But, when it hits, I can only play for so long before going flat.  Strings break.  The lip gets tired.  Notes run together.  Then, I just hang on and wait for the coda.

As always, it’s in the silence once the music stops where I can effect change.  I adjust.  I fire up any other parts of me that have shut down and put them back in service.  I start practicing for the next Performance.

Last night I got to practice with a friend I haven’t seen in over 30 years.  When Therese walked through the door at Perkins, I felt like me, not the slow, despairing creature I had been for the last week.  I felt my heart expand from a brittle nub of contraction.  I felt music moving through my veins.

Band Divas—Sandy, friend Julie, Therese and Therese’s dad, who was our band director in 1973

Therese and I met at swimming lessons the summer before we started junior high.  She was a part of every happy thing I did in school—band, speech club, foreign language club, and all those slumber parties.  We were part of the same gang—smart, talented, teen-aged girls trying to figure out who we were.  She’s still smart and talented, an accomplished woman moving confidently through the world—just like we hoped we’d be back in junior high.

Catching up on each other’s lives, talking politics, laughing, we both remarked on how much we were the same as those young girls.  The essence doesn’t change.  The song of our soul seeps to the surface, no matter what tries to silence it.

I’m grateful for the chance to practice with Therese last night.  Like a tuning fork, she helped me find my pitch.  It’s always there, but gets lost sometimes in the cacophony of my depression.  Thank you, my friend.