Hope you and all your critters have plenty of hidey–holes when the fireworks start (and go on and on and on and…)
Happy Long Weekend
03 Jul 2021 13 Comments
in animals, anxiety, bipolar disorder, hand-made cards, Holidays, hypersensitivity, Mental Illness, PTSD
Stronger and More Frayed
26 Jul 2014 12 Comments
in bipolar disorder, hypersensitivity, Mental Health, mixed-media art, mixed-state, poverty, routine, triggers Tags: cars, Mom, stress, work
Miraculously, I’ve finished another week of work. My life is both easier and harder. Holding this paradox seems to be the Work set before me.
Easier: Mom left me her 2011 Honda CRV, a car with features and comforts I never thought I’d have again. I can hardly believe it’s mine. After scraping a few dollars off the top of my disability check each month to save for a Smart Car, this thing of luxury dropped into my lap (or parking lot). The first time I filled the gas tank, I cried. It cost about half of what it took to fill my dad’s truck.
When Mom bought the car after Dad died, she said to me, “You know you’ll probably get this soon.” It was just one of hundreds of references she made to her own death (It’s that thing old people do—”I won’t be around much longer, so you better…”). I didn’t pay much attention. I was glad she had a zippy little car that she loved. Driving made her feel safe and in control. I absolutely understand that.
Harder: My schedule at work is all over the place—mornings, afternoons, mid-day. I’ve told my supervisor that I need consistency. I need time for my own self-care, and I need to be able to depend on it. I’ve tried to hold my fifteen hours a week to afternoons, but this week was the worst so far. And it’s all to make sure I attend an endless parade of mind-numbing meetings. Some of them have been important—orientation to the organization, introductions to other agencies working with us, procedure—but most are irrelevant to my position. Our boss wants us all to be cross-trained. Part of that, I think, comes from not knowing what our jobs really are yet. But the more of these meeting I go to, the more I can see what’s mine and what’s not mine to own.
Easier: My boss relented on the meetings. She created a buddy system, so my buddy will let me know if I miss anything important. That allowed me to take charge of my own schedule. I’m working 1:30-4:30 every day starting next week. Good for me, but also good for the team. Now they know when I’ll be available for client interviews and care conferences (what I should be doing).
Harder: I had built up a reservoir of stability with my routine and daily monitoring. That’s used up. Everyday is a fight to turn my fear and negativity around. Everyday I feel myself sliding toward lethargy and old habits. I’m hypersensitive and my concentration is fragmenting. I can still see it happening. I can still pause, breathe, and choose not to react, but I’m getting so tired.
Yesterday I had to leave a meeting. The woman leading it was one of those people who starts a sentence, restarts it, jumps to another topic, restarts that sentence and never gets to the point. I know a couple of people like this. They drive me ape-shit. It’s a neurological thing—my nerves want to grab them by the throat.
Luckily, it was the end of my day, and I ran to the Chinese restaurant to eat lunch, listen to my iPod and journal. It helped, but I’m not getting back to my set point like I used to. I’m not able to repair the damage each day all this stress creates. It’s only a matter of time before I really blow.
Easier: Our parents left us some money. It’s not enough to live on the rest of my life, but it will give me some breathing room. I can do my laundry every week. I can get some work clothes. I can even plan a trip to the Southwest this winter to see if more sun and open space will keep me from needing hospital-level care come spring. Poverty has been the biggest stressor in my life. Mom and Dad knew that. They planned their last act of love carefully to ease that for me. I’m so grateful.
No matter what happens, no matter how the easy and the hard continue to play against each other, I am a success. I have gone to work every day for three weeks. That’s a miracle. Walking through the office door is a miracle. Waking up and doing it again is a miracle. Even if it all stops today, I’ve triumphed. No one can take that away from me. It’s all mine.
Man, I freakin’ rock.
Princess Bridezilla
02 Jul 2013 6 Comments
in Bipolar Bad-Ass Training, bipolar disorder, distorted thinking, distraction, exercise, hypersensitivity, Mental Health, rapid cycling, TV and Movies Tags: The Princess Bride, Wallander
Funny that The Princess Bride keeps rattling around inside my head when I’m in the midst of rapid cycling. Well, funny might not be the right word. Inconceivable, maybe.
It’s a dire warning when I’m more depressed getting out of the water than when I get in. My deep water aerobics class is the highlight of my day, nearly guaranteed to jump-start a little feel-good chemistry. It may not last long, but even a couple of hours of relief when the depression is mighty feels like heaven. Lately, it’s been more like the Fire Swamp with lightening sand and Rodents of Unusual Size sucking my energy.
There are days when nothing helps, not even my most radical back-up plan. Driving through the beautifully cool morning? Nope. Starbucks and my journal? Just pisses me off more. A double feature? Blowing a credit card wad on British DVDs? A healthy, vegan dinner at Hu Hot? Distracting and numbing, but once finished I’m back in The Pit of Despair.
There are times when my skin is just too thin. Everything seeps in. I checked out the Masterpiece Mystery! series Wallander from the library last week and devoured it. The BBC adapted Swedish writer Henning Mankell’s murder mysteries with lush photography; tight, complicated plots; and a jaw-dropping performance by Kenneth Branagh as Wallander. The music is haunting and images of the forlorn Swedish countryside painfully beautiful. Wallander himself is just as haunted. There is no doubt that this deeply depressed detective will never gain a shred of insight or be able to change his self-destructive ways.
I feel the guy’s pain. Literally.
I walked into my mom’s nursing home on Sunday to a dining room full of drooling, slumped souls waiting to be fed, or cleaned up, or wheeled elsewhere. My compassion turned tail and yike!yike!yiked! it out of there. The only thing left was my wide open nerve ending and a smattering of guilt. I ducked my head to keep from making any eye contact, but I still needed to wade through the moist miasma of smells to the other side of the room. It was as horrific to me as anything Stephen King ever put his name to. It crawled under my skin and festered. And in the back of my mind, The Dread Pirate Roberts smirked, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
The refrigerator is too loud, my tee shirt too green, the bushes outside my apartment too bushy. Nothing on my iPod sounds right. And if Henry gives me one more of those looks I’ll burst out crying.
Yesterday I researched a little for my story Technical Consultant. Carrie Severide will have to go to London, and I needed to find out what that might look like. Getting a passport, managing a long and lousy flight, jet lag, bad food—it all started to make me sweat. I got anxious for her, this creation in my head, and had to stop.
My internal stimulus can be just as overwhelming as the external. I’m water-boarded with wordswordswords. Images tumble over each other like a litter of snarly opossums. The brain red-lights into overload all on its own.
It takes a lot of deep breathing to pause and step back from all of it. But, that’s the Work. That’s always the Work. To untangle and get the tiniest bit of perspective. And it could be worse. It could always be worse. As Inigo Montoya says, “Let’s look on the bright side: we’re having an adventure, Fezzik, and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are.”
That’s it. An Adventure. Why didn’t I think of that?
Christmas Unplugged
26 Dec 2012 6 Comments
in bipolar disorder, Christmas, hypersensitivity, Mental Health, mixed-media art, therapy, triggers
Unplugging from Christmas felt a little like traveling through a foreign country. After 55 years of doing Christmas, undoing it was just weird. I was able to see how much anxiety and stress the holiday generated in me from the time I was tiny (sleepless and hysterical, watching for a magical man with presents to land on my roof) through my years working retail and still making all the family gatherings, to buying presents I couldn’t afford and eating food that made me sick, to the sensory and emotional blitzkrieg that ultimately triggers a fierce bipolar storm.
Thanksgiving was a trial run, choosing not to attend the family dinner. I had to navigate some pretty big potholes of guilt and shame, feelings of being mean, selfish, anti-social, unloving, ungrateful, etc. It was about as difficult not to go to Thanksgiving dinner as it was to go. But, I knew I was carving a new path, and that it would get easier.
It did. As a whole, my family was supportive. They missed me at the celebrations, but didn’t pile on any additional guilt (I still had some of my own to manage). My brother and I are starting a new tradition of meeting for breakfast the morning he starts back for home (he lives nine hours north). This is perfect. I can still enjoy him without getting overwhelmed. My sister took me to a darling little coffee shop last week where we could do the same. Now, I need to figure out some new tradition to do with my mom. Hmmm…
It helped that I was still enjoying fair mental weather this week. So, cooking a pot of delicious, vegan soup yesterday was a joy instead of a stressor. Listening to my holiday music and snipping new captions for cards felt relaxing and calming. And then watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” and getting weepy over the sweet Frank-Capra-isms was fun and kept me connected to the holiday. I still ate too much yesterday, but all in all, it was a success.
And as a side note, my therapist gave me a tool I’d like to share with all my neuro-diverse friends. It’s called The 14 Days of Christmas and is a way to navigate the stress the week before and the week after the holiday. Here’s how it works:
The following activities are written on little slips of paper and put in a jar. On each of the fourteen days, a slip is drawn and the activity carried out. This helps in a number of ways: each day has a small, doable goal; each day holds something to look forward to; and each day provides a small self-soothing or pleasurable activity. All these benefits could mean the difference between losing one’s mind and keeping it. Of course, there are times when no tool can keep the episodes from happening, but I like to have as many guns in my arsenal as possible.
Here’s the list. Of course, everyone will have others to add that will make the list more personal. I’m also going to fancy-up a jar and pack this with my Christmas decorations for next year. That way I’ll have it ready to go.
The 14 Days of Christmas Activities
- Make an Alphabet Gratitude List (A is for Aunt Tootsie, B is for Biker-Chic boots, etc.)
- Make a list of ten things you like about yourself or skills you have when you are feeling good, then keep it to read when the bad times come.
- Do at least one activity that appeals to each of the senses (visit a flower shop, light a scented candle, etc.)
- Make a collage with pictures/words cut out of old magazines. Let it be about what soothes you.
- Write down a New Year’s Goal—something you have control over and is reasonable.
- Go to a cafe or coffee shop.
- Journal.
- Turn on loud, fast music and dance.
- Read your favorite book, magazine, paper or poem.
- Read a trashy, celebrity magazine.
- Go for a drive.
- Write a letter to someone you haven’t heard from in a while.
- Watch an inspirational or funny movie.
- Get a haircut or pedicure.
- Play a video game or card game.
- Make a scrapbook.
- Make a list of people you admire (real or fictional) and why.
- Blog
- Try cooking a new recipe.
- Get a massage or go to a spa.
- Pray or meditate.
- Go to the library or a bookstore.
- Do something with your hands (knit, crochet, build models, make art, etc.).
- Have sex (alone or with someone you care about).
- Do your favorite exercise.
- Talk to a friend on the phone.
- Go to a museum or art gallery.
- Find something funny to do (read the Sunday comics, visit “I Can Haz Cheeseburger” on the net, etc.)
- Take a nap.
- Write a Bucket List.
- Chat online.
- Invite a friend to your home.
- Sing or play a musical instrument.
- Make a simple meal and invite someone to join you.
- Watch TV.
- Go for a walk and take a picture of whatever catches your eye.
- Have a little chocolate.
- Go outside and watch the clouds or the stars.
- Visit your favorite Web sites.
- Go to the movies.
- Learn something new (a new word, new skill, idea, information about a friend, anything) and write about it.
- Give a gift (bought, made, an experience, time together, etc.).
- Join an Internet dating service.
- Shop (virtual or real).
- Go visit a friend.
- Listen to gentle music.
- Play a game with someone else.
- Sell the stuff you don’t want on eBay or half.com.
- Draw or paint a picture.
- Add to this list.
Drumsound
14 Nov 2011 2 Comments
in bipolar disorder, Cats, coffee shops, compulsive eating, depression, distorted thinking, distraction, exercise, hypersensitivity, mixed-media art, mixed-state, music, poetry, routine, Rumi, symptoms, Writing Tags: fatigue, home, pain, shopping, sleep
∞ ∞ ∞
How to follow that quiet, wise voice inside. Because it’s still there, much as my ears rush with this other sound. There seems no other how but to do, to follow the dim suggestion to plant one foot in front of the other.
The old routine tastes off, contaminated by this unsavoriness. The water still feels like comfort as my body stretches and churns, flexing out depression’s burrs. But, Haven, my writing sanctuary, my one indulgence, irritates and offends. Christian music blares from outside speakers, Easy Listening inside, and I hear both at my regular table. No one will fix the cacophony for me, and I leave. I’m done there, I think.
I look for a new shirt at Wal-Mart, but nothing is right. I push my cart around and around the racks of clothes as if I can conjure what I want with the proper spiral. I go to the grocery store, determined to buy healthy food, no junk. Each selection requires long scrutiny, painful contemplation. There are moments of standing blank in the aisle, staring into the sea of lunch meats and cheeses, holding two jars of spaghetti sauce.
I come home to waiting cats, mildly curious about my bags. I put groceries away, heat up soup, make a sandwich, start to watch a movie I’m not interested in, lay down on my bed with Henry tucked close.
I hear the faint voice encouraging me, and I do the next thing. Then the next.
“I know you’re tired, but come. This is the way.”