I waver over the line of leaving and arriving, trying to come back to today where they meet. This David Whyte poem spoke to me before I even contemplated moving and became a part of the art journal that will be published in July. I tore this spread apart three different times, trying to find my true connection to the poem and my authentic voice in it. It was one of the first spreads I created in the journal and one of the last I finished. It seems fitting—the struggle of leaving and arriving—to a place and to ourselves.
For A Mind Divided’s seventh birthday, I thought I’d look up my very first post. Hmm…somehow this seems so familiar…
♥
Insanity, Creativity and Living in the Now
When I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I thought my life had ended. And in a very real sense, it did. Parts of my life fell off like flesh off a zombie–my home, my job, my friends, my ability to support myself, my ability to live independently. In the months and years that followed, the lessons of living in the NOW and letting go of attachments kept repeating. Living with bipolar disorder (BP) was like living in a constant fire. It burned away everything I thought I knew about myself and how the world works. But with fire comes new growth that could never happen otherwise. I’m finding that to be true in my life as well.
While I always considered myself a writer, I also became an artist because of BP. I needed a way to express the chaos I felt and the wild shifts from despair to joy and back again. My study of the world’s religions deepened. I explored the science and metaphysics of the brain. I also fell in love with “Criminal Minds” and “Fringe.”
I invite you to journey with me into the overlapping realms of mental illness, creativity and spirituality. There will be fire and ice, but also miracles.
Our Social Justice Minister, Erin Gingrich, asked me to participate in her service a couple of weeks ago. Her topic was “Hope Rekindled,” and she’d heard enough of my story to think some version of it might add something “powerful.”
I loved crafting a speech to fit the theme and metaphors we chose—visions of high school speech competitions made me smile as I worked. Even better was the opportunity to pull out parts of my story that could be told in an uplifting way. I wasn’t nervous that Sunday, just honored.
The third member of our service team that day, Martha Shen, crocheted a huge doily for Erin some time ago. She included a poem with her gift that became our service’s central theme.
a single strand
masterfully intertwined
whose beauty is defined
as much by the empty spaces
as by the strand itself.
Here’s my Reflection. If you’d like to hear Erin’s homily, you can click here.
Oddly, my bipolar and binge eating symptoms hibernated while I was sick with bronchitis, sinus and ear infections (Can my body not multi-task? Is my brain too small to hold it all?), so the return of mixed-state depression/rage must mean the other stuff is on the way out. Yaay (?)
While being physically sick is no fun, the vacation from mental shit-storms and out of control compulsion is heavenly. It’s like being normal, only full of snot and really, really tired.
I’m still tired and semi-full of snot, but yesterday I rode sad anger back to bed and built a nest of portable projects around me to keep the yammering in my head at bay.
Henry and Emmett attended, but even they knew not to poke the bipolar bear who had no fucks left to give.
One of the hard things about coming back to my normal state of mental abnormality is that I’ve done so much cool art stuff these past two months. When I could barely breathe, I read a bit in Susan Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy about collecting words, then made Word Cookies out of old art magazines.
I carry them in this little bag that fits nicely in my purse, and offer them like Fortune Cookies to whomever I’m with (which has mostly been people at the drug store, my therapist’s staff, and a few civilians willing to chance my germs).
I’ve been brave about drawing in my journal.
And I created a spread that fell together like a story. Poor Tom Hiddleston, dumped by the harlot Taylor Swift, gave a heart-wrenching interview in February’s GQ that reminded me of Sting’s song Why Should I Cry For You? A little research gave me details I’d missed just listening to the song, like “under the Dog Star sail,” which refers to Sirius, and “north, northwest, the Stones of Faroe,” which led me to the tiny cluster of Faroe Islands off the coast of Iceland. I loved the metaphor of a broken-hearted sailor on the bleak, Arctic seas. And I loved pulling together all the elements for the collage.
The wall quilt I started before I got sick is turning into a fabric collage—a place to try new skills like painting and stenciling on fabric. Tearing apart my old art magazines for the Word Cookies, I found wonderful tips and examples. When I gave a fuck, the possibilities thrilled me.
The materials to make three new art journals came out of my cupboard. I finished two. The third now languishes on my table, waiting for the fucks to come back.
The Buckaroo Banzai journal
My favorite quote from the movie by evil Emilio Lazardo.
Art by Andrea Matus DeMeng
I took a class with Andrea at ArtFest.
One week in therapy, Megan and I looked at commitment, not just making commitments to others, but also keeping promises to myself. I realized that my longterm goal of writing a book to be published carried no joy for me anymore. In fact, working on it was often painful. Why was I doing this again? So people at my funeral could get a party favor? Morbid, bipolar-based reasoning.
I don’t have to prove myself a writer anymore, or leave something “of substance” behind. I can spend my life pleasuring myself with weird art that practically falls out of me, instead of grunting over tortured prose. So, I let that ancient goal go. There are, my friend Sue tells me, only so many fucks a person can give.
Yesterday, in my Nest of Apathy and Rage, I emailed Megan, just to whine. I knew, eventually, that the anger and depression would shift, but it was big and ugly yesterday. Even if I had none, I wanted someone to give a fuck.
Have I mentioned that my therapist is awesome? And funny? She wrote back later:
Take a part of the human body rich in adipose tissue, add pressure and heat (as in sitting for long periods of time), and that body part will revolt—or become revolting. Enough on that matter.
Next came a therapy session where we connected the dots between trauma and food as my drug of choice. Since my diagnosis of Binge Eating Disorder, I’d set down my shame and guilt about being a Woman of Substance. I’d become kinder, more accepting of my body. But there we were, dredging up all that business, and I found myself disappearing. My hands and feet went numb; a rushing sound filled my head; I seemed to leave my body and drift somewhere behind and above it.
Later, I learned what I’d always called this “shutting down” was technically dissociation—an altered state of consciousness that can include depersonalization, sensory and psychological numbing, disengagement, and amnesia. Most people experience mild forms of detachment, like daydreaming while driving and losing a bit of time. The more pathological end of the spectrum ends up Sybil-like with fragmentation of the personality. It’s a coping mechanism—a way to keep the psyche safe when under attack, whether that attack is real or imagined.
Clearly, I had more work to do with this. Or, as Megan reminded me, not. I always have choices, and she is not the variety of therapist who requires excavation of Hurtful Things.
Soon after, as I sorted my old blog posts into potential book categories, I marveled at how I once worked so very hard at controlling my eating, how I celebrated small victories and believed I made tiny changes in my behavior. And then I always gave up, as my endgame of losing weight could never be reached. I started to wonder if I could ever push gently against the binge eating, if I could find a way to work with it like I’d found ways to work with bipolar disorder—gently, with acceptance and kindness, while still holding the worst symptoms accountable. I had no idea how that might look, but I opened to the possibility instead of shutting myself away from it.
On my way to Orly Avineri’s workshop in Taos, I started reading Foolsgold by Susan Wooldridge. In her introduction she says:
I began writing these pages when I decided to make a small collage box each day for a year with what I found on my walks—often the most ordinary, seemingly worthless bits of nothing. That’s when fool’s gold became foolsgold for me, a field around us, or state of being, where everything can be transformed by our seeing and creativity. Merged into one word, “foolsgold” describes a paradox, the value in what may seem to be worthless. Foolsgold reminds us to look beyond appearances, even in ourselves. What seems to loom in us most darkly may finally be what brings the most light. Everything can be transmuted by attention, play, love.
I used to walk a lot, then stopped as it wasn’t getting me to the destination I wanted. If I had some different motivation to walk, like looking for art fodder along the way, I might be able to do it. I let that idea sit in my hindbrain as I got my self to Taos.
One afternoon, Orly showed us a small art journal her nephew made. An environmental crusader, all his art is made up of junk with space for sketches and ruminations. Orly’s nephew had no concern for style, or balance, or making things look pretty. His art was raw and powerful. And very simple.
I can do that, I thought. And as that realization settled in, my body demanded it.
It took a few weeks once I got home to jumpstart idea to action. But now I have my WalkAbout journal, and every few days I set out with my big zip lock bag and find my material for the day.
Change, even good change, can be stressful. My rapid cycling has been spinning like a hamster wheel. Some days the amount of trash among the trees and berms disgusts and weakens me. I tell myself I can’t go out among all that thoughtlessness again. But the hamster wheel keeps spinning, and I tie on my purple trainers. After a couple of weeks of this, I’m learning to wait for fodder to signal me—light on shiny foil, strange lumps, a flash of color in the dunny weeds. It gets easier and easier. As does the art that comes after.
My butt likes that I’m moving more. I make my WalkAbout pages in the evening when my binge eating is most bothersome.
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