RealMental

acting as if.

sometimes, is the only way i can act.

rushes of emotion, mental activity going way over the speed limits.

i see you smile, watch your interactions with other people, the way that you move yourself that is no longer the child you were.

i’m not sure “how to be”, i haven’t written or read that chapter yet.

i bet there isn’t one on that anyway.

for each person it would be different. the way you process information and emotion is uniquely personal.

it’s as if i am watching a movie that pulled me close enough to jump into it. emotionally.

i’m trying to dog ear the page so i can get back to it later.

only you can’t do that with your life. you can, but then you always have to go back and face the pages that you thought you could escape.

after so much time, it all gets tangled up like christmas lights.

you curse them, wonder if just throwing them away would be a good solution.

except, each year at that magical time you pull them out again.

and they are still tangled.

once again, the only solution is to work on them each day. sometimes making little or no progress.

some days making so much progress, you have to lay down for a nap because the progress hurts so much.

some days, acting as if is all that i have to give.

I am a classic Adult Child. I need to please everybody, and my self-worth is measured by my ability to make everybody happy/calm/sober/sane. Between my alcoholic dad and my depressed nonfunctional mom, I was the adult of the family. I spent a lot of time being quiet, being good, being busy, being helpful growing up, but it didn’t make a dent in my parents’ behavior. All it did was make me wonder why they didn’t love me enough to see how hard I was working to make them happy– which then, of course, made me both more depressed and more determined to be better, smarter, nicer, more. (And really, really, angry. But it took me years to figure that part out.) I tried to take care of my younger brother, and mothered/smothered him right into resentment, which is only now beginning to heal. I tried to take care of my mother, but those attempts bounced off the teflon shield of her narcissism. And I tried to please my dad– though this, in part, was “rewarded,” and kept me coming back for more.

None of this helps me have healthy relationships. I am the best, most caring, most sympathetic friend ever, until you don’t reciprocate in a perceived hour of need, when I, exhausted, heart-hurt, depressed and angry, will lash out at you in a sobbing, choking, waterfall of grief and accusation. I am the ideal employee, until the father-figure mentor falls short of my expectations in some way, at which point I will cease to give a shit and start self-sabotaging. I work myself into the grave, then get exhausted, manic/depressed, and start messing stuff up, all the while lacking perspective because I was trying to be perfect and denying that I was falling short. I’m the best boss– always available to help you sort a situation out, giving credit where credit is due, and being truly constructive with my criticism– until I fall apart and am utterly unavailable to you. And I am a pretty good wife, mothering, cleaning up, nudging along, until I get pissed off at whatever it is that I’m annoyed by, because isn’t it enough that I work, and do the shopping, and do the cooking, and do the family organizing, do I have to do everything? All of these traps are hard to avoid, and keeping out of them is as much work as remembering to take my pills every day. That’s why practicing the fine art of Letting Go has been so crucial to keeping my sanity.

Before I met the Better Half, long before my bipolar II diagnosis, it would be safe to say that I was a Serious Person, well on my way to being a Bitter Bitch. I was a prime candidate for a Sense of Humor Transplant. But the Better Half made me laugh, makes me laugh, helped me rediscover my laugh and my sense of humor. And the joy that he brings me every day allows me to lighten up, to realize that my house doesn’t have to be perfect, to let the dishes sit another day, and to air my grievances in a way that will not win me Battleaxe of the Year. It’s still a struggle– decades of being a Control Freak are not easy to let go, and a little bit of perfectionism is OK. But maintaining the balance? Oof. Letting go of getting it right, and just practicing, even if I never make perfect– that’s what’s needed.

Republished from BipolarLawyerCook.

We have a stressful situation coming up, and I worry. I’m already seeing signs that I recognize…they could go away as quickly as they came, or they could get worse. I won’t know until it happens. I am on eggshells, unable to figure out the “right” thing to do or say, just trying not to crack the surface I tread. I don’t know how to respond to thought processes that are, to me, foreign. Nothing terrible is happening, indeed, nothing bad is even happening. But I have that ache all over my insides, like the ache you get in your eyes when you’re straining to see in total darkness, the tightwire tension of trying to be perfectly still and silent so that you can hear what might–or might not–be coming up behind you.

By coolbeans

It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen my dad in person. While I was out with my daughter today, I saw a man who looked a lot like my dad. It was startling how much. I kept glancing over, trying to decide if that’s what my dad would look like with shorter hair and carrying a little more weight.

My brain twisted around and around looking for the answer. I finally asked my daughter to look. “Who is that man?” She looked and said, “I don’t know.” I asked, “Is that your grandpa?” She looked again. “No. He looks like him, though.”

The man got up and left and I was suddenly unable to hide the fact that I was trembling. I put my head down and started to cry. My daughter was perplexed. “Why are you crying?” I told her I didn’t know exactly. That I thought it might really be him.

She said, “I would think I’d be glad to see my dad if I were you.” Then she said something else. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it made me think she believes I don’t see him because of something I did.

I’ve felt shaken all day. I can’t stop crying and I feel lost. I didn’t realize why until just now. I was afraid to confront him and tell people what he did to me because I thought they would see me as a troublemaker. A grudge-holder. A tattletale. Maybe even a liar. I’ve dealt with other people in my life being unable to see why I don’t just “let it go”, but I didn’t think my little girl saw it quite like this. She doesn’t blame me and she’s not upset with me, but she does see me as the instigator. As much as she accepts me and allows my problems to be mine, if it weren’t for what I did, it wouldn’t be a big deal to run into my dad when we stop to get a burger and fries.

She’s not yet ten years old. I don’t want to tell her everything so she’ll be on “my side”. I’m on her side, and being on her side is more important than having her on mine. So I’m telling you. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. I only made it stop.

Originally posted here.

Since calling back the therapist and booking my first appointment for this coming Friday I have felt lighter, happier, more bright, and motivated to get up and go every morning. As the appointment gets closer I wonder if I’m already pushing myself to heal before I get there — like when someone hires a maid but cleans the house before she arrives.

The want I have to become ‘normal’ is so overwhelming some days. In the last week and a half the husband and I have re-connected so well that I don’t want to let anyone else into the spectrum of my thoughts. It cheapens the experience, to share, even here. I cannot describe the love we have without sounding cheesy or overdone but I will say this man is my best friend and I love him with everything I’ve got.

Jesus, even that sounds silly. Go ahead, laugh. I am.  But sometimes I want to be more ‘normal’ for him.

I’m so appreciative of this rock in my life that I can break down to, that I can trust completely, and that when I am up, as I have been as of late, he continues to inspire me on a daily basis to be myself, which is a happy person for the most part.

The less time I spend thinking about petty things and history, the happier I become. I find if I get my freelance work done in the morning (I work from home) and head off to the gym or go for a walk or even just shower and throw laundry in, I feel as though I’ve accomplished something. It beats sitting on this couch while surfing the net and feeling incredibly guilty about such a waste of time. If I stay on the computer too long, I mope and get so down. But I haven’t sat around on the computer for over a week. Now, by mid-day I’m ready to tackle any project and I’ve even found made time to read a novel again, or knit (I know), or just snuggle with the kids and talk. I used to brush all that stuff off to surf the internet.

It’s gray here – the snow hasn’t come and the sun is scarce, so I’m missing the brightness. I’m really busy with life though, and the kids. I haven’t yelled at them since God knows when, except to call them for dinner. By the end of the day I’ve done so much that 9 p.m. seems late and I crash. I’m making lists of house stuff and errands and getting them done, which is big for me. Hello, meet the Former Mrs. Procrastinator. I’m eating 3-5 small meals/snacks a day, cooking more for winter and sleeping a regular pattern, as opposed to the starving myself of sleep and food.

Like I said, the maid has been hired, and I’m cleaning the mental house.

“If you want something badly enough, you can make it happen.” It’s not true, at least when it comes to memory. There’s always some inconvenient truth-teller, correcting the re-written version of the past that you’ve authored. I’ve wondered often if you’re in denial, or if you really believe it. Are you that insecure? That fragile? That crazy? Re-framing is one thing, but painting over the canvas doesn’t change what’s underneath.

You tell us we are lying, that it was never like we say. You tell us that we are ungrateful. And it’s not true. We are grateful, because despite all the rest, we made it out of childhood as OK as anyone can reasonably expect. And we know that you believed that you loved us. Intent counts for something, even if what it’s always been about is your narcissism and self-absorption, your need to be seen as a “good person”.

But you’re the one who’s lying. You’re lying to yourself because you don’t want to know that you should have done more, tried harder, stopped looking inward and acted to do what you could for us, rather than spent all the years feeling sorry for yourself. And telling us it’s the truth won’t work. And now you’re lying about other things, because you like the mania, and you feel every bit of the self you imagine yourself to be. You’re denying that your behavior is manic, because if you admit that you are, then the feeling of worth isn’t real, and you have to re-paint the canvas again.

I feel sorry for you in some ways, because it must be exhausting, needing to re-write everything to define yourself in your favored purple prose. I feel sorry for you for not being able to admit your mistakes, much less learn from them. But you can’t make me admit that what happened didn’t, and you can’t make me tell you lies that will make you feel better. My canvas is worn in places, scarred in others, but the entire work is there for me to understand, and the total picture teaches me something new every time I look at it.

The fourth time i tried to kill myself hasn’t happened yet.

I am making some of the hardest decisions i have ever had to make to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Today my husband asked me to come home, he pleaded. He asked me to come back and make an effort to work things out. To be a family again.

So many parts of me would love to do that. The support. The friend to talk to. But i know in my heart that the environment i lived in for the past seven years is directly related to the debilitating depression that i suffered for the past two years. I can’t put faith, or take the chance, in the idea that things will change.

I need the change i have now. I need to stay alive. For myself, for my children, for my husband. I want to stay alive. I feel better in the past three months than i have in the past nine years. It’s been hard. Incredibly hard to walk away from my marriage. But, for me, that’s the key. It’s been hard. It’s made me sad. But, i am not depressed.

I can truly say that. For the first time in so long. I am not depressed.

Being on my own has made that happen.

I’m sorry for that.