I’m feeling pretty alert considering I didn’t go to bed until about 3:30. I didn’t mean to stay up that late but I had to write in my journal. I’ve really been slacking the last few years. I tend to just write about tangible stuff…what we’ve been doing, how the girls are, what so-and-so is up to. I haven’t written about my thoughts or feelings much in a long long time, which is mainly why I kept journaling all those years. So I need to start writing in it more regularly than every 2 or 3 weeks. It really helps me to purge things, much like I hope to do with this blog. It’s weird because I never really realized it until I started counseling that I really don’t talk to people about my feelings at all. I have a few close friends and of course my family and my husband. But I really don’t talk to any of them about those really crazy, deep things. I don’t really know why. In some ways it is easier to talk to strangers about it, because they don’t know me and a certain level of anonymity helps one be able to share. But talking to someone very close about it is extremely difficult. Partly because they don’t understand and partly because…I dunno…The only person I ever really did talk about those things with was my first boyfriend, a relationship that continued for 5 years and started when I was a teenager. It wasn’t just that he listened to things but he understood on some innate level how I felt and what I was going through, with everything. We were extremely close. Even when I’d say things like “I hate my life” or “I want to kill myself” he never judged me or made me feel like a weakling, or less of a person. He always had a way of making me feel loved and wanted and secure. In a way he has been the standard that I have held everything else up against, sort of trying to recreate that feeling with others. But I have learned every relationship, whether romantic, friendly, or family, is always different, the nuances and dynamics of it, and there will never be any two that are alike. So I’ve learned I need to appreciate people for who they are and accept their strengths and weaknesses, much as I want to be accepted with all my own flaws.
So anyway I dunno what is up with me today. I’ve been reading a little on other people’s blogs and it kinda makes me feel worse, because it seems so many people are doing so much better than I am. They’re writing about all this great stuff that’s happening and here I am, complaining and trying to figure out all my issues. I just really don’t know what the heck is going on with me from day to day. Although bipolar isn’t “multiple personalities”, in ways sometimes it does feel that way. There is the sexy me, the depressed me, the childish me, the preppy me. They all exist simultaneously in most people, and in my “normal” state I would say for the most part that’s true. But it’s also true that a lot of the time, one part of me comes to the forefront and overtakes everything else while the rest regresses. In many ways this makes me feel like I don’t know who I am, that there are all these distinct, individual parts of me that do not combine, they are contradictory and cannot make a harmonious whole.
I feel different from day to day and I’m not sure what the reason for that is. There are two possiblities, one is that I’m rapid cycling, or even ultradian cycling, which is a form of bipolar where a person’s mood fluctuates extremely within either weeks, days, or even within the same day. Another possibility is that it’s mood lability, which, for the most part just means extreme mood swings. It sounds like the same thing but from what I understand, professionals believe that rapid cycling is a definite part of bipolar disorder while mood lability can at times occur in anyone. I’m starting to think that I’m rapid cycling, because obviously I have bipolar so my extreme mood swings wouldn’t fall under the “regular” category. I need to talk to my counselor and psychiatrist about this. From what I understand, rapid cycling bipolar is a difficult form to treat and may be genetically different from “traditional” bipolar. Supposedly even bipolar I and bipolar II may not be caused by the same thing and therefore not treated the same (bipolar I is “classic” bipolar which includes full mania and psychosis, bipolar II includes only hypomanic episodes). There’s a lot of research being done about bipolar now and in ways it’s helpful but it also sometimes raises more questions than it answers.
So today I am just feeling, again, all over the place. I was in a very good mood this morning which just progressed from there, I was feeling hypomanic after that, running and dancing around with my kids, having random conversations with people in the store, in the park, even across a parking lot, being flirty, etc. I was really giddy and sort of talking to myself all loudly and happily. Then a few hours ago I just started feeling blah and sort of depressed. It was almost like instantaneous change. Now I just feel quiet, maybe even a little sad and sullen. I don’t feel like doing much of anything, just hiding out from everyone for the rest of the night.
I am so tired of all of this. This constant switch is wreaking havoc on my life. I want some sort of stability, I want to know that I have some sort of control over myself, which I don’t and I feel very angry and at the same time helpless. I really feel like I’m destined to just spiral down until eventually I am completely loony and locked in some asylum or I just wind up killing myself. I feel like I have no idea what’s happening or where I’m going or even who the fuck I am.
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