Hopefully it will help at least me. It would be nice if it helped someone else. Or entertained someone.
I wrote a really long post about the past year, in painstaking detail. Then I decided that you would be better off not reading it.
Here's the short version: it was the best of years, it was the worst of years. There were wonderful, amazing moments, and months of feeling mired in mud. Oh, right, that would about describe bipolar. But it's not all highs and lows. There is middle ground, where I am pretty functional. I managed to function quite a lot when I was spending time with my daughter and granddaughter, who was born last year. I got up in the morning. I showered. I socialized.
But when I came back to Florida, I really, really wanted to be up there in Maryland.
Right now it's impossible for me to move to Maryland. And I've spent the last year wrestling with that. It's contributed a lot to my depression and my downhill slide where I neglect things like showering, exercising, socializing. I'd even started missing appointments again. Even for therapy and psychiatry.
How can something really, really great happen which makes one so depressed?
I knew the damn answer, I just refused to admit it. I've spent years in therapy, and some of it was actually helpful. But the answer really lay in the years I've spent in 12 Step programs. Acceptance. The stupid Serenity prayer. It kept whispering in the back of my mind. I kept ignoring it.
Sometimes I just want to be someone I'm not. I wanted to be in Maryland, but I just didn't have the resources or the stability to move there.
Acceptance doesn't mean giving up. It doesn't mean wallowing in the place that I'm in. It means recognizing where I am. The only way to get someplace else is to know where I am starting from. And also accepting the good things about the place I am in.
Of course, I dropped out of 12 Step programs a couple of years ago. Since I was Group Rep at the time, it's just another thing to feel guilty about.
Oh, good, I've come around to feeling guilty again. That's a familiar, friendly place.
I'm not good at long term goals. If I want to move to Maryland, it's going to take a lot of steps in-between to make it work. I'm not sure I'm capable of those steps. My goals right now are all about trying to return to a normalcy that I had before last year.
I didn't spend all of last year in my nightgown. I went on a cruise, for Pete's sake, and I only spent two days of it moping in my cabin. I participated in NaNoWriMo, and achieved my goal. I visited my daughter and granddaughter three times.
So, highs and lows, and places in between.
I'm not sure if I've entertained you, but I have spoken my truth.
I wrote a really long post about the past year, in painstaking detail. Then I decided that you would be better off not reading it.
Here's the short version: it was the best of years, it was the worst of years. There were wonderful, amazing moments, and months of feeling mired in mud. Oh, right, that would about describe bipolar. But it's not all highs and lows. There is middle ground, where I am pretty functional. I managed to function quite a lot when I was spending time with my daughter and granddaughter, who was born last year. I got up in the morning. I showered. I socialized.
But when I came back to Florida, I really, really wanted to be up there in Maryland.
Right now it's impossible for me to move to Maryland. And I've spent the last year wrestling with that. It's contributed a lot to my depression and my downhill slide where I neglect things like showering, exercising, socializing. I'd even started missing appointments again. Even for therapy and psychiatry.
How can something really, really great happen which makes one so depressed?
I knew the damn answer, I just refused to admit it. I've spent years in therapy, and some of it was actually helpful. But the answer really lay in the years I've spent in 12 Step programs. Acceptance. The stupid Serenity prayer. It kept whispering in the back of my mind. I kept ignoring it.
Sometimes I just want to be someone I'm not. I wanted to be in Maryland, but I just didn't have the resources or the stability to move there.
Acceptance doesn't mean giving up. It doesn't mean wallowing in the place that I'm in. It means recognizing where I am. The only way to get someplace else is to know where I am starting from. And also accepting the good things about the place I am in.
Of course, I dropped out of 12 Step programs a couple of years ago. Since I was Group Rep at the time, it's just another thing to feel guilty about.
Oh, good, I've come around to feeling guilty again. That's a familiar, friendly place.
I'm not good at long term goals. If I want to move to Maryland, it's going to take a lot of steps in-between to make it work. I'm not sure I'm capable of those steps. My goals right now are all about trying to return to a normalcy that I had before last year.
I didn't spend all of last year in my nightgown. I went on a cruise, for Pete's sake, and I only spent two days of it moping in my cabin. I participated in NaNoWriMo, and achieved my goal. I visited my daughter and granddaughter three times.
So, highs and lows, and places in between.
I'm not sure if I've entertained you, but I have spoken my truth.
When I was living in Georgia, around the end of 2007, I desperately wanted to go back to the Greater Cincinnati area. My husband had died, and although I had some wonderful friends, all of my family was back North. It was an incredibly gruelilng process doing all that I had to do to make that dream come true. Without the help of some wonderful family members and friends, I might never have made it. But the truth is, now that I am back here and see my relatives frequently, I don't feel the sense of peace that I was hoping to feel. It's always greener. And, as you say, another thing to feel guilty about. Like I want way too much when life has already given me more than my share.
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