Checking on my Comfort Zone

Recently, a friend introduced me to a site called Superbetter. It's all about making yourself better - more resilient, more optimistic, more motivated. It's filled with games but not like flash games or xbox games. These are quests and you face challenges, gain allies, learn skills, and fight off bad guys. It intrigued me and, since my friend signed up for it, I figured I would sign up, too. I don't play everyday. Honestly, I haven't been to the website in weeks.

While working through my quest I got stuck. It's my own fault, too. I was faced with a challenge and didn't do it. I haven't done it yet. I started to but it was uncomfortable so I set it aside with the intention of returning to it the next day. I did return to it but I didn't do anything about it beyond rereading the description of what I was supposed to do. What did I get stuck on, you ask? It's silly, really. All I needed to do was write a journal entry answering this question:

What is your current relationship with your comfort zone?

Fortressed within it?

Always busting through it?

See what I mean? It's simple. Yet, it's so complex. Formulating a reply has been troublesome and it's been weighing on me.

Source: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

My comfort zone is always changing. It varies with my mood - how manic or depressed I am or if I'm neither. My level of anxiety plays a big role in defining what I enjoy doing or what I'm willing to try. Likewise it determines what completely freaks me out, it draws that proverbial line in the sand which I cannot cross. What feels impossible for me one week is second nature the next and vice versa.

Source: Clinical Junior.com

My healthy self, if I know my healthy self - which is dubious, is bound to be somewhere in the middle between manic and depressed. That's only logical. She must be more cautious than the manic version of me and must also be more relaxed than the anxious version of me. Surely she is, or at least believes herself to be, more capable than the depressed version of me.

So, today? At this moment? I feel good about myself. I believe I'm good at my job and I enjoy it. I feel good about my relationships with family and friends. Calling my best friend is not a stretch today even though the same activity yesterday was distressing and I couldn't bring myself to do it. I feel like I have something worth sharing on my blog and I'm able to adequately answer the Superbetter question.

Will I feel the same tomorrow? Who knows.

If you're curious, here's a little about Superbetter from TED Talks.

A Little Gratitude Please

What are you grateful for?

The usual answers include:

• My family
• My friends
• My health

Other common answers are:

• A good home
• Healthy food
• My pets

The answers are all legitimate and I'm sure most people are being truthful in giving them. They aren't unique, though. They are so common as to be cliche and, like any old adage, the words fall out of our mouths without a moment of consideration. The thoughtlessness of it all only registers when the words land with a heavy thunk across the top of one's left foot. Saying "I'm grateful for my family" has become an antiphone that doesn't require the least bit of contemplation. "I'm grateful for my friends" is an automatic reply, a reflex similar to the startle response we have when someone sneaks up behind us. It just happens.

"For my dog" or "for my health" are comfortable replies when playing the I'm Thankful For game round-robin style with people we might call friends but we're not particularly close to. They are safe, true statements and, most importantly, they don't even hint at the intimate matters living closer to our hearts. I get it. Don't get me wrong. I use those standard answers, too. I think I've even gotten pretty good at the Sincere Smile which dresses up the shallowness of my randomly chosen, standard answer with the guise of heartfelt earnestness.

All of this begs the question, what are you grateful for? Peak into all the little crevices in your brain to find something particular to you and your life. When you're being candid with your real self, who and what rise to the top of your Grateful List.

Me?

I'm grateful that a certain someone picked me up after work one day, like always, and took me directly to my doctor. We did not pass go or collect $200. This person told me s/he was scared for me, told me I was sick and I needed to get help. This person got me the help I was incapable of getting for myself and promised to stand strong for me until I was able to stand for myself again. That event took one hour out of one day and changed the course of my life.

Silence

A few years ago I attended a women's retreat. I shared a little of that experience with you not too long ago. One of the "rules" (really more of a recommendation) was to spend a certain amount of time each day in silence. Attaining that goal meant more than not talking. That was the easy part. It required being alone and away from a million little things. Phone, TV, music, the obvious stuff. Once I eliminated those things I realized that my surroundings were far from silent. The ceiling fan and fridge whirred and, without other noises to conceal it, they seemed loud. I left my room expecting to find a quieter space outside, perhaps on one of the gentle trails or on a bench beneath the sprawling branches of an old tree. I had to share the trail with other people and, although they were quiet in the normal sense of the word, they still made noise that filled my ears. Even when I was alone on the trail, the gravel beneath my feet crunched with every single step I took. Silence, true silence, was eluding me. Eventually, I returned to my room and decided it was quiet enough. I was able to exist with my thoughts, my journal, and my pen.

Several years before that, I went on a spiritual journey of sorts. This was long before I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and I was desperately grasping for something, anything, that would give me some peace. Upon arriving at the spiritual retreat center the first evening, I was instructed to be silent until a specified time the following morning. No talking and no turning anything on to listen to. Being alone with myself like that was unnerving. I didn't much like myself at the time and I definitely did not respect myself. I was trapped in an illness I did not know I had and the silence outside my body made the noise inside by body seem that much louder. My thoughts jumped from one traumatic experience to another while my inner critic picked apart every little decision I had made, proving to me how bad my choices were and how terrible a person I was. My skin crawled with tension and my stomach hurt. I did the only thing I could think to do. I wrote. I had no watch or clock so I have no idea how long I scribbled in my journal. I continued until all the jumbled mess in my head was transferred to paper and until I had described all my emotions and body sensations as well as I could. Finally satisfied, I carefully closed my journal. I felt lighter. I still needed to deal with the awful things I had written but, for the night at least, they lived in the journal and not in me.

1000 Paper Cranes

Legend says if you make 1000 paper cranes then you can make a wish and it will come true.

A much more recent story, one about a little girl growing up in the toxic world created by the Hiroshima bombing, is attached to the paper crane legend. The little girl's name was Sadako Sasaki and she developed Lukemia when she was a child. She started folding origami cranes with the goal of being able to make a wish. Some stories say her wish was to be well again while others say it was for world peace. Some versions say she finished 1000 cranes before she passed away at 12 years old. Other versions say she didn't and that her friends and family finished them for her. You can read one version of Sadako's story at 1000cranes.com.

I suspect the little girl was originally wishing to be well and that the wish morphed into one of world peace as she succumbed to the illness. I'm a grown woman and I would wish to be healthy again. Forget world peace; I want to live. Maybe I'm just selfish. Of course, maybe she really was a child of the light, mature beyond her years, and destined to help usher in a change in this world.

Would I wish to be free of my illness?

Bipolar Disorder comes with a lot of ugly characteristics. If I were to make a chart listing the pros and cons of living a life with Bipolar Disorder, I suspect the cons would far out number the pros. The pros, however, include some amazingly positive things.

• increased confidence
• increased creativity
• more outgoing
• higher goals
• increased intelligence
• better performance

If you live with Bipolar Disorder, though, then you know those things are not permanent. It's a terrible truth and it often feels like a curse. I can taste success and then the mania wisks me away in an updraft, a tell-tale sign of an impending storm. How high I go reveals the strength of the storm and the level of destruction it will do.

What if the legend is true? Just pretend for a moment and believe with 100% certainty that making 1000 origami cranes would allow for the granting of one wish.

Here is paper crane #1.

You Understand? Really?

My friend expressed some concern about me not long ago. She is a newish friend and does not yet know much about having a bipolar brain. She knows even less about my particular brain and the life experiences it initiated and stored in its memory.

"You're not quite yourself today. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. I'm just in a funky place right now."

It's a good answer. Most people accept it easily and we move on. More importantly, I avoid thinking at a level which would prompt tears or temper. My friend, however, didn't like it. She pressed the issue. I don't remember the exact string of questions or my answers but I kept trying to politely and nonchalantly redirect the conversation. The only way to make her interrogation stop was to be direct and probably rude.

"Look, there's nothing wrong in the world around me. My bipolar head is just screwing with me. It's illogical, it happens, and I'll be fine."

What else could I possibly say? The 15 minutes we had together before going to work was not enough time to explain the meaningless anxiety churning in my gut or the darkness I was walking into. I didn't really want to explain anyway. I wasn't ready to share the very personal, raw details she was trying to elicit and her aggressive, albeit well-intended, poking for information has made me less inclined to share in the future.

Then she said, "I understand." The conversation could have, should have, ended there but I laughed and shook my head. It was a knee-jerk reaction and it was stupid.

We pulled into the parking lot at work. "Really. I understand."

Northern Goshawk

My mind commenced to spinning as a result of her audacity. Thoughts. Feelings. Images of "understanding" eyes full of pity. Memories of "understanding" voices telling me to suck it up. It all moved through me so fast that the only knee-jerk reaction I had was stunned silence and the inability to move. Long moments passed.

I scoffed and stepped out of the car. As we walked into the building we work in she continued looking at me. Her eyes oozed just how pathetic I was to her. She looked at me like I was a sad, little, wounded sparrow even though I felt much more like a Goshawk whose territory had just been invaded.

Those not initiated into the pain, euphoria, confusion, and chaos that bipolar disorder gifts to the fortunate sick and the people who love them do not understand.

A Weekend with Friends

Manic. Margie pegged me. She saw it before anyone else -- including myself. Here I thought I was acting normal and she says, "How many drinks did you have?" She wore a big, goofy grin.

"What?" I asked incredulously. "None. I had a glass of apple juice." I made the decision before going on that trip that I would not drink any alcohol. It's bad for bipolar disorder, a condition which had only recently been diagnosed in me.

"Girl..." She let the r hang in the air for a moment and shook her head, "You're as tipsy as I am and I had three glasses of wine!"

I was a little stunned to hear that. "You're buzzed."  I teased.

"So are you!"

"I'm not." I retorted. "I'm fine. Just enjoying myself and the show."

"No." She drew out the word again, shaking her head again. "You're acting high. Buzzed. Lit."

I considered her statement, took stock of my behaviors over the last couple hours, and realized she was right. The mellower me was being usurped by an overly spirited, bubbly me. I hadn't noticed it in my own self. Someone else had to point it out to me.

Later that night Margie, Kristine, and I took off for a walk around the retreat property. I thought it would burn off some of the energy in me and bring my slightly manic mind and body back down to earth before they had enough fuel to spiral out of control. It was quiet time so I had to whisper. That helped. It was dark, so I had to pay attention right around me. It helped me focus and bring my mind back to me. The quiet and the dark kept my senses from being stimulated as much as they had been during the show. The energy in that room had apparently been electrifying. I thought I was reacting at a level comparable to the other audience members. And maybe I was. Maybe they were simply able to come down to a normal level of happy and satisfied when the show was over whereas I was not.

We wandered along wide pea gravel paths for almost two hours before going to Kristine's room. She shared her room with Gayle, the friend who had taken the lead in making this little weekend happen.

"I have pictures taken of me when I was manic," Gayle remarked before I had time to close the door. "My eyes were so big ..." she held her hands up to her eyes, curving her fingers to pantomime binoculars. "My eyes were so big that you could see the whites of my eyes, all the way around the colored part." She pointed at her eye, tracing a circle in the air around its iris. "I see that in you." Gayle giggled.

She can read me like a book. I don't mind though. She has Bipolar Disorder, too, and has been managing it longer than I have. She's honest with me so I know I'll get genuine feedback and support. I guess she's almost like a mirror. She reflects me back to me and then I see the symptoms.

We sat on the little balcony attached to their room and visited for a while. When the time came, we said our good nights and gave hugs all around. "Sleep tight," I said as I opened the door to go.

"I will," Gayle chuckled. "But you'll still be awake."

She Speaks - Washed and Whipped

Hot water slid down my back. I leaned my head against the shower wall using my crossed arms as a pillow. The fissure inside me grew wider. All joy and contentment spurted from an emotional wound, like blood from an artery. Misery and pain slowly clotted the hole. Memories of everything I ever did wrong, real and imagined, played on a giant screen in my mind’s eye and I was powerless to turn it off.

Water washed down my spine splitting at my hips into tributaries that rolled down my thighs and calves. Focus on the water. The heat. I wanted it to help but it did little to carry my distressing thoughts into the drain. Make it stop. I pleaded with the universe which yielded nothing in return.

My mind slipped from the moment and into a space I knew to be imagined and real at the same time. I held a bullwhip in my hand, poised in desperate readiness to use it against my enemies. Who were those foes? I didn’t know. I only knew that I temporarily forestalled their attacks.

The bullwhip disappeared. Rope restrained my wrists and pulled my arms over my head. A whip struck me from the darkness. Confused by the pain and lack of control, I stared into the gloom searching for my attacker. A strap of leather lashed out again, beating me like Jesus or a slave. I cringed.

“I’m not a savior! Or a slave! So why are you doing this?” I cried.

Another crack sounded and the whip landed surely on my back.

“Am I so terrible that I deserve such punishment?”

A woman’s voice in the darkness said, “If you are going to use a whip, you should know what it feels like to be on the receiving end.” She was calm, not the slightest hint of anger in her tone.

Even though an infinite shade limited my sight, I knew the woman’s voice had a body and companions.

A length of leather braid smacked my back and she said, “You never know when they’ll hit.”

Another lash, harder than the last, burned my shoulder blades. “You never know how hard they’ll strike.”

I heard a loud snap in the air to the left above me and felt a strike from the right. “You never know when they’ll miss or where they’ll come from.”

The beating continued from all around and, just as she told me, I could not predict if, when, or where I would be hit next. I could not tell how much pain would be inflicted or who was controlling the whip. My mind, intoxicated by so much pain, held up who as the most important information to have.

The woman provided the answer before my pain-soaked brain fully formed the question. “Sometimes it’s others, people you’ve wronged. Most of the time it’s not.”

A dark haired woman in a long crimson dress stepped into view. The whip reappeared in my hand and I stood outside my own exhausted body. I used it on the tied woman, myself. I couldn’t stop torturing the part of me that a rope still held in place. She rolled her head weakly and looked at me. I helplessly turned my attention to the woman from the shadow.

I pointed to the bleeding woman. “Why are you doing this to me?” Tormented tears dropped from my burning eyes.

“I’m not. You are.” She looked at me through steady green eyes reminiscent of the undisturbed surface of a pond. The woman’s companions gradually emerged from the darkness.

“But I’m not, I couldn’t,” I stuttered. “I wouldn't do this to myself. Something or someone is making me.”

She shook her head, “You are beating yourself, punishing yourself for things you believe you should be punished for since no one else will do it.”

I handed the whip to one of the woman's companions, the featureless person nearest me. It was a shadowy thing, a stark contrast against the brightly lit and blood-striped body in front of me. I watched as the unidentifiable person whipped her, me, further. Others joined it and they took turns beating and abusing me, spitting at me and occasionally kicking me. I looked at the crimson woman again. “Why are you letting them do this to me?”

“I didn’t give them permission. You handed them the whip. You’ve stood here idly watching them assault you.”

Standing beside the woman at the edge of the shadow, I cried from the guilt of persecuting that person hanging limply from the rope. Returned to the delirious body I started in, I cried from the physical pain inflicted on me but stayed without a struggle because of the disgrace I felt. A chill moved down my spine.

My everyday self leaned face first against the shower wall using my crossed arms as a pillow. Cool water washed down my back, burning as it rolled over my spiritual wounds. I slid slowly to the shower floor, my face turned to the wall, and wept.

"Drops of Jupiter" Describes Mania?

If you've never heard the song "Drops of Rain" by Train there's a video here for you. It's an absolutely beautiful song. I promise it's related to this post.

People ask me what mania was like and it's so utterly hard to describe. I don't think you can really have any sense of it if you've never experienced it. When trying to answer that question for people, I can almost always tell if they understand me on an intellectual level or an experiential level. Their eyes shine differently. Sometimes I see laughter in them revealing the wonderful experiences that can and do happen during a manic phase. Sometimes it's sorrow and shame. Sometimes it's relief and the weight of silent loneliness falls away.

Trying to describe it to the people that nod their heads politely, "Uh huh, yea, uh huh. I see" is a challenge to say the least. This is where that song by Train comes in.

It's not about mental illness but most of that song does a good job of describing mania. I certainly related to a lot of it when I was falling back to Earth, through normal, and headlong into depressed. Being out there so high that I twirled along Jupiter's atmosphere describes me at that time rather well. Feeling so bright and energized that the Milky Way and heaven are dim and uneventful does too. Yes, the wind swept me off my feet and in the best kind of way. Yes, I did get to dance along the light of day. Line after line of this song resonates with me and I think the poetry of it offers people a way to grab hold of the idea of mania so they can begin to understand.

X is for Major Arcana X: Wheel of Fortune

I have a tendency to think about some things in terms of opposites. Life and death. Right and wrong. Up and down. Manic and depressed. Placing the ideas on the flip side the same coin organizes them quickly and easily. That approach to thinking is so prevalent that I am compelled to believe it's human nature to do so. The coin system works great for a lot of things but it's sorely inaccurate for many others. The 10th card of the Major Arcana always reminds me of that fact.

This card has two wheels on it. The obvious one that's the focus of the card and another one tipped over on its side at the very top. Do we make our own future, our own destiny, or are those things determined from above, from the divine? The artwork on the card says the answer is both. The lighting bolts in the background, the power from above, are always hitting our lives from one direction or another. The other wheel, with the Sphinx, the monkey, and the crocodile is the destiny we create for ourselves. The swirling pattern farthest in the back is the motion our lives add to the world around us - the proverbial ripple in the pond.

I don't dare speculate about the wheel at the top. After all, who can really know the mind of the divine or the rules from beyond the veil that govern the physical and spiritual universe we live in.

The wheel in the front I can talk about because it is my own life and its movement is the result of my own choices, good, bad, or indifferent.

The ape on the left is riding the wheel up to the top. It represents creation, initiation, those things that are coming into being in my life and they are not necessarily positive  things. The ape could let go if it chose to. It could refuse to allow the emergence of the next thing in life. I could refuse and at times I have.

The crocodile on the right side is riding the wheel down, to its lowest point. It's tied to the wheel with absolutely no choice but to experience the destruction that occurs in life. Or does it have a choice? The tie is loose, there's no knot. The crocodile could let go, just like the ape. In letting go though, it will fall none the less. Perhaps something wonderful is being destroyed causing pain that we cannot escape from. Of course, something causing us great pain might also be disintegrating.

The Sphinx at the top is balanced. The wheel turns easily so maintaining that balance is difficult. It looks back into that space between the wheels, between how we influenced our own lives and how the higher power influenced it. If we are to learn anything, it will be from trying to merge the what and why of our past. There's no point in looking forward for the what and why of the future, because we cannot know what lighting the universe will throw at us next. If the Sphinx turns to peer deep into the future, the balance will be lost and the wheel will resume its movement. People being people, turning to look is inevitable.

I guess I should tell you why this card always reminds me that life's things and events are not represented on the opposite side of a coin very well. After all, that's where this post started.

The wheel of life does not flip. It does not have heads or tails. It revolves around a hub. The animals, representing creation, balance, and destruction, do not sit on one face or the other. They ride the rim, diminishing and expanding continuously - never appearing or disappearing in an infinitely small moment in time.

Life is not, can not, be the opposite of death. The wheel is the very representation of life and it turns, not flips. Health and sickness are not opposites either. Getting sick happens over time, so does regaining our health, and maintaining it is a balancing act. This is no more apparent than in trying to live between mania and depression. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it permanent? Absolutely not. I will make some choice that will start the wheel turning. Lightening, far beyond my control, will strike. Do I hold on to the wheel, trust that it will not stop at the bottom? Will the momentum of its movement be enough to carry me through the low point?

I've lost count of how many times I have been so afraid of the motion that I have tried desperately to climb back up to the top. When I was on the downward side, trying to climb back up only made the wheel turn faster and faster until I couldn't hold on anymore. I had no more control. My fate was dictated by the powers from above and it was my own fault. Learning to hang on is one of the hardest and most painful lessons of my life. Riding the wheel is hard, that's true. It hurts and I selfishly think sometimes that it hurts me more than others. The wheel keeps moving and it always brings beautiful things with it along the way. They are not permanent but neither are the ugly things. There's one exception to that. Letting go.

Letting go meant I was always at a low point, lower than the wheel would have taken me if I had only held on. I could have closed my eyes and screamed in terror. Instead, I let go and screamed a silent sort of terror. I could not close my eyes. It was as if my eyelids had been torn away. I was ignorant of how far I would fall, when and if the divine would finally pull me back up within reach of my life, and what the divine would put me through next. My life stopped, suspended in that terrible space I should never have entered. The swirling motion of existence continued without me because I was stuck in a single moment. That which should have disintegrated, what should have fallen from the wheel instead of me, stayed there. It left no room for that which should have developed in my life.

There I remained, experiencing the pain and anguish created by the enormous power from above and the choices I made in response that lightening and thunder. Angry, desperate, screaming in pain, I learned what hell truly was.

U is for Ups and Downs

Up and then down and then up and then down. Like a roller-coaster ride. Really? It's like that?

I don't think so.

• You choose to be on the roller-coaster.
• People with bipolar disorder did not have the option of such a choice.

• Your roller-coaster ride will come to a predictable end and you'll return to your normal, every-day life.
• The cycles of bipolar disorder have no such end; they are life-long. There is no stopping and getting off the ride.

• Your roller-coaster ride is engineered to be safe. Even when you are falling, you know you'll arrive at the low point safe and sound.
• Falling into depression is falling into a great unknown. You don't know how deep the hole is and you won't make the journey unscathed.

• You know you'll emerge from the low point of the roller-coaster.
• Not everyone returns from the low point of depression.

• Your roller-coaster ride has a specific maximum height. You're likely to return from the heights with messed up hair.
• Mania has no maximum height and it can escalate to the point of messing up entire lives.

The ups and downs might look like a carnival ride when they are plotted out on paper. In real life, though, comparing bipolar disorder to a ride designed for fun... that's just wrong.

Lines for a Fortune Cookie for NaPoWriMo Day 21

The next time you feel down, someone will tell you to pick yourself back up and get over it.

You will "like" a Facebook page dedicated to mental illness advocacy and education.

Choose your words carefully. Stigma bites and it might come back and bite you.

An important message is waiting for you at http://www.bringchange2mind.org/

Someone close to you has a mental illness. They're just not saying so.

Stress is wearing you down. Slow down before you hurt yourself.

Talk to someone. You need to share and they need to hear.

Are you really OCD? Or do you just like saying that?

You will soon meet someone with depression.

Participate in your local NAMIWalk.

Sing. It's good for you.

Recovery is possible.

Are you crazy?

Meditate.

Just breathe.

Take one step at a time.

Your insurance will cover it.

Imagine your world if she wasn't sick.

Try listening to understand rather than to respond.

Good things will come to you if you follow this blog. ;)

You are the 1 in the 1 in 10 that will experience depression.

Your bad attitude is the reason people with mental illnesses don't seek help.

Every criminal is not mentally ill and every mentally ill person is not a criminal.

Suicide is not funny. Tell that to the next person you hear make a joke about it.

Remember to tell them you love them. Every day.

R is for Reflection

These are few of the images some high school students created as part of an artsy lesson on symmetry. Every picture is different as each one is made from the letters of that person's name. They used the letters in their name to form a kind of code that told them where to graph and where to dray the lines. In choosing colors, they only had to make sure that each sections' neighbors were of a different color.

What does this have to do with mental illness? Well, much like we experience mental illness, these pictures are all expressions of symmetry. Yet each person's experience with mental illness is unique, just as these small works of art are unique.

Artwork created by my students (c)1913

Many of the kids got part way into the activity and started complaining that their picture was ugly, that they wished their name made something pretty like that person's over there. Mine's too simple, it's boring. Mine's too complicated. I don't know how to color it.

I had to do some poking and prodding to get them to move on, to keep working to the finished product. They are beautiful, aren't they?

The activity got me thinking about how often we wish our lives were different. What if our lives were more like that person's life over there. How often we think our own lives are not pretty or are not worth working on. My life is so boring. My life is so complicated.

We can only work with what we're given, just like these kids did. At the risk of sounding cliche, I think we can create something beautiful, balanced, and worth sharing with others if just keep taking that next step.

C is for Crazy

Wordle is just too much fun. You enter a bunch of text into the box on their website and then they create an instant picture with all the words. All sorts of formatting options are available - format, font, color, etc. The smallest words show up least frequently and the largest words show up most frequently. I went to thesaurus dot com and looked up crazy and then posted all the antonyms into the Wordle program. My choice of words was motivated by an attempt to figure out some language to use when talking about mental illness. Rather than indicating what we don't what people to say, I wanted to get some ideas for what we do want people to say. I'm not sure what I expected to see. Here's the image it created....

I'm rather irritated by the results. Are people without mental illnesses the only ones that can be sensible? or reasonable? People with mental illnesses cannot be rational or balanced or smart? Really?

Changing the language that we use is important. I think it's time that we advocates change our choice of words, too. Nature abhors a vacuum. Taking words out of people's concept of mental illness leaves a gap that must be filled. What are we going to fill that space with?

For more information about the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge see the website of the same name.

Life as Lies

This past November I participated in National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to write 50,000 words or more for a new novel. It's hard and it's fun and the novel-wanna-be that I wrote needs a lot of editing or a recycle bin. Here's a small snippet from it that I rather like. It's from the perspective of my female main character and she is reflecting on her early college years, remembering her life when she was 18 or 19 years old.

No. I was not happy. I thought I was. I was having a great time, but I was manic and didn't know it. I had no idea what bipolar disorder was. I had never heard about it and 20 years passed before I was diagnosed with it.

At that time, I thought I was a normal college kid. I hadn't lost any friends yet. I wasn't failing my classes yet. Although, I was eating less and less frequently, drinking more and more often. That's the way it was for everyone. Right?

Yes, I thought I was happy. Pretending to be happy. Fake it 'till you make it. I think other people saw me as happy and having fun. Too much fun. Being irresponsible. I don't know.

I was numb - that lack of sensation that follows a tragedy, a trauma - but there had been no life event that would warrant such a reaction. I was unable to feel much more than empty, hallow, and disconnected.

I didn't feel disconnected from another person. I wasn't hallow because I lost an attachment or empty because I was missing someone. I was just empty.

I felt disconnected from the world. Like I was in this world but not really in this world. If that makes any sense at all. Think of it like a dream. At some point in many dreams you realize you are dreaming. You don't wake up. You don’t stop the dream. You notice and move on. But your dream version of yourself knows that leaving the dream is possible. Returning to reality is a reality and you can return to the dreams again later. Back and forth between dreaming and waking -- always recognizing the dream as a dream, a lie -- always recognizing the waking as reality, the truth. It was kind of like that. Only I could not ever wake up. I felt like I should be able wake up and at any instant appear in reality, in truth, and it would be in a place that was not this place. Of course, that's nonsense and on some level I knew it. Sometimes.

I felt the atoms on my skin. I saw the molecules of air. Not literally, but I was acutely aware of them - each one. When I touched something, I saw the atoms repelling one another. I understood that we never really touch anything. Our sense of touch is nothing more than the force of atoms attracting and repelling one another. It's a rather depressing view of the world I suppose. But that's how I saw it.

At the same time, I felt the connection to everything. No. I sensed, saw, the connections. Electrons in an atom are not confined to little circles around a nucleus, like the nice drawings in textbooks depict. Electrons are not points. They are not little dots running round and round like the monkey and the weasel.They are waves. And they extend to infinity. And that means everything is literally connected to everything else. All of existence is woven together.  It's a great tapestry made of electron waves. I saw it all. Sensed it all. It was clear to me. I understood. But I was not part of it. I was on the outside looking across this universe. I was an observer, only watching and seeing this world and all that happened in it. But I was not part of it. I could not interact with it.

I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like I'm trying to tell you that I'm from another planet or another dimension. I guess that's how it comes across. If you've never felt it before, it's understandable that you would likely come to that conclusion. I know I'm not from another planet. I know I'm not an alien or from another dimension. Intellectually I know that. Knew that. Still, I could never shake the feeling that this life was the lie.

Thanks for reading. I hope I captured some small part of the onset of a mental illness. Please share your thoughts and feelings about it. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

The Elephant in the Room (suicide)

I'm coming up on the one-year anniversary of my friend's suicide. Her memory is occupying my thoughts more frequently -- almost like they did in the months following her choice. She was sick, living her life with a severe mental illness. Sometimes she suffered debilitating lows and other times she soared joyful heights. Such is the existence of someone with bipolar disorder.

I used the word "choice" earlier and I don't believe she made a choice. She had no choice. Bipolar disorder is a disease of the brain and, when it wants to, it hijacks your mind. Seeking help is a choice, which she did. Eating well, exercising, participating in support groups, etc. are choices and she did all those things. She was an active advocate for herself and others with mental illness. She spoke up and spoke out, educating the people around her. She didn't hide her struggles in shame. That's a dangerous practice, she knew it, and she encouraged others step over shame and embrace help. Those are choices.

Sometimes, though, the disease trespasses into a life in recovery without anyone knowing it. Sometimes it snatches you right out of your life and all you can do is hold on for all you're worth until the heavens drop you from their heights or the void pukes you up from the depths.

My friend did not choose. She simply could not hold on long enough and the void swallowed her whole.