Military Training

I have two speeds: everywhere at once and hyperfocus.

Right now I am listening to the Cure, setting up a pad of paper to write down a to do list, and trying to come up with a good topic today.  The title is inspired by this story http://mariovittone.com/2013/04/the-unaccounted-for-variables-where-tough-mudder-failed/

My high school years weren't just spent in a chaotic chasm of depression (although much of the time I was being flung from one emotion to another with little, if any, warning).  They were also the years that allowed me to experiment with my look, my beliefs, my friends, my lovers, my education.  There is nothing so satisfying as the feeling of extreme beliefs, because that makes everyone else wrong, and how easy is that to believe?  Right?  My emotional state varied so much, I made friends in one state and then lose them in the next.  I felt as if I was always chasing the next "switch", but only to stop it (I learned there are ways, but that's for a later post).  I know how unstable I must have looked, much of it attributed to teenage rebellion/hormones.  But I knew I really was different when it continued into my college years...and then didn't stop.  There were few days in which I felt solidly placed.  Everyone else had it all together but being a college student allows for a certain amount of eccentricity, so I fit in.  After graduation, I fell apart.  I lost focus and direction.  I found both in having children.

Why the military reference?  Because as my oldest contemplates joining the Air Force, I wonder if my extreme negative views on military service actually kept me from the one thing that might have been able to train me to keep it together.  At the very least, those ideas did keep me from appreciating the hard work these individuals do, and in our increasingly violent world, I think maybe we all could benefit from some military training.  

How's THAT for a 180 on my previous view that the military is a place people learn to kill one another and is therefore an immoral institution?

Happy Memorial Day.  I'm going out to buy a steak now.

Helplessmess

Some mornings I wake up in sheer panic.  I can barely comprehend facing another day.  Nothing seems less desirable than putting my feet on the floor and walking out of the bedroom.  So I have a mantra I speak to myself when I feel this way.  "This, too, shall pass (I even imagine the punctuation)."

Most of the time it works.  I know people who hate that saying, due to it's obviousness, which to them translates to unhelpfulness.  Some concepts need to be complex to be fully understood, but not this one.  It really would pass.  I spent years trying to overcome this feeling, only realizing that it ALWAYS eventually passed if I moved on to another activity.   You know, one that doesn't involve what seems to me to be an unconscious response to something I don't understand.  It really sucks waking up like that day after day.  I relish the mornings I open my eyes and a feeling of comfort and safety washes over me.  I have no idea why each morning is different, it happens in different degrees, too.

The thing is, this feeling of helplessmess...
(...yeah I just wrote helplessmess.  That's a great word, I'm leaving it in.  What a great mistype.  I just found a poem about this very phenomenon here.)
...takes a while to go away.  I often have to fight it and push through my morning with little intention of actually doing anything.  Planning and list making I'm good at, implementing it is where I falter.  The skill of "pushing through it" is one I learned at a young age, I had to have a job, and to keep that job I had to show up to work.  Then I had children, and there is no NOT pushing through that.  But it's very easy for me to do just enough, and I am often disappointed due to what I have failed to accomplish in any given day.

Speaking of helplessmess...
My husband and I saw The Great Gatsby recently.  It's a very moving telling of the story.  I remember crying at the end of reading the book, but my husband had no such memory and thus was, while we were leaving, taken aback at his reaction to it.  It took him all afternoon to find his emotional bearings.  He was really struggling at one point to "push through it" and was complaining to me about it.   I was prepared for the emotional fallout, I have mad skillz when it comes to recovering from being beaten about the imagination with an existential story.  But I was feeling particular snarky that afternoon, was frustrated with his lack of ambition, and replied, "How do you think it feels walking around feeling that unstable most of the time?"  No one ever has an answer to that.  It's my backhanded way of helping people understand me.  He didn't answer me, too lost in his own helplessmess to hear me, probably.

The kittens are leaving in a week, but that's not what this post is about.

The thing about being crazy is that I'm so normal most of the time.  My doctors are usually stumped, my demeanor is often one of gracious openness explaining about my illness.  But it's a demeanor that fails to find a connection to my reality.  I've never been able to properly explain my life in such a way as to convey what I truly experience day to day.  Everything's in the past tense, my understanding of time is no longer a fixed experience, it's been altered and I know I'm lying about details, I can't help but add them in.  This distraction, knowing that what I am saying is only partly true even if it's only a crime of omission, prevents me from being true to my self.

I should never have to leave a psychiatrist's office in embarrassment or with any sense of shame.  But they are the ones who are the toughest to tell the truth to, so eager am I to come across as "normal", just like I have trained myself to do every day.  It's hard to let down that guard and be honest about the internal struggles I face every day.  Most people "get over" it, they grow up, they don't need a mask.  At least that's what I tell myself in my darkest moments.  Those are unfair accusations to make, as I can't possibly understand fully anyone else's struggles, either.  Maybe their trials were better suited to them.  What was a trauma to me could be barely a trial for them.

It feels necessary to explain that my condition is not known by most of my family, nor my husband's.  It's awkward to find an opening in the conversation for, "I have a condition called Bi-polar, type 2.  It would be great if you could try really hard to not be an asshole to me."  Because that's all I want, for people to understand that although I can Mama Bear for my kids more than effectively, my own traumas have left me a little fragile and mean people suck.   In some ways, it's like living in a land with no elevators, having two broken legs and everyone is demanding you climb the stairs on your own.  Climbing the stairs is such a normal activity, they couldn't possibly understand why anyone wouldn't be able to do it. And I can't remember how I broke my legs, I just know they don't work.

Kitten Therapy

The kittens are now 10 weeks old.  They have taken apart everything they can reach, jumped on all of the furniture, eaten and shit out a hundred bucks worth of kitten food.  The litterbox is an ongoing struggle to keep clean and stink free.  They scratch and bite and fit under the doors.

The kittens are also consistently underfoot and need constant care.  And I'm going to miss waking up to their little faces in the morning.  I'm going to miss the companionship and delight they bring to each day I have been blessed to spend with them.

One of them is biting my foot right now.  They do that a lot.  They wake us up by jumping on our heads.  Any time someone in the house needs to de-stress, we play with the kittens.    We call it Kitten Therapy and although these little beings were unplanned for, messy, annoying in their "I look like a sock on the floor in the dark" qualities, it takes one tilted-headed look from those fur-enclosed eyes to feel the hope in the world.

For my first post, it's not great, but it's a pretty good start.