between the broken places

Posts Tagged ‘sadness’

Just Not My Season

How is it that my aloneness can turn a regular day into a cold, murky place where it rains with no wind and I can’t put a coherent thought together?  I’m uncomfortable in my own skin so much so that I had to talk myself into the shower today.  I’m a water person so when I don’t want to shower it’s an issue.  I recognize this, so I jumped in quickly thus assuring myself that it was not really an issue.  Uh huh.

My below the surface, well-hidden stress has my face broken out like a chocoholic fifteen-year old.  I’ve been here before – 30 years ago – breaking out wasn’t pleasant the first time and much less so in my 40’s.  I’ve been eating crap lately – a difficult and painful task after gastric bypass.  Seems all I want to eat is French fries.  That’s some healthy stuff there.  (Think I’ll go turn on the oven)

My dreams have been really vivid lately, an additional sign of lurking issues.  The dreams make no sense but seem very real.  I sleep a lot lately; also not a good sign but a fertile ground for those vivid dreams.  I’ve told my husband that a wave was heading for the shore; not much he can do but pay attention and hope I don’t drown or pull us both under.  Unfortunately, he’s away right now and my daughter’s at school or work so there is no one around to know that I have to shove myself out the front door to get to the life boat.

But where to go once I’m out of the house?  I want to go shopping but that’s a slippery slope.  I’ve been decorating for Christmas and that keeps me busy but isn’t keeping me happy – a strange and unusual experience.  I love this time of year and it rarely brings on depression, if anything I tend to get manic with all of the hustle and bustle.   Not this year, sadness is swirling through my bloodstream, splashing on the shores of my soul and dampening my holiday spirit.  The worst part; I don’t know why.  I don’t always know why but it’s usually not so random.  I don’t do random well.  I’m on a need to know basis with my episodes and right now, I need to know.  But no one’s talking; my brain is providing no clues or maybe I’m just not listening.

The oven just beeped – French fries are ready.  Gotta go.

A Bipolar Vacation

When I scream do you listen or do you just hear

Do you know that it’s panic, anxiety, fear

When depression attacks, leaves me deep in the well

Do you know that I’m lost; I’ve been dropped into hell

I try to escape; I long for salvation

But no exit is near on bipolar vacation

What’s Yours is Mine, What’s Mine is Yours

When your pain is my pain and my pain is yours

The windows slam shut and so do the doors

Thrown into the darkness, though never alone

We each gasp for breath as we each search for home

Sinking then drowning – what else can we do?

Would I have come here had it not been for you?

Out of Context – Life of a Bipolar Chick

Per Dictionary.com the word Context means the following:

con⋅text (noun)

1. the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect: You have misinterpreted my remark because you took it out of context.
2. the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

Bipolar Disorder is an Out of Context mental illness. It takes normal, everyday events or comments and knocks them out of context, sending them back to my brain jumbled, with a trigger attached no longer allowing me to make sense of the situation, much less react in an appropriate manner. This has the ability to leave me paranoid, irrational, confused and suicidal, among other things.

The worst part about thinking out of context, is when those around you realize that’s how your brain works and they use it to their advantage. My ex-husband once told me during an argument that he could love me more if I were prettier. Yes, his exact words; “I could love you more if you were prettier.” There were no surrounding sentences to place this comment into some wacked out context; it was a random thought thrown towards my head with the speed of a flying dinner plate. He tried to play it off, told me I had misunderstood…again. That I was always picking individual comments and holding people accountable for my “out of context” interpretation.

To this I say: HEY! Speak in context…say what you mean and mean what you say. I’ve got enough trouble trying to sort out all your crap on a daily basis. I don’t want to have to decipher your comments as if they were Di Vinci’s Code. Yes, my brain twists the truth and tells me lies…I don’t need any help from idiots who think it’s funny to watch me react badly to something and then try to wrestle myself out of the cage I’ve locked myself into.

When I am living “Out of Context”, I am forever apologizing for not understanding what someone was trying to say, for taking something to heart that wasn’t meant to go there or for reacting to someone else’s action as if it were meant only to hurt me. This is why I have had to learn about my “triggers”.

Triggers are unhappy, sad or even joyful events that can make depression or mania more likely to occur. The baseline trigger is generally something that happened in the past which caused an extreme reaction and now some new event twists the Bipolar brain into a visceral response because of some familiarity to the initial situation. With the exception of the originating moment, the new reaction is an “out of context” moment caused by Bipolar Disorder. This is why we have to learn our triggers, understand how they played out in the first place and put the whole situation back into context to help avoid new and exacerbated reactions.