This is one of the nicest things I’ve read on a bipolar blog lately, it’s by Natasha Tracy:
I’m the first one to say that support from loved ones is incredibly important when dealing with a mental illness like bipolar disorder. And yes, those loved ones typically include family. But here’s the thing – it doesn’t have to. {more}
All the info out there says that support is an important part of the whole bipolar recovery toolkit. Kay Redfield Jamison and Marya Hornbacher cite love.
I asked on a forum a good while back, for input from middle aged plus people living alone and coping with a mental illness. People said they knew of people, but nobody said yeah me. I could look around the blogosphere (and streets and mental institutions), but at the end of the day it’s all whaaaaaatever really, because no matter how much I research all this, here I am, this is my life and I just have to get on with it.
Fuck the Kool Aid though. You gotta keep going gotta smile gotta this gotta that yes no toe the line … well I don’t gotta. I’ve decided to do my damndest to be as okay as possible as long as my dogs are alive. Sometimes I need to remind myself of that more often than others, but it’s solid. After that, I’d like to go.
If I tell you I always suspected I’d end up alone, is that (speaking in the jargon of the Kool Aid) a fear or a self fulfilling prophecy? Do I have to apply that whole soap oprah self help shit all the time? Fuck the Kool Aid, because it isn’t all about the obvious. I couldn’t have known that my mother would die suddenly, for example.
Fuck the Kool Aid
Fuck the Kool
Fuck the
Fuck
Anyroad up, I think I at least realise the need to plod through the next while without worrying about what comes next, to gratefully accept the support I do get from special people and let the other aches fade gently. I sound like the serenity prayer.
Godgrant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Actually, I was reading the whole serenity prayer, which is by Reinhold Niebuhr; usually I just mentally delete or replace words about gods, but I started seeing it differently.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking,as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
Because faith is both love and trust, isn’t it? I think they struggle to exist independently. That’s why the word trusting was redacted, because there comes a point when the absence of love leads to the absence of dreams, which leads to … so many more absences.
Where am I going with this? I’m just thinking aloud.
I could apply clichés like bandaids. The future is wide open, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to use (haha typical me, those are song lines). I use that sort of tactic to reassure other people.
*shrugs and walks off*
