/ Today’s Throwback is from December 2013 The other day Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. who is an Associate Editor at Psych Central posted an excellent article titled “The Biggest Lesson I’ve Learned in Managing My Bipolar Disorder.” Upon reading the article I was pleased to find that I pretty much learned the same lessonsr. Below are each of the lessons she…
The post Lessons I Learned – Throwback appeared first on Insights From A Bipolar Bear.
Posted in Read Along
Back to high energy, which started last night. TOok me forever to fall asleep last night, and I am awake this morning. I’ve finished decorating for the Christmas Party and have started on my Christmas cards–I did all of Bob’s work cards and am about to start on my Sunday School class cards. WE’re going to need new cards–these I bought on sale last year at the Hallmark Store and I’m almost out already. They’re Snoopy cards! :) Hopefully I can find some more like them for my family.
Last night’s sermon was so applicable to what I’ve been going through. I went and accused the pastor of reading my blog
. He talked about how Rachel and Leah, Jacob’s wives, competed for him and his love by having children and how their identity got bound up in that, which was the only status symbols available to them in that time. Leah wanted Jacob’s love but didn’t get it no matter how many children she had, so God brought her to where she finally realized God was what she needed. Rachel had Jacob’s love but it wasn’t enough–she wanted children like Leah had. And God had to bring her to a place of brokenness to where she realized all she had was GOd–and he was what she needed.
What this tells me is that I’m not going to find my identity anywhere but in Jesus and be satisfied. Not in publishing or in motherhood competition or anywhere else. I need to keep reminding myself of that and doing what I can operating out of that truth. So. We will see what GOd does with this truth in my life.
Posted in Read Along
It started up again last night. My guts have been low-grade bleeding for…a long time. It’s become kind of a fact of life. I’ve come to accept it. I do get mad that it wrecks my RV holding tank sensors, so I can’t tell how full the tank is. I have my work-arounds for that, but still.
I get frustrated that I have absolutely no energy to do the things I love doing: hiking, dancing (my spine gets in the way of that too), dog sports, or anything that requires being up and around and away from a toilet for more than an hour. Shopping leaves me exhausted for days. I put off going out until I’m out of absolutely everything.
Apart from my holding tank sensors, the part I resent most is my hair. It’s falling out. I’ve got a bald spot in front, right above my hairline. I really should see someone about this, but I’m just so damned tired.
Last evening just about sundown I went to take a crap, and whaddyaknow, a big blob of bloody mucus came out. Ugh. Well, thought I, I hope that’s the end of that!
It wasn’t.
True that even a teaspoon of blood looks like a lot when it’s on toilet paper. It is quite the shock.
My first impulse with things like that is to find some alternate explanation. Toddlers, for example, often ended up in my office, accompanied by a red diaper and a panic-stricken parent. Most of the time the culprit was that awful red dye they put in Jello and “red” Koolaid. Excellent teaching opportunity: don’t feed your kids anything you don’t want to see in their diaper! Beets will also cause red diapers, but not as shocking.
I have eaten nothing red of late. Not beets, or red Jello, or even the lovely rare steak I’ve been plotting to burn on the grill.
There’s a bit of dullish pain in my gut, nothing I can’t ignore; and a characteristic tinkling bowel sound that only occurs when I bleed. I once recorded it to play for a doctor, but erased it after my last horror show encounter with the bozos they now call “physicians.” I can’t wait for the robot docs. At least they will hopefully be more objective.
When I started getting frank blood coming out of my poor ass, I considered packing up and heading for the local ER. Then I considered what would happen. Procedures. Possibly admission. A tube in my nose. Antibiotics. Colonoscopy.
You know what? I’ve been there and done that. My body can’t tolerate the steroids they shove at me. I don’t want to get C. Diff. In fact, I want nothing to do with the medical establishment. At all.
I had plans for today: there is a knitting club at the RV park where I’m staying. I wanted to pick the brains of the people who actually know what they’re doing. I’m too damned tired. I don’t seem to have bled enough acutely to bring my hemoglobin down, but I didn’t have to take my blood pressure pill this morning.
I’m tired. I’m grieving the loss of my son. I’m grieving the fact that I never had a real mother, even though I tried desperately to make her into one in my mind. I feel like I lost my family in a fire. But they’re still alive.
Susan Sontag’s book Illness As Metaphor has provided me with a paradigm in which to understand my in illnesses, but not the one she herself offers. Sontag was more about the way society stigmatizes certain illnesses. To my way of thinking, my illnesses are loud metaphors for my inner ecological disasters.
Bleeding Guts= I’m torn up inside
Asthma= I’m suffocated by the people and circumstances I live with
Spine disease= no support
Bipolar= No stability
Etc.
In case you’re wondering, I’ve worked with these metaphors for decades, trying to find some modicum of healing in therapy, NLP, hypnotherapy, support groups, even witchcraft! I went to India to work with an Ayurvedic guru. I’ve worked with healers from every continent on the globe.
And although I can say that the metaphors do help in terms of putting sets of symptoms into a context, I cannot say that I’ve derived one iota of benefit from all this omphalospection.
If not for the Biggess Doggess, I would certainly pack it in. It seems odd that I would stay alive and suffer for a wolfish beastie. Somehow I just can’t let her down. She has been through so much! A victim of trafficking, quite literally, used and thrown away. With love and care, she’s flourishing. I can’t bear the thought of her going through any more trauma. She totally freaks if I leave her sight. I’ve committed to staying alive as long as she lives, if I can.
We’ll just have to see what happens.
Posted in Read Along
Button button, who's got the button? You do now - why not put it on your website to show your affiliation with, or love of The Bipolar Blogger Network?
