"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Friday, April 11, 2003
Every storm passes eventually
sun-shine Function: noun
Date: 13th century
1 : something (as a person, condition, or influence) that radiates warmth, cheer, or happiness
2 : the way today sort of feels as compared to yesterday
Late last night we had thunderstorms rumbling through, and with the rain came a sort of cleansing.
Even though I was already dressed for bed I turned off the porch light and walked out in the dark to see it. Its been months since we have had a thunderstorm. The lightening was flashing like a strobe light somewhere out of my field of view, and the thunder must have been coming from way up in the clouds because the sound was one of those long rumbling groans that takes forever.
It was about that time that I began to come out of whatever funk I had been in all day.
I could feel myself slowly rising from the ashes like some sort of lethargic phoenix, shaking off the clinging dust of the melancholy that had me in such a grip earlier. I walked back inside and checked the mood chart that I have been keeping, and sure enough, the trend was there, I had hit a "low" but maybe I was coming out of it, I hoped I was.
I logged on to the Harbor-of-Refuge site and spent a while in chat. The folks in there are all wonderful people and know exactly how this feels since they have all dealt with it themselves. If I had to recommend only one website for people with bipolar disorder, this is the site. I was cheered up quite a bit by the people in their chat channel before I logged off, and its not the first time.
I had trouble sleeping and after a wasted hour of restless tossing I got back up to watch the news. After another hour of soldiers in Iraq and chatting on the computer a bit I was finally getting drowsy, and finally drifted off to sleep..
This morning as soon as I awakened to my alarm (Note: if I ever meet the guy that picked out that shrill sound I'm gonna punch him in the nose) I knew I had in fact turned the corner. It was still cloudy outside but it felt like sunshine, or at least more than the day before did! I can't say I had a spring in my step since I'm a night person, so I never "spring" till 6pm at the earliest, but it was not such a chore getting up and getting ready for work as it was yesterday.
So I get to work, and yes, its cloudy and chilly outside, but the people seem nicer and warmer and the problems of the day before are more of a low burn than a blowtorch.
I hit my work goal for the day by 10am, which felt good. Its nice when things work and you don't have to fumble around under the hood, tweaking this number here and that number there until they all stand upright suspended in the air by the sheer rightness of their being. Sometimes it is just as simple as running a tape on a calculator. I wish all my projects went that easy, particularly ones that I expected to be bears the day before.
Amazing what a few brain chemicals can do for ya, isn't it?
Yesterday one of my meds caused a very uncomfortable reaction. I have had trembling, and sometimes it feels like I am shaking all over, a very exhausting experience because your body will naturally try to hold still. Yesterday afternoon, I really thought I was at risk of going into a seizure of some sort I was shaking so bad, so I went into another building where there are people and sat there until it got better. I'll talk to my doc on Monday about that.
I can understand how people go off their medications. Not that I will, there is no side effect that will ever be worse than that dark place I went to. Every person with bipolar disorder has been to that place, and it scars you for life. People without this disorder are physically incapable of understanding how empty and dark that place is, their brains just can't chemically comprehend it. I think that a person with this illness simply has to remember how bad it was in that place, and the fear of it will keep them on track with the medications. At least that works for me.
No sir, I do not EVER want to go there again.
But today is not a day for those trips. Its sunny inside, and maybe it will be sunny outside soon too.
Our way is not soft grass, it's a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upward, forward, toward the sun.
Ruth Westheimer
