Clearly Clicking Ahead

Three weeks ago, it was Entirely Too Soon to tell you all just how much better it seemed that life was getting.  Now that I have had three weeks of relative (gasp!) happiness, steadiness of mood, positive feelings, and lack of severe depression, I am here to confirm that I am quite giddily at a (fairly) solid, maybe slightly elevated baseline.  After over a year of soul crushing depression that never let up for longer than a day during that period, what I feel most is sweet relief.  Over the past year, I was fairly positive that I was never going to ever, ever, ever experience a “happy day” ever again.  Thankfully, I was wrong.

I feel clear-minded, I feel optimistic, I feel like issues can be worked on, I feel like my toolbox is full, I feel as if I have great love in my life.  I feel so good that I worry my mood is getting too elevated.  This feels a lot like hypomania, building into mania, but I would really like to believe that it’s just good, solid, level, positive feelings.  Bipolar disorder is cruel in that it makes a person unable to trust their own feelings, their emotions, their behaviors.

So, I choose to believe this is happiness.  I choose to believe that a combination of a happy home with LarBear and satisfaction with learning new things and the addition of quite a bit of mental health groups and programs has resulted in a happy Rosa.  It doesn’t hurt that it is Spring, and the weather has been beautiful.  It doesn’t hurt that I have finally crossed the line from willfulness to willingness, and that I am really and truly being honest with myself about my feelings and thoughts.

I have been keeping very busy, between DBT and individual therapy (both talk and art) and art groups and the newest addition, a peer mentor.  My mental health maintenance and my art are now primarily my “job.”  And really, I am working on it all several hours each day, but not so much that I am getting burned out and not so little that I am just sitting around wasting time.

I find that, the more time I can spend being creative and creating things, the happier I am.  For the last several months, it has been jewelry, and more recently, I have moved into papercrafting.  I find that I love learning new techniques and skills, and I find that I am quite good at working with my hands, which surprises me to no end.

I feel that, to make the creativity complete, I need to get back to writing regularly, even if it’s just a 300-word essay on the blog.  I miss it, and I miss the connections I make with other bloggers.  So, I’ll try once again and write semi-regularly.  That’s all I can do, is try.

My main goal, or the goal overall, is to not wallow in my misery.  That is easy to say when not depressed, but super terribly hard when in the depths.  For as long as I can, though, I am going to face any issues head-on, I am going to be effective, and I am going to use every skill I have to keep my mood relatively stable.

This happiness thing, whether it be hypomania on the road to mania or just true happiness, is something worth working for, something worth putting all of the eggs into the basket for.  To have felt the lowest of lows for so long, and to now feel like life is worth living and that the world around is so amazing and beautiful, yeah, I want to hang onto that.

 

 

Forever Starting What I Don’t Finish — Except This Time

Cheers to all of the NaBloPoMo bloggers out there!  Blogging every day in the month of November is no small feat, and one I have accomplished only once in my long, but not illustrious stint on the blog-circuit.  I did make an attempt last year, but it was quite pitiful, and, as the title of this post suggest, was left unfinished.

Rather than vowing to blog every day this November for NaBloPoMo, I think I am going to change it up a little and do it Rosa-style.  Knowing that this part of the year can be rife with painful bipolar cycling and ventures to the dark-side of things, I think I will pledge instead to simply blog as much as I can handle.  Because if for nothing else, it makes me feel better, even for a short bit.

My physical at-my-desk space for blogging has greatly improved, and my mood is currently *mostly* stable.  Surely, with those two things in hand, I can hit “publish” semi-regularly.  In addition, I have several people I follow who are participating in NaBloPoMo, and they are all fantastic writers and I’m sure they will leave me feeling inspired, if not just plain itchy to write my thoughts down.

And in gearing myself up for this time of accelerated and enhanced writing, I read back through the last several entries I had made.  I am pleased that, even in times of great sorrow and despair, I didn’t appear to wring my hands and “oh-poor-me” it…it seemed that I often had a solution that I was working on, or at least something of a game plan.

What I realized when I was reading all of these back-entries, is that, without writing, I generally make very little game plan as to how to handle my current mood or situation or circumstance.  Of course, I talk to myself in my head, but it does seem that goals get carried further when they are down on “paper.”  Of course, the other beauty of having things written down is that I can go back and look through these ideas and see patterns, which is ever-helpful in changing how I think and how I behave and how I *do*, in general.

So yes, a bit more writing is in order, because as I have been reminded, dark days of winter are a’coming, and they can be downright tricky.  Whatever I can do to help myself feel better and to help myself figure things out, is what I need to be doing.

For anyone reading, I wonder…have you ever taken a somewhat-extended hiatus or period of inconsistency from blogging, only to come back to it successfully?  I would really love to know, so I can direct myself through this most efficiently and effectively!

 

Sweet, Sweet Relief

 

Although I have blogged infrequently over the last nine months, looking back through the posts I can see what I already know — it’s been an up-and-down all-out battle.  After months of ECT and hospitalizations and stays in the crisis residence and many med changes to count, I am extremely relieved to say that I have found some peace lately.

Middle ground has always been the most sought-after state for me, and lots of people with bipolar disorder.  Moving from paralyzingly depressed to euphoric highs to muddled mixed states and back and forth, again and again, does take it’s toll.  When some middle ground is experienced, and I mean middle ground lasting more than two days, then it is time to celebrate.  For me it is, at any rate.

It has been over a year since I have had an extended spell of relatively stable mood.  Well over a year, in fact.  At this point, I can truly say that I feel pleased with how my life is going.  I am starting to figure out who I am again, or, who the “well” Rosa is.  It seems like every time I reach this point, I redefine myself and this time is no different.

I have been back in DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) groups for the past six months or so, and, just as anytime I have participated before, they have done me a world of good.  My relationships are better, I put up with less crap from people and also (I think) give out less crap.  I have finally started getting into some things that interest me again, and I work really hard on Building Mastery and Building Structure because those are the two skills that seem to help me really *get it.*

Building Mastery is basically doing and learning to do things that make you feel competent.  It can be anything, from getting on top of daily tasks regularly to learning how to ice skate.  I have recently been doing a lot of cooking and domestic-type-things that help me to exercise this skill.  I made a pumpkin pie tonight for the very first time ever — never would I have thought that I could have a greater sense of satisfaction than going through all the steps (find recipe, buy ingredients, put together, bake, present) by myself and having the end product turn out so well.

The DBT skill of Building Structure is just what it sounds like — adding tasks and routines and making one’s life FULL of meaning, with a healthy balance of sleep and recreation and work (work not necessarily meaning paid employment).  I practice Building Structure by using a day-planner and scheduling out all of the appointments that I am responsible for, and then adding a few tasks or goals to each day.

I find that the more I get up and do in the course of a day, the better I feel, and the more motivated I am to do more things, and eventually conquer tasks and items that during the past nine months have been next to impossible.  I realize I make this sound very easy, but in fact it is very difficult and, to be honest, it took almost five months of me dragging my feet in DBT group this go-around to make much progress.

But once a little bit of progress has been made, at least for me, it snowballs and things get even bigger and better than they were before.  I am doing things now that I haven’t done in months, and for some years.  Some people might think, “Oh big deal, she’s showering regularly and wearing clean clothes.”  Well, HELL YES it is a big deal!  We all have things we struggle with, some things are the same and some are totally our own, but it is up to everyone to tackle the part of life that works for them best.

So yes, thank the moon and the heavens and the stars above for DBT — for once again pulling this extremely anxious and depressed and moody and mercurial Bipolar Rosa out of the fire, or at least for this episode.  The fairly-stable Rosa remembers that, sometimes, these patches are stability are somewhat fleeting — best to enjoy while one can, and celebrate that sanity which is all too fleeting.

 

Victory Laps

Today’s prompt from Reverb13, Day Seven is as follows:

Please post your favourite picture of yourself from 2013, self-portrait or otherwise!

And to Reverb13 and the dear Kat McNally, I have to just say “no, thanks” to this one.  I’d like to think I keep this blog fairly anonymous, and also, I don’t play well with cameras, in many ways.  So, no “selfie” of me, but I’ve already received Day Eight’s prompt, and will be participating tomorrow.  My regrets.  (But you really should go check out the links of people who did participate, because there are some good ones!)

But because I am liking this Reverb thing so much, I found another pr0ject by way of a new blog I am following, Jill at “A Thousand Shades of Gray.”  Apparently there is more than one Reverb host, so I was very pleased when I saw a different prompt at Project Reverb.  I’ve signed up, but haven’t received an email yet and can’t find a button, but I have seen what today’s prompt is on Jill’s website (and later on Project Reverb’s), so I’m just gonna go with it and file paperwork later.

Project Reverb’s Day Seven prompt is as follows:

Victory Laps: What was your biggest accomplishment of 2013?

I like the idea of doing a victory lap.  It’s fairly cold out right now, but perhaps if I were wearing different shoes or hadn’t just eaten a huge bowl of chili, I might make a lap around the neighborhood.  I had many accomplishments in 2013, but the one I am most proud of is somewhat vague.

My biggest accomplishment of 2013 is to have lived a whole year with the least bipolar disorder symptoms I have had in decades.  Decades, people.  I am not sure if that sentence makes sense, but life doesn’t always make sense.  I wrote what exactly what was in my brain when I wondered what my biggest accomplishment was, and this was it.

Some people might say it’s not an accomplishment because it can’t be measured.  I would argue that it can.  I have cried significantly less tears, had hundreds fewer breakdowns, gone on zero manic spending/sex/self-destructive sprees.  I am taking care of my house and it is a home.  I am a better girlfriend and partner in crime.  Now I can support DSB when he is going through a rough time, instead of the focus all being on me.

I am more in tune with myself.  I know when I need to take a “people break” and I do it.  I go to bed at the same time each night and get up at the same time in the morning.  I take my meds like I’m supposed to.  I play with my dogs, clean the kitchen, and go to the grocery store.  I organize the laundry room and put clean sheets on my bed and visit with family and friends.

These don’t sound like big things, I know.  They sound like everyday, normal things.  And they are.  But to me, they are huge, because a year ago, two, three, seven, ten, fifteen, and so on years ago, I couldn’t claim any of the above, at least not for any length of time.  And now it has been a year.  I year that I have kept my head screwed on, asked for help when I needed it, and have generally felt successful at life, if there is such a feeling.  I have even gutsed up the motivation to quit smoking.  I will be two weeks quit on Monday at 8:50 a.m.

I think I’m about ready for that victory lap.