Inside a Fairy Ring

He chanced upon a fairy ring,

Where elves dance and pixies sing.

Twas there he saw the little light,

That flew so high and shone so bright.

He knew it from the start:

Twas a fairy princess, bless her heart.

And noticing just then his glance,

She came round his ear, not just by chance.

Her tiny light was glowing blue,

He heard her laughter, proud and true.

With a glitter of pixie dust so warm

He saw her in her magic form.

She told him, “you can take with you, friend,

My magic is a gift, your fortune will not end.”

“But what“, he said, “of your life here?

Will you still sparkle if I hold you near?”

And because he dared not take,

What he knew would cause her heart to break,

All the elves came to dance, and all the pixies out to sing.

He was forever sacred, inside a fairy ring.

-03.18.13

NOT drinking green beer...

Nope, no green beer for me.  Not gonna happen.  Just gotta make it through today while everyone is talking about celebrating and partying until tomorrow morning when people have to go to work hungover and it won't seem so appealing.  Not appealing at all.  I mean what kind of fun is it to just get stupid and then black out and not remember the party anyway?  Nope, wouldn't want to do that.  *sigh*

Now, you might think that's a bunch of malarkey, and you're right. St. Patrick's Day is one of the hardest days for me to want to stay sober. There are times of the year (like New Year's) when it's harder than others.  I mean, it's easier to avoid a situation than a holiday. I don't go into bars, I even try to avoid going down the wine aisle in the grocery store.  I don't hang out with people when they are drinking.  I have a lot of support for my sobriety and I live in a "dry" household.  But, I have alcoholism in the genes on my Dad's side of the family. And anyway, St. Patrick's Day is, let's face it, a drinking holiday like no other.

In college we joked that it wasn't "peer pressure" but "beer pressure."  I mean, St. Patrick's Day was the one day to see just how drunk you could get and hopefully, not die of alcohol poisoning.  Since I've been sober (10 shamrocks, so far) I've always felt left behind by the world on St. Patrick's Day. Now, my Dad, earlier on, had tried to warn me just to have a "wee drop" so that you could always drink a little, but he was too late.  It may have been too late when I was born.  I can honestly say that I do not understand drinking for taste, or some kind of light effervescent feeling.  I don't even get why people drink who don't want a buzz - and that means as big a buzz as you can get.  Yes, smashed, wasted, blotto, it's all the same.  There is but one goal.

I do other things to celebrate holidays that don't involve drinking (as I write I'm wearing my green and listening to traditional Irish music on Pandora) and we're planning cabbage and potatoes with dinner.  I even got myself a green-looking fruit drink so I could feel like I had a "green drink."  But maybe no day of the year is as hard to get through sober as this one.

If you're struggling to stay sober today, know that you're not alone in the world.  With a little bit of luck and whole lot of willpower you'll make it. If you feel you need some support check here for a local AA chapter meeting. You can take it moment by moment if you have to. And if you're on psych meds, remember that drinking is just out because self-medicating will mess with your brain chemistry.

So, here's me wishing you blessings for sobriety today if you need to be sober and otherwise, please be careful and safe!  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

blarney

I won't tell you if I'm Irish or not, but I have a piece of the original blarney stone!

How do you know when you're delusional?

That's the real question isn't it?  The answer is: you don't.  Otherwise, you wouldn't be deluded.  I'm not trying to be funny here, but it's like a paradox, wrapped inside of a conundrum kind of thing.  They say that if you can question your sanity, you know you're sane.  But that's like, a big overall kind of view of sanity.  Most delusions are like parts of a broken mirror. There's a chink here and there that has gone missing.  Maybe you can see enough of the picture that you don't notice the broken parts.  Maybe you just don't think to question them.  Or, as happens often with severe mental illness, someone (usually a doctor or therapist) points out the incongruity in your thinking and you react.  If you're deeply delusional, the reaction might be denial in some form and that can range from retreating into the delusion to a violent outburst.  My therapist told me once that with some people, you just have to work with their delusions, because their psyche's are too fragile to handle reality. See, delusions are defense mechanisms. 

Why I'm thinking about this today is that I'm wondering about how I survived so long with all the delusions that I had at my worst.  I was just explaining to someone today how I spent 6 years battling serious auditory hallucinations.  They were loud, they were omnipresent and they were my reality.  The main plot of my psychosis was a belief that I could read people's minds and that I was "connected with the universe" in a way that allowed me to "listen" to things that affected me - especially people talking about me.  The voices, as I call them, made it hard to concentrate on anything because they were the focus of my attention.  I remember I couldn't watch TV or listen to music without them filling in the cracks - and by that I mean I also thought that I could "hear" the residue of the thoughts that the various media personalities "left behind" when they were taped.  I thought I was getting subliminal messages.

Now, the only reason my reality was rarely challenged was that part of my psychosis was that I thought no one would believe me about my special abilities.  Twice I actually said something so out of touch that the listener questioned me and so I simply avoided those people.  See, I didn't know how to ask that question about my sanity.  I didn't want to.  Did some part of me know the answer and just not want to hear it?  All I know is that without meds, I hallucinate too much to function in society.

But what about now?  I seem to be able to share my thoughts with people and they seem to synch with reality.  I can usually pull myself away from buying into the delusions (like, I have this delusion of reference that the intercom chatter in stores is about me for some reason). Subtleties are all but lost on me though, and people still scare me.  I need to be very clear about what everybody means or I suspect the worst. It's still not easy.

So, what I want to know is: how would I know if I was deluding myself?  Could I face the answer? Could anyone tell me?  If so, how? Do people have to be careful with my psyche now?  What aren't they telling me?

There's no conclusion to be found here. I'm attempting to ask the question. 

signs of wellness

I was reading the forum on bipolar success stories today on PsychCentral.  The thread with the most replies currently is titled, "I Took A Shower Today."  That really struck me, because some days I just don't get up for a while and I don't take a shower and I don't do yoga (or much of anything) except that fortunately I'm really good about taking my meds.  Now, maybe this is true, too, for a good number of people who don't even have a mental illness. I mean, some days you probably just don't feel like getting out of bed, maybe especially on weekends or vacations, so you don't. But for me, it's a sign.  With bipolar disorder you have to watch yourself closely for signs of depression (not taking care of yourself, not keeping commitments, etc.) and mania (racing thoughts, pressured speech, lack of sleep, over-activity, etc.)  It's literally hard to stay balanced when your mood swings.

One of the best resources I ever found to help keep track of the signs of wellness for bipolar disorder is a workbook or journal where you schedule your activities in advance (as much as you can) and then check to see if you at least did what you planned to do and also, if you've like, stayed up all night painting the walls or something on a whim. If you keep at journaling on a daily basis, It can become a routine after a while and depending on how much you have going on, you may or may not be able to make a mental checklist.  Why this is so important though is that bipolar disorder can make it really difficult to accomplish simple activities or to control your impulses.

I liked to see the thread about taking a shower, because I didn't feel so alone.  I admit it, I just don't always shower regularly, or brush my teeth (let alone floss) or exercise regularly.  I'm doing much better than when I wasn't on meds, though.  Without meds, when depression hit I would stay in bed for a week and cry.  When mania hit I'd max out a credit card and just go somewhere random by myself.  I've been both obese and anorexic (sometimes a separate food journal is a good idea sometimes, too).  As a result, my health has suffered, I couldn't keep jobs and I ruined my credit rating, not too mention just doing a lot of "risk taking."

I wrote an article about how these days I "pass."  For the most part, I can keep up appearances.  That doesn't mean that I haven't been anxious all day, as usual, and that simple tasks, like hygiene, are sometimes a big challenge.  Now, it just so happens that I did take a shower today, so I was proud.  And it made me realize that I keep comparing myself to people who don't have this illness and feeling like I'm hiding the fact that I fall short of "emotionally balanced."  So, I think it's important to remember that if you have a mental illness, you give yourself credit for each little accomplishment and each impulse-control.   I'm happy for the person who took a shower today.  And I'm happy for all those of us, mentally-ill or not, who just keep trying to get through the day.  The important thing is not to give up. You may even surprise yourself.

Ides?

All I have to say about all the "warnings" of "Beware the idea of March" online today is that Julius Caesar was obviously NOT a paranoid schizophrenic, or he would have KNOWN that everyone was out to get him.

Full Circle

In case you haven't heard it on the geek grapevine, today is Pi day.  According to the Pi Day website (yes, there is a website), "Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159."  So, I'm thinking about circles.

More to the point, I'm thinking about circular patterns.  In my life, there's a big circle.  It has everything to do with values and self-esteem.  When I was a kid I went to catholic school and everything seemed fine with my peers until we started getting pre-pubescent (4th grade).  Suddenly, I was an outcast because I was the smartest kid in my class and I was well-behaved.  In fact, the year before that I had won the "Jesus Christ Award,"  supposedly for setting the most Christlike example.  I mean, I just thought that's what we were supposed to do, i.e. study hard and try to be good kids.  But my peers, starting at about that age, had different ideas.  I found myself getting bullied and ostracized for being a "goodie two-shoes". 

So, I was lonely and stopped really interacting with my classmates unless they sought me out to taunt me.  I was miserable.  And on top of that I was starting to clue in to new influences in the media, namely, Madonna, who seemed to take everything it meant to be christian and twist it around on itself.  I felt like, why be good?  It just leads to pain and torture and everyone wants you to be a "bad girl" anyway. I mean, that's how you got the boys to like you, wasn't it?

By the time I was 10 I decided that I wanted "in."  I wanted to be bad.  I wanted affirmation from my peers. I wanted to be, if not popular, not the butt of the jokes.  Well,  all through the rest of grade school (until 8th grade) I did a terrible job of being a "bad girl."  I really didn't get it and my parents kept a watchful eye on me anyway. So, I kept getting picked on.  In high school, I lucked out and found friends in honors classes and theatre who were intelligent and "eccentric" and who also, for the most part, tried to do the right thing.  My senior year I was elected to both the National Honor Society Board and Thesbian Board.  It should be noted however, that I was being pulled in for counseling on suspicion of manic depression. (I just thought I was being dramatic).  Also, I had an after-school job at a restaurant and I was starting to get myself into trouble with some older men.  Yes, I'll come out and say it: statutory rape.  So, overall I felt like I had moved up on the "coolness" ladder but I didn't even imagine what was happening to me.

18 happened and college.  Without the the thoughtful guidance of my parents, an illness creeping up on me, and too much time on my hands I suddenly found myself in way over my head.  I remember the first day I was walking around campus with a hangover and everything "made sense."  I felt like I had joined the human race.  There are a lot of stories to tell here, but for now, suffice it to say that I spent twelve years drunk and stoned among other things.  I had a series of abusive and dysfunctional relationships.  My first diagnosis (bipolar disorder) came at 24 and I kept using while I was on meds.  I got into self-destructive activities like being on the submissive end of violent bdsm. I gave up on meds. At thirty, I made my first two suicide attempts.  I went numb.

But that same year, I realized the first thing I had to do was get sober, or I was going to die, so I quit using.  And no, it still isn't easy feeling left out of all the "fun." Unfortunately, about that same time my paranoid schizophrenia really kicked in and so I went a little overboard giving up dysfunctional relationships, because I thought everyone was a threat. I spent 6 years moving around, trying to have a life, completely alone.  Finally, another suicide attempt when I was 36 and a subsequent hospitalization got me back on meds.  About a year later, I finally re-connected with my family.

Now, I don't think of it as good or bad, but survival.  It simply follows that if you want to live you have to take care of yourself.  You have to ask for respect and respect others.  For me, it means taking meds, working with my doctor and therapist, staying clean, and keeping up a healthy daily routine.  What has happened is that I've ended up rather lonely again.  If I didn't live with my parents, I don't know what I'd be doing.   I have a very small number of friends who are all awesome, but very busy with their own lives.  My relationships are functional though, and peaceful, and I can't ask for more than that.  And these days, I live with the stigma of "mentally ill" and "recovering addict," so no matter what you do, I find, it's futile to try and be a crowd-pleaser.

There you have it, back to square one: helping my parents, blooging hard, trying to take good care of myself and be a good person.  Only now, I understand why all that is so important, and yes, I'm proud if I can set a Christ-like example.  

So, I have circled all around it and given you my own personal Pi Day tribute!   Happy Pi Day!   :-)