Hello Friends!

Well, I am still doing very well. To the friend who commented in the last post, worried that I was in a manic state: fear not. I have an entire team of psychiatric professionals with whom I meet many times a month, in one permutation or another. In fact, at one point in the last few weeks I asked my therapist if I might be manic. She said "There is mania, and there is happiness. I have seen you manic. Right now, you are happy."

There is no cure, let alone a "miracle cure" for being bipolar. As of right now my disease is well controlled by medications, but it is still present and it is still a part of my personality. It always will be. When I am happy, it is likely that I will feel it more intensely and display it more passionately that the average happy person. When I am sad, it is likely that I will be more depressed and take things harder than your average sad person. This is part of my disease, but also a part of who I am. This is how I move in the world.

In the past week, I've had some elated times and some very hard times. It can be scary to navigate though emotionally intense times for the most emotionally well-adjusted person, but when you've been made necessarily aware of your slightest shift in mood, it can be quite frightening. There is a stigma to any mental illness, and the self-inflicted stigma can be the most devastating. For every shift in mood there is a corresponding shift in self-observation: is this an emotion, or is this a symptom? Am I reacting to the world, or am I getting ready to be locked up again?

It has the potential to be paralyzing, when faced alone. How is one to navigate the very human world of stimuli and responses when you cannot trust your own perception of stimuli, nor your ability to respond in a non-pathological way?

If it is possible at all, it is possible only with a great (very great) deal of training and experience. As of this writing, I am never quite sure, when I experience an emotion, if I am having a genuine emotional experience or a pathological expression of that experience. My intellect and reasoning and if/then mental flowcharts can only take me so far. I have been (mightily) wrong before. I might (probably, likely) will be wrong again. To be blunt: that sucks.

But I am not alone. I have doctors, I have therapists, I have friends, I have family. If my personal barometer is off (and sometimes it is, though increasingly less so) then I can count on them to let me know. So far, the most brilliant and rewarding moments of my recovery have been the reactions of these dear people around me. Friends notice how much healthier I look. My family has not seen me so relaxed since infancy. My therapist is calmly elated at the difference between the shrinking, shy, self-hating, depressed and manically anxious girl who scuttled into her office and then tried to kill herself, and the tall, calm, gentle and observant (if intense and often overly emotional and overly analytical) woman who comes to see her now.

It is often difficult to extract the “disorder” or “disease” from the fundamental personality traits of the patients. I always have been and I always will be intense. I always have been and I always will be prone to unreasonable flights of fantasy that cannot necessarily be grounded in reality. I always have been and I always will be easy prey to debilitating depressions in response to seemingly minor provocations. It is part of my disease. It is part of my disorder. It is part of who I am. With medication, with therapy, and with time, it will become easier for me to discard and control the parts of this phenomenon that are not “me.” As my brain chemistry is corrected, and as the corrupted thinking patterns and deep-seated wounds in my self esteem and my vision of the world are healed, I will be able to embrace with more and more confidence and peace the passion and intensity that makes being Amanda worth while. It is already happening, and though it may not be a “miracle cure” it is none the less a miracle.

If I sound manic in my posts, it is necessary to know where I came from. I have poured out my soul on this blog, but only so far. Even though I am bipolar, for a long, long time, the only symptom I displayed was depression. It was a depression so profound, sunk so deep in my bones, that I had been carrying the desire to die from an obscenely early age. My mania never announced itself in elation or joy or grandiosity. When I was “manic” my symptoms mimicked a major anxiety disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, or obsessive compulsive disorder. Even manic, I was never happy, at least not for more than a moment or two at a time.In my depressions, which would last years (interrupted only by "manic" sessions of obsession and fear) I could not bathe, I could not eat or I ate too much, I could not leave the house, and when I left the house I felt that around every corner lay someone ready to despise me. I sometimes could not go to work and when I went to work the burden of my own perceived incompetence crushed out any ability I might have had to prove my competency. There was a deep sense of doom clouding almost every waking moment. I lost jobs, friends, and relationships to this unspeakable sadness. Compared to the bone-crushing, heart-breaking, soul-smashing intensity of the depression I carried before, any glimpse of happiness would seem positively manic and obscene. And of course, when I express it, I am going to express it even more loudly and obscenely than my gentle non-mentally ill bretheren.

But I don't just have a glimpse, I have whole vista of happiness. And even with the many distressing and tragic and painful worries that remain in my life, I am full of joy and thanksgiving. I am so, so happy that even without a comparision to my earlier miserable state, it might seem unreasonable.

For a long time, it has hurt. It has hurt to be. It has hurt to be me. And though I still feel hurt (sometimes deeply), it no longer hurts to exist. And beyond that, the hurts that I have carried so long have given birth to the happiness I hold now.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.

— Rumi

Some prayers of happiness

Dear Friends!

I am so well. It's been a while since I wrote here, but I am very, very well. They found the right medications for me, and my soul has never been so free. It's a miracle of the highest order, at least in my little life. The heavy, murderous shadow that has weighed me down from early memory has been lifted, and I am well.

I can't say it enough: I bore friends with my constant repetition of how happy I am. And not just happy, but peaceful. I never knew what a miserable burden of anxiety I carried, even on my best days. I knew it was hard to be me, but I didn't know just how hard it had been until that burden was taken away from me.

I still encounter the range of emotions: elation, anger, sorrow, joy, pain, silliness, seriousness, love, and the mild panic of a paper due and an exam to write.(Monday! Ack!) But I feel these things more freely--they aren't overwhelming blows. For so long, living with bipolar, I was prey to every stray thought and feeling. Everything was terrifyingly significant, everything had to mean something, and I had to find out what it meant right away or something terrible might happen.

And that is all gone.

I am speechless with gratitude. All of my prayers and psalms begging for mercy and deliverance have been answered, and far beyond my wildest expectation. I longed for freedom from misery, but couldn't know that beyond that freedom was so much capacity for joy.

And best of all, I can feel God again. I was so desolate and alone for so long, but the tyranny of my pain has been broken, and I am free to seek and find God, very close.

Alleluia!

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,
for his faithful love endures forever...

...In my distress I called to the Lord,
he heard me and brought me relief...

...I was pushed hard, to make me fall,
but the Lord came to my help.
God is my strength and my song,
he has been my saviour...

...I shall not die, I shall live
to recount the great deeds of God.
Though the Lord has chastened me sore,
he has not abandoned me to death.

Open for me the gates of saving justice
I shall go in and thank God...
...I thank you for hearing me
and making yourself my saviour.

The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
This is the Lord's doing,
and we marvel at it.
This is the day that the Lord has made,
let us be glad and rejoice in it...

...You are my God, I thank you.
All praise to you, my God.
I thank you for hearing me,
and making yourself my saviour.

Give thanks to God for he is good,
for his faithful love endures forever.
(Psalm 118)

On top of this great gift, I have found a great love, and I am finally fit for love. For the first time I can love without the sense of dread and fear of rejection. I don't have to waste my energy shielding my partner from the fact that I am me. I don't have to feel in need of constant renovation and revision. I give happiness and receive happiness, give love and get love, and know that the gifts I give, as well as the gifts I receive, are well worth having. I can give myself as I am, and be received for all that I am. It's the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me, and sometimes I think I might pop from the sheer joy of it. Hooray!

One of the tangible gifts that my love has given to me is a beautiful little blue book called "The Book of Uncommon Prayer." It is full of some of humanity's best tributes to God, and I have a lot to share from it. For tonight, I have a blessing for all of my friends, and one especially.

The winter will lose its cold,
as the snow will be without whitenes,
the night will be without darkness,
the heavens without stars,
the day without light.
The flower will lose its beauty,
all fountains their water,
the sea its fish,
the tree its birds,
the forest its beasts,
the earth its harvest --
All these things will pass before
anyone breaks the bonds of our love,
and before I cease caring for you in my heart.
May your days be happy in number as flakes of snow,
may your nights be peaceful,
and may you be without troubles.