holding pattern ...

... yeah, so, and since my last post, which will quickly come up upon a week ago, now, where I was discussing, working through and building (painstakingly) my "stick to this" list, I kind of fell by the wayside.

I think I left off somewhere where I was essentially sorting through shit and stuff, and/or something like that.

Near as I can remember, it was a Friday evening and I was going to sort through my yarn and any need-to-be finished projects in that realm. My ultimate long-term goal is getting the creative side of my office and studio running again, starting an etsy shop and continuing some of my other artistic activities, writing to be included. I keep saying I will get to these very integral parts of my soul, and then I don't. That's the shits of being me.

And, you know, I did what I headed off to do last Friday night. And it was fun, and I realized that all the balls of yarn, which have been waiting in a large wicker basket since our move into this house, and the two moves prior to it (3+ years all total), were not at fully as messed up, and totally tangled, as I first thought (imagined, obsessed, and generally blew out of proportion using my brain as dynamite and one small thought as the match). Again, this is me sucking at being me!

So, it's amazing how things can build, and grow in your mind to huge-gantic proportions all because you are stinkin' thinkin' instead of forming thoughts based on reality, and actually dealing with a task that has forced your hand beyond all the reasons in your head.

So, I dealt with the yarn, and that is what I learned. Things are never as bad, or as tangled or fucked up as they originally seem.

Now, while I learned that, and while I honestly was learning at a burning and "building up to something" kind of pace, I also was falling hopelessly to the wayside.

While the yarn has been carefully sorted, some rewound, and various (and not too many at that) projects left to finish, while many more lurk in my mind's design, my insides unfortunately chose that time to cease up! Fuck!

I essentially took a nap, which I do both literally and figuratively. My way of dealing with my fucking mimic of a bipolar brain is to complete the tasks at hand that require dealing with (the ones where if you don't do them, you get hauled away for not taking care of your kids, lose clients because you take jobs and don't do them, etc.) is to finish shit as soon as I can and then take a nap.

I log a lot of sleep during this down-swing time, since sleep moves time in big chunks and if I'm not awake, I don't reel and mis-deal the insanity into something that I cannot use.

This, in and of itself, is what I've been struggling with for the past seven years since my stroke, the way in which my brain "mimics bipolar activity," so said the neuropsych geek I saw seven years ago.

So, there are these tremendous upswings where I feel like my legitimate and functional "old self," who used to be a real sprocket in action.

I love these times and bask in total recognition of "me" and how "things used to be," and how much I enjoyed being me, never mind the little deaths. But that little joy, no longer keeps me, because the "off/down/for shit" times cost too much, and I feel so fucked over.

After my stroke, I began to hate, and was very angry at myself, and got really depressed over the fact that things weren't like "before" and that I had become one of those bitter "before vs. after" people who just can't get over themselves or whatever it is that is bothering them.

That person, that bitter person, just wasn't me, but guess what it? Shit, piss, fuck, it was me! (in the now, and forever)

During these down times, my head essentially "shuts down," and if it tries to stay or play at being way far "up," I can't concentrate, and I begin cancelling things, not showing up when I try to catch my reflection in the mirror and basically sidelying and or flat out lying about what I am doing, when I'm actually motionless inside, frozen, waiting for the elevator door to up when I push the "up" arrow button.

During these times, I'm able to work, parent, love and continue lasting in my closest relationships, though those who love and last with me know that I still doth protest too much when this happens, and that it's still hard for me to live with me when I'm on the down spiral.

I seriously, would not put another person I loved through this, this watching me fight with myself and lose! But, seriously, that's what I've been doing! I've been putting my loved ones through this, and I love them to bits for their support and unconditional love right back at all the parts of me.

To the lay person, or any person I might lay at the time (just kidding ... my bipolar shit doesn't go to that extreme!). It always looks to the casual observer that, whether up and/or sliding down, I'm perfectly fine with it ... yeah, so and that's another lie I tell myself.

I think after a fashion, the casual observer can spot a manic-depressive whack job from a block and a half a way, my two competing selves included.

However, off to the side, when my work contracts are done, family is fed, and kind loving words are said (since again my bipolar activity doesn't hit extremes where I take work, make wild promises and then don't complete the work ... to which my doctor has duly noted for me that, I've got too long and large and wide a stick jammed up my ass to be severely to either bipolar side, because I overthink my swings ... to which I fully agreed, and was all like, "Yeah, you are so right, the only thing that stops me from being fully, and unadultratedly bipolar is that on one of my manic upswings, you won't find me dancing naked on a table at the local tavern because right now I'm way self-conscious about my belly fat!")

In essence, 10 pounds of annoying "belly fat" are all that stands between me and a write up in the local paper's Police Report column!

In other words, I'm so bipolar my bipolar shit smells just like everyone else's bipolar shit! I swing just as high and just as low, and the thing that I stubbornly cling to is the doctors words that my brain merely "mimics" this behavior and is not really happy to see or bit!

I stink, and therefore, I am ... bipolar.

Having done my best and/or worst to explain that, I guess I'm just trying to suffice, and to slice it up and say, I'm still all up in my own face, and trying to work out the fluff that is stuck in my stuff, but I couldn't keep up with the list that I started, because right as I started it, who knew!?!?!? (well, I knew, and should probably have known better than anyone) that the sheer delight of feeling like I was "onto something" and moving full fucking steam ahead like a madwoman surely meant I was due for a crash and burn ... which I was.

In an effort to appear sane to myself and to my blog, because yeah my blog has a secret police force that can come after me and say, "Hey, you are not writing this the way you intended to, and what about your high and mightly lists, huh?!?!?"

Well, because of that insane inner voice (which you know came from me and not my blog police) I was opening post windows, and leaving dot, dot, dot notations and placeholders, and I was going to come back and keep working through the list, as if, I hadn't really been taking the week off, inside my own head.

I was going to pretend I was posting and learning and working my way through my list on a daily basis, by holding the pages open, and editing in the info later, most of which I would have had to make up, because off to the side of things that I don't let slide during my down shit times, I was actually on snooze!

I know that sounds weird, but that's what the downswing is like for me. I lament it, and I torture myself over it, since I don't feel "quite right" or not "quite how I used to feel all the time," and it becomes this horrible thing, when really it's just how my brain works now, so hmm, hello, Anne?!!?!?? For hell's sake, why not get over your old self already!?!?!? Right?

Yeah, and so this is my way of saying, I like where my list started, I understand why it waylaid for a bit. During the down times, at best, aside from the things (people!!!) that I truly care about and refuse to take into the gutter with me, I walk through life "making myself go through the motions" of stuff like bathing, answering the phone and being kind to strangers and stray animals, but on the inside, I'm really totally on SNOOZE!

That being said, and honesty being my most brutal and favorite policy, I deleted all the placeholders, and I'm not going to pretend that I hadn't spiraled down there for a wee bit.

I will continue the list, picking up where I left off, and it will flesh out in it's own time, and in 30 days this brutal honesty which I so embrace, that is pretty much the habit I'm working towards, this acceptance of self.

You know, so there, now. It's not about lamenting and killing myself over the "off" days betwixt and between what's really going onward, right?

Now, isn't it amazing what one learns about oneself even when one has been busy beating themselves up when they were down the winding and horrifically difficult staircase.

Peace, it is, and peace out.