Bloggeration!

This bipolar business is a bit sneaky. It plays tricks on you. I am this Monday, marvelling at its sneakiness and having a giggle. It's tried to pull a fast one, but there aren't many flies on me! To be fair, there are some, but there aren't many.

I have been to Brighton! 
(That's not the sneaky part- I knew  I was going, it wasn't a delusion or anything)

Anyway, free at last, I began to write down some thoughts for a blog on the way down, creativity had been lacking of late  and certainly a couple of blog entries were so shoe-horned that I removed them completely afterwards in shame. So, I was delighted to see the muse returning. I had been so enjoying my Buddhism classes, that I wanted some time to think about them since I had gone from hating it on Week 1, to finding it ridiculous but curiously comforting on Week 2, to loving it on Week 3. I was also STILL reading 'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert (third time it has been renewed at the library) which is filled with Meditation and religion and the search for inner quietitude. I can't wait till I get to the Javier Bardem bit!  Tbh, I had virtually decided, that I could be a non believing, all embracing buddhist if it was going to find me a bit of peace and allowing myself that, brought enormous waves of relief -a tsunami of a plan.      

I seem to have spent most of my adult life denying myself a religion because of stigmas and rules and common sense and and and.... What I am now coming to believe is that religion of any sort (even a dedication to the healing power of stilettos perhaps) is a way of bringing peace to a life and I was beginning to feel that, this weekend, everything was converging and I was keen to discover all that I could. I could feel myself rushing towards pseudo-Buddhism like coming home. I was desperate to get there. As Harry says to Sally in the iconic film "Once you know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone (something in my case) you want that life to begin as soon as possible."

So, whilst I was away, I kept the comfort of my new wisdom with me, still having beers and milkshakes and seeing a concert that will stay with me for the rest of my life for reasons I may lay down in another blog : I gossiped, I lusted a little and all the while, felt this desire to rush toward calm water with open arms and felt that the day was coming.
On the way home the following day, I uttered my chant to Tare, the mother buddha, "Om Tare, Tu Tare, Tare Soha" whilst mentally asking for blessings. Suddenly, I found myself exactly in the same place in that train, same people in front and behind, but speeding through space and time with everyone else in my carriage. I could see clearly that we were all heading in the same direction on life's journey at that particular moment and that we were hurtling, quite safely through time and space and life, whilst simultaneously passing through the Home Counties; trees and housing passed by us at speed. I didn't think I was in a void. I'm not nuts!
 Later on, I listened to some music that usually invokes emotion in me and I felt it so clearly. I felt it in colour and with every nerve end in my body;  then I asked for Tare's blessings and once more hurtled through the universe in my train, the conductor checking tickets to the truth that lies beyond. I didn't feel scared in the least -quite the opposite. These episodes lasted only seconds at a time, but I found  great peace and comfort in staring down the carriage thereafter. This religion thing was going to work for me.

Between changing trains, I sat down to record some of it but my pen couldn't write quickly enough. I decided to give myself a break and to read back over the (physical and mental) journey I'd travelled in 24 hours. I began with the first paragraph, written yesterday, 9.40 am.
" On a train to Brighton. Just had caffeine in the form of a skinny latte.I just thought 'bugger it! (I no longer allow myself caffeine normally) There must be 2 or 3 expressos in it. Hope it's OK".  Then there followed discussion of my new found faith in faith which contained the sentences,  "Religion is the essence of humanity. I can feel the euphoria building of what is to come."

BINGO!!  That medium-sized word, euphoria. I knew in that instance that I wasn't having a religious experience at all, I was entering a manic state. Told you it was sneaky! It hides itself in all sorts of guises and now the terrible thirst that I have had for the last week and the pain in my shoulder blade, that I assumed was lung cancer, but in reality is my age old tension spot brought on when I start clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth, register themselves in my consciousness.  So, it seems that these depression flags are present before mania too. Interesting!

I had a bit of fun with it later, I pushed the boundaries to see how far I could go before reigning it in and I had a lovely day if I am being honest. I listened to music that touched every sense in my body, I danced,

 I laughed, I felt the wonder of life.
I spilled over with every emotion expressed in the music as I channelled the essence of the musician.

 Every couple of songs, I'd put on a slow one to bring me down a little before cranking it back up. I do feel bad for those who cannot feel in colour; whose bodies cannot hum with the joy of being alive, with hope and wonder and beauty. Who do not feel, really feel with every fibre of their being.It is awesome.
I have that ability. I don't want to let it go. Maybe I don't have to, I just have to learn to integrate it better and I need to look after myself during these phases as much as during my depression. I need to get out my comfort box and tend to myself like a mother. In fact, I'll do that now.
                                                             

just being

I have always felt things deeply-really deeply. I also had an inclination that it was not in the same way as other people felt things. I seemed to feel ....more of it ... more of the shading of life. There was never just a day. Each day was a day filled with highs and lows and wishes and wonders






and regret and fear and intense,bright and blinding colourful hope.

That is when it wasn't filled with nausea inducing anxiety or a fatigue so deep that raising my head was an effort. In either case, life was exhausting. But I always felt that life was being lived. "At least I know I am alive" was the encouragement I gave myself when I saw others drift along on an even keel in a leafy waterway as I was riding the crests and troughs of  a perfect storm. I could not envisage a life where emotions went by unnoticed, unappreciated or worse, were not there at all. It seemed somehow to take away from the magic of just being alive, of treasuring every moment.

But, I have to be honest, things have changed. I want the calm of a narrow boat on a summer's day now.  Whatever God is, perhaps he'll grant me that. I have been grieving this past year for the excitement of open water in the form of the life I knew. The one that did not let any feeling go unhindered -each felt instinctively and deeply and categorised under goodie or baddy, black hat or white, John Wayne or Lee Van Cleef. Recently though, I have been actively cultivating an emotionless life. I need to do this so that I don't accidentally slip into mania and then downwards into grinding misery. I have resented every minute of that boredom, and yet..and yet in the middle of the boredom are sometimes moments of such peace that I could cry with relief. Peace is something very rare in my life because it is so very rare in my head. But it's my new goal. You can keep your highs and lows and the day to day feeling with every fibre of your being. Let me be. That's all. To be, quietly, unassumingly and without drama.


Sometimes, a lifetime of peace is so tantalisingly close that I can virtually taste it, but alongside this yearning for peace, I cannot stop filling my life up with things and striving for things. You'll have noticed that even peace is a 'goal' for me. I feel, that since giving up a job that immersed me in emotion whilst requiring me to suppress it, I have filled the extra time with writing and making and entrepreneurial things, decorating and gardening and cooking-all of which I desperately wanted to do, but all at the same time? I feel myself slipping back into an old pattern. Nothing is done well, everything is unfinished. P tells me that they are all more fulfilling things, things to ground me, but can I be honest with you? Apart from writing, I am unsure that I feel any more grounded and fulfilled at the moment. In some ways, I feel less fulfilled. I feel like it's all getting away from me. My mind still leaps from one idea to another and another. They are all good ideas-I am good at ideas. As my friend says 'Every one would make money, but there are far, far too many of them'. The things is, I feel compelled to follow each new one, leaving all the old ones half finished. It seems such a shame to squander them, but it leaves me feeling unfulfilled. This is very like the usual old me. What's nice to notice is that the ideas are there year round, they aren't dependent on my mood , as I used to think/feel.
Maybe the difference now is that all the ideas I have, I have for myself and my family, whereas before they were all concentrated on improving the lives of others. But I did feel fulfilled doing that, maybe it wasn't good for me, but it felt like it was. Maybe what I need to do, is see myself as someone in need of my help, and then go about helping myself. I used to have great success in helping others although I certainly used to feel awkward and unhappy when I had great plans and ideas on how to help people that I was subsequently not do because I needed to actually be in their company for inspiration to strike and the moment I left them, it left me.

So, peace alludes me when I fill my day up so. I can hardly even relax in the bath-my mind is busy all the time. Oh dear! I realise when I write this that it has always been thus, and that's what the meditation was for.
Thank goodness I'm a one-day-a-week Buddhist x

Home again.Home again, jiggedy jig.

I am

Home again.

And what have I learned?

I have learned that I do not turn into a pumpkin if I play the dutiful daughter. I have learned that I am not playing. I have learned that it is not the whole of my extended family that is dysfunctional, only my end of it

I have decided to take the option of being happy.

Having met up with my beautiful cousins who have remained in stable and loving, supportive relationships with quite frankly, awesome spouses, it's made me think. This wider family represents my childhood and adolescence (including holidays) and even some of my early adulthood. That is until our grandparents died and by then I had already moved away.
Family support wasn't taken away, I removed myself from it. I buried it. I have not been kind to myself.

My own, tremendously handsome sibling and his beautiful young wife are another matter though. Not stable. Not happy. Trying- they are definitely working on it but they do not support each other in any constructive way at all because they don't know how to-complicit in dysfunction perhaps. I can't find the words to begin the conversation.  He's ignoring, papering over, willing it not to be so. I know this cycle so well because he has not been kind to himself. He is lost and scared, spitting and fizzing to warn others off in a desperate defence reflex.

Not to me. To me he just lies.

All this beauty is in one room, with laughter and memories and cake. I am peppered with compliments for my organisation, for my children, for the decoration, for my ingenuity at keeping the surprise - but never, not once for taking my beautiful place in this beautiful family. I am invited here, there and everywhere and thanked for being the catalyst of the reunion, but no one tells me I look nice -not even my mother.
I am trying to let it wash away. It sounds so petty and ridiculous. It is petty and ridiculous, I know it. It just takes a lot of brushing off.

But, I can choose to be happy. I can choose to believe the gushing texts
that have been arriving all day.
I can remind myself that I
avoided mania-inducing states and
was not tired and lethargic for any of the visit, for what was possibly the first time EVER.

I controlled my cyclothymia.

From Catherine wheels to Tornados

I used to liken my Cyclothymia to a catherine wheel.

I was once invited to a Guy Fawkes party in a lovely garden that led down to a river. The chap who was hosting it, nailed the catherine wheel to a tree then watched in horror as it jumped off its perch, whizzing and fizzing and firing its violent colours like a six shooter backing out of a saloon . Mien host chased after it, along the riverbank, in safety goggles and a V-neck sweater - attempting to bring it to justice with the aid of a long stick. I have rarely laughed so loudly and so long and when the suggestion that I might be bipolar arose, in my intial relief at an explanation of my life, I saw myself romantically as a catherine wheel. I was a gentle maverick, a children's entertainer, a rogue firework-sometimes getting out of hand and briefly dangerous but always entertaining and wonderful to look at.

In the months that followed though, as I hit my ups and downs with a new awareness that I found frankly quite terrifying, it struck me that unchecked, a catherine wheel could cause much damage and that I could cause more. I seemed to be housing a recurring tornado.

I have always loved extreme weather; growing up on a very severe coast line, fun for me was walking along the seafront when the waves were so vast as to overpower the sea wall by several feet and crash over the recently abandoned car park on the other side. I adored the drama of it-the power of nature; the feeling that it could snuff me out any minute, but that it wouldn't bloody dare.

As a result, I love the sea although, at the same time, I am more terrified of its vast power than of anything else. Thundestorms are another favourite; always torn between common sense and exhilaration when thunderbolts are thrown through the air and that delicious grumble of the gods invites you to party. How I long to go outdoors.... and so often, I do.

In retrospect then, it doesn't seem such a surprise that I ricochet constantly between the horror of fear and the freedom to be out of control. When did it all begin I wonder?

Now of course I realise that I am a tornado, not a catherine wheel at all. I sometimes -but not always- get a bit of a weather warning and ooooohhhh the excitement. I soar on that excitement, I see the tornado start to build and I feed it with glee, whipping and whipping it round like a spinning top until it has such a momentum that there's no stopping it. I am an awesome sight-mighty,powerful, intelligent and I do not suffer fools gladly-all are ripped from their place of safety and tossed aside. I am bright and witty and everyone is drawn into my atmosphere. I do not rest, nor sleep but go along my clever, clever way, taking all that I want and showing the world how it's done. I draw admirers from everywhere, everyone wants a piece of this phenomena. I can spin forever!

 Yet in the back of my mind I know that this isn't how it ends, that the spinning will stop even when I don't want it to. I panic and struggle but sure enough, the cows and double decker buses get harder to lift and the debris starts to slow me down. I look for a man with a stick to help, but he has got bored now and wandered home for his dinner and after all, people have jobs to go to. I try only choosing light things to fling about me, but all the time the energy is being discharged ; something has popped the Tornado like a balloon but it is me who deflates slowly until finally there is nothing by quiet and calm immobility and a sense of disorientation.

But the worst is yet to come, once the tornado of my soul has been snuffed out altogether and I look around, the horror of the decimation is revealed; the carcasses of friendships and reputations and time with children are strewn everywhere and I am completely spent and exhausted with a need to sleep and an inability to think. But even this is manageable, because I realise that when I do start to think, it won't be pretty. I am my own newscaster reporting on untold damage. I do not pull any punches. Apocalyptic is my style -I am a sensationalist after all.

But I have been thinking...thinking that if I were constantly a gentle breeze-neither a hurricane nor stagnant water- I think I'd find that less tiring.

So, welcome to 'The Tornado Files; One woman's observations on how it feels to accept herself and the strategies she's experimenting with to pace herself.'... it's a working title :)