I am tonight writing a post as my mother scrambles to assist me for what she hopes to be the last time in a long time. I had a falling out with a friend who had lent her couch to me while I tried yet again to put it all together. I am writing about what hurts me most about my life. That is plainly how I let people down. Or that I hurt them, dismay them, even sometimes take advantage of them. How I do not stand on my own. How I cannot seem to stand on my own. I find that to be a great moral failing.
Sometimes I feel that if I were more highly functioning I would not have to be the object of a certain brand of pity. I remember when I felt my shit don't stink. I remember corporate jobs with healthcare. I remember being stuck up. I remember pride, upbraiding the lousy one, the fool, the freeloader, the ingrate. I remember hoarding. I remember hearing someone's too sad story and being afraid that their woes might be communicable just by the telling. Looking down on people has a certain chemical advantage in the brain I wager. Being looked down on definitely rips at the soul.
It's not easy to hear that people have had it up to here. They tell me sometimes to write down my goals. They tell me that I should have gotten my degree by now.
So I have had to cultivate some sacred zone where it is o.k. to be me. Where I am not smarting from a moral injunction. Where Moses can't get at me. It's not always been about not having morals, it's been about having too many. I didn't seek help for the longest of times because I wanted to be self-reliant. I was the first in my class by most metrics. I believe I learned all the lessons, at least the upswing ones. The one's where you are striving to score higher than the others, to look better than the others, to speak better than the others, to think big thoughts, to have subtler taste, to maneuver socially, to self-deprecate while you status-seek. Now the down-stroke lessons; to conceal hurt in laughter, to make a case for yourself, to regret, to finesse bitterness, to grovel, to keep walking with no wind at your back, to surrender.
I wouldn't want to end this post without what I also know. That there is a power in a pill, that is the beginning of what is possible in being a good person. And I gladly will comply.
it is not easy to learn, but eventually you will, that happiness does not come from the outside, it comes from the inside. Everyone else knows where they want you to end up, but they cannot force you there, they cannot drag you there, but they CAN HAVE FAITH that you will get there, on your own time, in your own way. And you can have that same faith in yourself. What you have to decide is whether these people really want you to end up where you want to end up. If not, jettison them, or at least learn to detach. Where you find a caretaker, often you also find an ego at work.
Desperate people do desperate things. And public policy that works against far too many people with all sorts of disabilities obtaining wellness is making a whole lot of people desperate.
Pills are cheap, they are easy. But it's not clear to me that they alone work. Americans so want the 'quick and dirty' way to solve problems. Have you considered counseling in concert with medication? or support groups? or simply learning to find humor, gratitude, the power of friendships, the power of helping others? It takes a lot more effort, but the rewards are far greater to those to try these things i think.
It's not just the destination. It's the journey that matters in the end.
I am happy that you responded. What I wrote is not reflective of my total conception of bipolar disorder as it relates to my life and my life with others. This was a post about a certain feeling, or related thoughts that center around morality. I do however agree that centering my life on happiness is far better than to do so on morality from the outside. In life sometimes you battle the same foe many times over. I battled morality by coming out of the closet to form my own sense of what a good life is. Now the challenge is to figure out how to look for refuge in the world, to be cared for and looked after as I do so for myself. To maximum joy!
Bought a book of photographs in the 60's or early 70's. The title? "Kiss the Joy As it Flies" ... and that is what i do. I try to find joy in everyday life, in simple things; i am not at a place where this is consistently successful, but have managed to reduce the times where this awareness is impossible. And the dark times seem to be lessening as i age. (maybe i've just learned how to structure my life in a way that keeps inordinate levels of stress away).
I am still working at putting away childish things, as you do when you embrace who you are.
I am sorry that i misinterpreted your post. (i did have a sense at the time that i should have given more thought before responding to you.)