Journey of a Year, pt 2 . . . or, What Will It Take?

I don't quite know where to start. Or rather, how. So, I suppose I'll start with that statement.
Or, not...we'll see...two days later and I've figured out what to start with. This:

221.5. With clothes on, yes; but not that much clothing.
That is what I just weighed in at a few minutes ago.

It's been an interesting week all around. I've had some major accomplishments, causing temporary feelings of jubilation. I've also been caught by some major pratfalls. Overall I just feel tired. Weary, really...Two months ago I began writing in a composition notebook which I call my symptom journal. I decided rather than struggle to answer questions when I go to the doctor and I can't tell him how I've been (usually because I can't remember the day before, much less the previous month) I should start tracking things. When I'm anxious I write about feeling anxious, or upset, or stressed out, etc etc etc. And when I do remember to use it I find myself tackling some big issues. When...

The first entry was on March 9th.
It was uncharacteristically short.
It was a few simple lines
about how I was struggling
with feeling anxious whenever I had to leave the house.
Here it is now the 15th of May and I am turning into an oversized hermit crab.
With a very stuff-filled house that I stay tucked under
rather than taking with me from place to place.
I've become a comfortable recluse,
sitting on my couch hour after hour,
occasionally breaking to graze through the kitchen
in search of sugary foods. Or cheese.

My mother raised a good point to me recently. Something that brought to mind old concerns and set the foundation for new resolve. Background there, first.

Mom: is Doctor Mom most everyday. She is a busy and amazing woman. Strong, intelligent, witty, compassionate. She is the full time caretaker for my father. She is less than two weeks his elder, but she is such a vibrant woman that no one believes she is as old as she is. Her hair is sprayed with white threads now, but her laughter and insight give her the air of woman sage not a marginalized crone, which a woman who has seen the hardships she has could easily be.
My father: he is now a quiet man, though he was not always when I was young. His health is confusing for everyone, his doctors included, and he looks like an old man many days. Although, he wouldn't be one if he had taken better care of himself in his middle age. Please bear that in mind -- it is relevant to my current situation.
When Mom is not tending to my dad's medical needs she is doing our dishes, washing our clothes, playing chauffeur for the household, balancing the checkbooks, ad nauseam. On the side she does free lance proof-reading and copy editing. And she's a writer. In her spare time. Which she doesn't actually have.
Mom also takes care of me when I'm not doing well. Yes, I am an adult and well old enough to do for myself. But as of late the Bipolar and the OCD have been debilitating and I have needed a driver and chaperon, a decision maker, an observer, and someone whose memory falters less often than mine.

It is Sunday evening now.
This post is still waiting in anxious patience
in the EDIT window. Paragraph
after paragraph of an incomplete thought --

a perfect illustration of my point.

What will it take? My mother raised a good point to me recently. She suggested we ask the doctors to do blood sugar labs. Diabetes runs in my family. It is the source of my father's medical woes. And there is a strong correlation between the onset of Type II and one of the medications I am taking now. It's the one causing all the weight gain...The last time I was on this medication my blood glucose was at the threshold of 'pre-diabetic' levels...Now I am back on the medicine, six years later and starting to display a few alarming medical symptoms. All of that got me thinking...

If I was told I had diabetes I would not be my father. I would be diligent and educate myself, changing my diet and exercise to regain control of my health. But should it take becoming a diabetic to become a more responsible tenant of my body? What will it take?

I want to be healthy.
I want to be happy.
I am well aware that the two are tied together.
I am always so ready to make the change,
to be better and love myself more.
And I am always so ready
to start doing it tomorrow...next week.

Tomorrow is a new day. Trite, but true. And tomorrow is the start of a new week; the perfect time to start a new pattern. Tomorrow is the day I will become

not a new me, but a better me.
I want to be more dedicated to taking of the me I am.
I'm the only me I have.

Tomorrow I want to become accountable to myself, to strengthen my resolve, to take responsibility...what will it take tomorrow for that plan to stick?
More likely, what will it take tomorrow for me to excuse myself from following through? What will it take tomorrow for me let myself off the hook? What it take tomorrow for me to become a self-fulfilling prophesy?

What will it take tomorrow for me to make that choice to discard
my old patterns,
to reclaim myself,
and be changed?

Journey of a year...

On my 27th birthday I began a One Year Dating Sabbatical. The last in a chain of short-lived, bad-idea relationships had just fizzled to its end. I was dealing with the major emotional ramifications of some results of poor decisions. I needed to clear my head and get hold of my heart, so to speak.

It has been two years and three days. I have not dated anyone in that time--not for lack of trying occasionally. There have been one or two men I have been very interested in. There have been a few times I thought a date would be a very nice thing to try. But, I have not ventured out yet. And that seems good. Each time I have felt 'ready' something has stopped me, fortunately. Because although I have grown (physically and metaphorically) in the past two years, there are still big changes I need to make before I can be ready to share myself with another person...I've come a long way in accepting myself, but it's been so many baby steps, joined with periodic backsliding, for two years.

These two years have been full of pain and anger at myself and sorrow and change and I have learned a lot. But I still have a good way to go before I love myself enough to accept the love of someone else...That brings me to this year.

In one year (well, one year minus three days,) I will turn thirty. It doesn't seem old to me, and I'm not afraid or stressed out or crazy about it like some people get. What I am is looking forward to a year to prepare for another epoch of being me. I am giving myself a year to change into who I want to be when I turn thirty. Yes, I have come to terms with myself in last two years. (More in the last four months, really.) But I have also realized the things I need to change to feel better about myself. To be more confident about how I present myself to the world. To be more attracted to myself and ready to attract the sort of attention I want to receive.

Two hundred and nineteen pounds: 219lbs. That is the most I've ever weighed.
It's what I weighed in at before I took my shower today. I've done the calculations using the tools on The Daily Plate; my current BMI is 38.79. Obese is 30.

I'm 5'3". I gain half an inch when I stand up super straight. When I graduated high school eleven years ago I weighed about 130lbs on a bad day. My wrists are not very big around. If I squeeze, I can wrap my middle finger and thumb around my wrist and they touch; and I have very short, stubby fingers, so that's saying something. My point is, of course, I am not built to be a big person. I do know I'm actually fat, I feel the weight. It impacts my back, my knees, my hips, my foot. But in my mind, I still don't get just how bad it is . . . But then I see my belly in a mirror or look at a picture of my face, and I'm surprised. I'm saddened. I'm sickened. It makes me want to cry. Not because there is anything wrong with not being a skinny twiggy kid. I know I'm older and my metabolism is slower. I don't want to be unnaturally skinny, to have my bones stick out and my extra skin hang limp. But I'm built to be someone whose curves show -- not melt together. And my inability to stop eating is taking its toll on my body even more than my self-esteem.

I want so badly to change. I make plans, I set intentions, time and time again. It's the follow through that's problematic. I can't seem to make myself accountable to me. And it's making me sick. And I have to stop it now or it may never stop. I'm taking a medication right now that I first took when I was 23. I gained thirty pounds, count 'em 30, in two months when I first started this medication so many years back. It's been six years and I haven't been able to take all of the weight off. Now I'm back on that med, with the prospect of a dosage increase looming, and my weight climbing further than ever. And I'm frustrated, and angry, and annoyed, and scared, and stymied. It is a vicious cycle and I can't seem to break free...And I'm running out of clothes.

This needs to be a year of change. I need to make a physical transformation to reflect the emotional one I have been reaching for. I need to decide that if I am not happy with how I look, if I don't feel like I look as 'beautiful' as I can, I am not able to accept the wonderful things about myself that others have praised (my olive eyes, my red hair, my ghostly porcelain skin) but am going to always be intensely focused on the things I don't like (my yellowed teeth, my pockmarked face, my flabby limbs and stretch-marks and cellulite) then I need to change those things. I need to brush more often, eat more strawberries, suck on lemons; take better care of my skin, not pick at my face when it breaks out; exercise, moisturize, lose the weight and keep it off. I know I'm human and I will always find something to criticize about myself, some way that I don't compare favorably with my ideals of beauty. But I'm also the one who has the power to change the things I see as 'less.' And I need to exert control.

There is a chant that came to me one evening last year as I sat in meditation. I used to sing it to myself daily as I took my supplements. It's posted on my bedroom wall. But, I'm never really in my room. It's a simple chant, straight to the point, unlike the things I write here.

I am a child of choice,
I am a child of change,
I control my own destiny,
I am a child of choice.

I think I need to start singing it again each morning as I wake; and I need to start remembering to clearly set my intentions for the day as I go about my morning ablutions. I need to make the choice each day that I am in control and I am in charge of my happiness. I need to remember to look around me while I journey through life, instead of drifting aimlessly, bobbing mostly downward as I put the power in everyone's hands but my own. I need to be more aware and less complacent. I need to be fewer words and more actions. I need to do. I need to take this year to be a fresh start earned not gifted to me and to make the choice to change for the better. I need to...

Blogging on Bipolar Disorder

I must admit, I don't always hate having bipolar disorder. After all, the first few days of a manic cycle can be wonderful. The pantry gets organized, my room returns to neat normalcy, I write everything I can think of and old stories are revisited with new life.

Then, days like today arrive. I get farther into the mania and suddenly it's not so fun.......I lose the ability to think in complete sentences. My stress and anxiety increase, escalating the occurrences of the symptoms of my long battled Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Suddenly, my brain gets a mind of its own. The thoughts come rapidly and repeatedly. I began having the same thought 5, 6, 7 times or more until the thought is formed properly. I obsess over how the thought it worded -- compelled to think the same sentence repeatedly until it is thought just right. Perfect in a way that may make sense to no one but myself, but makes perfect sense to me.

I get bored easily: it's hard to keep my attention focused on anything, to find anything to occupy my mind with, when I am not able to do anything other than multi-task. Watching DVDs is okay, but I'm really only listening, so it should probably be something I've seen before. After all, I'm going to be messing with my laptop the whole time anyway. Mind you, that's going to suck since I'm going to switch tasks on my laptop every four or five minutes, unable to stay interested in or understand any one thing for long.

The first few days, or sometimes only hours, of mania are exhilarating. If not for those around me, they are at least for me. My mind begins to work in a rapid succession of simultaneous thoughts. I know I'm intelligent, but mania makes me brilliant. My artistic soul becomes that of an intense creator, bursting at the seems with newness and excitement. I talk over myself, tripping over my own words, stuttering and making strange noises. My fingers can't keep up with my brain at any task -- writing, drawing, typing. My eyes can't keep up, words become jumbled as I read, letters transposed as I put words down in solid form. Thoughts burgeon from primal mush in the recesses of my cloudy mind: first they are crawling ooze, then are running, tumbling, jumping jags of light and line.

Then,

it

all

just

clogs up into a jumbleamultivehiclewreckaseachtrai n of thought de____rails. But, I stay manic.

And now, I am confused, frustrated, angry, withdrawn, aggressive towards myself and hating inanimate objects. It mixes, my mania. And I know I should reach for my symptom journal, write about triggers and feelings and events; or, grab my therapy binder and search for just the right worksheet to help me sort my emotions and anxiety out. But I can't do any of that if the thoughts won't stay still long enough to form into sentences. And I can't sleep it off, like depression. The energy is dancing before my eyes when they close. And if pictures form, they aren't the kind you want to see when you sleep.

Yes, I have bipolar and most days,

it's just not so fun being stuck in the middle

of a pendulum of emotions.

the Metro Gnome

Walking down the city block
"tk" "tok" "tk" ... "tok"
I'm a "tk"ing time bomb
An irregular clock
A single woman "tk"er tape parade

planning my memorial....

There have been three deaths in my family since Christmas. The last two were very unexpected. The third was the only funeral I was able to attend. All of this has led to several recent conversations between my oldest sibling and my mother about memorial services and funeral music and what things honor the deceased versus what things are done to comfort and honor the relatives (or "relevants" as my young niece more aptly says.) So now I find myself thinking a good deal about the elements I would want in my own funeral/memorial service/rowdy wake. Simple things like a nice outdoor setting and burning sage, and some more specific things like the song "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and the first two verses of the Hymn of Promise. And someone would need to sing the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. I once sang it for a National Day of Prayer service, at my mother's instigation, and I think it is wonderful. (There's a version of it different from what I did that has a great folk music tone, done in the '60s by the 3Ds.) And if the music was canned -- which my ashes would rise up and scowl if it were -- I think Joni Mitchell singing "If" would suffice.

As crucial as music is, message is important, too. I would want someone to read the poem "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann, Oh! The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Suess, and a few carefully selected bits of Buddhist teachings, perhaps. Also, the lines

"I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff
that is fine, "

from Whitman's Song of Myself should be printed somewhere on whatever is used for a program. That is after all one of my all time favorite poems, and I think that is an apt stance to describe me. . .
There should be some Thoreau thrown in somewhere by way of a prayer, because I like his words. And no sermon. (If my family and friends need to be preached at, they should listen closely to the Ehrmann poem.) Most of all, I want a Speaker for the Dead. I know it might seem sort of cheesy using a concept from a sci-fi series for your funeral, but I've thought since I was a teenager that it is a good one.

It's one thing to celebrate all the wonderful memories we have of a person when their life ends, but I think we do a disservice to them if we only acknowledge the good. If you honor my memory by only talking about the things you like about me, then you are only offering your version of me to the world.

I want to be remembered as a whole person -- even the parts of myself people may dislike, the parts of myself that I sometimes tend to think make me 'damaged goods.' Those are the parts that complement the good things about me, the traits I hope to pass on. Without my 'artistic temperament' I would not be such an empathic person. Without my temper I would not have such a wonderful grasp of invective. I have after all coined some interesting colloquialisms in my more irritable moments.

There is of course one other thing I think a memorial for me would need in order to be complete:

a congregational sounding of a "barbaric yawp."

Followed by a wake with wine and cheese.