Category — Mania

So I am feeling so much better.  Things look differently to me as I go about my everyday life.  I’m still suspicious of myself sometimes.

I have been working on this home inventory project for insurance purposes that I have wanted to complete for two and a half years.  A while back I’d had some false starts using different software than I am now, but recently I got all the kinks worked out, found the software I wanted to use, even recovered from losing some data I entered, and now I am really on the path to finishing this huge, massive project.

I’ve become driven to complete it.  Each night I have my lists of what to do the next day so I can easily find my place and keep working.  It’s Saturday today and I was bright eyed and bushy tailed to get up and keep working.  I probably have another 3 or 4 days of work.

Along the way I’ve asked myself – why oh why do you care so much about this when there is so much work involved.  Why am I so driven?  The best conclusion I’ve come to is that I just like having stuff like a home inventory done.  I like finishing things that take massive effort like the patio set, like the 14 or so scrapbooks I’ve finished.

I have learned to be suspicious of manic-ness.  So of course I’ve wondered if this is manic-ness or just that I am driven.

I am excited.  I can see the end in sight.  When I was manic and felt excited, the excitement felt like a nervous excitement, jangley.  I am not nervous excited.  I do feel good deep down inside.  I feel that when I breathe.  I kind of wonder if I am excited because I have the chance to apply myself to doing something tangibly productive.  I haven’t had much of that this year.  As I sit here and think about this, I have a kind of relaxed, resigned feeling about my self-examination.  I’m not itching to get myself to stop or get on with it so I can work on my project.

Last night I wanted to keep working, too, but I also held off because I was tired.  I figured I would get more done if I stopped and began again in the morning.  I was kind of reminded of my other detailed, organizational projects I’ve done over the years like tagging my photos with keywords.  There’s this funny appeal for me to projects that are boring, massive and detail oriented like this.

What was nice about last night was that my husband had come home from work and we were sitting together in the living room watching TV and working on our respective laptops.  I had been in my own world.  He was in his.  Eventually, we really came together.  As the evening wore on, I was chatting up a storm.  In the old days when I was manic, I wouldn’t have been available for casual chatting.  I would have been super focused on what I was doing, even when I had down time.

Last night I was aware that I felt like I was on the fringe of that possibility of having an open heart and be able to relax away from my project.  By on the fringe I mean that I had stopped my intense work on the project because I knew that was good for me but I still didn’t know how to exactly let my drive go.  It was like I was shy with myself and with my life.  It’s an odd question but it was like I was wondering – did my life want me in my non-driven state, was I welcome after having been so driven?  Could I switch from being really on to not wanting to be on and find a new groove?

Yeah, that’s it.

I’ve been thinking about the source of my drive which I imagine to be working in my parents’ printing business where there would be large, massive projects that would have to be finished by a deadline.  Often boring the only way to complete them was to work steadily, measure your progress, and take advantage of the good feelings of momentum toward completion.  I would have been lauded for being a good worker but I wouldn’t have been lauded for being me in all of my other ways of being.  In our daily life you relaxed when you finished your work.  The worked loomed in your head until it could be completed.  My family couldn’t relax in between.

So it makes so much sense to me that I would have metaphorically been standing on the edge of relaxation, hoping to be invited to join the party and not being completely sure what parties like this were like.  But I did stand there.  Hoping.  And I did find an immense amount of delight chit chatting with my husband.  We both felt so open hearted and close to one another.

I’m not so sure about this drive thing and it’s future place in my life.  I’m still a little suspicious of it.  That served me well yesterday because it had me consciously stop.  I certainly don’t feel the old nervous excitement of my manic days, but I also don’t completely trust myself either.

The antidote to lack of trust always has its source in my attachment to Andrea.  I guess what that means right now is remembering and feeling how she wants to be with me, discovering who I am, and just being.  I am safe with her even when I am angry with her.

I hope for today that I can be flexible with my drive.  Looser.  Not so rigid.  Yet still disciplined enough that I can finish this project and move on to some of the more fun things I want to accomplish.  It’s odd but what makes the difference is if I approach this project with a “hard heart” or a softer heart.

Well, this morning I went back for my third round of work on painting our patio set.  Most of the surfaces were covered with the final coat of paint, but there was lots of detail work to be done around the arms and legs of the chairs.  I started tackling those areas and it was like I would think I had gotten everything and then another unpainted area would appear.  This was happening over and over again.  It was really frustrating.

I had to stop for a minute and come to terms with the fact that this was not a project that I would be able to hurry through to the finish line.  I wouldn’t be able to suffer through the agony of all this fine detail work, comforting myself with the idea that I would be done soon.  I wouldn’t be able to rely on that old manic thrill.  So I also stopped and recognized that I really hated this project.  I kind of got a kick out of saying that.  But I knew completing this was important to me.  I wanted to do it.  I just didn’t want to ever do it again!

It was nice to spend this time with myself, to settle myself down.  I found myself thinking about how I enjoy puttering around the house and decided I would approach this detail work that way, relaxed and like the point was not to finish something per se.  Before I knew it I was actually done with what I set out to do, and I actually had a great time.  But I still won’t do this kind of project again any time soon!

As I was painting, I was thinking about how painful this would have been not so long go.  Having to do something I hated like this, would have had me feel trapped and that feeling would have kicked off another layer of much more vague feelings.  I would have had a PTSD response which would have then kicked me into a manic state of mind.  My heart would have been racing, I would have tried to just stay focused on completing the project, I would have felt tense, and my mind would have wandered to rehashing various people interactions and what went wrong and what I feared I had done wrong.  Oh what a hell.

My young parts felt really happy today.  So, so, so different from that time because I understand what those vague feelings would have been, I have outwitted the mania, and I know I am not living back in the past anymore.  I can actually make a distinction now between past and present.  What a relief.

I started walking with my neighbor again this morning. At one point during the winter and into spring a bit we walked about 5 times a week around our neighborhood which came to about 15 miles a week. It was really incredible. Then I got to a point where I just felt rotten. I was grieving so much that even just walking around our yard was too much and too hard to do. I would have good bursts of energy and so I would work in the yard on those good days, but then I lost energy completely for either walking or gardening.

Three weeks ago I started to feel more like myself again and so I decided I would walk again once my neighbor got back from her trip. So we began walking again today.

As I was walking on the last stretch by myself back up the hill to my house, I remembered how I felt when I had stopped walking with my neighbor. I was really clear that I felt bad, and I didn’t want to feel better by walking.

There are so many important things tied up in that statement.

First, months ago saying this was really significant. I was saying that feeling bad was useful to me and not something that I wanted to try to push away, not something that I wanted to get out of feeling as had been true for so long. I was afraid that I would feel better after walking and that I would miss important emotions that I had been unable to get my arms around for years. I had enough good experience of being real with myself that I wanted more of it, even if it meant temporarily feeling bad.

Second, I realize that where I am now is different. I no longer need to feel bad in the way I did then. In fact it is a little shocking to realize how far I have come. It’s hard to believe that I was in such a bad way that that was true. I also don’t feel radically better in some bright and shiny way, but I do feel better.

Feeling bad is more a regular part of my life, not something to be afraid of or something to protect myself from. My husband and I have had more arguments in the last six months than in the past because of this. I am more able to talk about when I am upset about something that he does. Because I am so much more attachable in my relationship with Andrea, I am also more attachable to him and of course within myself. I’m not worried about what will happen when I express my upset feelings. I have had experience after experience of good things emerging from my anger whether that be working out a way to get what I want or just closeness because I have told the truth about myself.

Looking back, I wasn’t holding anything back consciously before I got more comfortable with my bad feelings. It wasn’t like I was stewing inside. I just don’t think I knew what I felt. I think that’s true. I’d have to look back at some of my earlier writing to be sure that’s true. But this makes sense. It does keep explaining why I treasured feeling bad so much this past spring that I feared exercise would make me feel better!

So back to what I wrote last night. I still had to pay attention to myself and recognize that I was feeling pretty sucky and not berate myself for feeling off. But feeling bad was more a part of my regular life. I had had a great visit with some friends. I had enjoyed myself doing some shopping in the big city (although that was not as much fun as it used to be). And I could see that I felt bad about not being able to be with my visiting parents. That evening I remembered what I had come to know more clearly since the spring that nothing I did could push away the sad truth that I had to take care of myself first and that my parents do really upset me. So all I could do is know that this is true and be gentle and loving toward myself.

Walking this morning then was different. I was walking just because I knew I would enjoy it and feel good. I wanted to do something that felt good, but I didn’t have any expectations that feeling good would take my sadness away.

I actually felt a little nervous this morning leaving the house. I didn’t know how I would integrate the high feeling of walking into the rest of my day. Would I feel all good from walking and then feel disappointment when the high wore off? I left the house kind of perplexed by that, and I guess just decided to notice how things turned out. Then as I was writing the paragraph above I was reminded of how I used to feel a little manic after my walks in the spring. I would have this positive energy and then feel frustrated because I couldn’t sustain it. I couldn’t make this translate into other good things in my life. Same as I worried about today.

This was an issue for me in the spring because I hadn’t been able to flexibly move from feeling good to feeling bad. Today I was more able to simply recognize that I would feel really good from walking and that it would be okay however things turned out, whether I ended up spending the day watching TV or writing or if I ended up accomplishing amazing feats in the kitchen or around the house. It didn’t have to be one way.

This is a turning point realization for me. I’m going to add it to the new Turning Points page that I’ve started assembling.