Just Another Manic Monday (or Tues...or Wed...)

Hey, Y'all--

Been a little manic lately. Ok, alot manic lately. People used to call me a drama queen, but I think I got over that. Then they said I was addicted to chaos. Thought I got over that, but I guess it still follows me around all the time. Well, sometimes, anyway. This has been a week like that. My serenity was kinda down the tubes all week. Trouble in paradise, whatever. I try to keep my life as simple as possible, and usually I can accomplish that--that is, until I put my feet on the floor and get out of bed in the morning! LOL

Usually I find as long as my sense of humor is intact, I can handle most anything. Problem is, most people don't seem to think things are as funny as I do--or they don't see them in the same humorous light. You know I have that saying I quote: "If it ain't magic, it's tragic," meaning if I don't laugh about it, I'll cry about it. Basically, it's just that there are way too many people going around being way too serious about life...and I guess I could choose to be that way too, but WHY SHOULD I??? My life is way too serious as it is!!! Why cry over it, when it wouldn't change anything anyway, ya know?

ok, here's a "for instance." Today I was helping out a friend. He needed a ride to pick up a paycheck (he doesn't have a car at the moment), and the place was closed for lunch for an hour, so we had to sit in the parking lot and wait for that hour. He sat there and bitched and moaned the whole time. I figured it was a good chance to visit, listen to some music, even gave him a nice neck rub to get out his tension while we waited, kept a positive attitude on my part, tried to keep things light. Guess which one of us got the headache??? Same situation, two different approaches. Now, that doesn't mean I was any less aggravated that I was stuck waiting in a hot car in an undesirable, boring situation not of my own making, not able to go anywhere cuz of the gas situation, etc. But what could I do about it? And what good would getting aggravated accomplish? It got HIM a headache! And me an earful of colorful words that made me blush! And if I weren't the good friend that I am, I might have just left him in that parking lot hitchhiking his way home for his rudeness, lack of gratitude, bad attitude, bad language, griping, and overall ickiness! :) (and I sure as heck would not have given him one of my patented very relaxing neck rubs!)

I just figure that everything happens for a reason. Yes, I even believe that "wasted time" happens for a reason too. There must have been a reason (whether I ever know what it is or not is not the point) for the delay. But the point is, when something like that happens, we are faced with a choice--we can gripe and complain, CHANGING NOTHING, or make the best of it, STILL CHANGING NOTHING, but at least not getting an ulcer in the process! And if we try to make the best of a bad situation, we at least stand the chance of something good coming out of it in the process.

Case in point: A couple years ago, my son Tyler and I were in the airport in Atlanta on Christmas Eve day. I'm sure you can picture all the turmoil, stress, and aggravation abounding. They announced that they had overbooked the flight (surprise), and asked for 2 volunteers to take the next flight and they would get 2 free tickets in return. Everyone just griped and moaned. Tyler and I figured, heck, it would only mean a couple hour more delay to get home, so we took the delay and the tickets (we also got 2 free meals with them, by the way).

Oh, but here's the best part: The plane we were supposed to be on then got delayed by 2 hours, so the one we ended up taking actually left EARLIER than our original one, and we still had our 2 free tickets! So they had a flight full of aggravated passengers, while we just sat there grinning with our free tickets and bellies full from our free meals!

Anyway, the point is, I think it's all in your attitude. Life is not fair. That's a given. God never said it would be. Someone said, "Life is 1% what happens to you, and 99% how you react to it." Guess that's what I really wanted to say. When you are dealing with your emotions to the extent that we have to as people with bipolar disorder, that's a really big deal. Especially since to become stable, we have to learn to manage our emotions. So a big part of that, in my opinion, should be to learn how to become a more positive person. Am I saying to go around singing, "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow"? No, of course not. Am I saying, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade"? Yeah, I think that's a bit corny, but sure. "Deal the hand your dealt, " is the way I've heard it put. Whatever happens to you, is what happens to you, and wishing it away, or wishing it were different, isn't going to change it, and ignoring it isn't going to make it go away, either.

The ugly, unfortunate truth is, the only way to get through an unpleasant situation, whether it's having to sit in a hot, boring parking lot for an hour, or whether it is facing the death of a loved one, is to deal with it. Yeah, I know--I am never happy with having to do that myself. But it really is the only way.

In my own life, I have been found to say, "If you don't like your reality, just change it!" (Yeah, I know, but what can I say?) The real truth is, if you don't like your reality, change what you can, and ACCEPT THE REST. Yeah, the old SERENITY PRAYER. Ever think that maybe the Serenity Prayer has been around so long is cuz IT WORKS?? Hmm...

Well, hope y'all are having a good week. Check in, let me know how y'all are doing!
Remember, we're all in this together!!
Blessings,
Michele

People Will Only Treat You the Way You Teach Them to Treat You

Hey, y'all--

First I have to apologize (I do that alot, don't I?)--every time I vow I am going to post more on here, I go back to hiding my head like an ostrich and keep from writing until I am feeling better, thus defeating the very purpose of this blog in the first place. So, again, I'm sorry that I haven't posted in so long.

So, enough of that. I'll tell you what's been going on. Yet again, TennCare messed with my medications, and I ended up in another mini-episode, and now I am in the depressed cycle (again)--add to that the desire to drug again. Yeah, after almost 2 years. In NA they say, "The body recovers and the liar returns." It's true--even after all that time--I haven't even thought of doing drugs...was doing so well, even with with the bipolar, and all of a sudden this thought pops in my head that with all the pain I've been feeling over losing my sister, how much better I would feel, IF...

I used to be so strong, I think (and my sick BP mom reminds me)...I can fight this... but the truth is, these days I just don't feel so strong. And it makes me mad when people remind me of who I USED to be. Why can't people just accept that I'm NOT who I used to be? Why can't they just cut me some slack? Ok, so for the most part I AM this independent, stable, strong, wonderful, superwoman they think I am (right). Well, at least on the outside. And sometimes I can even be that woman on the inside. But other times, like this week, when I am just tired and depressed, why can't they let me be that woman too? Why do they still expect such high standards of me?

And yet, even as I pen those words, I know my own answer: PEOPLE WILL ONLY TREAT YOU THE WAY YOU TEACH THEM TO TREAT YOU.

What a hard lesson that was for me to learn. Having come from an abusive home to begin with, and growing up as a young girl believing I must have done something to deserve the abuse (which I DID NOT!)... to finally learn as an adult (and many, many hours of therapy later) that it wasn't my fault... BUT that people will only treat you as you teach them to treat you.

Think about that. Yes, at first, I can accept that I was abused through no fault of my own. My father was a very sick man. Even my first boyfriends, I can accept that. But the pattern that followed, into my young adulthood, ok...so at what point did it flip from being their fault to mine?

I have read ALL of Melody Beattie's writings on codependency (definitely a MUST READ, by the way)-- all about the "victim mentality"-- and I realized that from the time I was 12 years old and was first sexually abused, and from 12 (first memories) through 16 (when I finally moved out of the house), when I was physically abused--ok, those were times of abuse that could be faulted to others.

BUT...from 16 years old onward...can I still blame others for the abuse I received? Don't get me wrong, I am still NOT saying that I DESERVED it, NO WAY!! But I am saying that I DID keep the victim mentality, though, when I could have grown and advanced in my emotional maturity BEYOND that victim mentality, and had I done that, I most likely would not have kept picking losers, men who continued to abuse me. But, however sick it sounds, being the victim was comfortable to me. It was all I ever knew. Choosing abusive men was the only way I knew. Wrong as it was, it held a morbid comfort for me. FEAR kept me bound to that. It may have been horrible, but at least I was familiar with that horrible. So I convinced myself that there was nothing else out there for me--horrible was all there was outside that door, too, so I may as well stick with the horrible I at least knew.

In AA we have a saying: Some are sicker than others. BOY, WAS I SICK!!!

So for the past 2 yrs, I have devoted myself to God, to myself and my own self-improvement, learning who I really am and what I want, and especially what I want from people (specifically MEN), and what I will no longer compromise about. I have tried to find out what God's will is for me, and I was working hard trying to find out what that was, without a man.

So what happened? Some idiot frog (a wicked prince charming, if he was any prince charming at all)--got in the back door of my carefully built up wall and tore it all to pieces, leaving me alone, wounded, and crushed once again. WHY? The same thing I've been trying to tell you. People treat us the way we teach them to treat us. Somehow, sometime during this brand new relationship, I had fallen back on my old behavior that told me I was so lonely, I wanted this man to love me so bad, that I became codependent again, forgot about everything I had learned about being ME, who *I* was, and lapsed right back into the "I'll be whatever he wants me to be so he'll love me" adolescent way of thinking (SICK)....

And I basically taught him, in a very short period of time, that he could treat me as bad as he wanted to, as long as he said the magic words--I love you.

Oh well, at least it was only 2 weeks instead of 2 months or 2 years this time! :)

And, boy, was it a kick in the arse lesson for me. How could someone knock down a wall so easily that it took me 3 years to build up? Oh well, guess I'll just go look for some steel rebar to reiniforce this new wall. And I will try not to be bitter (yeah, right).

I wish I could just pretend it never happened, but that's like looking at a knife sticking out of your heart and saying, "Oh, my, I know there's a knife sticking out of my heart, but I'm just going to pretend it isn't there, and I will just ignore the pain." I CAN'T ignore the pain. But I at least can LIVE through it. I have lived through worse. And I have survived.

And I know I am not alone. On this one, I absolutely know I am not alone! I know there are MANY of you that have been hurt by men, especially men who freaked out when they found out you were bipolar, or who ran when they saw you in an episode. I don't know why I thought this one would stick around when I had mine. What on earth was I thinking? Mini or not, it was still an episode, and his feet could not hit the door fast enough.

Oh well, back to my old philosophy:

ALL MEN ARE FROGS. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PRINCE CHARMING.

Take care of yourselves, and remember, you really are not alone.
Michele

One Single Puzzle Piece

Hey, y'all--

Please forgive me for my absence. I went in search of my mind. Unfortunately, all I found were bits and pieces. If any of you find it, I would appreciate its return.

Today I feel as if I've been putting together a 1000 piece puzzle, only to get to the end of it and find one single piece missing. And now I'm so frustrated, and I think, "All that effort, wasted!" One single piece can disrupt a whole, beautiful picture! One, tiny, single puzzle piece, in and of itself so insignificant... yet look at all the havoc it can cause.

Have you ever heard the expression "upsetting the apple cart"? It's kinda like that, I guess... what I've been going through the past couple weeks. My life was going along fine, I was happy, life was great, then...BOOM! It was like an explosion went off in my world and all of a sudden I was in an episode that I never saw coming, and I didn't even know what was what, or who I was any more. Everything was different, and I didn't know how to handle it.

And in the middle of it all, along comes a man who I thought was Prince Charming, who turned out to be nothing but a frog in a fake white outfit, but who managed in a two week period to steal my heart and my life. I can't blame him completely, tho--I'm the one who fell for all his lines (and, boy, some of 'em were pretty darn good!).

And I know I should've been sharing on here, but I guess I was like the ostrich in the sand--if I don't see it, well, it just doesn't exist. Yeah, right. Ain't that a great philosophy. And it accomplished exactly what you might think it would accomplish. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

But I did cry alot. And sit on my pity-pot. I even cussed a few times, which is really a big deal for me, because I try so hard not to get angry! None of those things helped either. So...seeing's as pretending that the problem didn't exist didn't help...and hiding from the problem didn't help...and being angry at the problem didn't help...I guess that that left only one thing--the very thing I absolutely did not want to do--FACE THE PROBLEM!!!!!

I just did not want to admit I had made yet another mistake. That, once again, I had to pick myself up and try again. I'm just so darned tired of doing that. Every time I think I'll know better for the next time, but I never do. Before this recent bout of BP cycling, I had been stable for over 2 years! And I have not been in a relationship in longer than that!! So how come I didn't see this coming? Where was the chip in my wall? That's what I've been asking myself.

I was at an AA meeting yesterday, and the topic was "becoming part of the solution instead of the problem." And I spoke up and said, "But that's where I struggle, because I AM the problem!!" So how do I do it? How do I change myself so that I start being the solution and not the problem? Especially since I've done so well hiding from myself for a lifetime? Ashamed of who I am, feeling like having bipolar makes me somehow "less than," or "not as good as," or defective somehow.

It's like being in a boxing ring with God. I lead with a right jab and pout, "It isn't fair." He counters with, "I never said life would be fair." I come back with, "But life's too hard!" And God says, "Cast all your cares upon Me, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." My left hook to His jaw is accompanied with, "You don't know what I have to go through just to get through a single day!" He grabs my hand just as it is about to connect with His jaw, and pulls it to His heart, as He lovingly says to me, "I know what I had to to through just so you could have this day." I fall to my knees in tears, speechless...

And He raises me to my feet, lifts up my chin so that I can look into His face, radiant, peaceful, more loving than any love I have ever known, and He places a single puzzle piece in my hand.

God always answers prayer. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. But sometimes the answer is WAIT. Wait until He puts the puzzle piece in your hand.

So maybe Prince Charming was a frog. At least it only took me 2 weeks to find out. At least it wasn't 2 months! So maybe I'll just have to keep on waiting some more until God brings my soulmate into my life. Waiting's not always so bad as long as it's waiting on God. At least I know I'm not alone, huh?

Blessings,
Michele