Almost Fell Right Back Down the Rabbit Hole

Hey, y'all --

Well, I almost fell right back down the rabbit hole again!

Yesterday I was working on a writing project for Dave. I had gone out of the house before saving it, and it was snowing here, and I think we had a power failure. Either that, or I had saved it in a temp file instead of a regular doc. file. Either way, when I got home, I realized I had completely lost an entire day's work.

I tried desperately to recover the document, only to go in circles, and get completely frustrated, to the point of tears. I'm not kidding -- I sat there staring at my computer screen and cried and cried. Over something I could do nothing about.

But I kept thinking to myself, "Don't let this steal your joy." Over and over again, I kept thinking, "Don't let this steal your joy." Because of the way I've been feeling about my house being so clean, and how I've been so happy, how it pulled me out of my depression and all. And how this one thing was triggering me back into the depression.

So I talked to my husband about it. And he reminded me that I"m not perfect. Do you believe that? ME? Not perfect?

It was a hard lesson to learn, since I DO expect perfection from myself. It stems from my OCD, which I have besides the bipolar disorder. I would never expect from anyone else what I expect from myself. And I know that nobody else expects from me what I expect from myself.

Nevertheless, that high expectation of perfection from myself is there. I try never to make a mistake, and when I do, I berate myself for it. It's almost impossible to live up to my own standards -- thus the personality disorder!

So I made a mistake. A big one. An avoidable one. But the fact is that I did make it. But what I did once (wrote the project), I can do again (re-write the project). It certainly isn't worth letting it steal my joy. My husband and I worked 3 whole days together to get the house looking the way it does now. And I had finally come out of my 3 week long depression.

So I had to ask myself, "Is this really worth going back into that depression?" And I'll tell you, that depression was so bad that I told myself that NOTHING was worth going back into that darkness. NOTHING!

So here we are, and it's a new day, and I am optimistic. I feel fresh, and I feel like now I can tackle that project again. As a matter of fact, I feel like now I can do an even better job than I did before. I have confidence now. I am not as stressed as I was.

Because I had to face up to the fact that I'm not perfect -- I had to face imperfection in myself and come out on the other side of it with acceptance of a personal shortcoming, and realize that it is OK to NOT BE PERFECT!

My husband puts it this way: There was only one perfect man, and He had holes in His hands.

Remember that God loves you and so do I,
Michele

Sorry I've Been Gone So Long

Hey, y'all --

I'm sorry I've been gone so long... but I promise I'll make up for it and try to post more often.

I've just come out of a 3 week long depression. It was really bad, but I learned a lesson, one I want to pass along to you. I've still been seeing my therapist every week, and she taught me this.

She says your outsides reflect your insides.

Here's the case in point. Having bipolar disorder, when I get depressed, I just don't clean my house (because I'm too depressed), and I let everything just go to pot -- I let everything get messy, I let everything pile up, and then I look at it and it's just too much -- it's too overwhelming to me. So I don't do anything about it. And it just gets to looking worse and worse. And I get to feeling worse and worse. And it's just this vicious cycle. The worse the house looks, the worse I feel inside. See my point? My outside matches my inside.

If my house looks cluttered, I feel cluttered inside. If my house looks messy, I feel messy inside. If my house looks overwhelming, I feel overwhelmed inside.

So here was her advise. Just take one little part. Just one little area, and work on that. Not all of it, because that would be overwhelming. Just one little part, concentrate on just that, and clean that. And eventually, just one little part at a time, it will all get done. And it worked!

Now my house is all clean, and it looks wonderful! And now I feel clean inside, and not only did the depression go away, but I'm happy! I had lost sight of what happy feels like. Not manic, just plain happy. You wouldn't believe how wonderful this feels. I had gotten to the point that I didn't know if I would ever feel this way again -- the depression had such a hold of me.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you, because I know you have bipolar disorder too, and I'm sure some of you are facing the same thing I did, like your outsides reflecting how you feel inside, and being so depressed that things just get so overwhelming to you that you feel like you're in this vicious cycle. If you have, I'd like to hear from you.

There's an ideal that says that men identify themselves with their jobs and that women identify themselves with their homes. Boy, it sure proved true in my case!

Remember that God loves you and so do I,
Michele