Category Archives: Confidence

Because I Can

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I’m finally letting myself show anger, even rage, call people on the bullshit they hand me, their lies, singular or repeated, all of it.

Because I can.

I purged an old, dead email account of its contents the other day.  What (at the time) I felt was a stupid move was reading a bunch of those emails first.

I was aghast.  I saw myself being emotionally and psychologically abused to a horrifying degree.  Had there been a physical analogue, I would have been the woman in the ED who “fell down the stairs”, “walked into a door”, or was “just the clumsiest woman ever, you won’t believe what I did to myself. . .”  And I would have ended up there daily, until eventually I landed in the ICU, on life support.

Reading those emails was something that needed to happen, though, because it wasn’t just one relationship, and it hadn’t been just with guys I was “involved” with.  I took a long, hard, painful look at the woman I have become, and I’m angry.

I’m angry at myself, but I’m also angry at all of the people who had a big hand in turning me into this woman.  Because I never used to be this way.  You swung at me, I ducked and hit back twice as hard.  You lied to me, I called you on it straight out and gave you the option of being honest henceforth or getting the fuck out of my life.  You treated me badly, or took advantage in any way, I walked and never looked back.

I entered treatment for my bipolar, and slowly, but slowly, I began to wear down, and people took advantage of that.  Even though I knew I was doing everything possible to be well, and that I had never taken my illness out on others — except for a few, a very few, bursts of shouting and tears — I felt like I was a burden just being in people’s lives, and I had to do everything I could to compensate and please others.  This belief was reinforced when friends I’d known for years started backing away; the mother of one of the children I nannied for started distancing herself and telling me how disappointed her child was when I didn’t show up for something because I was curled up in my bed, sobbing, unable to even move (yet I always at least gave her notice that I wouldn’t be there); and finally, my sister, with whom I had always been very close, and my best friend of 20 years both decided to cut off all contact with me, basically telling me that they couldn’t handle “my drama”, and other behavior that was completely beyond my control — even though I was still working my soul to the core trying to prevent them or anyone else from being negatively affected.

Clearly, there was something wrong with me beyond my illness, as a person, and I was lucky to have anyone still in my life at all, so I had to (and did) do anything and everything to keep them.

FUCK THAT.

A sister who walks out on you when you are at your lowest is not a sister.  For a long time I have been compassionate, because she genuinely didn’t get it.  She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting well.  But you know what, it doesn’t matter if you understand or not; you love someone, you support them.  You do not call them “a black hole”.

A friend who uses her children to hold you hostage — consciously or not — because you know they are little and they love and need you, and that if you call Mommy on her lies and bullshit and manipulation she will cut off the contact you have with them, I don’t even have a word for that.

Friends who back away because you are as contagious as a leper, and even if they know that statement is true, who don’t want to deal with the fact that you have to fight constantly to keep your head above the swells while they can get up and live their lives every day are not friends at all.

And new people in your life whom you will put up with, excuse even, all manner of garbage from, all while hiding or making light of how bad things have really gotten, because you’re desperate for someone, anyone, to “support” you and show you kindness. . .  Well, that one is on me, but I never would have gotten there without the concerted efforts of the people above.  Yes, they had every right to make a choice to remove themselves from my life, but they were cruel and weak and cowardly to have blamed me, instead of having the guts to admit that they couldn’t deal with being spectators to the struggle I was living and the constant pain I was in.  Because, had they done so, they would have had to admit to themselves that what I lived every day was an enormous struggle, and so unspeakably painful, and they were cutting and running, abandoning me when I needed them more than I ever had.

For years I have searched for the reason I let my former psychiatrist lie and manipulate and force me into electroconvulsive therapy — I can finally use the word FORCE, for the very first time, and you don’t know what a triumph that is — and at last, I have found it.  It was the result of a long line of abandonments and betrayals and manipulations and lies by those I loved and trusted most.  I had been made to feel like less than nothing for so long that I had come to believe it as gospel truth, and who cared that the old me, the real me, had been firmly and unwaveringly against ECT with all of her being for three-and-a-half years?  She wasn’t standing guard any more, and my opinion didn’t count.  How could it, when I didn’t count as a person myself?

That’s something I get to carry with me always.  The permanent brain damage, and the post-traumatic stress I have from being anesthetized, having electrodes hooked up to my head, having a current, a shock pass through my brain to induce a seizure in me — sixteen times over.  I blamed myself for that, too.  Up until about an hour ago.

And still, I put up with bullshit and manipulation and being treated as less than a person by people I love, because it is all I know anymore.  Almost three years to the day of my first shock and seizure.

Now, three years and fifteen days after that first blast of electricity, arguably the lowest point of my life, it ends.  I’m done.  I’m worth more than that, a hell of a lot more.  I am often a hard person to have in your life, and that has always been so, it has very little to do with mental illness.  But I am the best friend you will ever have, if you are willing to accept me, all of me, and give back.

I am smart.

I am compassionate.

I am intelligent.

I am strong.

I am creative.

I am resilient.

I am supportive.

I am loving.

I am beautiful.

I am selfless.

I have a strong moral compass.

I am patient.

I am understanding.

I am honest.

I am accepting.

I am forgiving.

I am idealistic.

I am open-hearted.

I live my beliefs.

And I once again believe that I am worth it, that I am worth more, much more than I have been given in the past six years of my life.  From friends, from lovers, from family.

So I will live my life accordingly from this day on.

Because I can.

“I ain’t a soldier, but I’m here to take a stand. . .”

~ Jon Bon Jovi/Richie Sambora/Billy Falcon


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

“Difficult”

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Difficult.  Overwhelming.  Exhausting.  All words that have been used to describe me for most of my life, in and out of episodes of illness, bipolar notwithstanding.

And they aren’t inaccurate.  I am passionate about almost all matters, and positively hellacious about the remainder of them.  I have mellowed in my old age, but I still pour my heart and my soul and my everything into anything I believe in.  It’s why you’ll see me disappear from here for days to weeks, because I haven’t anything to say that pulls at me and begs to be put down into words.  When I was in school, I wrote every single paper the night before — they refused to come out any sooner.  Some I even turned in late, because they weren’t done cooking in my mind; and while I could have written a good piece and turned it in on time, if I waited a day or two longer, out came something truly excellent.  And though at times I would fake it in many subjects, I never, never would when it came to writing.  Not only was it a mortal sin, the possibility just absolutely did not exist in my mind.

Oh yes, many of my teachers found me “difficult” in school. I spoke my mind without restraint, I corrected them when they were wrong, and worst of all, I didn’t show them the respect they automatically deserved simply because they had decided to become teachers. I expected them to earn it, just like everyone else; my parents raised me to treat everyone this way — teacher, janitor, classmate, doctor — everyone began on an equal footing. Those teachers who appreciated me and didn’t label me in any way as “difficult” were the wonderful individuals who got it.  They saw the differences in me for what they were: self-possession, creativity, intelligence, sensitivity, passion, and an incredibly strong moral compass.  And they encouraged and supported me far beyond what their job description required.  The result was more than them gaining my respect in equal measure; from my third grade teacher to my Anatomy and Physiology professor (and quite a number in the intervening years), I remember them all vividly. They each gave me something special, and they left upon me an indelible mark so uniquely their own. I was sometimes still a smartass — that’s something rarely ever suppressed in me — but I was a polite, kind smartass (you know what I mean).

Over the years, I’ve lost more friends than I have kept because I am “difficult”.  In some cases it was my choice, but more often it was due to friends’ inability to understand me. I view the world with a very different perspective than most people, and I live my life accordingly. When I was younger, I was free-spirited and so absolutely sure of myself. But as we grew older, many friends came to be uncomfortable with the same wild eccentricities and unshakable character I have possessed all of my life. I have a wall that surrounds me, that has always surrounded me. I imagine I was born with it, and it has always kept me very independent and secure in myself. (“They got a wall in China/It’s a thousand miles long/To keep out the foreigners/They made it strong/And I’ve got a wall around me/That you can’t even see/It took a little time/To get next to me” ~ Paul Simon)  I can and do let those who are very strong and brave inside, because it is not a place for the faint of heart. And those dear souls who understand what it takes have been in — and even out — of my life for years, but I am blessed that they see that I am worth it.  I may be temperamental, moody, distant, emotional, overwhelming, exuberant, and at times just a bowl of crazy flakes, but I love them, I love their kids and their families, and I would do absolutely anything for them.  And they have loved me, not in spite of all that, but because of it.

Not surprisingly, the only people in my life who don’t find me difficult, overwhelming, and exhausting are my girls.  I am full of the kind of joie de vivre that most people either lose or have beaten out of them on their journey to adulthood.  I cheered them on with unabashed delight when they were learning to feed themselves (Babygirl gave me some funny looks for that one, but she loved it). I’ll climb a tree (in a skirt) with my girls, though I haven’t been up one in 20 years.  I encourage them and permit no room for self-doubt or restrictions when they paint (getting messy is part of the fun!) or do anything creative, and more often than not, I join in.  I get on Skype or the telephone to do reading homework with them, and I buy them books for absolutely no reason except that they love them and so do I.

I have bipolar disorder, this is true, and when I was so profoundly ill for so many years, I lost a couple of people from my life that I would wish back into it in an instant — except that things would never be anything like what they used to be between us.  It’s the nature of the beast, and I have made my peace with it.  I can’t say that was me (or anyone) being “difficult”; I won’t accept that word to describe me during a period of time that was so painful and so protracted that much of it I don’t remember, and what I do scares me even now, when I know I will never go back there.  I did what I could even then to try to save the last threads of these relationships, but sometimes things are just too far gone between people.

And now that I am well?  Now that I deal with sadness and heartache instead of depression, and joy and exuberance instead of mania?  Well, the sadness and the heartache are definitely far from on par with what most people experience, as are the joy and the exuberance.  My life is unusual and crazy and full of passion and love and heartbreak, because I am unusual and crazy and full of passion and love and heartbreak.

I am difficult.  I am overwhelming.  I am exhausting.  That’s something most people can’t deal with in their lives, not really, and I understand that.  But after 32 years of being this way, and never doubting that this is exactly who and how I am meant to be, you’ll see no changes in my nature.  This is me, and I’m not going to become someone else for anyone in this world, no matter how much I love them.  That’s not to say that I am in all ways rigid and invariable; like the tree I climbed with my girls, I have branches that are strong, flexible, and accommodating to embrace those closest to my heart.  But my trunk only grows stronger and more solid with each passing year.

Proof of my exploits as Rima, the (backyard) jungle girl. Though my girls told me to go inside and put on pants, I wasn’t wasting time with such silliness when it looked like so much fun!
P.S.  It was.  :P

Addendum: It seems this was my 300th post. I think that means something.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Will You Be There To Catch Me If I Fall?

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For 31 years of my life, this one was a done deal.  Okay, I can’t speak to my younger years entirely, but something happened to me around age 14 that made me my own and only support.  I had my first breakdown, and in true Ruby style, it was one hell of a mess.

Crying hysterically when your mother tries to drop you off at school may sometimes be normal for some adolescents.  But I was never bullied, I had lots of friends, and I wasn’t afraid of any of the teachers.  So for me it was a bit extreme.  To my mother’s credit, she knew this was not one of those “You’ll feel better when you get to school” things, and she didn’t force me to go in.

Hiding in the basement, cowering in terror from your very good friends when they try to come and find you at your house after school definitely does not fall on the spectrum of normal for a 14-year-old girl.  It would be more than a decade before I had any idea why I did it.  Even before then, I never really thought about how incredibly strange my behavior was.  And no one was home with me to see the degree to which things had deteriorated.

Now don’t take that to mean I had absentee parents.  They simply both held jobs, and as the crying and anxiety seemed to relax almost entirely when my mother brought me back home in the mornings, she went to work at hers (not without reservations, I’m sure).

At some point I pulled myself back together.  I couldn’t really tell you how.  It probably had something to do with the looming threat of not graduating the eighth grade and getting the fuck out of that school forever.  Even if my days in middle school weren’t as miserable as some, that place still sucked.  There’s a reason they parcel those three years away into their own little hell.  That way you can get through them and start semi-fresh somewhere else.

There are a lot of now infamous parent/teacher/principal/student conferences that went on while they tried to figure out what to do with me, as I was so far behind in so many classes.  May it suffice to say I gave a lot of the staff a lot of hell, but in a very adult, don’t-you-dare-talk-to-me-like-I-am-a-freaking-child kind of way.  I was pretty incredible, even my parents thought so.  My theory on why I was graduated is that I had one or two good teachers who were on my side and realized that there wasn’t really anything else they could teach me, and the others just wanted me the hell out of their lives.

Point being, after I got back up onto my feet, I made the decision that no one was ever going to see me off of them again.  Fuck all to what was going on, I could hide it.

And I did, with one exception when I was 16.  Never mind the details, but it caused a shift in my perspective.  It was no longer I’m going to hide this, damnit.  It ceased to be an issue of pride and independence and turned into a belief that ultimately, I really was the only one I could rely on to take care of myself, at least emotionally and mentally.

And for the next 15 years, that was my life.  I had friends, I had family, and I had doctors, eventually.  And they were all good people looking to help me in my time of terrible distress.  But I wouldn’t have it.  Not really.  Yes, I sobbed in my mother’s arms more times than I’m sure I ever did as a child.  Yes, my father cleaned up my financial messes and babysat with me during the days as I went through electroconvulsive therapy.  Yes, my friends made themselves available to me to the degree that they were able to and then some – but they did all have children, most were spread across the country, and for a lot of that time I wasn’t really with it.  And yes, on more than one occasion I know I begged for help from my psychiatrist.  I had even begun to develop a strong support network through blogging.

But still, when I got down to cases, I was the only one I could count on.

It’s funny how the most unexpected things can change your whole perspective.

Last Winter, I spent about three days in the worst migraine I had ever lived in my life.  By the third day I couldn’t even think, and when I went to speak to my mother in the early morning hours on a Saturday, when she was getting ready for work, I was pushing back hard on the tears.  You cannot cry when your head feels like that.  Crying equals more pain.

The solution she quickly came to was for my father to take me to the urgent care.  Sensible enough, except my father hates all things medical, he doesn’t deal so well with them, and dear Lord, in the past five years had I put him through enough doctor and emergency room visits to last several lifetimes, and I just didn’t want him to take me, honestly.

I expressed something like this to my mom, tears rolling down my face in spite of myself, and she told me that maybe that was something my father was meant to learn from all of these experiences, how to be able to deal with the medical world (my mother is so very Catholic and, I swear, everything with her is “meant to be”).

I don’t think my dad learned anything that day, but I got to thinking about what maybe I was supposed to learn from all that had happened to me in the preceding five-and-a-half years (yes, I’ve got some of it in me, too).  And sometime after the Vicodin and the ice packs and attempting to sleep and the muscle relaxers and throwing up, I came to the most amazing realization.

I have so many people in my life who are reaching out their hands to catch me.

I have friends who would put a roof over my head and food in my mouth should I land on their doorsteps.  I have aunts and uncles and cousins of my parents who would take me into their lives in an instant.  I have two grandfathers who would give me shelter and love and whatever I could need.  I have so many wonderful cousins.  One particular branch have absorbed me into their lives and made me feel like closer family than I technically am, and never so much as blinked when I asked them to help me find a pharmacy where they live and drive me there (twice) because I was going off-the-wall manic.  I have my parents, I have always had my parents, but I feel differently about their taking care of me than I ever did before.  I have so many of you lovelies, who would scoop me up and tuck me into your lives and set me on the road to recovery in an instant.

I have the whole beautiful world.  There will always be an endless number of kind hands, even if they are the hands of strangers, reaching out, willing and wanting to help me should I need it.

Kind of amazing when you think about it.

There won’t be another breakdown.  I may have my moments here and there, but I can say with absolute confidence and certainty that I will never go back to where I have been.  But while I can’t list for you all the things that journey through Hell (capital H) taught me, one of them was definitely how to let love in.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

On Being A Bitch

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(I really wanted to first write a post on all the sweet comments and commiserations and sympathy I got from the lovelies who responded to my most recent post, but I guess this needs must come out now.) 

My mother and I were heading upstairs a few minutes ago, her to go to sleep, me, apparently to write this post (though at the time I had no thought nor intention, the fact that I am now hitting the keys with a formed idea tells me it was a forgone conclusion).

Mom said to me, “You’re so sweet.”

I thought about it, and struggled for half a moment, before responding, truthfully, “Sometimes.  Sometimes I’m just a bitch.”

My lovely mother responded with something like incredulity (on my behalf).  ”What, like I’m not ever a bitch?”

You would have to know my mom and me and have been privy to years of us in our most intimate moments to follow the rest of the conversation.  But the gist was about how when my mom is a bitch, it’s in an ‘I’m tired, I’ve had a long day/week/month, I need some space, I’ll snap at you’ way.  Every man, woman, and child had been a bitch like that.  And yes, through the years, she has sometimes upped her game and been a real bitch, but it has been rare.

Even at her worst, though, her most intense, out-of-control-bitch-ness, I don’t think she has ever come close to me (and she agrees, though she loves me much too much to outright say so).  My level of bitch cannot even be explained away as mood disorder related, though on some occasions that has added fuel to the fire.  I am something that there isn’t even properly a word for, when I am a “bitch.”

Because when I am a bitch, I am intense, intelligent, persuasive, subversive, focused, relentless, forceful, and ten million kinds of dangerous.  I could probably do more damage than an H-bomb.  Seriously.  Ask anyone who has known me intimately and at length. Actually, don’t.

I don’t bring out the bitch very much any more.  I keep her in check, because I know well the harm she can do.  She can destroy nations (though her work typically runs on a slightly smaller scale), because she has a pretty spotless history.  All of her crusades have been honest, informed, and honorable.  How powerful is that?  A bitch who only ever fights for causes that are noble and worthy of her faith, and who can stand up to everything that is dished out at her and still walk away without a spot or a stain.  Gives me chills.

Liberty Leading The People ~ Eugene Delacroix

So yes, I have reined in the wrath, and I have learned to wield my power responsibly.  And I have gone from Liberty Leading The People to La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Which has actually brought me full circle in a way that is not worth my words to explain.  

I present, instead, a visual for all of you. I’m not sure whether to be proud of myself or frightened. Probably both.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci ~ Frank Cadogan Cowper


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sometimes You Have To Stop With The Commenting. . .

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. . . and just write a damned post of your own, already.  This is something that often keeps my comments on other bloggers’ posts to a minimum, honestly.  A post will get me thinking more and more and I will try to respond in a comment and it will turn into such a long and involved soliloquy that I have to interrupt myself and say, ‘Ruby!  Five hundred words does not a comment make!  Write it up as a damned post, already!’

And so I will.

This post is brought to you by DeeDee, author of Disorderly Chickadee.  She has recently added her fiery and indomitable voice to A Canvas Of The Minds (if you don’t know what that is, then click!), and a question posed in her very first post, Where Do I Begin?, got me all excited to write.  The question in question was, “Where does my condition end, and I begin?”

I have a much more well-defined – yet still extremely nebulous – answer for this one than the majority of people carrying mental illness diagnoses, I suspect.  To the anxiety components, I have mentioned before (y’know, somewhere in the annals of this blog) that I come from a long line of bona fide worriers.  From my great-grandmother, to my grandfather, and on to my mother has passed this trembling torch.  None of them would ever be classed as having an anxiety disorder (I can speak with total certainty about my mother and my grandfather, to be fair I did not know my great-grandmother, but my mom did).  My mother has to take some Valium before flying, but that hardly counts.  At its very worst it would be a mild phobia, specifically pteromerhanophobia (good lord, now there’s a word).

For whatever reason, that torch exploded into an inferno in me.  But that isn’t something I want to focus on here.  I don’t embrace it.  Anxiety, in any form, I am learning to solidly kick the ass of.  Anxiety, even worry is never useful or productive.  Concern is something we should all have, but once it goes beyond that stage – pfft.

Let’s talk about bipolar disorder in the context of where it ends and I begin.

The first thing I will tell you is that I was here first.  BD came later, after I had myself quite well-established, thank you very much.  This is probably what has saved me time and again, by the way.  Having such an incredibly well-defined sense of myself since. . . I don’t know what age.  To hear my mom talk, and to rely on memories and other internal evidence, I was probably born with that.  Yes, I was so fortunate as to grow up in a house with a loving family who encouraged this sensibility in me, but there is something else, something inside of me that would still be there had I grown up otherwise.

In any case, manic-depression was an uninvited guest to the party that is me.

But maybe it thought it was invited.  Maybe it got confused.  Because the other thing that’s highly pertinent is that I have what is informally called “a bipolar-type personality.”  I don’t know how common this is in others who carry this diagnosis (or, for that matter, in those who don’t).  It certainly isn’t often heard of, or if it is, only in the context of confusion and what is me, wait, is this the disorder, I don’t know!  But I know.  And the people who have known me longest know.  And even my darling PCP knows that when I am not in an episode, when I am completely and utterly symptom-free (ahem, now), I am still wild and unpredictable and madly passionate by temperament.  Always have been, always will be.  That’s just Ruby.

Which is not to say I cannot differentiate between symptom and personality trait. Actually, it is meant to say the exact opposite.  I certainly can, and with rare precision.  But having this temperament inherently made it much more difficult for me to do so, and made my disordered ups and downs infinitely easier for me to disguise.

It did something else.  It fractured relationships after I chose to seek treatment.  Not so many, but some very important ones.  It fractured them because people who loved me, people who wanted most desperately and tried so very, very hard to understand it all – through years, exhausting years of me trying to ‘get well’ – simply couldn’t.  Because now, things that I was putting forth as symptoms. . .  Well those aren’t symptoms, they’re just Ruby being Ruby.  She’s always been like that.

When in fact I hadn’t, I had just hidden the transition, the massive tectonic shift inside of me so beautifully, and not sought for help until more than a decade-and-a-half after the fact.

Oh well, right?  It’s no one’s fault.  These people didn’t want to lose me in their lives any more than I wanted to lose them.  It took me a while, but I did come to understand that.

And I wouldn’t choose to be any other way, or to walk any other path than the one I have.

Moral of the story:  ”And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” ~ John Donne

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

On Doing Something I Shouldn’t (Should)

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I shouldn’t be writing this to you right now, lovelies, I should be trying to sleep.  But that’s exactly the reason I am writing it.  Lemme ‘splain.

This week has been such a good week.  I’ve had wonderful days, and I’ve had wonderful days.  The former have been wonderful because everything was so beautiful and right.  It’s the latter we’re concerned with.

These past few days I’ve stepped out of the glowing bubble.  I’ve felt distress, I’ve felt sorrow, I’ve felt rising anxiety, I’ve been disturbed, and I’ve had a night of very fractured sleep (this last one).

So why is all of that wonderful?

Because the distress didn’t become anxiety.

Because the sorrow was so completely different from depression.

Because the rising anxiety dissipated when I told it to and then read a book, no Xanax required.

Because the disturbance was the thing most likely to throw me off-balance, and it didn’t.  It may have contributed to the fractured sleep, but so may have a lot of things.

And because the night of fractured sleep was exactly that.  It wasn’t my brain not shutting off, it wasn’t my sleepies failing.  It was simply that I had things tugging at me that kept me from sinking into complete and total somnolence, which I have done every other night this week.  And those things will not tug at me tonight, so I don’t fear more lost sleep.

Isn’t it so very wonderful?

(Incidentally, why did no one ever warn me that Splendor In The Grass was such an incredibly fucked-up movie?  I mean, it was excellent, I know it was excellent by the way it resonated deep within me, flipped me all around, and nearly caused a misstep.  But geez, it would have been nice to know what I was letting myself in for!  Though maybe it meant more because I didn’t.)

Moral of the story:  Fear is antithetical to growth, progress, and strength (yes, all of them).  Quash it whenever possible.  ;)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Of All The Weeks In My Life, This Has Been One Of Them

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And it has been very long.  Very, very long.  So long.  Long.

I think I am the opposite of most people who deal with manic-depression, but I’m not sure. I try to remember from the zillions of books I read on it, but that was so very long ago. . .

What happens with me is that when I am depressed, time rushes by, but when I am manic, it goes so very, very slowly.  Guess what this week turned out to be?

“I blink and half my life is over. . .” ~ Pete Winslow

I have never been a huge poetry-reader, I will confess that now.  Mostly I stuck to prose, especially in my younger years.  But beginning a poem in an anthology that one of my dearest and my oldest friend brought back to me when she visited the City Lights book store in San Francisco years ago. . .  (you know who you are now?  hi!).  That line began a poem and it jumped out and grabbed me and has stuck with me in a way so many and so few things have.

City Lights possibly might not mean a lot – anything – to some of you, but if you’re familiar with the Beats and specifically Lawrence Ferlinghetti, that’s his.  The progression is I spent pretty much all of my teens wildly enamored of Jack Kerouac.  I have made good acquaintance with Ginsberg and Cassidy and Burroughs and Holmes and so many more as well, but Kerouac will always be my true love there.  We are both “crazy mixed-up Catholic Buddhists,” though I only have a name for it because Jack gave name to it.

Thank you, Jack.

This week was, as I described to my psychiatrist Thursday when I saw him, florrid mania.  Psychotic, to boot. But then it had little tiny ultradian cycles woven inside the days and most especially the nights.  I would lay in my bed at night, knowing there would be no sleep, listening to music, Thinking, and hallucinating with four out of five senses.  Time stretches out for me in a very unreal way.  And I lay there and I Thought about so many things.  One of them was how I was having my parents drive me to my doctors’ appointments, because I didn’t feel like it was at all safe for me to be behind the wheel of a car.  A decade ago that would have been the first place I jumped in that state.

I have slowed down.  I have grown older.  I have grown wiser.  I have grown tired.

(For those of you keeping score, 72 hours awake, 4 of blissful sleep, 16 awake, between 30 minutes and 2 hours asleep – little hazy about what happened there – 14 mostly awake with a wee bit of dozy time, which is not real sleep but is closer to it than anything else I found, 4 of sleep, 6 more awake and that is now.  I know.  It’s confusing to me, too.)

By Wednesday afternoon I decided the best only course of action for me was to go silent, which I learned by hard lesson is what to do with myself in that state.  I stay completely off of the internet, and keep all other interaction very minimal, until I feel like I have most of my judgment returned.  If I ever disappear for a long period of time with no notice, that will most likely be why.

Thursday night the mania dissipated (though the insomnia didn’t) in a very nice and novel way.  Just a matter of minutes, it was like inside me some dials and slider switches were moved and I was restored to euthymia.  Euthymia.  Such a pretty word.

I think it was a combination of finding a bit of balance, and some clonazepam (Klonopin) that did it for me.  And yesterday morning my doctor wrote me for my favorite sleepies that didn’t kill me but should have (not a botched attempt there, a drug interaction that no one knew about nor figured out for months, despite me repeatedly blacking out – and I was the one who discovered it – but I’m off the other drug), which gave me my four hours of sleep last evening.  Which I needed, because while I haven’t come down this time into a full depression – yet – things got pretty desperate for me yesterday.

The wherefore of that is a little hard to explain, but it has to do with the lovely way I have of almost dissociating when I am so long with very little or no sleep and nicely manic, and no longer having that, being fully present in the reality of the moment.  And it has to do with how hard I work to insulate my mind, my mental state against anything that might further compromise it, even a little, and coming out of that cocoon-in-a-very-high-tower-with-no-door-and-briars-at-the-bottom.  That’s a good one.  It not only describes perfectly what I build around myself, but doesn’t it sound pretty much like hell to come out of?  It is.  I nailed that, and right off the cuff.  Love it.

Lastly, my desperate state had to do with one of the many moments of clarity I had while Thinking, actually this one deserves the designation of ‘epiphany’, that I found myself in during the whole episode.  I’m saving it for another time.  Maybe.

Moral of the story:  ”I’m a paranoid schizophrenic.  I am my own entourage.” ~ a delightfully misnomered quote, from the always lovable and neurotic John Cusak, in America’s Sweethearts

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Sum Of My Parts Is More Than I Am

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And that isn’t a bad thing.

It feels very strange and foreign to be sitting here typing this.  How long has it been?  Four days.  It’s funny how much time you can fit into four days.  I feel like I haven’t done this in something more like months, for two reasons.

The first reason is that these past four days have been fairly difficult, as days go.  The benzo withdrawal – well for now I think I see the other side, but it was definitely something to get to this point.  I drew the drapes and hunkered down, both literally and figuratively.  But the figurative part, the part where I shut down and shut out everyone and everything, that wasn’t such a bad thing either, though it felt that way at times.  It segues nicely into my second reason.

Reason two: extensive thoughtfulness and self-examination.  Some of it has been conscious and extremely deliberate, some of it has just been the result of shutting out the drone of other voices and the constant babble and noise that is the soundtrack of the world in which I reside.

You see, I’ve been spending a great deal of time alone with myself for a while now, in one sense.  I’ve been avoiding interacting with people “in real time,” face-to-face or on the telephone.  But I still blogged some, emailed and read other blogs and Facebooked and kept up with the external Rattle and Hum.  These past few days though, not so much, leading up to not at all.

Depressive isolating, right?  Wrong.  I entertained that idea some, but that’s not what it’s been at all.  I’ve just had a great deal to figure out.

When I was first formally diagnosed as bipolar, I didn’t tell anyone for a few months.  I wasn’t shocked, or even surprised, I knew exactly what I would hear going into the process.  Nor was I ashamed or afraid of what my family and friends would think.  Everyone close to me knew I was having a very difficult time of it and seeing a psychiatrist regularly.  Hell, my parents were footing 20% of the bill for the appointments (the part the insurance didn’t cover – yes, I am aware that I have very good insurance).

I didn’t tell anyone because I needed time to process and decide what the diagnosis meant to me, without any outside thoughts or any form of input.  Much as I knew about manic-depression and was already certain that was what was going on with me, there was a slight disconnect between knowing it inside and having an external source, a doctor whom I had a burgeoning trust in, officially confirm that diagnosis.  Some processing and shifting and reshuffling and sorting had to take place within, and I knew it had to take place without any external influence to disrupt all of that.  By the time I was through, I was secure enough in how I felt that I could talk to others without fear of their thoughts and opinions coloring my own.

That’s how I had always lived.  My conceptualization of things was the only one that mattered, at least when it came to me and my life.  I would listen to the thoughts and advice of those whom I respected, and on rare occasions I would even allow some of it to penetrate my tempered steel skull.

These past years, while I was in professional treatment, a paradigm shift occurred.  From what I can tell by my memory and journals and other external references, it actually occurred very suddenly, over a period of just six months.  And it was enormous, tantamount to a profound shift in the earth’s major tectonic plates.  I’m still working on isolating a cause – maybe I never will – but it decidedly produced volcanic eruptions and deep earthquakes, which resulted in nearly complete and total internal destruction.

The nearly part is the part that saved me.  But two years later I am still excavating and rebuilding the parts of me that survived.  It’s a slow, difficult task.  Sometimes I move forward, sometimes I slide far, far back.  But what I have, the bits and pieces of me that survived, well they’re pretty amazing.  There is so much to work with inside of me.  I am like a long lost temple containing riches beyond my wildest dreams.

I used to know that so implicitly, it was woven into me and probably the most central truth in my life.  My mother tells me that even when I was very young, I had such a strong, secure sense of myself, a confidence such that she never worried because she knew that whatever happened, I would always land on my feet.  I never thought about it, I didn’t ever have to remind myself of my value.  That certainty was so deep that I can only relate it to the beating of a heart.  You never have to nudge your heart and say, “Hey in there, wake up.  You’re slacking with the whole circulation of blood throughout the entirety of my body business.”  At least that’s how a heart works when it’s functioning properly, and you don’t need a pacemaker or anything else external to help it along.

Maybe that’s why all of my efforts to get back on my feet have been unsuccessful thus far.  I’ve been building the right things, I’ve been building great things, but the foundation has been faulty.  Sooner or later anything you build will crumble and collapse if the foundation isn’t firmly in place.

So that means my immediate task is to perfect and fortify mine.

Moral of the story:  ”The trick isn’t in living forever. . .  It’s in living with yourself forever.”

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

In 5. . . 4. . . 3. . . 2. . .

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So two days ago (8 September 2011), I had my six month anniversary of when I began this blog with my first post, The ‘Miracle Max’ Moment.  It’s a little different from (but also much the same as) the type of posts I have come to write since.  It’s a bit of a process to get from throwing out a random thought and seeing what happens to it to letting anything and everything fly and not giving a rip who may be reading it and how they may respond.

For the record, I’m proud to have gotten here from there.  And thank you to everyone who reads what I write, and who has been brave enough to subscribe and be inundated with my ramblings on a near-daily basis.  A very special thank you to those who have stuck out my moods and my life, in non-blog interaction (of course), but also specifically among the bloggers I know, and those I ‘kind of’ know.

I am good at times, I comment and reply to comments and give quality feedback on posts on other blogs (I think, anyway).  And then there are the times – recently, for example – that I turn almost completely to myself and my world.  I may read, but I don’t comment.  I may not return emails or reply to comments on this blog for days.  I may struggle to do anything, both online and off.

But this blog has been my lifeline.  Lately, if nothing else I try to make myself post each day.  Sometimes I just fiddle around with the bright work (the behind-the-scenes stuff that usually no one can really pinpoint, but makes the experience better for everyone).  But this thing truly is my baby.

Thanks also to all of the bloggers who have decided to help in painting Canvas with their wonderful Minds.  ;P  Lulu, Always, ManicMuses, Novalee, and Manic Monday - you are all wonderful, and you occupy a special place in my life.  Being the site’s Admin (though not the only one behind the concept, ahem, Lulu) has given me a taste again of something I wasn’t sure if I was ready to handle, and it has done it in such a way as to not overwhelm me, or even really show its true face until I was well past the biggest hurdles (well, we’ll see about the hurdles part).

It has given me a responsibility and accountability to others.  It may not seem like much, and at the moment we’re in a place where there aren’t too many things I need to do in an Admin capacity (except for recruit more bloggers, we really want for you to join your voice to the chorus, everyone).  But there have been other times, with setup and implementing new ideas and contacting bloggers individually and all the various and sundries. . .

In any case, it’s different from writing this here blog in so many ways.  Not just in that I have a responsibility to other people (though I do), but also in that what I contribute there has to be more ‘focused and directed,’ and less ‘rambling whatever’ – the way I write here.  :D  So I am honing my craft as well.

I decided that six months of good, solid work here – I haven’t posted every day, but I averaged it out to 23 posts a month – deserved a reward.  If you are highly observant, you may have already noticed something a little different (and no, not the background color).  If you are a subscriber and are reading this in your inbox, I think you have to actually visit the page for this to work.  It’s alright, we don’t mind waiting for you. . .  Are you here now?  Good.

Now everyone look upward, all the way to the top of your screen, almost. . . look at the search bar. . . look at my address, my URL. . .  Notice anything?  Notice anything missing?

Yep.  I have my own domain, no more .wordpress.com, just .com!

It’s really much more symbolic than anything.  WordPress still hosts my blog, but I feel more now like it is in fact my blog.  It may seem like a baby step, a little tweak at most, and in a way it is.  But in another way it’s a huge leap from where I was.  I inched along in itty bitty bits, but I got so far.

I think the biggest factor involved is the symbolism.  Because doing this was a big, scary thing for me.  It was an acknowledgement that yes, I have done something worthwhile and kept up with it, and it was a sort of vow to myself that I will continue to do what I love and I will grow it and expand it in any way that I can.

Happy girl.  Actually. . .


(This song and video are solely the property of their respective owners and artists. Absolutely no copyright infringement is intended.)

And as it happens, I opened my curtains this morning for the first time in ages, I swear with no conscious motive other than to let in the light.  I thought in the moment it was pure practicality, but it makes me wonder now.

Moral of the story:  I am Ruby.  See me shine.

(And in case you’re confused or concerned, you can still enter in my old address with the .wordpress.com and it will re-direct you here.)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Magic, Part Two (Well, A Little)

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I read a lot of blogs in my ventures through internet land.  I have been reading more and more of them lately, as I look for potential contributors for A Canvas Of The Minds, my other project.  By the way, I read them thoroughly and this takes time, so if you feel like I’ve overlooked you, your invitation just may not have been post-marked yet – so why don’t you make all of our lives easier by contacting me already?

I have very few things in my life that will fill me with the wrath of God.  Despite my venting here, generally I’m pretty mellow.  I came across something in my perusing that flipped that switch recently, though.  I read a post where a blogger said writing was such a great form of therapy because it didn’t require any talent!  Or words to that effect.  I’m not sure, I make a point of not quoting idiots.  But I took a deep breath and counted to one million and realized that this person was merely broadcasting their ignorance, nothing more.

They’re right, in a way.  Writing doesn’t require any talent.  Pretty much any moron can do it (and lots of them do).  It’s good writing which demands talent.  I mean, you don’t have to take my word.  You could poke the souls of Dickens or Austen or Kerouac or Wharton or Hardy or Virgil or Vonnegut or Twain and ask them their opinions.

Writing, in case you’ve missed it, is not just One Of The Things in my life.  It’s The Thing In My Life.  It is my life, in more ways than I could ever detail for you, in more ways than I could ever detail for the rest of my days – although I will undoubtedly never cease trying.  I write for lots of reasons, but the main one being Robert Heinlein’s, “. . .  Because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.”  The full quote, along with a few others that relate, can be found on my page Thoughts From People Wiser Than I.

Would I like to have my words published in my lifetime?  Of course.  Would I like to be able to support myself and live off of them?  Sure.  Will I keep writing if I am rejected by every publishing house ever to exist and not a soul ever reads my thoughts, not even my very best friends?  Absolutely.  I will die if I don’t.  My soul will wither and I will cease to be.  I want very much for people to relate to and enjoy what I say, but I write because I am a writer.  It is my vocation and my calling and my gift and my everything.  I have suspected this for all of my life, and I had it confirmed from within and without at a very young age.

I don’t profess myself to be a genius, but I do possess a gift, far more so than even the one I have for photography (detailed in my last post, Magic, Part One - how clever I am with these titles).  You may recognize it or not in this medium.  When I blog, I literally write whatever flies from my mind to my fingertips.  An idea may cook in my brain, but I don’t plan or outline or work at it.  An 800 word post is generated easily in under an hour, and probably it would take about 20 minutes if I weren’t a very slow, two-fingered typist.  And I don’t edit, at least not for style or content.  I read back for grammatical or spelling errors, but beyond that the most I ever do is clarify something slightly.  I have a policy of not changing content, the same as my policy regarding photography mentioned in the post prior to this one.  All of this is meant not as bragging, but to give a rough metric for comparison.  If you find something valuable in what you read here, you ought to read the things I actually think about and work at!

There is one thing, though, that I do work at (even here), because I cannot help it.  Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.”  Also on the page (page, not post) referenced above.  I don’t try to explain this one, generally, but today I will because it’s a piece of the magic in being a writer.

I call it “the click.”  There is the “almost right word” and the “right word,” and if you have writing as the main thing in your soul, there is “the click.”  You may not notice it as such, but it’s there.  ”The click” is when you’re trying to get That Word, The Right Word, and you’ve been going through your brain and your thesaurus and anything and everything you can think to go through, and all at once you hit upon it.  And something inside of you just clicks and you know you have your lightning.  It can be a big word or a little word, an integral piece or one that seems not to be too crucial to the reader or even yourself – sometimes your only clue is that you were so determined that you spent hours or days or months looking for the word.

I have a policy of not altering what I post here after I hit Publish, unless I spot a spelling or grammatical mistake that is glaringly obvious after the fact.  I may go back and re-read and think of something I wish I had written differently, but I don’t change it.  On very rare occasions I will find that something really does need altered, usually for accuracy, but when I have done that, I have always marked what I changed with an asterisk and added an explanation at the bottom of the post.  Again, integrity.

I don’t know that this post explains magic the way the previous one did, which is why it has a parenthetical in the title.  Writing is the thing I’m best at doing and worst at explaining.  Loving I am incredible at, but I can explain why, easily.  I think.  I guess I’ll have to try sometime.  But this last paragraph just gave me my moral.

Moral or the story:  ”Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion.  Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” ~ Franz Kafka  

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.