It Felt Good to Work

The other day, I went a little manic - in the actual, clinical sense. Was actually manic the day I went to see my therapist, so I spewed a whole lot of logorrhœa (not as gross as it sounds), and hopefully she got to take something from it, such as a sample of what my hypomania can look like. Also, being nowhere near as inhibited as I normally am, a lot of personal thoughts and feelings came out (not mushy stuff - I was manic! Not even sure I'm capable of mushy when manic.) This lead to some useful information gathering for both her and me. She even suggested that I may want to try to harness the powers of mania to become more sociable and go outside more. Seeing as how I essentially went outside three times the three weeks before Tuesday, and each of those instances was to see my therapist, one could argue that I don't get out of the house enough. But guess what! I've actually talked to strangers! the past few days! I normally avoid that like the Black Death.

Another wonderful thing about the mania spectrum... pain inhibition! So I'm less socially inhibited, but have more pain inhibition (likely do to a rush of norepinephrine, dopamine, adrenaline, and a number of other neurochemicals and hormones that occur in larger quantities during manic-spectrum episodes.) So... I've actually cleaned a bit around the house, put away dishes, and helped dig up gas- and oil-soiled dirt, gravel, and sand in our driveway (to replace with litter, good soil, and new gravel.) Ever tried digging up a gravel/sand mixture that's been saturated in gasoline and baked in the sun? Almost turns into makeshift cement! Albeit makeshift cement with awful tensile strength, and pretty mediocre compressive strength... It could take quite a few blows from the sharp edge of the shovel and took some brute force to dig into (though, once you got a whole, you could shove the shovel (unintentional play on words) underneath the layer of gasoline saturated sand/gravel and upheave it. Something like a 100+ pounds of earth and stone removed, and dozens more of new earth, rock, and litter added, there were a few muscle fibres used here and there. My family hasn't seen me work that much... for probably at least a few years. I don't think that I've even held a shovel-shovel (as opposed to a snow shovel) in three or four. Did shovel some snow here and there last winter or the winter before that. Still, manual labor has not been on the list of things I've done for quite a while. Fibromyalgia can be a bit of a female dog, that way... because we all know how female dogs are! Actually, I don't really... Quite clueless on the comparison.

I also worked out a little, have been working on neck stretches and strengthening for my awful, screwed up neck, and been doing yoga a bit more regularly (think you only need to do it about 3 days out of the week, anyhow.) So, all that, and my body is just about killing me, now. I have visible, easy to feel knots in my muscles riddling my back, my arms, as well as my legs. Pretty beat up, seeing as how using this body of mine for labor is like trying to get a rusty manual lawn mower from the 50s to cut a field of wild grass. Luckily, I wasn't alone in digging up and refilling the driveway, as I would've been utterly physically incapable of certain tasks. Also funny to watch the tallest, strongest man helping out use the smallest shovel (heigh-ho, heigh-ho...) At least he wasn't using the little garden shovel that I don't really deem a shovel - more like an over-sized, pointy spoon. However, I did end up using it to break up some last bits of earth, as it is the best tool when you need to both pierce and scoop just small quantities.

But despite my body feeling like it tumbled down a mountain side like the baby in Kung-Pow www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAX_4x… (not good quality), it was nice to actually be able to both mentally and physically go outside and do something productive, and actually socialising? I haven't felt like I could do any of that in way too long... And then, spontaneously, I got a second wind. Sadly, that second wind does seem to be withering a bit. Oh, well. Enjoy it while it lasts, I suppose. Hopefully it'll come around again when I actually have the opportunity to socialise more.

Blind Spots

Everyone has blind spots, ignorance, naïveté, flaws. There isn't a single person on the earth who is truly and fully immune to such things, though some do seem more prone, and others resistant. But the fact is that there is no perfect individual in existence. And where I believe most people fail the greatest is in their blind spots. Even the smartest, wisest, most perceptive individual has a blind spot here and there. They may be small, but they're there, and when something falls within that blind spot, it can have disastrous results. I must admit that I have some pretty significantly large blind spots in a number of areas. Unlike with a car, you can't just trade in your very being for a new one. You can't just miraculously remove all of your blind spots. Just like with a car, however, you can make adjustments, and learn techniques, for avoiding many of the potential detrimental effects your blind spots can have. Sadly, I also must admit that I fail horribly in that area as well. What can I say? - I look but I don't see. I search but I don't find. This largely applies to my relations to... er... the rest of humanity. I'm somewhat of a sponge for academia, and yet so terribly clueless with things in the natural world.

For me, academics - particularly those which I control, and which are not dictated by some sort of institution or other individuals - is like a portal into another world. It's a world where logic lies in an endless ocean of abstraction. Clean lines and solid colors can live harmoniously alongside blurred and indefinable shapes and cornucopias of intermingling colors. The accumulation of knowledge flows eternally through and with the riptides of abstraction, forming thoughts, ideas, rationales, concepts, and a myriad found only in the mind and soul, but reflected in the world, if not reflecting the world. I can calm down and focus in the meadow of numbers and mathematics, or become exhilarated in the deep libraries of records. Records can be of all things, meaningful and seemingly meaningless, often merely and so greatly a reflection of the recorder. And while I can get lost in this wonderful world of knowledge, quite benign to those around me, others exploit and darken this world. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. Even mathematics can be dangerous and powerful. Most academics have relatively benign, if not beneficent, intents, but time and time again their work and abilities are exploited, and my world of solitude poisoned.

But no matter how much knowledge I accumulate, my life never becomes more fulfilling. It's like having enormous wealth with nothing to spend it on, or copious amounts of food that you're unable to eat. It's there, craving a use and a purpose, yet such uses are lost on me. No amount of literature could ever truly teach me how to live. I cannot read my way into a cure for my social awkwardness and anxiety, nor my variable moods, nor my difficulty with interpersonal relationships, nor my inability to lead a truly productive life. No amount of words and carefully researched and studied essays and articles could ever teach me wisdom. Without wisdom, knowledge is useless, and if knowledge cannot bring about wisdom, what does? Simple: experience. Life experiences, spiritual cultivation, faith - of most all sorts, and... failure. In three particular years of my life, I gained perhaps a decade's worth of life experience, I practice spiritual cultivation most every day, and I have faith in a number of things - even if it wavers from time to time. But, of all of these, I think that the most important is failure. I believe that nothing teaches wisdom greater than experiencing failure. Even then, some just don't have what it takes to gain... much of anything from their failures, while others may not have had the chance.

While failure is a very vague, and poorly defined, event for most people, it can often be defined by the very individual who experiences it in some way. If nothing else, it is simply defined as failure. Knowing that you have failed, with or without an actual distinct definition, and accepting that failure is the greatest step one can take to gain wisdom. So... why have I failed so miserably at experiencing failure? I don't expose myself to it - or rather, I avoid it at all costs. How do I do this? I do nothing. How can you fail when you leave nothing to fail at? If you don't even try to begin something, how can you lose at it? It's like standing on the sidelines of a race, right? You can't possibly lose (or win) if you don't even participate.... Or so my rationale goes. Funny thing is that it's a rationale with little rationality.

I've been called wise, an old soul, intelligent, bright, and so on and so forth. I've abhorred such compliments for such a long time with little explanation as to why. Well, I've come to believe in more recent years that my abhorrence was the result of being aware of my many, large blind spots. Perhaps in the back of my mind I reasoned with myself, "How can you be such things if you don't seem to have anything to show for it?" I often tried to convince myself that I only received such compliments because the other people didn't truly understand the nonsense that I spewed, and assumed it to be something smart. Looking back, that's quite an arrogant, lowly view I had of others, even if it was mostly just a delusion rooted in my own deep seated self-consciousness and low self-esteem. I not only often neglected - neglect - myself, but I also constantly bully and criticise myself. I dismiss or erroneously try to refute my own self worth. I see myself in relation to the rest of the universe and see a tiny, negligible speck that, in the grand scheme of things, is barely recognisable as existent. But the most painful part is that I am just so self-aware that, even when I am so hopelessly delusional, I always know deep down that I'm delusional, erroneous, paranoid, overly self-conscious, overly critical of myself, and so on. Knowing your flaws can be both one of the most excruciating things you could ever experience, as well as one of the most necessary things in all of your existence. Unlike most people who are hopelessly swallowed up by their flaws, I don't have a weak foundation with which my house is doomed to fail upon, but rather... I have an astonishingly strong foundation with a hopelessly poorly built house that's doomed to failure simply because it is. I have the foundation... now I just need to figure out how to build a better house.

Over 99% of the time, I lack anything near a bad intention, and yet probably over half the time, my blind spots cause structural weaknesses that can be outwardly perceived as bad intention. I suppose you could say that I simply lack finesse... Sure, I may have a way with words from time to time when it's written, but put me in front of another human, and one out of every two times, I'm quite certain I will slip up and cause some horribly unnecessary, and totally avoidable, backlash. It can cause the perception that, no matter what I do, it will likely end in failure... Even my avoidance of failure is fundamentally a failure in and of itself. But perhaps the failure to fail is an inadequate source to produce true wisdom. Or perhaps I am more consciously aware than subconsciously. Honestly, the subconscious mind - in my experiences - is much more influential for learning. Most people say that their failures lie in the cognitive difficulty of turning subconscious thought into conscious thought, but it's a bit muddled there. If your subconscious teaches you a bad thing, and you are not consciously aware of it, then you cannot hope to change that negative thing. However, if you are conscious of something, but it's not nestled deeply into your subconscious mind, then you cannot possibly hope to learn it. The subconscious mind teaches, but the conscious mind sheds light on what is to be taught, and acts as a doorway. And, now that I think of it, I am currently undergoing the very processes described above, as I try to reprogramme my mind to the very core, as well as teach it new, good things (by embedding the knowledge and wisdom into the subconscious mind via the conscious mind.) A harder feat than it sounds, and I think it already sounds quite difficult.

Blind spots... We all have them.

Essay of Ramblings: A Lone Nightshade

[Disclaimer: This is a 3,028 word essay of philosophical rambling.]

    I read article upon article, individual word after individual word, taking it all in like some mad supercomputer. I was almost subconsciously absorbing it while merely consciously knowing that it was absorbed. And as it become absorbed, images persistently produced in my mind of some sort of liquid, slimy, grey creature made out of not cells, or even a single cell, but the tar and muck and grime that it squirmed in. It was almost horrifying, and yet so stunningly captivating. It moaned without a sound, the melting expressions evident yet constantly morphing and sliding away. It was the culmination of centuries, millennia, of strife and bickering, of suffering and pain, of ennui and anger. It was the culmination of the legacy humans would most likely leave behind, masking all the greatness. It was disappointment.

    Certainly, it is easier to make judgments and speculations from atop the hill, while looking down upon the battle from afar. Certainly. And I believe it difficult to say whether it is more honorable to make such speculations and judgments at such a vantage point, than to make judgements and actions while in the thick of it. Hindsight may be 20/20, as the saying goes, but why is it time and time again that mistakes are merely pointed out, but seldom, if ever, learned from? Another adage goes that history repeats itself, which, while not conflicting with 'hindsight is 20/20,' certainly suggests that there is some inevitable, yet logically avoidable error in human judgment as a whole. And a few may learn from the mistakes, and may in fact try to create change and enlightenment, or simply avoid recreating the mistakes of the past themselves, but humanity as a whole has some fundamental flaw.

    That moaning and groaning, slime-borne, mute creature of humanly Hell personified (which is quite redundant, yet seemingly necessary), in my mind, was spawned of the spats back and forth between people of such similar minds fighting over one of many details. "It is a very important, central, pivotal detail," one might say, but it doesn't change the fact that the bickering and fighting and, many a time, slaughtering was beyond unnecessary. How many souls faded from the early by the hands of another over a detail? Out of thousands of various ideals, beliefs, and concepts, one single idea could be different, and wars might be waged over it. Mental illness does not lead to outrageous reactions, to fighting and slaughter, to death and decay, to evil and darkness... Some... core, fundamental quality, nature, or susceptibility in humanity does. Some attribute it to demons or otherworldly evil spirits, some to nothing more than humans, some to free will, some to fallacies. A combination of all such things, or perhaps merely some, may be the root cause. But then I think about those individuals who best this susceptibility, this weakness, this flaw, and I wonder, 'If they can do it, why doesn't everyone?' Free will. A double-edged sword.

    Free will is an extraordinarily frequent theme in many philosophies and religions. What is free will? It is the idea that each human can act in whatever way they so choose. This certainly does not mean that they can achieve any goal that they wish, necessarily, or that things won't stop them from either committing to that action, or succeeding in carrying out the action. Surely, if a man with a knife from a hundred feet away charges at a man with a gun, there is little doubt that the man with the knife will probably be shot and possibly die before stabbing or slicing the man with the gun. But the choice to pursue the action of attempting to attack the man with the gun was completely the knife-wielding man's own, made of his own free will. He may not succeed, it may be futile and self-destructive, but it was his own choice. Many feel trapped or chained, while forgetting that, inevitably, no external restriction can truly take away their free will. They can try to get out of the chains, out of their prison, whether or not they will succeed.

    Time and time again, man is witness to man's demonstration of free will where free will may even seem unlikely. A convict tunnelling his way out of prison, a militia thrusting themselves at their enemy in certain doom, a pilot travelling some hundreds of miles across vast, isolated mountains from his crashed plain in hopes of finding rescue. In the face of hopelessness, man either breaks from delusions of having no options, no cards left to play, or they embrace their free will and take actions, however unlikely the goal behind that action is. And free will is obviously, and not-so-judiciously or minimalistically, utilised in lesser matters that may very well escalate to vastly consuming matters. Everyone has opinions, beliefs, thoughts, ideas, perceptions, views, and so on, but free will is the catalyst behind acting upon those things. Often, they are thought to be our identity, or they are argued (perhaps even with some ferocity), that it is not our identity when others believe it is. And whether or not it is our identity is irrelevant to me, at this time, if nothing else. The fact is that everyone with a conscious mind has them, and often enough, individuals take actions in regards to them.

    And this is not to say that one should or should not take actions fuelled by beliefs and whatnot, some beliefs even dictating that one should take action regarding the vary belief that is dictated. I am not about to argue for or against any personal beliefs, and dogmas or philosophies, any major concept in human history. I myself have never utterly agreed or meshed with any one set of beliefs, abstractions, et al., nor have I utterly disagreed with many, or most, that I have come across. An image comes to mind of the modern sniper, proficient in becoming one with his environs, clad in a ghillie suit, crawling slowly and steadily, while occasionally attaching and assimilating foliage from his surroundings into his ghillie suit. By taking the actual flora and making it a part of his camouflage, his is able to seamlessly blend and become one with the nature around him. Now, I'm not meaning to imply that I simply take fragments of everyone's ideas and beliefs, assimilate them with my own, and then blend in with what of humanity surrounds me. While I may be more of an observer than an agent, while I may prefer to generally stay back than jump up front, while I generally avoid attention than strive and seek it, while I'm generally introverted and not extroverted... I do not simply assimilate to blend in. Rather, most who have met me find it quite hard to imagine me 'blending in.' While I may not pop out to the masses, I am also starkly different from those who surround me (sometimes creating the very strife, the avoidable mistakes that I've been describing, wrought from incongruent views and thoughts, or misconceptions.)

    If I were to try to describe myself in relation to my surroundings, to the world around me, while trying to avoid self-centric, narcissistic, self-praising, or any other such or similar adjectives, words, I would say that I am like a lone nightshade in a field of lilies, dandelions, roses, petunias, violets, and most any other flower imaginable, sans any other nightshades. Out of a sea of flowers, some similar, many different, some grotesque or appalling, others wondrous and enchanting, I am the lone nightshade. So, while none or few of the other flowers necessarily blend in, or are completely unique, while there is a myriad of colors, shapes, and sizes, I still remain the lone nightshade. Perhaps there is a lone lotus, as well, who may or may not stand out, who may or may not look out of place, but that does not change that I am a lone nightshade. And yet, do you know what is interesting? I repeatedly point out what is different about me, as many people do about themselves, or their beliefs, or whatever else goes on in their head. People want to be different somehow, to stand out, or they want to point out the contrast in an attempt to make others assimilate to them. But I don't just want to point out my differences in this metaphor. You see, everything I described was a flower. Everything I described was flora. Everything I described took sunlight and converted it into sugars and other usable resources through photosynthesis. Everything I described has relatively similar genetic material and structures. And something interesting is that I can list more similarities than differences about my metaphor of being a lone type of flower in a field of other flowers, and yet any two humans are more similar to one another than any of the various flowers in the field. Sans organisms that utilise asexual reproduction, humans are perhaps some of the most genetically similar creatures.

    Race amongst humans doesn't exist, yet we wage war over it. For all of the seemingly radical ideas that come from the many human minds out there, and throughout the millennia, there really isn't a whole lot of true uniqueness, novelty, or extreme in any one idea, relative to the ideas of many others now and past. In away, ideas are simply one more brick, one more plank of wood, building upon previous ideas, and creating a singular structure. What that structure is or will be... I could never tell you. I have not created a single original thought in my life, but I certainly have taken many thoughts and ideas from others, I have learned from experience, from history, from texts and others, I have accumulated knowledge and wisdom, and the very specific combination of those non-unique thoughts and ideas is what is unique. No one has experienced exactly what I have, no one has learned the exact combination of things I have, no one has thought the exact lifelong string of thoughts that I have. It is not any one thing that makes anything or anyone unique. No atom, no molecule, no organelle, no cell, no organ, no gene is truly unique, and yet every individual ever born to the world is unique through their individual wholeness.

    With so little, yet so much, uniqueness, it becomes harder and harder to grasp what we fight about with one another. It becomes harder to even comprehend war, strife, and struggles between other human beings. Sure, if some sci-fi movie came true where some previously unknown alien race chooses our very own planet to exterminate of all native species, it would make perfect sense to war against them. There are also many movies, stories, games, and even religions centred around 'battling demons' or 'destroying evil.' It dehumanises these concepts, and makes them something totally different. And yet, humans see these things, compare one remotely similar quality to another human being, and decide, "Well, you must be evil, so you must die!" What kind of rationale is that? Or the idea of killing all who don't believe in your faith? Say someone - 'Person A' - believes that someone else - 'Person B' - is going to Hell because Person B believes something different, even if only infinitesimally different, does that give Person A any - ANY - right to kill or harm Person B? If Person B suddenly went on a murderous rampage, then sure, if you can't detain and/or get them under control, Person B probably needs to die. They did, after all, decide to go on a murderous rampage. But if Person B wasn't causing significant harm to the people and world around them, especially if Person B wasn't causing any more harm than Person A, in what way could Person A ever have the right to kill Person B because a thought in their head is different?

    The amalgam of all negative emotions, of all darkness and - perhaps - evil, of all the wrongs in the world and all of the lives cut down unjustly... in my mind creates this screaming, moaning, groaning, crying, voiceless slime that constantly melts and slops and reforms and morphs... It gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it seems impossible to see anything else. How can one not see the accumulation of such torment and gloom over the entire course of human existence?

     

    And yet, life would not be life without it. Why? I can't answer. I don't have the answer. No one does. But, even then, I accept it, however reluctantly. Time is an illusion, or so appears to be the more likely of two unknowable things in my mind. Everything has happened, and yet, at this moment, we have not experienced it all. We are finite, infinite, singular and numerous, like a point that is a line, or a line that is a point. A line, a ray, a segment... Time is all at once. Or so goes the Einsteinian belief.

    I have faith, beliefs, opinions, ideas, thoughts, and yet accept many of the philosophies of the so-called 'Sceptics,' those who followed philosophical scepticism. But I do not simply reject what I don't know; I just know that I don't know anything with utter certainty. Certainty seems to be a very human concept, anyway. All words are human concepts. And certainty does contradict faith, and so how can one have faith with utmost certainty? Thusly, why would a philosophical sceptic reject faith if faith requires uncertainty - the inability to know? If such a sceptic were to every do anything in their lives, to simply not be dead, would they not have to have faith that whatever they do will result in something that they intended, whether or not it does? We invented words like certainty, absolute, and definite, and yet we cannot say with certainty that there is certainty? It is merely an estimated meaning of an estimated thought. But language is constantly used to convey logic, when language is at its very core not logical, but abstract. Creating a logical language, as many have tried to do, is then a functional contradiction. And then it's hard to understand the truest meaning of contradiction, when contradictions often combine to create the world as we know it.

    I know much, and yet I know essentially nothing, conceptually. Reality is a matter of perspective, as is existence, as are beliefs and experiences, and so on. Your brain reacts the same to a dream as to real-life stimuli. Randomly firing neurons can create hallucinations that are no different from reality aside from the fact that no one else can corroborate it happens, and yet we humans often experience things that others can't corroborate that, as far as we can possibly know, were in fact real sensations. But why is one sensation real and another not? We have a name for what is apparently unreal, a hallucination, and we can often explain its existence. So these hallucinations that are apparently not real are therefore a real phenomenon.

    These mind benders that we often get caught up on... They truly prove how little we do and can know. And yet, if we can't know, how can we prove it? Contradictions, paradoxes. And we get caught up on something like skin pigmentation, bone structure...? If we were all blind, I doubt skin color would've ever even been conceptualised. If we were blind and couldn't feel, I doubt that bone structure would've been thought of. Take away the senses, where we get our information, then we take away reality. And if dreams are processed the same as 'reality,' then at any time, we could be in a dream and think it was reality. Oh, so rarely does an individual truly realise they're in a dream before they wake up. And heard of dreams within a dream? There have even been ideas that dreams are our souls essentially experiencing another life, making the life we are 'awake' in, the equivalent to a dream in the other life, or what we call a 'dream.' And some people lose touch with reality to the point of just wishing to wake up from the dream, while they are already awake. Some think that you can wake up through suicide, but for all we know, that person just killed themselves and that's the end of that. But the idea that if you die in a dream, then you die in real life, means that trying to wake up by killing yourself doesn't wake you up, but simply kills you no matter if you were actually dreaming or not.

    The fickleness of reality, of thoughts, ideas... of everything. Makes bickering between humans, even wars, seem so... so... idiotic. And yet the inevitability of idiocy, of the bickering, of the wars, makes the bickering and the wars necessary. If one tries to destroy a people, in order to avoid that destruction, one must destroy the destroyer. It was done in World War II, the Allies versus the Axis. Hitler wished to destroy peoples, to dominate, to dictate, and so it created the necessity of warring against him. Conflict is always unnecessary before the conflict, but almost always necessary after. As long as there are initiators, there will be people trying to end what they initiated, for better or worse.

     

    I just want to live my life... I just want to... make my strife and struggles, my empathy and compassion, the best parts of me in the worst, mean something. And everyone wants to mean something, somehow. Free will... The double-edged sword. Or perhaps more like a rose... with so many thorns. If you can manage to enjoy the rose without getting pricked by its thorns, it'll have some benefit. But if you aren't careful, if you don't handle the rose correctly, you most certainly will get pricked, and if you continue to misuse it, continue to handle it correctly, you just might get entangled in the bush like a bunch of barbed wire. Such a beautiful, delicate thing... with such harmful potential.

    Free will...

A Bolt Loose, or a Wire Frayed

I wake up in darkness. I think to myself, "I fell asleep well enough before noon; why's it so dark?" I check my phone beside my bed to see what time it is. 22:16. How'd it get that late? I want to get up, but I struggle. I feel paralysed and my body just wants to lull me back to sleep, but my restless mind keeps me... somewhat awake. I think. Think about all sorts of trivial things, and I think about why I can't get up, why it's so dark, why I slept so long... Why? Finally, I muster up the willpower to reach for my phone again. 22:45. I breathe deeply, somewhat like a sigh, but mostly just to get oxygen to my brain. After more paralysis, more cyclical thoughts, more mental agitation, I finally build up the willpower to sit up. I reach for my phone again. 23:01. Okay, time to get out of bed. Finally, I slide out of my bed, seeming as though I hadn't used any of my limbs in decades, like I had been in a coma, and I walk out. The hallway is mostly dark, but some light shines down from the stairway to the main floor.

I begin to walk up the stairs, and my eyes strain painfully to adjust to the difference in lighting. After a few moments of pain, my eyes are adjusted. By the time I get up the stairs, I suddenly get this... wellspring of energy. I start fast-walking throughout the house, doing little things that suddenly pop into my mind. I need to get that blanket and those pillows. I forgot the water bottle. I need a tissue. I want some bubble gum. How about some TV? Oh, gotta take my pills, first. Is it really Tuesday? I'll wait until my mom gets back to ask her what day it is. I'll get back to TV. Oh, how about I pet the cat? I'll return to the TV, again. That spanned about five minutes. I literally walked to opposite ends of the house repeatedly doing miniscule, almost purposeless things. I would get something from one side of the house, then forget that I wanted to do something on the other side of the house. I would then remember I wanted to get something from another corner of the house. Up, down, side to side... My heart was racing, my head was light, I felt like a feather.

After hours of watching television, I eat, I reply to messages online, et cetera, et cetera. 06:59. The time right now. 9 hours seemed like thirty minutes. But I didn't lose time; I was fully aware of everything, if not hyper-aware. My mind was flying the entire time, the gears turning so fast that it seemed like they were being stripped and losing grip, yet rotating nonetheless, even if they didn't accomplish anything by their rotations. I analysed, I pondered, and I thought deeply. I was emotionally invested even in things that didn't have a whole lot of emotion in the first place. My mind, my body, my soul were being swayed to the current of whatever was around me. I wasn't so much defined by what happened within me, but rather by what happened around me. I was clear and transparent, allowing crystal clarity into my surroundings. If anything, I was a conduit. I channelled my surroundings, my influences, and my stressors. I may have often channelled it silently, but it was channelled, nonetheless.

Now my head feels like it's wearing a stone hat. Heavy on my spine, somehow cutting off circulation to my cranium, perhaps even my brain. My eyes are heavy and burn, my heart pumps slowly and silently, my breath is fairly shallow. Where is that energy? Will I fall asleep and then wake up temporarily paralysed again? When will I wake up, or go to sleep, for that matter. I feel like something is wrong with my entire nervous system, but I have no idea what. It feels... hmm... compressed. Other times, it feels frazzled and twisted. And yet other times it feels overcharged. Or even cut off. But at no time does it feel... right. It's off, somehow, but I don't know why or what is causing it. Is it fibromyalgia? Bipolar? Anxiety? Those are my big three. Fibromyalgia seems like the most likely candidate. Dysautonomia - the dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. The things that are supposed to run more or less without the necessity of thought or effort. You don't especially have to think about digesting your food or breathing, or pumping your own heart. These things, for the most part, typically work on their own. Certainly, some things you can influence. You can purposely control your breathing, but if you don't do it purposefully, it usually works anyway. Anxious thoughts can certainly affect all of your 'autonomic' functions, like heart rate, breathing, and - yes - even digestion. Fibromyalgia can cause or even be the partial or whole result of some form of dysautonomia. This path... feels right. I think it's this, I think dysautonomia is causing these problems, but I don't know why. I have no real connections I can tie.

A coma sounds very good right now. Not have to think about all of these things, not have to worry about staying up too long, or possibly getting nagged at for sleeping too long, either. I mean, really, who nags at a coma patient for sleeping too long? Usually the people are just happy when they finally wake up! It would be interesting to see what the doctors could discover while I was in a coma... I can't imagine what may be picked up in an MRI or CT. If someone saw what was really going on in my brain and nervous system... I wonder if I would get answers, or just more questions. Normally, I run into dead ends or more questions, usually unable to find any definitive answers. I would love to just once find answers.

A lot of frayed wires and loose bolts in this one.

Wonderland

The weather has been unusual, lately. Yesterday, I heard winds howl so loudly that I thought a whole fleet of jumbo jets were falling out of the sky, and I kept on waiting for the sound of their crash, but it never came. I looked outside, and despite the character whistle of the winds, the trees didn't even seem to shiver or sway. I felt like there was a war going on, but I was too blind to notice, all because of some clouds and loud winds. A tornado, a hurricane, no matter how unlikely they are, the thoughts crossed my mind. I kept wondering, "How could a wind be so loud, but not even ever so slightly shake the tallest trees around?" I thought that maybe planes were flying by, and the clouds were just bouncing the sound waves down upon the earth all the louder and from all the farther away. But planes, up in the sky, don't cause the wind to whistle just outside your window, and they don't usually constantly hove or circle around your house, seemingly never to go away.

I have fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia gets worse in... pretty much any weather that isn't, on all accounts, considered average. Room temperature at normal humidity and pressure, with no clouds in the sky. That seems to be the only time my fibromyalgia doesn't react to the weather. This was a cloudy day, a bit colder, at a lower atmospheric pressure, and perhaps slightly higher humidity. I'm mostly inferring these things, as I haven't even stepped outside in probably three or four days. The effects of weather are very quick. Very sudden. 24 hours ago, I was unusually energetic, and even in a somewhat good mood. For most of the past 24 hours, I've been sleeping away hours, dreamlessly, feeling paralysed and weak. I've been dissociating, as far as I can tell, though I don't have much hands on experience with dissociation. Derealisation and depersonalisation. At first, it started out almost like malaise. A strange feeling that you get - instinctual - that makes you feel like something is wrong, or simply 'off.' But then... it became more. Hours seemed to go by and I hardly noticed, occasionally looking at the clock and just seeing a whole other number to the left of the colon. I saw shows and commercials, I was wary of them, but I quickly found it difficult to really recall what previously happened, or figure out how I got to the point I was presently at. My emotions left me. My nerves turned off. I could dig my nails as deep into my arm as I wanted, and I would hardly feel a thing. I would talk, barely, exasperated and weak, and in a monotone voice, if at all. When people in the house woke up and started to move around, talk, and do things, it was like when you're watching a movie and a crowd of loud teenagers walked into the theatre, acting as though no one else was there, and as though they owned it. I was just a viewer, trying to watch a move - life - and they had come in the middle of it and started to tear it apart and make it difficult to watch. It was like they didn't belong.

I read that, during derealisation and depersonalisation, you're suppose to use your senses more to get a tighter grasp on the solidity and realness of the world around you. You're also not suppose to zone out and get entranced by a singular thought. If anyone's watched the most recent episode of Mad Men, with the stimulant, then you might get an idea of why that was all difficult for me to do while watching it. Perception of time, this odd feeling of things not being real, seemed to just overlap with my feelings, if not confirm them, validate them. I got up, after some time, anyway, and made myself some tea, as well as some heavily seasoned tuna - lots of pepper and garlic salt, in particular. I was up, doing things, trying to use my senses. My sense of touch, sense of motion, sense of sight, sense of taste, sense of smell, sense of temperature... my senses could hardly have been utilised more without dumping the hot tea on myself, and throwing the pepper and garlic salt into my eyes. But it was all so... eerie. Strange. I recall feeling like a character in a TV show or a movie. I didn't feel like it was all completely real, but rather like I was simply supposed to think it was real. I imagined myself being a character on the TV show, Hannibal, and the tuna was actually human meat, but I didn't know that. My lack of knowledge would only sicken the crowd more, due to their secret knowledge which they would be unable to tell me. When I saw the sharp edge of the tuna can sticking up perpendicular to the can, I imagined some antagonist in a horror flick about to shove my face into until the sharp lid was embedded deeply into my skull. But I didn't feel any emotion toward these thoughts. Simply that they seemed strange.

I took a lorazepam (Ativan) to see if it would help at all. Maybe if I dealt with anxieties, even if just pharmacologically, then my body wouldn't need to dissociate in order to escape. It didn't seem to work. The tea I drank had chamomile, velarian, and was a cocktail for calming and soothing the body to sleep. I also didn't know a particular difference. Everything still felt like it was only suppose to seem real, but like it wasn't really. It was like a dream, and I've almost always had cinematic dreams that were incredibly realistic, and not too unlikely. But not long after, my eyes became very, very heavy. I had been up for over 24 hours. Eventually, I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't even move. I fell asleep, and then woke up. An hour went by. I closed my eyes, and then opened them again. Perhaps an hour or two more went by. Every time I... felt like I blinked, time skipped. Was this sleepless dreaming? Was this what it's like not to dream, and to have the deepest kind of sleep removed from death? Before I knew it, the sun had drastically changed position. It was no longer afternoon, or even evening. The clock said it was past 1:00; I can't recall the minutes. Either I went back in time and the sun blew up, or it was past midnight. I heard my mom talking about me. Saying how I had been sleeping all day, on the couch in the living room, with people coming and going, talking and doing things, but I just slept. She said that the weather changes were probably causing my fibromyalgia to take it all out of me. She couldn't have been more right. I slept for over 12 hours in all, the deepest sleep I had ever slept, and even after waking up at 5:11 in the morning, once and for all, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. Jaden was coming. He slept on the couch, so I would have to move. I gathered up all my willpower and strength to get up, go to the bathroom after holding it in from virtual paralysis for nearly 20 hours, got some water, some food, and I went downstairs. Jaden came, got the couch to sleep on, and I've been... somewhat awake, somewhat present, since. It's been two hours and twenty-eight minutes, at this point.

Before I became virtually paralysed, I checked my weight. This was then obviously before my marathon of sleep. I've lost 10 pounds in barely over a month, no more than two. 10 pounds. The past month, I've probably eaten less than half of what I normally do. Everyday, my fibromyalgia suppresses my mood, presses down on my body, and I've been depressed for almost every day of the past month. I haven't had an appetite, and my antidepressant doesn't seem to have even the minutest affect. I get anxious over absolutely nothing - literally not even having a thought process associated with anxiety, but simply fearful for no reason. It's like I'd been living upon a mountain peak all this time, and I finally decided to walk deep into the valley below, but I can't find my way back up. I've occasionally thought I found a way, started to climb higher, and then found myself before a dead end with seemingly no detours, so I descended back into the valley to search for another, but I'm starting to feel like there are only ways down, not ways up. This valley is a clearing, with virtually no plants, just short grass, and you can see every corner of the lowland, but no discernible way up. There are no animals, no food. There is just one sad, lost individual, wandering in circles.

Introversion, thinking of one's self and issues obsessively, anxiety... this is supposed to be perhaps the greatest cause of dissociation, but I feel like I get the closest to feeling reality be real again is when I think about these things. When I remember who I am, why I am where I am... how I got here. And yet, my brain is apparently pulling the plug so that I don't think about these things. It's not actually supposed to be a bad defence mechanism, though its side-effects are never, or seldom, desired. It's like turning off a computer so a virus doesn't run rampant on it... but the virus did its job, anyway. Now you can't use your computer, anyway. If you just shut it off to stop the virus, then what are you going to do with it, now? You need to destroy the virus, remove it, not just disable it by disabling yourself. And yet, shut down like this, I haven't felt anxious... I've had some paranoid and unusual thoughts, but I've been unusually not anxious. Sometimes I forget to breathe, or it feels like I can't. Sometimes it seems like my heart doesn't know how fast or slow it's supposed to go, so it just goes through all the different beats until it sounds right. But I don't feel anxious. I don't feel pain, or at least it's much harder to feel it. I almost can't comprehend happiness or sadness, and yet depressing things make me tearful, even if they aren't that emotionally provoking. I feel like I'm irritable in some way, but not as though I would act upon it. It seems like my body is still active, but my mind mostly just turned off. Like a computer that's running without its motherboard, or its operating system, perhaps. And while my thoughts seem to wind and be too slippery to get a hold off, or to be too far into the distance to even really see, they feel so much clearer in the moment. When I focus on something, it becomes really sharp and clear, and I notice more details than ever before, it seems, but everything else is blurry, and when I don't focus on anything, everything is blurry in some way. Words on a computer screen seem to darken and fade as my eyes move, and even a bit while still, as if the ink that printed them bled... but they're just photons, light, absent ink or substance for that matter. They're all a single, solid color, and yet some seem to be clearer, others blurrier, some darker, others more faded. It feels as though my eyes are emboldening certain letters and words, as though they were relevant, but only in my peripheral vision, and they constantly change, so I can't see what's so important... even as I type.

If you took the soul and spirit away from a man, yet still let him live, I feel like I would be him. Memories, data... but nothing really seems to make sense or have purpose. Time is irrelevant, emotions are irrelevant, and even thoughts seem fairly irrelevant. I feel like I'm waiting, but I was never told what I'm waiting for. To wake up? To die? It's hard to tell. And after I think this, the thought will pass, and may or may not be thought again. Also hard to tell. I'm not treading in sociopathy. I'm not remorseless, but I'm currently not remorseful. I don't act in my own interests because I don't act. I'm not selfish because I find it difficult to think about myself, let alone anyone. When I do think of myself, I think in terms of abstractions and thoughts, but am unable to put any real meaning behind it. I'm not mentally healthy or orderly, as there is nothing but disarray and off-shifted thoughts in my head. I do, but I don't, know what reality is. I'm in Wonderland, if only I got there by not moving, and if only this world is Wonderland.

Déjà Vu

These déjà vus are getting more frequent. I used to only get déjà vu every once a while... maybe every other week, or so. But now... it's every day, multiple times a day, and each time I just instantly stop what I was doing and get sucked into it for just a moment... and then the feeling kind of lingers. They're mostly just emotions, senses, but not really pictures or scenes in my head. I mean, the scenes still pop up from time to time, but most of my déjà vu, lately, has been much more like emotions alone. I'll read, see, hear, feel... I'll sense something, and then a flood of emotion pours over me, sometimes nearly compelling me to cry, or outwardly and very clearly react. I'll feel just as I felt some time in the past - sometime I can't clearly recall - and then thirty seconds later, the small crack in the curtains, where I can just barely peek into some past event, gets closed, and I'm cut off. Thirty seconds, sometimes a little longer, sometimes a little shorter, and I simply can't recall the memory at all, but the feelings associated with the memory seem to stick around for some time. Sometimes hours, even, but rarely more than a day.

I keep on wondering, "Is this déjà vu? Are these even really memories, or real memories?" I have had an annoying case of the false memories for years, now, but those are usually just plain ol' 'memories,' faint holographs of events I thought happened, but never actually did. My mind has liked to rewrite history, or insert utterly false events altogether. But these... These have such strong emotions, it's hard to imagine that they're from false memories... It's driving me nuts. I feel like I had major amnesia, and also got brainwashed into believing I lived a whole life up to a certain point that I never even lived! And now I'm at the point in the movie where the main character starts recalling his real past, and realising the past he thought was his past wasn't even real. Now, obviously, I'm not that bad. I have more real memories (when I can access them!) than false ones. The false ones are just typically nuisances... Things that hold little true significance, but that I always seemed to recall. I can typically recall false memories much more easily than real memories. Real memories typically just... come to me. It's not that I can willingly recall them, it just happens whenever the hell it wants to! Usually when I'm trying the least, actually. Usually when I'm distracted or caught up in something, that thing that I'm absorbed into triggers the memory.

You know when you're just having a conversation, and then someone says something that reminds you of something else? It's kind of like that... It just suddenly pops into you're brain, and you're like, "Oh, yeah! I remember that!" Well, that's about the closest normal approximation I can think of for this. This is more like you're soul exists in more than one time, and the you from the present feels what your soul feels from events of the past. It's sort of like that intuition, shared sense, that twins are supposed to have, at least sometimes, but my twin is from the past, and doesn't yet exist, and when it exists now, I'll be in the future. Despite being in two different places on the timeline, I share those senses. That's what it feels like. It's also kind of like on TV shows when a character starts tweaking out because of broken, quick flashbacks where the audio and visuals cut in and out repeatedly. It's not so debilitating, of course, and much less clear... There's a strong vagueness to it. It's about as clear as a room full of smoke in a burning building. But just because you can't see it hardly at all, it doesn't mean the fire won't still burn you and the smoke won't still choke you.

I'm so tired of this crap... Even just one day of complete clarity would be grand, and then I could die, happily remembering what it's like to have any sense of clarity.

Agitated Depression

Agitated Depression... a 'mixed state' in which symptoms of depression and hypomania collide into a volatile mixture... In my experience, nothing good ever really comes of it. But this one... state that I'm going through... feels... like a relief. Like a prisoner who has been starved, beaten, and tortured, and - finally - as he is being lashed, hit, beaten, and sliced... has a glimmer of relief, of joy. He rejoiced because he knows that it's all going to end soon. He'll be free soon... as he bleeds out in the mud and the life fades away from him. In my agitated depressions, everything... intensifies. I'm aware of everything around me, unlike mania (in which I'm often laser focused, and can't seem to pay attention to more than one thing), and... everything, EVERYTHING has some sort of feeling attached. The lifting sun outside bothers me because... it feels like a timer has reached its end and is buzzing, and I'm going over some sort of never-spoken, never-seen time limit. The chair I sit on brings pain, and the keyboard drives me mad with urges that I simply can't deny... Urges for communication and purpose. The screen is a portal, a gateway... It's indiscriminate and can show both the most awful and the greatest of things. The blanket brings comfort and safety with it's weight as it rests on my body and wraps me up. The pillow brings comfort in its softness, even if the comfort is more psychological than physical. Well, those are examples of idle things, at least... Trivial things.

But every emotions, every feeling... even my empathy, it all becomes... magnified, more like through a telescope than a magnifying glass. My brain bursts with sorrow and joy, with elation and despair. When someone else is sad, I'm depressed, and when someone else is happy, I'm joyous. But, most of all, I'm conflicted, even to the point of tearfulness about everything, good or bad. My heart is in a tug-of-war between numerous different forces, different feelings. The chemicals in my brain seem to be pouring and washing over my brain without restraint, without purpose, sometimes mixing and clashing with other chemicals. Sometimes causing paradoxical effects. I see life through a kaleidoscope that changes and fluctuates without ceasing, impossible to grab hold of any one solid image. Everything morphs and changes as if liquid or gaseous. Nothing is solid anymore, and everything is flowing, drifting, swirling, or sloshing. The world, particularly that of my mind, turns into a sea of green liquid metal that will swallow up any poor soul who falls in. It looks so, so cold, but its scolding and burning. The world around just fades into an intoxicating bile-green fog, while the few 'solid' things that can keep you out of the liquid metal are constantly morphing and changing, a maze of pathways where at any moment a hallway can become 10 times the length you thought, or when you thought it turned left, it may suddenly turn right. The inorganic, hard metal flows like a living creature, moving at a whim, shifting and morphing.

The pain amplifies... My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds and my neck struggles to support it. I just wait for the spine to snap after taking so much strain. My shoulders feel like they've turned to stone, and my back struggles to hold that up. And then.. my poor lower back... taking on the burden of it all - the entirety of the slowly solidifying, petrifying flesh. The knives and needles stab me willy-nilly, the nerves shoot with electricity along their roots, their branches. I feel like I was in a car crash, and then the car flipped into a garbage truck right as it was compacting the garbage. I'm filthy, smashed, and contorted. Oh, my head... It's like someone wrapped an iron band around it and then tightened it more and more until they couldn't tighten it any further, like a belt on a man who denies he's gained a few pounds, and insists on the notch he remembers being able to squeeze into. And this is but a fraction of all I feel... But a minute, almost meaningless, sliver in the grand scheme of things.

I tire... Exhausted and beaten, I envy that prisoner... I envy his escape... He didn't take his own life, he didn't avoid further punishment... He endured it and endured it until... it ended. He was released. He was free.

Sonata

Each person has a song. Many think that songs with words, with a voice, are the most powerful and most beautiful, but I respectfully disagree. The sonata, devoid of a human voice, but bountiful in the beautiful, natural resonance of the universe, is truly the most beautiful, I believe. Every song is utterly unique, played literally for a lifetime. And these songs often overlay upon others’ songs, creating a symphony of sorts. When two songs clash, and simply aren’t harmonious, they either remain horrid to the ear, or they depart until a harmonious tune is found. Many symphonies have moments of cacophony to provoke emotions, especially that which is difficult to bear and hard on the ears, only to return to the beautiful essence that was invoked from an individual’s very soul.

So what is your sonata? What does it sound like? How has it crossed and blended with others’ sonatas? Most sonatas are epics, are journeys for the mind and soul. But some are cut all too short, and make but brief, yet often quite powerful, songs. Tempos often vary, within each song, creating turbulence and calm, excitement and lethargy, happiness and sadness. There are spikes in pitch, as well as lows. No matter what, though, each and every song is a work of art. Something truly beautiful comes from each individual’s sonata.

My sonatas feel like they could be embodied across the vast range of Ludwig van Beethoven. Within a single song, he can make a lament, and then suddenly increase to something exciting and joyful, and then return to the slower, deeper, more lethargic elegy. Bipolar is a synonym for someone who’s life is inevitably beautiful, whether through tragedy or triumph. Sometimes the triumph comes completely from the tragedy, like a phoenix rising from the ashes and the flames, and then soaring into the sky and embodying the sun and the stars that provide us light, both utterly illuminating, and through the inevitable darkness. Moonlight Sonata and Fur Elise seem to touch my soul the most, at least as of yet. I’m not connoisseur, much to my dismay, and I know that those are two of his most popular songs, but perhaps there is a reason behind that. While many are moved by the two songs, and perhaps they do in fact touch their souls, I believe them to embody my very life essence. I’m not moved; rather, I am. I hear those songs I know that I am them.

As I see and hear the song of my life playing before me, progressing as I do, my soul feels enlightened. My eyes close and my heart opens up. Through four days of... a fairly strong depression, I’ve come to feel... high. It honestly feels like I took opioids, and yet I haven’t taken anything. I’ve spent most of my time for a few days, and for so many hours, just laying down, sleeping, or barely remaining conscious. I’ve been somewhat out of myself, and yet so aware. It’s like I’m meditating while walking about, and while utterly present. I went from feeling so, so heavy... hopelessly unable to even lift myself up, to feeling like I’m walking upon clouds. And yet, I still feel terribly heavy. It’s like my insides are made of stone, but my skin, and an aura around me, are lighter than helium, lighter than hydrogen!, lifting this heavy, awkward body into the clouds, higher and higher, until I’m past the atmosphere, and I see the glory of our world before my very eyes. And then I turn around and see the greater glory of the universe around me. This deep depression brought me joy and the ability to see clearer, and yet I fear it will be fleeting, and I will return to my ignorant, awkward, bulky, heavy self, or perhaps my oblivious, energetic, light self. Either way, oblivious or ignorant, I will be once again blinded and unaware.

But these most powerful of moods - especially the lower I go, rather than higher - the purer my soul. It’s like these occasionally, magnificent depressions are a form of ritual purification and trial after my soul becomes overly burdened by darkness and impurities. I know what it feels like to be high off of narcotics - legally, of course... The pain of my body sometimes requires their powerful effects. But I also know what it’s like to have very high manias and very low depressions without any outside agents. My own body is capable of recreating the effects of those powerful narcotic drugs without even needing such things. I know what it’s like to be addicted to drugs, and what the feelings of drugs are like, not from taking them, but simply from being who I am and experiencing life as I do, naturally. It’s beautiful and tragic. It’s a war inside me - a war for my soul. And it’s impossible to truly tell which side will, or has, won... until the dust has settled, and it is all concluded. Not until one force is totally destroyed by the other will I know which side one.

But this war waged inside me is not something terrible, necessarily. Some wars are necessary, especially those which are spiritual. Sometimes one has to prove its dominance over the other. Sometimes one has to struggle to survive against another. And struggles are what really mold the individual, for better or worse. Whichever side is winning will determine which side the soul deviates. Shall it be pure and grand, or shall it be impure and poisonous? My bipolar is truly a journey toward enlightenment, and when the war is ended, and I’ve died, all will become revealed, and it will be evident who I truly am, and where I truly lie. I have struggled very much, and so I have been molded more and more into something great, whether great for the better reasons, or for the worse.

Many raving maniacs are actually truly enlightened. This kind of enlightenment brings about something utterly irrational and incomprehensible, and sometimes this does a number to the mind. Their souls know, and their minds try to know, and they can’t help but spew the incoherent, otherworldly mess for all to hear. I hear it... Like whispers. And my spirit whispers back, so subtly and quietly. It is not in the mind, but in the spirit and the soul that this is heard. There are not voices, nothing even comparable to our universe, and yet something in me understands. My mind is boggled, and I cannot recreate it so that others may hear, but I can merely attempt to exemplify a mere, faint shadow of its greatness.

And though I am so euphoric, I am so tired... so sleepy. My eyes struggle to stay open, though it’s not even noon. I’ve slept for so many hours previously, and yet my body and my brain beg for more rest. My body remains like stones on the inside, full of granite, too heavy to hardly lift. I wish to faint, to simply snap asleep, almost comatose, as each movement requires grand effort. Perhaps... this is my cross to bear. And yet, I cyclically go through this. From the joy of life, to the burden of my cross and death, to the grand rebirth, and back to life. It replies over and over and over. Sometimes it’s a mere reflection, distorted in ripples and waves... and yet, other times, it’s as clear and real as can be.

My sonata...

A Hitchhiker's Guide to My Mind...iverse.

I want to try and make a basic outline of how my mind works, how to attempt to traverse it, and the various common qualities of different moods/phases/areas. It's more in a hope that others might be able to avoid certain issues in the future. First, some basic background. I am bipolar I - I rapidly cycle, usually from day to day - or at most week to week - between moods that are typically either depressed or manic (or mildly depressed or hypomanic), with brief and somewhat uncommon pauses of relative normalcy. There are also some fairly frequent minor 'mixed states,' which blend two extremes into a more volatile combination, usually leaning toward depressed, and some much more occasional major spikes. The major spikes tend to also be mixed states, and - while I could be wrong because I don't have enough data yet - they go in a monthly cycle. I know... it's my 'period.' If I start ripping your face off with words, getting really irritable, switching from seemingly happy and extroverted to reclusive and introverted... well, you just might ask me, "Is it that time of the month?" in which case I might just want to rip your face off... or laugh. Who knows?

::::Geography::::

My mind has mountain peaks and low valleys, volcanoes and soothing hot springs, burning deserts and frozen tundras, flat plains and rolling hills... You name the geographical feature, my mind has it. Now, if you go outside and you look at a hill, you can easily identify it as a hill. You look at the topography of my mind, and it might be a little more difficult because these ain't yo nomull evruh-deh heeeeels, ya siy? Also, by my kooky sounding spelling, one might think I was more toward the 'higher' spectrum, whereas I'm actually in a mixed mood right now that's heavily leaning toward the depressive side. Literally every moment feels unbearable and dazing, yet I frequently cover it up with nonsensical jokes and fake smiles. I'm also actually in a lot of pain right now from my fibromyalgia, and I've had increased anxiety lately. So do you think you can so easily identify the geographical features of my mind, especially now? Well, let's go over some of the more basic qualities of my psychological topography so that you could better identify these features without necessarily stuffing your brain so full you have an aneurysm.

---High Ground---
Mountains:

There are two primary kinds of mountains - volcanoes and just plain giant heaps of rock. Volcanoes are perhaps the most relevant for those around me, yet perhaps the least common, as well. Volcanoes are moods that are big enough to be mountains, but with the added quality of being very volatile, and potentially dangerous. 90% of the time, a volcano will be a mixed state (reminder - a combination of depression and mania that creates an explosive and/or volatile compound.) Mixed states are much less common for me, and they usually aren't quite mountains/volcanoes, either. I'm not sure, yet, as I've only recorded about a month of my mood patterns so far, but from what I've recorded, I have a hypothesis that my volcanic mixed states come along roughly once every month. My mood can flip flop, I can be extremely irritable, I can seem extremely difficult to get a read off, I can seem unpredictable, I can explode in your face and melt it right off with words alone, I can become extremely anxious and worried, I can be irritable and difficult to work with, I can become extremely emotional, and it essentially becomes no holds barred. A bit of my steam was relieved from a recent eruption, so I'm not quite so unstable at the moment, but one eruption doesn't necessarily mean that another won't come. These moods also tend to last longer than my normal moods - as long as a week! Usually, there's some build up as well as a gradual decline after reaching the peak. The best tactic when you see a volcano? Well... stay away from it, you daredevil dumbass! What else do you think you should do? Climb to the top and take a swan dive?

The other kind of mountain is just tall and imposing. While there may be some minor qualities of one mood type when it's dominantly another, the little fragments are usually of sub-clinical and fairly irrelevant levels. For instance, I might go through a depressive episode but have a number of ideas and be unable to sleep. Does this mean I'm in a mixed state? Nope, not at all. A lot of ideas and difficulty sleeping has never made a hypomanic mood on its own. Sure, a mixed mood doesn't always necessarily need to have a full blown hypomanic mood on top of a full blown depression, or a full blown mania on top of a full-blown/moderate depression, but the symptoms of either are usually quite significant and contribute considerably to the volatile nature of a mixed state. Note that there are no real 'depressive mountains,' as depressions are typically lows, like valleys. The only real exception is a mixed state, but it has a giant pit in the centre filled with scolding hot magma that goes below the earth's crust.. so I'd say that the 'low' kind of makes its way into there. Anyway, mania mountains tend to have very sharp peaks and both rise and decline very quickly. They're usually fairly short-lived, seldom lasting more than a couple of days. It's ironic how a person in a flight of mania might feel like they can move mountains when their mania can seem as imposing and 'high' as a mountain.


Hills:

Hills are usually mania-related and can be quite frequent and rolling. This are usually enjoyable for both those around me and myself. Usually a hill is when I seem more positive, more energetic, full of ideas, perhaps more talkative, and overall more kooky - but markedly less of all of those than mania mountains. Hills denote hypomania. This is the happy-fun-times of bipolar. This is when the bipolar person is still relatively in their right mind, but are obviously 'higher' than normal. Admittedly, it can also sometimes just feel a little bit 'happier' and 'energetic' than usual to the bipolar person themselves and those around them. Hypomania seldom, if ever, gets a person hospitalised, and they're even often overlooked by the world at large. In fact, bipolar II individuals who have hypomania, but not full-blown mania, might - or are rather almost guaranteed - to be diagnosed simply as 'depressed' because people typically don't even notice the extent of hypomanic episodes. Hills can sometimes be overlooked, as well, especially when you have much more extreme features like a great canyon or mountains that reach past the clouds. Hills are common and - while sometimes marvelled at or even loved - fairly unremarkable in the grand scheme of the bipolar spectrum. Hills might also be indicative of more minor mixed episodes, though these hills are quite rare. Hills like this might have scolding hot springs and be volcanically active far underneath the surface. Just in case you do run into a mixed state hill, look for unexpected or unusual changes that deviate from the normal hypomanic mood.


---Low Ground---
Canyons and Valleys:

Canyons are usually when my mood takes a sharp drop into depression. I can seem perfectly fine and even normal and then - oops, there's a cliff there! Usually, the lowest of the lows comes almost immediately, and then the depression might go away almost about as suddenly. Valleys, on the other hand, tend to be longer lived and have more gradual descents to and ascents from the depression. The geographical definition of a valley, and most lower points, can have the word 'depression' in them, in fact. Plain depressions usually aren't as complicated or varied as mania and hypomania, so there's little need to go further in depth, but for a quick description... During a depression, I can be less vocal, have little or no energy, little or no motivation, feel as though I am actually physically feeble (or more than usual, at least) which others can feel, too, I can often have worsened or increased incidence of fibromyalgia flare-ups, as well as general achiness, stiffness, and lethargy, I can seem more withdrawn and be more of an isolationist, and... above all, I can occasionally cover it all up with compulsive and fake smiles, and reassurances that nothing's wrong (my energy level is usually telltale, however.) Canyons and valleys are usually the worst of the worst. If I do have a facade, I usually can't maintain it for very long. I often shut down completely, or quite near. These places are also often much darker and colder than the areas higher up.


Ravines and Gullies:

These are basically the same as canyons and valleys, in that order, but simply smaller. When I have a facade or try to cover up the depression, I can typically pull it off much better and for a longer period than with the canyons and valleys. Because valleys last longer, I usually maintain no facade, or it can only survive a smaller portion of the depression, but a facade can often survive the whole depression of a ravine or gully. Gullies might not even really register on other people's radars as, while they might be wider in proportion to ravines, they're also typically shallower. Gullies might seems like simply slower points in life, or even appear relatively 'normal.' They may last longer, or appear flatter, than ravines, but I'm typically decently functioning (well, relative to me, at least) and can have at least a semi-decent outlook without too much effort. There usually isn't nearly the degree of awe-striking power as a deep depression can cause, but they're usually much easier to deal with, as well. These mild depressions are fairly common and often relatively short lived.


---The Ocean---

To stick with the geographical theme, the ocean can represent the great unknown. It constitutes most of the world, and yet it's probably the least explored and the least understood part of the world. Much of my mind is still an utter mystery to me, but with new tools, new things are being learned everyday. The great, deep blue can seem imposing, mysterious, and even scary, and perhaps it should be... to a degree. For if we sink into this great unknown... could we ever come back? I perhaps get too curious for my own good, sometimes.


::::Tectonic Activity::::

Anxiety isn't really like any particular land feature, but acts more like tectonic plates shifting. Anxiety can form mountains and volcanoes, dry up and create new seas, tear land apart and make giant holes, it can swallow houses whole into the ground like they never existed, it can shake the ground and your foundations, it can send tsunamis crashing into cities, and it can instill fear. While anxiety isn't exactly any particular land feature, it can certainly contribute to the formation of land features. My anxieties can plummet me into a depression, or send me into a manic high. Sometimes, it causes volcanoes to explode, and for my foundations (beliefs, for instance) to shatter right from under me. Anxieties can scare me into a seemingly catatonic state, or send me running. What I do certainly know, however, is that something bad always comes when anxiety is looming over me, and it's most volatile when paired with a land formation that's already existing.

Letting Go

For some people, it comes naturally (perhaps too naturally), and for other's, it seems utterly impossible... Letting things go is something that certain people have an affinity for, and other don't. Some people are lucky enough to be somewhere in the middle, but I think most people are at least a little too far to one side or the other. I, personally, have extreme difficulties letting things go, especially things that aggravate me. Every once in a while, however, I manage to let something go, and I can never get used to just what a relief it is! It's like an enormous burden suddenly vaporising and floating away into the sky. Okay, it's not always so graceful, and getting to that point is definitely easier said than done...

Several days ago, I sought out an answer to something on a website that's specifically for asking questions and getting answers from other users in an attempt to share useful knowledge. Well, I haven't always found the community on that site to be so utopian. In fact, sometimes it's just full of arrogant, self-righteous ass-holes, to put it nicely. There really isn't any other way I can think of putting it, that isn't harsher, to give the right idea. Well, needless to say, I got a bit incensed with some of the people on their and even got to the point of reporting one and writing an angry message to another. These didn't go unwarranted, either. I was not irrationally lashing out - I was taking appropriate actions in response to their actions. I thought that my angry message was even quite restrained and civilised!

Well, I went out of town for Easter weekend, and for that whole time, I didn't check my e-mail or that website. It was actually nice that I forgot about it all. Well, after getting back home (tonight), I got on my e-mail and checked the messages. Well, I got more than I was expecting, but one stuck out in particular. It was a message from that site. Specifically, it was the reply to my angry message. The person actually had said that they didn't even know what I was talking about, and so they couldn't even reply to it. For a brief and immediate moment, I became inflamed. I wanted to (virtually) scream at him until my head exploded!

...But then, something unusual happened. I rubbed my headache riddled head, checked the box next to that e-mail... and deleted it. I then deleted all of the other junk and moved on. It wasn't instantaneously, but it was pretty quickly, that I sudden felt this great sense of relief. I didn't have to worry about the stress of ranting furiously at this guy, or trying to reign myself in so that I wasn't in turn accused of being belligerent, or awaiting his next reply, or the possibility of several more back-and-forth messages... I just stopped it right then and there. On a scale of 1-10 of how hard it is normally for me to let something like this go... it probably gets a solid 7. If you throw in some erroneous information on the other person's end, then it probably jumps to a 9 or a full-blown 10. It can probably sometimes seem like I might be more willing to give up a kidney than to give up a conversation about something that makes me angry. Well, I guess I must be willing to give up a kidney, now!

You might hear stories of people who got great relief from not stressing out about certain things so much, and you might either scoff at it or think it's completely obvious... or both. I've often scoffed at it and thought it sounded completely obvious. I have always had trouble not making sarcastic or irritated remarks about positive life stories, whether out of jealousy or some warped perception of reality. I could just as easily think that the person is being hopelessly positive in a hopeless world (warped perception) as I could jealously crave what they've found. Well, I don't really get jealous about that sort of stuff right now (I've come to be like the people I've made fun of!)

Now, admittedly, if I didn't have the headache, weren't tired, weren't lacking the mental stamina to carry out the incensed ranting back-and-forth, and I didn't feel like it would be inevitably pointless, I probably would've continued with it. I would've fruitlessly have brought more stress upon myself out of some inane idea of right and wrong, good versus bad, and an idiotic moral-crusader-type delusionary complex. But what's the point? In all of my experience, I'm the only one who really loses anything out of such situations. Sometimes I may even feed other people's warped psychological appetites, and then I'm not only bringing damage to myself, but providing something that my 'antagonist' wants! So, again, what's the point? Simple, and essentially only, answer... There isn't one. It's totally pointless! So... I cut it off. I stopped that horrid cycle, at least for now. Score one for me!

So I probably saved myself a considerable amount of utterly unnecessary stress just by ignoring something that could do nothing more than cause me unnecessary stress. I think that my head and body would be thanking me for saving them that burden if they... well... were autonomous and could speak as entities other than myself.

The Beautiful Path is Seldom the Easy One

The eventful, beautiful path is so seldom the easy one... Nothing worthwhile comes from going about the easy way in life. I was blessed to be bipolar, not cursed. I was given the gift to see a world few others can see. Schizophrenic and dissociative individuals, amongst many others, can also say that they can see into a world no one or few others can. Many come to believe that their hallucinations, delusions, and various other symptoms are actually a way of getting in touch with a spiritual world or some other kind of alternate dimension. Since it's not really easy to prove them wrong, and I've personally had those thoughts before, too, I wouldn't necessarily discount these beliefs. I wouldn't even really want to refute their claims. As one individual said in the movie, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, about if he regretted being born with bipolar, "That's a very easy question; there's a very easy answer. No, not for a second. 'Cause if you've walked with angels, all the pain and suffering is well worthwhile."

Do you ever hear about how the great spiritual figures in history and religion glided smoothly through life and into transcendence? Nope. You hear about a long, hard journey filled with doubt, wonder, pain, and strife... You hear about a journey with tremendous ups and treacherous lows. They know both great joy and dire despair. They've experienced the full range of what life has to offer, both good and bad. Perhaps they didn't necessarily go on murderous rampages, or give into the darkness so much that they at least dipped their toes in evil, but they did have to deal with such individuals. They have emotional and spiritual conflict. They were not always so certain of their purpose, of their religion, their god(s) or goddess(es). If such an individual came to be in this modern world, they'd probably be thrown into a psychiatric ward and pumped full of pills until these extremes seemingly disappeared... until they became 'normal.' I've seen some of these historic, grand figures - these spiritual marvels and tremendous heroes - and seen so many qualities of bipolar, of depression, of schizophrenia...

So, what really distinguished these people from those with 'mental illness'? Was it just that the times have changed and we've gained a different understanding of the human body and psyche? Have we unlocked hidden problems that were invisible to those of the past? Did our society change in such a way that it was virtually inhabitable for individuals like these great historic figures? So many questions that just might be impossible to answer...

Moses. He saw a burning bush... and God's voice came from it and sent him a message... and then the fire went out, and the bush wasn't burned. Some people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and various other mental illnesses, see spiritual hallucinations - things no one else sees. No one was around Moses, thus no one could actually prove anyone else could see what he saw. Yes, perhaps it was a physical manifestation that everyone could've seen, and that there were no hallucinations. But reality is an artificial construct of our minds, interpreting sensory data to map out a perceptual conception of what we call reality. You obstruct, enable, or alter any of these senses in any given way and the individual's reality changes radically. So what truly defines reality? What is real and what is false? Certainly their are some solid things. If I touch a rock, and then you touch the rock, the rock is probably their. If I hear a voice, and you hear a voice, and the voice is exactly the same to both of us, then it's probably real. But reality is still only as true as we can perceive it. Our dreams are truly real until we wake up. How can anyone prove that our spirits, minds, or souls don't enter some other dimension - some other world - while sleeping? Do we have to physically be their, or is it enough for only our abstract, our consciousness, to be their independently? If a heaven and/or hell exist, and our spirits go their, but our bodies don't, do we no longer exist? Are we no longer 'real' because we lack our bodies?

So back to Moses. There were, in fact, many physical manifestations that direly affected a great deal of people. There were plagues, one after the other. I do believe that God had a hand in this, but I also think that God often works within the confines of our logical, physical universe. He used frogs, locusts, droughts, hailstorms... He used things physically possible in our world. He didn't summon some grand creature with such an indescribable appearance or presence that it could drive a man mad just trying to wrap his mind around it... He didn't conjure something that was never before seen to the universe. Rather, God used the scientific laws, the constraints and rules of the universe, and he made them happen. Some could argue that the chances of things happening exactly as the Bible said they did would be so unlikely that it certainly didn't happen... But who in this world hasn't seen something that was so anomalous that they simply couldn't explain it? They occur at least at some point in someone's life, and yet these events couldn't possibly have happened at such isolated points in time so long ago? Occasionally... God does utilise truly baffling things to make His will a reality. These can be visions, dreams, or things that only a few - especially spiritual individuals - could see or did see. These more abstract, bizarre instances seem to be so similar to so many bipolar experiences. Mass hallucinations and delusions have occurred, in that multiple individuals saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt the same thing, even if no one else could. We often attribute these to chemical imbalances in the brain.

In that quote from the bottom of the first paragraph in this rant, this journal, a man knew he had bipolar - a chemical imbalance. It's proven that the bipolar mind acts differently than the 'average' or 'normal' mind. An interesting fact is that it's essentially impossible to detect bipolar simply from a brain scan... So, this man, Rod Harvey, is fully aware of his condition. He knows at least the basic scientific explanations behind the disorder - bipolar. He's aware of the physical and logical manifestations of his disorder. And yet... he refused 'treatment.' He refuses meds because he walks with angels. His mania highs give him such euphoria, such love and joy, and such splendid experiences. His mania also gives him frightening, terrible images - such as how he, "actually hallucinated by seeing the devil... Burning black coals of the eyes of the devil." Rod uses words like 'hallucination' or 'mania' or 'anxiety.' These are very clinical words. He is not oblivious, not unknowledgeable, and yet he accepts his hallucinations, his bipolar, and embraces it, even. He's learned to live with it, to function in modern society. Many psychiatrists, I'm sure, would just love to get a piece of him, to throw him into a hospital and to flood him with meds. He did attempt suicide once, after all, by walking right into traffic and nearly succeeding in killing himself! And yet... I see absolutely no reason to admit him, to call him crazy, or to fill him up with drugs to 'normalise' him. He is a marvel, he has a beautiful, magnificent mind... He walks with angels.

Reality is simply a perspective... One view out of many. Typically, realities align, and this is considered truly reality. But perhaps there can be more than one reality. Perhaps a person can see one reality overlap another, yet the people around them are totally unable to see them. And if you got a crowd of people hallucinating at the same time, you might have dozens of different realities overlapping! And does this make any one reality more real than another? Even great scientists dwell on the possibilities of many dimensions, multiple universes and worlds overlapping on another... The 4th dimension is believed to be unseeable, incomprehensible, to us 3-dimensional creatures. A 1-dimension entity could not comprehend a 2-dimensional entity, but could perhaps comprehend a 0-dimensional entity; likewise, a 2-dimensional entity could not comprehend a 3-dimensional entity, and yet it could comprehend a 1-dimensional entity. A 3-dimensional entity could not comprehend a 4-dimensional entity, but it could comprehend a 2-, 1-, or 0-dimensional entity. Now, this assumes that, somehow, these entities have some sort of sentience - consciousness and intelligence. It's purely hypothetical, theoretical. But these concepts are still generally accepted.

Regardless of if we can, in some ways, comprehend dimensions less than our own, but are unable to comprehend dimensions beyond ours, we really can only see and best understand our very own dimension - the one we live in and truly experience. But if a 4th dimension does exist, or a 5th, 6th, and so on, and somehow... by some crazy, virtually impossible to understand, circumstance, we were able to get a peak into that dimension... would what we saw not be real? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound? The answer... yes. Just because others didn't sense it, I don't believe it makes it less real. This realisation is both utterly terrifying and enormously rectifying. It both scares me and puts my mind at ease. We can't understand everything. We simply can't - that's a fact. No one will ever understand everything, at least so long as they exist in this universe. We may strive and strive to unlock all of the mysteries, but there will always be questions, theories, doubts... That's what makes this world we live in, our lives, so wonderful and so awful at the same time. We naturally fear the unknown, and yet we strive to unlock it, to understand it. We are curious by nature, and yet we fear what we don't know, and what is there to be curious about but the unknown?

Perhaps no one is truly 'mad' until they're minds, their very cores, have been so twisted and warped that they are hopelessly heading towards an unfortunate demise. Sane until prove insane, perhaps. And we typically rush to conclude an individual is insane simply if we don't understand him or her. If the individual doesn't follow the 'average' coarse, and deviates so much that it potentially counteracts the flow of the most common reality. I believe that 'unable to function in society' really means 'unable to conform adequately to common perceptions.' In an alternate universe where the clinically insane are the normal ones, perhaps the ones we consider sane would actually be considered insane, as well. Everything is a matter of perception. Some individuals can't handle these altered perceptions, and their beings start to be twisted and warped. I do honestly believe that these individuals should get treatment, should get meds, so that they can return to, or come to, a state in which their minds can handle. I was once at a point where my altered reality was so estranged from what my mind could truly comprehend that I went mad for a while. I was certainly insane and unable to tolerate this altered reality. But, after getting treatment, and having given my mind time to cool down, learn, and grow... I think I'm ready to handle these alterations. I think my mind can once again wrap around these alternative realities. Now, whether or not I actually have hallucinations is currently unknown. My past hallucinations could've been perpetual due to a constant lack of sleep. Anyone and everyone can experience hallucinations under the right conditions, and tiredness - lack of sleep - is one such condition. People who've never had a mental illness, have no family history of mental illness, can go for days without adequate sleep and suddenly start seeings things that aren't there. So, yes, if I have enough sleep, I might never hallucinate again. Or, perhaps, I might not have started hallucinating because it takes as long as months for my meds to truly empty out of my system, or because my meds permanently altered my brain chemistry, or because I haven't had extreme enough circumstances, other than just lack of sleep, to induce these hallucinations. Many schizophrenics, for instance, have very disorderly, incongruous and inconsistent, hallucinations, but mixed with lack of sleep, they can suddenly become extremely lucid and real to that individual.

So many factors... so many mysteries... If this were not so, life would be so much easier, right? But as I titled this, as I wrote, the beautiful path is seldom the easy one. The real challenge is in understanding, or even realising, that this is so.

Sickness, Depression, and... Spirituality?

I got sick a few days ago... It's actually kind of difficult to accurately say exactly when I got the virus, but based on my mood charts, it was about two or three days ago (my mood went from having at least some symptoms of being 'elevated' to being totally absent of such symptoms, and rather leaning toward and dipping into depression.) Looking at it from a simplistic view, utilising numbers and images, I could track more than just my mood. I saw my mood dipping and dipping, getting duller, sadder, more lethargic, and even quieter to an extent (though, when I got irritated, I wasn't so quiet...) Life was looking bland. It wasn't quite hopeless, no, but it wasn't really hopeful, either. It was just... there. Life was life. And then the virus germinated inside me, spread like wildfire, and beat the crap out of me. Now, for two days, I've been totally miserable, both emotionally and physically. I'm totally drained, my life feeling like it's seeping out of my body.

Now, you might think that my list of symptoms aren't really that terrible - especially if you currently aren't sick. Stuffy and runny nose, soar throat, pretty bad, painful, dry cough, body aches and headaches. It's all pretty classic symptoms of that little, but awful, thing known as the 'common cold.' There's nothing especially tragic or dire about this virus, and everyone gets it eventually (unless you're a bubble boy, in which case it'd probably kill you! and then it really is dire.) But when you have a mood disorder, or potentially just about any mental illness, things are intensified. Things are amplified to levels that the average, healthy individual likely couldn't fully understand. When I get a 'common cold,' I dip into depression. Now, what are the symptoms of mild depression? Body aches, headaches, lack of motivations and energy, lethargy, tiredness, sleep disturbance, feeling like the life has been drained out of you... and those are just the physical effects! The psychological effects? Things are perceived as duller, you have a lingering cloud of sadness (sometimes becoming tearfulness for seemingly no reason), you lack the interest in things you used to like, or even love, you typically find less meaning in life, your perceptions are distorted so that essentially everything looks negative, at least to some extent... Now, I'm just talking about mild depression - not full-blown major depression.

So when you combine the symptoms of depression, which can be almost flu-like on the physical side, and which can be draining from the mental side, with the symptoms of a cold, you get a pretty volatile mixture. It's similar to battling both the flu and the cold at the same time, but with a somewhat different set of obstacles and symptoms. Your body goes from just drained and sub-par with the cold to drained of your life, of your soul, and feeling so miserable you want to do anything just to end the misery. This is how I've felt for the past couple of days - totally miserable. And I have been trying just about everything to get rid of the misery - from utterly disgusting teas to a range of over-the-counter meds and even somewhat less common tactics, such as nasal irrigation and a therapeutic humidifier. Nothing's really worked so far. So... I seemed to run out of options... and what do I do? Well, I made a radical decision - perhaps one of the craziest decisions I ever made! (and I've made a lot of crazy decisions.)

I accepted it.

Yep, just like that... I accepted it. I accepted that I had a cold and it wasn't planning on going away, despite all my efforts. I accepted that I fell into a bout of depression and that I felt awful both emotionally and physically. 'So you gave up!' you might think. But I didn't. Sure, I accepted it, and sure, I know that - at least at the moment - I can't really do much about it. But if more options appear, I certainly will try them to alleviate the pain and the draining effects. But I can't right now. Not at this very moment. So why constantly struggle, so hopelessly, over something that I can't so easily control? Why battle and battle when I don't have the ability to tumble this terrible foe? Now, with the depression, it's a little easier to deal with it. The cold is physical - another entity within me just gunning to take me down. I will feel miserable until that thing is dead, and I somewhat have to wait it out until my body does it's thing and finally kills that horrid virus. I have to have faith that my body will deal with it, which I'm sure it will.

Depression, as I said before, is a little easier to deal with if you have the right tactics. Normally, depression is like this massive stone wall that no creature - man or beast, land, sea, or air-dwelling - could possibly get over. But humans have this wonderful gift - ingenuity. What is ingenuity, exactly? Well, let's look at an official definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: "a : skill or cleverness in devising or combining : inventiveness; b : cleverness or aptness of design or contrivance." So what does this essentially mean? Well, as humans, we have the gift of using our minds to adapt and conquer, to make the world be as we see fit. Mixing it with our natural willpower and free will, well... you get great - almost unimaginably great! - methods for adapting and conquering things we never thought we could adapt to or conquer. So why would depression be any different? As long as we utilise our gift of ingenuity, learn from others and the world around us, we can adapt to or conquer anything and everything. This can be good or bad, depending on how we deal with the situations in which we find ourselves.

So, with the depression, I accepted it. Easier said than done, certainly, but I got to this point of realisation - an epiphany of sorts - where I realised that I can just accept that I was depressed rather than toil and fight with it. Rather than see depression as an enemy or something to rid myself of, I realised that I can utilise it, learn from it, accept it... and, if necessary, stop believing what my mind was telling me. Not everything I think is truth. Just because I thought something about myself or my surroundings does not make it fact. And when you are depressed, your thoughts can be extremely distorted, and you start to become blind to the truth, and accept all of the lies you tell yourself as absolute fact. So, this acceptance, acknowledgement, and even ability to realise that not all of the things your mind tells you are true, or to at least question the integrity of what you think before accepting it, are all mindfulness. Mindfulness is being aware of what is going on, but taking a more passive stance, rather than struggling and resisting what is going on. With bipolar, in particular, sometimes... a person just has to accept that they are going to have down moods, up moods, and in-between moods, or even mixed moods. If it happened even just once, it'll most likely happen again... and again after that, and again after that. To deny this, to resist this, is just unnecessary and exhausting labor that could end up being the actual downfall of the individual with bipolar.

Now, you don't want to be so passive that you do absolutely nothing. That's a dire misconception. Rather, you want to be unbiased, rational, aware... You want to be able to identify everything that is going on within and without, to be understanding, and to not let your irrationality or natural defence mechanisms get the better of you. When we give in to the lies, the defence mechanisms, the coping mechanisms, and believe everything our minds tell us, we become slaves to our bipolar. Bipolar can be good or bad, but it all depends on how you deal with it. Often, it starts out terribly bad, primarily because we don't understand the bipolar, what's going on with us and in our minds, and we can't control it or appropriately deal with it. Bipolar appears as this looming monster trying to swallow us up. And, in some cases, this might be exactly what happens. If you don't learn to adapt and grow, to appropriately deal with the bipolar, it will likely swallow you up whole in one way or another.

In this bout of mild depression, I had several revelations. I also happened to be watching the History Channel show, The Bible, which shows strong spiritual struggles, conflicts, both within and without. But do you know what the difference between the 'protagonists' in these stories versus the 'average' person? Those protagonists know how to deal with those struggles. In the end, they are victorious. They adapted, conquered, and accepted. As I watched these biblical stories being enacted in a stunningly engaging visual re-enactment, I realised just how similar these great protagonists, these great historical figures, were to someone with bipolar who mastered mindfulness. They knew misery, they knew great joy, they had ups and downs, they had great inner conflicts, as well as outer conflicts. But what was so different with them? They accepted. They believed. They sorted out what was right from what was wrong. They denied the lies generated in their mind - however good their mind's intent was in creating these lies - and they accepted the truths. They were masters of the art of mindfulness. They were... aware.

So, even after finishing watching the show - the first episode, at least - I started looking at my own struggles, within and without. I started to become more mindful, but it was just plain rationality, logic, and science, even. It was something spiritual. And I experienced a spirituality which I hadn't felt in a long time. When did I last feel such spirituality? Before I got on meds. And what changed in my life, now? I got off meds. I let my bipolar free. I gave it back its potential. Sure, there may be some permanent changes, or even some rehabilitation needed - what do you think would happen after 5 years of being trapped in a cage? My bipolar was like some fierce, exotic animal trapped in a cage, restrained, for 5 years. Sure, this creature could be vicious and deadly, but it can also be beautiful - one of God's very own creations. You look at a wolf from a distance, and you think how beautiful, sleek, and powerful it looks. But, up close, you fear it. You fear the very presence, whether or not it is malicious.

Man once lived in the wild. We were hunter-gatherers. In terms of biology, history, and cosmology, this wasn't very long ago. But we adapted so quickly, we became such clever, ingenious creatures, that we outran our biology by miles and miles. We are still biologically similar to those hunter gatherers. We are still primal at heart and in our very DNA, but modern society and advances came so quickly and so rapidly that our biology couldn't possibly catch up. Being bipolar is much like being a hunter-gatherer. You can either succumb to nature and die, or you can thrive and survive. With bipolar, you can tame the wild (but at what cost?) or you can learn to live amongst it. While I won't be going out of my house to live in the woods anytime soon, the metaphor still stands. Psychologically, I'm a hunter-gatherer, and my bipolar is my wilderness. I tried to tame it, I tried to cut down the forests and kill all of the animals, but that truly does not work. As modern humans, we're starting to learn this. We're starting to realise the costs of advancing so quickly beyond our biology, our very own nature. So I let the wilderness be. I let it start growing back, start becoming what it once was in all of its glory. I may be frightened by it to some extent, but I'm learning how to survive. I'm learning how to adapt because I'm a human, and humans have the gift of ingenuity.

There are a couple of great blogs that I read (coincidentally right after all of the things I just wrote about) that describe various areas of what I talked about to varying degrees: Finding Value In Depression and Mania, Are You Missing a Piece of Your Happiness?, and Untreated Depression in Pregnant Women

That's in order of what I think is most relevant to least relevant to what I've talked about. They did also influence some of what I said, primarily in a syntactical way. I thought it was so bizarre and amazing that I'd stumble upon those blogs right after all of these revelations and epiphanies I had. If that isn't a sign of something greater, I don't know what is. The stars seemed to have aligned and dropped a little gift right in my lap. As the first blog says, I found 'value in depression' (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, mainly because I'm not currently manic) 'and mania.' I took what I always knew deep inside and fully realised it. I accepted my bipolar, and I found the value behind it. Perhaps I can truly begin to make progress... Perhaps I truly laid down the start of a great foundation to build from.