My bear

[yes_that_tonya]

I know I am still way behind on the 30-day meme, but I'm not here to tackle that right now. Right now I want to talk about my bear. I've made reference to this before, but I'm not sure I've ever spelled it out directly. This post has been cobbled together from a series of text messages I sent to someone special on Friday.

Sometimes I can be... Very emotionally unavailable. To say the least. And it turns toward everyone, regardless of how much I love them. It doesn't last for long, usually. I can bring myself out of it, but it can suck in the meantime. See... I am VERY EXTREMELY empathetic to everyone and everything around me. Sometimes I just have to shut it off and shut down for a while. I normally ooze emotion because I feed on the atmosphere around me. It's like air to me. I am probably also bipolar or something along those lines. I should probably be on medication but I can't handle the numbness, it makes me a total zombie. The last time I was on anti-depressants, I didn't feel anything at all. I couldn't even make myself get out of bed. I didn't care about anything. So I self-manage (not to be confused with self-medicate, which I don't do). I know the things that trigger a bad state and I can avoid them or at least be aware so I can prepare an/or prevent. Have you ever seen or read Misery by Stephen King? It doesn't matter if you haven't, I have an anecdotal reference. There is a scene where the antagonist, Annie Wilkes, tells the protagonist, Paul Sheldon, that it was one of her "low" days and it's better for him if she just stays away until she is better. I'm not usually so bad, but sometimes it can get a bit dark and I just have to stay in it a for a little while instead of fighting it. The result is that it stays away just a little bit longer.

There's another SK story that's (probably unknowingly) the best analogy for it that I've ever seen and I recognized it as soon as I read it: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. [SPOILER ALERT if you haven't read the book!!!] It's about a 9-year-old girl named Trisha who's on a hike in the woods with her mom and little brother in the woods of Maine. She steps off the path to go pee and instead of going back out the way she went in, she wants to try to head them off at the pass and gets lost as a result. She's lost for like 15-22 days or something, I can't remember. The whole time she's in the woods, she is being stalked by this bear that she thinks is a monster. Sometimes the bear is practically right at her heels, breathing down her neck. Sometimes it's so quiet and far away that she almost forgets about it. But it's always there. Sometimes she taunts it and calls it and tries to bring it out in the open. My depression/issues/whatever is just like that. Just prior to her rescue at the end, she is confronted by the bear and is forced to realize it's not a monster after all. Recognizing something and naming it does a lot to remove the fear.

My bear doesn't bother me a whole lot these days. I guess he's found other pursuits. I felt his presence on Friday, though, which is what prompted me to share this with my doll. I guess the events of Saturday afternoon made him lunge for me. I didn't run this time, just looked him in the face for all that he is. it's not so scary for me anymore. I don't usually feel like I'm going to be swallowed whole or ripped to shreds. I feel strong and he's just not as strong as me right now, so I always win the stand-offs. That's why he doesn't come around much anymore. But I know... the very minute I am weak... he will be back with a vengeance.

Comments

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

i wish i could relate a little better. i am bipolar, but i've only ever had one episode of depression and the rest is mania or hypomania, which is pretty much my baseline at this point. my old shrink dr. t was amazing and he and i had discussed how we had hoped the dsm-v would include a criteria for unipolar mania, since they obviously have a listing for strict depression. but nay, no such luck no matter how often i check on their progress.

i try to medicate though. i can't stand the "zombie" meds, so i refuse to take any of them, and many of them don't work on me anyway. but there are a lot out there, if you ever wish to look into it further, that don't have that effect on people. usually they're in the anti-convulsant class and were initially prescribed for epilepsy. funny how we still have no idea how the brain really works.

i don't retract though, if that makes sense. i like to confront my shit head-on. as i explained to a good friend last night, who battles with severe depression, i often envision myself as a sort of atlas figure, only that rather than holding the weight of the world on my shoulders, i am juggling all of these extremely heavy balls, and each one of these balls is a feeling or a situation or a memory or something that is causing me pain. and every time i share openly with people, more and more people, about one of these problems held in one of these balls, it's like the ball slowly becomes lighter until it is nothing but a phantom or a ghost. i mean, it never fully goes away, but the weight of it is lifted and i can stand up straighter and have fewer balls to juggle. i spread it around. it doesn't even matter so much how i do it, or with whom, but the more i do it, speak about it, write about, give it to new people, they get little bits of it and slowly i have fewer balls to juggle and less weighing me down.

and then all i have are the ghosts that haunt me, and the new issues that continually pop up.

i don't know if that helps at all, but it works for me, and so i thought i might share, just in case.

[yes-that-tonya.livejournal.com]

I whole-heartedly agree about making things ghosts. Your juggling metaphor makes total sense. What so many people just don't realize is that these things only have the power that we give them. By talking about it, rather than trying to hide from it, we're empowering ourselves and disempowering the pain.

Like I said, the bear hasn't been dogging me a great deal for a while now. Not like he used to. He used to be my constant companion, but now I can't even really count him a monthly visitor. Maybe seasonal, at best. And since I've cut off a lot of negative influences, I hardly hear from him at all. I can't say I miss him a bit.

At the same time, though, I've been on an incline lately, as far as mood and temperament have been concerned. Whereas I can let myself sink into the depression and wallow without getting stuck or drowning so much, I know I can't let myself just run with the mania that pulls at me sometimes. I have far less control over that. I can easily get carried away and wound up. But if I let it go too far, I know there will be a nasty crash to follow. It's the reason I've mostly stopped having and going to parties. The high energy just shoots me up so high I feel like I'm vibrating.

So I work hard on trying to maintain an even keel and not letting myself get over-stimulated. I've only really started to recognize these things for what they are in the past year at the most. I used to just run myself ragged, living in the midst of this whirlwind I created for myself. Always going going going with people running in and out of my life. It was exhausting. Now that I've calmed all that shit down, I feel better than I have my whole damn life. :)

I do miss it sometimes, though, so I'll have like mini-manic periods but I'm pretty good about knowing when to shut it down before I get too wrapped up in it again. Then I have to follow those with almost completely inert weekends. I guess it's just all about balance.

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

it IS about balance.

what always baffled me was how i found out that so many bipolar people would refuse to undergo treatment or take medication when in their manic stage. meanwhile, for me, i can feel it coming, as i'm sure you know when you have a bought coming too, and i'm just like oh hell no, this shit needs to be nipped in the bud NOW before it gets worse.

because once it gets worse you can't control your own brain. you're right, it's like you're vibrating. you speak like the micromachines guy from those 80s commercials. you can't even finish your own sentences. you can't sleep. and sure, you may be awesome and fun and a ton of other shit, but to not have control? it's not worth it for me.

when my mood stabilizers stopped working and i hadn't slept for 10 days dr. t "prescribed" pot. not daily doses or anything stupid, but then again i'm a smart cookie and i know a lot about psychiatry and pharmaceuticals to begin with. so i'd take two hits off a bowl of the good shit before bed 3x a week. lo and behold, it worked like a charm until we could find something else that was legally acceptable in the state of ny back when i still lived there.

don't know if it's an option for you, but hey, you never know. like, i'm not saying "yo go self-medicate and become a pot-head!" because as you can see, my regimen was really restricted and i governed it myself because i know what i'm doing. it's just another suggestion though.

[yes-that-tonya.livejournal.com]

Hehe, I should really clarify my statement about not self-medicating. I do get high from time to time, when necessary. :) I have a friend who is HIV+ and is prescribed marinol (THC pills) for nausea and to increase his appetite. However, he doesn't take them, he just smokes pot instead. And gives the marinol to friends like me. :D Just one of those is better than any other kind of mood-influencer or anti-anxiety that I know of. I don't like to smoke pot since I quit smoking cigarettes, not least of all because I'm more sensitive to smoke and now my asthma and allergies are finally not much more than occasional annoyances instead of constant issues. Plus the marinol is just so... mellow. It chills me out without making me feel stoned. Unless I take more and want to be stoned.

In fact, on Saturday when I couldn't get my emotions under control I employed 3 of my top cures: first dark choclate, then a marinol, and finally a glass of wine. By the time everyone had arrived at my house, I was right as rain. I just try to refrain from taking anything until there is no other option. I have always been terrified of being addicted to or dependent upon anything (or anyone, really).

Until a few years ago, I would self-medicate every few months by taking Ecstasty. I used to call it a "brain dump" because that's exactly what it was like. Stuff would build up and my brain would just start to feel all cluttered and overloaded. So i'd have a party and roll my ass off. Then I'd be good for a while. If X wasn't so hit or miss, I could very easily be addicted to that stuff. But it was always like chasing a unicorn. There would be one REALLY GOOOOOOD time, and every time after that would be just trying to catch and replicate that one time. I just got tired of the misses. And it was always such a hassle anyway.

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

i hear ya on the E. i've never had a bad experience though. then again, i have really high serotonin levels to begin with. but if you think about it... if it didn't cause all that damage to your spinal cord, wouldn't it, in moderation and if regulated properly so you got the pure stuff, be the perfect "cure" for depression?

only then you'd have to make sure you experienced the downsides of life too. it's the opposite of the zombie effect, in a way.

[yes-that-tonya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think I could handle being on it all the time. I do believe there is legitimate medical use for it, though. I've always felt that if more people took it, there would be less war, for sure. Nobody wants to fight while rolling. :)

I used to disbelieve that there was any lasting damage for taking it, but I have a lot more mental fog now than I used to. And aphasia, omfg. In the Stphen King novel (yes, I do get a LOT out of his books, hehe) The Dead Zone, after Johnny Smith wakes from his coma he has "dead zones" (hence the title) where he knew connections used to exist, but now they're gone. I run across things I used to know all the time, but it like I run into a "road closed" sign. I can almost see what I'm trying to reach, but it's just beyond my field of vision. It's terrible. My bff and I joke about it, referencing an early episode of Weeds where the oldest son is brought home by a cop while he is on X. The cop says that using X is like taking "ice cream scoops" out of your brain. So she and I talk about about my missing ice cream scoops. It's what I say anytime I do something stupid or can't remember something or can't figure out a simple task or problem. Very frustrating. And if that's not the problem, I don't know what is.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rabidwombat_/]

It hasn't really been long enough yet since our society began using recreational doses of E to have solid data on all the longterm effects, but it will be interesting to see how that plays out (and certainly far too late for any of us to backtrack). :p

Also... for me, and for most other people who ever used E recreationally for any length of time, the vast majority also used other substances along with/instead of during the same time period. Pot, acid, roofies, ketamine, opium, barbituates, cocaine, etc. Any one of those things could snatch up an ice cream scoop or three!

Regardless, I've been a long-term proponent of spiking our water system with some low-dose valium or ecstasy. I'm all for it. Not enough to trance anyone out, just enough to bring us back to earth.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rabidwombat_/]

LOVE the juggling metaphor. It is fabulously apt.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rabidwombat_/]

Tonya it reads to me as if you have made HUGE strides toward dealing with this, and writing here about it is another step toward keeping your grip. We've long held the same philosophy about journaling and here's another solid example.

On a totally separate but sort of related note, do you use Twitter ever at all? I have an account and am a huge lurker when I have time (stuck waiting in line at the grocery, etc.) but I rarely tweet. I do read the tweets, however, of an eclectic group of people, many of whom include a few celebrity types (neil gaiman, amanda palmer, grace potter, poppy z. brite, joe hill). All of those people manage their own twitter accounts and tweet from them just the way the rest of my friends do and I really like peeking in on them. I think you would enjoy Joe Hill's feed a lot.

That said, I only peek in there maybe twice a week and I simply grab what I grab during my window of opportunity, so I miss a lot. I just don't have time to do LJ, FB, Twitter, everything else I want to do on the web, etc., but since I mostly lurk anyway it's not like anyone misses me.

http://twitter.com/joe_hill

[yes-that-tonya.livejournal.com]

I was just looking at my LJ messages and saw I never responded to this one. Nope, I don't do Twitter at all. It's my last holdout and I mean to maintain it! :P