I will often irritate the crap out of someone by asking them why rather than accepting a circumstance as is. (Just remember when you get frustrated with me over it that I do it to myself too.) I don't just want to know that I made a mistake. I want to know why it was a mistake so that I can understand better how to do something (hopefully) right the next time. It also helps me avoid assigning motive to a person's actions. If I ask a friend why they've done something, it gives me a clearer understanding of that person and how to relate to them in the future.
Now, when we were pregnant with Caedyn, we did what most parents do - read all manner of articles, books, whatever we could get our hands on related to caring for a baby. We knew we were ill-equipped, and I was certain that I'd never be one of those women to whom being a mother came as any kind of instinct. I remember reading about helping a baby learn to self-comfort in order to get to sleep when they're ready to sleep through the night by letting them cry when you first put them down.
Self-comfort seems a foriegn concept to me in certain times of my life and as easy as breathing in others. It's a matter of the bipolar cycle, I suppose, as I find that the times in my life where it's most difficult is when I'm sitting in the depth of yet another sleep-deprived depression. Even when I tell myself "This thing right here is what I need to do", there is already no hope that it will work, so there isn't any motivation to try it. I find that I spend a great deal of time telling myself the things I can't do while I feel this way. No important decisions. No self-punishment. No negative reactions. My mind turns in on itself, and I'm trapped in arguments I had years ago or shame spirals that seem to just...push me down harder and further with every twist. It can be vicious.
I've recently been reminded of an occassionally admitted fear that I am some kind of black hole of need - never quite capable of meeting my own needs and therefore left to depend on others for the fulfillment of those needs. The fear itself is rooted in some deeper issues, of course, and related to several of the lowest moments in my life where emotional pain and the darkness of what I now understand is depression have dominated my perception of my life and the world around me.
In the last 3 years, I've made a lot of friends over the internet. This is actually a hell of a statement, because I just didn't ever do that. In high school, I had 2 friends until boarding school where I learned that no one is truly your friend so much as seeking enough information from your counsel to offer up in exchange for favor when they were in trouble. After high school, I learned from the man I lived with and the friends I thought I'd made that no one gives you anything they don't have to and only do what is needed to get what they want from you. I'm not bitching here. I'm trying to relate the -why- of isolating myself. Every betrayal is painful for people. For me, it was often another reason to die.
Mike was one of those two friends from high school, and he was the person who saved the human race for me. He taught me that friends don't just stand by you when things are good, but they're there when life turns to shit on a dime. Friends don't drop you when you screw up. They work through things. They help, and it makes you want to help them through their screw-ups. Friends aren't about perfection of compatibility, but about loving you in your imperfection.
The group of rp'ers that we formed on Yahoo consisted of some very good people and some who weren't so good. None of them were perfect, of course, but I came to like them for their idiosyncracies and oddities as well as their creativity and personalities. Much like those thought-patterns in my own mind, however, I watched them turn on each other and eventually destroy the community that they themselves had built. They created a clique of 'desirables' who found others less worthy of friendship and understanding, then beat those others down until they left.
I watched a support group for bipolar disorder do the same.
I accepted that a tiny circle of friends was probably better, safer, because all of it was so painful. I cared about the people under attack. I cared about the attackers. I just...cared.
But then, I took a chance and opened myself up again. Made friends. Found people that, even now, I respect or admire for their gifts and hoped to understand them for their flaws. They were the people I'd lost in the first two groups in a way. They were bright, fun, creative, beautiful people.
Sad part is that I still kinda believe that to be the way things should be, even though I've been shown over and over that it really isn't.
In this latest depression, I've come to understand that I keep reaching out to family, support people, friends, and supposed friends for that comfort I can't give to myself. The more I focus on them and what they're doing/saying/etc, the less I have to listen to those destructive thought patterns in my mind. I come to rely on their view of me rather than on my own, because my own have become so full of self-loathing.
I can tell you that I've learned to love who I am and just be comfortable in my own skin with the exception of those times, but it doesn't seem to matter really. It's that time during which I need it the most that I can't seem to find it within myself.
One of the things that I've learned in the last few years is to articulate as soon as possible what it is that I need rather than wait for people to guess. This is a continual work in progress, and I am always asking myself the why of things. The answers aren't always forthcoming, but I keep trying. If I need to be held, I tell Mike I need to be held. If I need to cry, then I cry. If I just need to know someone else is in the room, then I find a room with someone in it. If I need to talk...
Well, there's the rub. I trust the wrong people and talk myself into a world of trouble, because everyone abuses that trust, twists what's said, and uses it for their own benefit. No one listens without judgement, and everyone is willing to do you harm in the end if it suits their own purpose. And they're perfectly justified in doing so, because from their point of view, they're right and their opinion is the only one that matters.
So, yeah, I guess I am the black hole of need that I feared I was, but I guess I will learn to live with that. I don't want to apologize for who I am anymore. I have no problem owning what I do, apologizing for it, and moving on, but I keep finding myself apologizing for everything under the sun short of breathing.
My disorder isn't an excuse - for me or for you. It's part of who I am. When I've been manic, I've been wild and wildly stupid. When I'm hypomanic, I'm witty and creative and exuberant. I'm downright expansive in thought and enthusiasm for everything that makes me feel more alive, because I am alive. When I'm stable, I'm level-headed and practical. I want to be a better person than the one that I am, and I want to strive to keep myself healthy so that I can be part of the lives of the people I love and care about. I want to help them, support them, give back to them. And when I'm depressed, I just want to survive it. Mike observed once that when I fight the darkness of depression, it swallows me whole until I begin to drown, but when I stop fighting the overwhelming tide of it, I float. I survive.
And if friends are simply meant for fair weather, then don't knock on my door when it rains, and I won't knock on yours.
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