Going Through my Life

Warning: very disorganized...thoughts that are more like emotions put to paper. Starts off happy and cute, but ends with some stuff that could trigger.

I bought some girl scout cookies today, not necessarily because I like thin mints, but because they were girl scout cookies. I was a girl scout from kindergarten to eighth grade, and until sixth grade, when my MH issues started to develop, it was one of the joys of my life. Every week, I got to spend a few hours just spending time with my friends, learning new things, and dreaming about the future. For a few years, my troop met in my elementary school's library. I used to pretend that it was Hogwart's library, and when the troop leader seemed to be droning on about something, I would glance over at the shelf meant for the teachers and pretend to wonder what advanced spells were described in them. Since both of my parents worked, one of my friend's mom would take me home. More often than not we would end up at my friend's house for a few hours of play. We'd mix weird spices together in water to make "soup", pretend to be olympic athletes, and if we got in a fight I never blamed myself for it, or questioned whether it would kill the friendship. I just took it for granted that I was an okay person, that other people could like me, and that I could enjoy spending time with others.

I spend a lot of time reflecting on my life, but it's usually on everything that has gone wrong...and this focusing on negative situations has gotten so much worse since I was dx-ed, as I've combed my life history for signs of depression, hypomania, and anxiety...just to be overwhelmed by just how much psychopathology I've been living with for so long!

Despite feeling somewhat better in the past few days, the past few hours have been fairly awful. I don't feel that there is any real purpose to my life, and I don't believe that there ever can (emphasis: can, not will!) be. Though I have somewhat more energy, I still haven't recovered the ability to really be interested in most forms of work and play. I remember how excited I got as a child over something like going rollerskating; now excursions of that type are nothing but a chore...and even if I felt like doing anything other than talk, sleep, and surf the internet, I wouldn't have anyone to do it with anyway. I don't even find romance enticing; I like the theory, but it fails in practice because lately I've not been attracted to anyone. Seriously, my last serious crush (serious= not just transference for my ex-therapist) was a year ago. Keep in mind that I'm a 20 yr old woman! And, if we lay crushes aside and focus on love...the only person I've cared for in that way that much married someone else about a half-year ago.

I want to live again. I don't feel alive like I used to. But I don't know how, and I fear that it's not possible because I have things that I can not sort through and am bored by most things that could distract me from them. I want to let go, but I can't because it would kill my family. They love me, and I love them too. Their fault is that they don't understand me or my illness, and that, along with my secretive nature, has built an emotional wall between us.

So I'm not alive and I cannot die...and I hate it!

I've just skimmed over this and realized how disconnected it all seems. Wish my thoughts were more organized. This is how I'm like in therapy, which I suspect is part of the reason why my therapist and I never get anything done...if you've read through this mess, which really belongs more in a personal journal, I suppose, thanks. I feel selfish for posting this, as it uses so many words to say nothing at all, but I feel like no one in my life understands me, except for all of you. And part of me really wants to share this with someone else.

Its ok. We all get this way some times. I had the same problem when trying to explain this all to my parents after my dx. They just told me I was making no sense and talking in circles, so I gave up.

Hey, Secretum, my family & friends have always complained that i was too secretive. It was just me, but I guess they'll never get that.

You sound as if you're really in a place where you want to do therapy work & get some answers. That you haven't recovered the ability to be interested in work & play. It sounds like you've really got stuff you need to deal with, & you need the right therapist the help you thru it. You mention an ex-T, but now?

From what you say, there's no reason you can't sort thru whatever this stuff is that's log jamming you from the rest of your life. can't you get a new therapist? Or one that's a good fit? I just get the sense that you've got major roadblocks, but once you get rid of those you'll have a better view of your path.

This is a good place to be while you sort things out. And if I'm missing something, I'm sorry. Tell me again, okay?

Roadrunner, slowing down in her senior years

Thanks for the responses.

I have found a new therapist (old one was with my university counseling center, and we're only allowed 10 sessions/calendar year), but I haven't been able to meet with her as often as I'd like because she doesn't work whenever her kids don't have school, so that she can spend time with them. She's a very nice lady, but I don't feel like we are getting anywhere. She often interrupts me when I'm talking, and my thoughts are inherently so disorganized...we can't explore any issue because we can't stay on topic. I understand that tangents can be useful in therapy if they are in some way related to the original issue. These tangents are not really all that useful, especially when they distract from important issues.

I've only had 3 sessions with her, and I really like her as a person, so I don't want to end therapy with her. It also is really difficult to find a therapist here when you don't have a car.

I guess my biggest complaint is that I often do not see any way to clear the logs off of my path. I'm not in a forrest; I'm in a maze where all the walls are the same uninspired color, and everywhere I turn is a dead end. There is no way to solve the maze, no end point. I just keep banging against the same walls over and over again, as if I were hoping that someday I'll magically walk through them. There is only one way out of the maze, but neither you nor my parents would approve of it. So I'm trapped here until my time to solve the insolvable maze naturally runs out, which probably will be in about sixty years.

Thanks again for your time. You're not slowing down; my post was hard to read because it was the unedited babble of a distressed mind that probably has ADHD to begin with.

sometimes its good just to write what you think... it helps you to organise your thoughts and process your ideas. don't be so hard on yourself, it sometimes takes a while after a depressive episode to get back to any kind of resemblance of a "life". After my last major depression I was like a zombie for about a year, not depressed but just going through the motions of life. Now things are better, (even though I've hit a rough patch at the moment) and some things are good and enjoyable.
Do you journal or blog? Feel free to keep posting here, but journalling can really help to get thought patterns worked out.
With you T, can you try to think of certain defined problems that you want to address and then come to her and ask to focus on one or more of those each session?
Also, are you in a depression at the moment? Don't forget that the world always looks grey when you are depressed.
I will be praying for some colour and excitement to enter into your maze

Your post doesn't seem confused or disconnected. To me it seems that you are talking about how we seem to withdraw from the world around us.

As for the problem that most of us seem to have with our family and friends. I wish it were different. No one seems to understand how this affects us. And in my opinion, most do not want to.

Don't worry about your post and if it belongs here or in a personal journal. If it makes you feel better to share with others then share.

((( Hugs)))
I think sometimes its just good for everyone to just unload there thoughts .. I believe it uplifts us a little even if we are unable to see it. I think most people with bipolar have trouble putting there thoughts and feelings into a concise easy to read version .. Im glad you posted whats going on ... I think most bipoar people get into more of a mess when we shut down and keep all our feelings good or bad inside and let them stew .

Wishing you Peace and Love ~

Thanks for the encouragement. I agree that it is a good idea to record thoughts and emotions, and I do keep a journal. i just started writing my first post last night...and I couldn't stop. I struggled to decide if I should post or delete, and ultimately chose to post.

I guess I still am depressed. I thought that things were getting better; I felt better mood-wise the past few days. But since last night, I've been about as low as I've ever been.

Thanks again. I really appreciate the hugs and prayers and kind words.

I didnt find your post disorganized or disconnected at all. You were describing my life as well. But I didnt get diagnosed until my 30's and I spent so much time reflcting back unto my childhood looking at all the time lost to this illness. I didnt really get treatment until my late forties after a major nervous breakdown. One of the things that stood out for me was my T kinda stopping once mid sentence and just emphasizing his question, "do you have no joy in your life? Have you ever experienced joy?" and i just cried because i didnt know joy. i didnt know how to find joy or create joy. so i know what you are talking about. i have made that a mission over the last few years to find joy. meds and therapy have vastly improved my life. i got my degree and working in a job that i love and life is so much different that i ever thought it could be. the many many years i tried to fight bipolar without meds and failed, all the time i felt cursed and hopeless and suicidal, i wasted. finally finding the right meds worked and freed me. there is hope for a normal life.

have you read the philosophical threads the byzantine posted? they discuss a lot of the questions you ask, purpose, meaning in life, etc. I find it helpful to review from time to time, even in my dotage.

I used "philosophy" to survive my first encounter with mental illness when I was 12. It can be very comforting to separate yourself and your pain from what really is happening on a grander scale.

But I partially blame that need to understand things bigger than me (purpose, life, time...) as part of the reason why I am so miserable right now. I feel that I've found proof that emptiness/nothingness is at the core of everything. Even things that usually serve as my raft through the choppy waters of my mind-the goodness of God, the superiority of good in the good vs. evil fight, the unity of humanity-seem cruelly unreal.

Thanks still for replying.

So you're sticking with your 12 year old's understanding of philosophy? What are you, French?* i.e., even Antoine de St. Exúpèry's Le Petit Prince admitted he had a thing or two yet to learn. Let alone Sartre, Camus & Proust, who I think worked on it a little longer.

*phrase of the week is apparently so relevant or at least all-purpose, it is being extended for another week by unpopular demand.

Haha; this actually made me smile a bit! Thanks.

I believe that I have progressed a bit. When I was twelve, all that I had discovered was that "time destroys everything through change." and that "all things are connected." Now I've taken two university-level philosophy classes and had time to think things over a bit more. I'll admit that I am partial to using deductive logic as a way to discover truth. I don't trust science (though I am majoring in biology). I also don't believe that we have free will (there are deductive proofs for that). Overall, my mind is just programmed to feel hopeless. My philosophy TA last semester told me that my world view was "depressing".

I suppose that I could try to change the way I think, but it is hard to stuff what feels like a bunch of lies down your own throat. Maybe in time this depression will lift for longer than a few days, and I'll be blissfully ignorant of the emptiness of everything for a while.

Thanks again for your support. It has helped.

This reminded me of when my high school choir director told me, at the time of the Kent State University shooting (Vietnam War era), that I was too young to be so cynical. The next 40 years still weren't so bad! Lots of interesting people and jobs, books up the wazoo. My T likes to quote Sartre, fave is, Hell is other people. Yeah, THAT makes me feel welcome! But other fave quote is about what makes life worth living is finding a project (and doing it). T thinks you should add people to the project. Then doesn't that bring us back to Freud, a healthy person is one who can work and love? And T accuses ME of being a Freudian?! Okay, I gotta go watch The Simpsons now...

Secretum, I didn't find this post too disorganized to read. My posts are pretty much all disorganized and that's ok with me. That is how my brain thinks. No use in me trying to force it to do otherwise.

Alot if times, actually more often than not, when I slowly come out of an episode or phase I feel very numb with no purpose for a long time. I usually have to go through a long process of reinventing myself, and finding new purpose to my life. This ia a really tiring process to me and uncomfotable. It seems with every episode I am left with a very changed person. I'm not saying this is the same as you, just that I kinda understand what you are saying. Right now I am in the process again as nothing intrests me or brings me joy. Nothing I used to enjoy is appealing anymore. I found bikram yoga and right now that's all I've come up with. So I have been doing it as much as I can, hoping that it will create a snowball effect.

With all my above gibberish I am saying, I hear you. Such an uncomfotable place to be. I believe you can get through this maze. You might have to look at new views on life or even just find youself one thing that brings you joy. It's not uncommon to hit walls in mazes but eventually you remember what walls you hit and choose a new route.

I hope that wasn't to hard to make sense of I believe you are a strong person, someone to be admired, I just get that vibe off you. I hope you can find a passage way soon.

Anika, thank you so much for your kind, morale-boosting words. The idea that someone thinks I am strong has really gotten me through both the awful night when I posted this and the next few days. Depression makes us feel so weak, so helpless, and that for me leads to scary thoughts. So really, thank you.

And if anyone is to be admired, I think that it's you. Through your posts I've gotten a sense of who you are and all that you've battled, and you really are an inspiration. And you always start such wonderful, encouraging threads expressing your love for all the people here on the bipolar forum, which we all appreciate!

What a great thread. How can people say PC is not good after reading this? It's so real and honest. You just don't get that in real life. You reminded me of my girl scout days, lol. My memories of it are mostly bad things that were very minor but still stick in my head with crazy glue when i believe most people wouldn't even remember it at all. For example we were at day camp and I was stirring some rice or some food item and a little bit of it came out of the pot and the leader grabbed the spoon off me and wouldn't let me do it anymore. Why did that hurt me so much that just someone bringing up girl scouts brings me right to that instead of thinking about a fun thing that we did or something i learned or whatever....? This illness is so UNFAIR! No one can possibly understand unless they have it! Am I rambling or being totally off topic? Oh wait now I have to apologize if I am because that is what I do apologize for stuff like everything is my fault, lol. anyway, good thread.

Thanks for your thoughts, AlwaysRejoice. Sorry that your experience with girl scouts wasn't as positive as mine. I do remember one time, when I was in 4th grade, we went "camping". For our troop camping meant spending a weekend in a lodge that might as well have been an unstaffed hotel; we weren't very outdoorsy...We did have to make our own food, however. At this point in my life, I was fascinated by cooking, but my mom wouldn't let me near the stove because I was "too young". I really hoped to be assigned to help make lunch or dinner, which entailed actually working in the kitchen. But instead I was assigned to the breakfast shift, and I didn't get to do anything other than stuff some granola bars into paper bags. I was so disappointed, lol. Also on that trip I had a night where I had a headache and the other girls weren't interested in my poems. Funny what constitutes a bad night in then versus now terms...

And then 6th grade came, and depression started creeping up on me. I thought all of the other girls, along with everyone else, hated me for no reason. Memory is interesting. For me at least, unless I am really low, I find it calming to reflectively go through it all, good and bad.

I also sometimes wish that we could be as open in real life as we are here. I think I'd be a lot less lonely.

Yes, this.

Amazing what anonymity does for our willingness to be open, isn't it? And knowing that I won't run into any of you at the grocery store and get all awkwardly embarrassed about the last thing I might have posted here. Not that I would mind running into any of you at the grocery store!

When depression started creeping up on me in the 6th grade (funny, eh?) I didn't think everyone hated me - I just knew that they didn't like me. I didn't wear the right brands or come from the right neighborhood or pretend I didn't know the answers in class. It turns out that carrying around a copy of "War and Peace" in middle school is a really good way to make sure no one likes you. Too bad I didn't realize that in 5th grade, or before I transferred to public schools!

Both oh so true! Though a lack of being open is far from my only reason in not connecting/being lonely, it's undoubtedly one of them. I have walls upon walls, and I have only recently managed to let a few down with my psych. It's timely how you mention the anonymity thing, AniManiac. I said this just yesterday at my appt.! Same with the grocery store, even really wishing that I did know some PCers IRL, but am realistic enough to know that I would just clam up again... Sigh.

Too funny on the big Russian books. It was Nicholas and Alexandra I was reading at that time(!) (It didn't cause any problems per se, they'd always existed, but it probably didn't help, lol.) Oh, middle school. I don't think anyone wishes to experience that again!

Yeah, I'm wanting that IRL interaction enough just now that I think I might go to my campus NAMI open house tomorrow. There's also a DBSA support group in my area, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

My favorite is Anna Karenina - all too apropos...

I suppose that you're right-hated is a tad bit too strong. I suppose I felt more ignored and forgotten than hated. Though to my 6th grade self, any form of rejection = hatred. I learned to anticipate such treatment, and I haven't truly taken off my cloak of invisibility since. By high school I had become a lot more paranoid. I felt like anyone could see all of my faults and shortcomings simply by looking at me. Needless to say, I didn't make too many close friends.

I'm really impressed that you read War and Peace in 5th grade! I've always loved to read, but as a kid I was allergic to classics. I loved virtually everything else, though. In 7th grade, I literally had no friends (yes I was that pathetic). I always had a book with me, and when the other kids chatted before class I felt that it was safe for me to read. (I also had this OCD-like need to not break any rules. I helped a kid in my history class with his homework once, and I had to "confess" that I had to my teacher because I felt so guilty for "helping him cheat". So as much as I wanted to, I couldn't read during class at penalty of being a "bad person".)

I still haven't read War and Peace, but I have really enjoyed Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina.

I completely get you on the "walls upon walls" problem. I wish I could achieve some real emotional intimacy, but the fear is too strong. I really wish that I could meet y'all in real life! It would be amazing to have an organized get-together, but it's pretty infeasible with people living on at least 4 different continents.

Yeah, at that age, being ignored feels like being hated. I went to Catholic school for K-5, and there were a lot of other really smart kids there, so I did OK with that until switching to public schools. At which point, I became a complete outsider instead of just a little off-kilter. I figured out that they didn't really hate me, but they hated how I made them feel. I outclassed them all intellectually (was told in 8th grade that I should have been moved ahead 2 years, but it was against district policy) and they didn't like that I was different.

But I've found that the longer I'm in school (this is year 24! omg, enough already...) the more popular I am, because I'm surrounded by people who are more and more like me. Undergrad was SO much better than high school (except for the part where I started going crazy and mental health professionals totally brushed me off.) Grad school is even better; I've never been as socially acceptable as I am in grad school, because everyone else is a smarty-pants and I don't have to play dumb. No one tells me not to use big words anymore. It is awesome!

Oh, I didn't start in on W&P until 6th grade, and it did take me 2 years to finish it. Learned a lot of European history, and that garlic:vampires::Russian literature:boys (which was probably for the best!) But I have very similar, distinct memories of standing around before class reading while everyone else was being...social...

This is so pathetic/funny, but I had almost no friends in 7th grade. My one friend was a deaf kid, because she was the only one equally desperate for friendship and equally outcast for being different. Sad but true.

Whoa, just realized how long this got. I think the Lamictal is making me a little airheaded today - definitely chattier than usual...

It's ridiculous that they wouldn't let you move ahead two years! Though I suppose that if they had, you would have differed from your peers in both intelligence and age... It's too bad that you couldn't have gone to a magnet school for gifted students. What are you getting your PhD in?

I'm glad that your social life has sorted out over time. I differ from my peers in so many respects that I don't think mine ever will. But I have set a goal to be *less* lonely. Maybe I can at least achieve that. And maybe it will be enough.

Hilarious and sad. But as you said, it's probably for the best. Most boys that age are idiots anyway; they just want sex.

Is this OCD related?? I have this tendency ridiculously much. Have been dx'd OCD, but the dx seemed to be based on other things. Heh, I probably hit the threshold before we even got to this. Though it has come up, I don't remember it being in that context. Still have much to learn about OCD...

Can relate. H.S. was actually pretty good friend-wise (had more than ONE!), but my group was the nerds/APs/valedictorians, so that explains a lot. Was really on track for great things. College was good too. Till it all crashed and burned with my first really bad depression and I had to drop out in 3rd year. I had no idea what was wrong with me. It made no sense. Everything was perfectly fine... grades, friends, no real stress. It was all so easy. Then, boom! Incapacitated. Castigated as a useless ingrate upon going back home, never got back on track. Long story short, oh to be surrounded by smarty-pants! And to not be told not to use big words! (Good grief...you mean bring it down even more?! ) This has been a topic more than one therapist has brought up. It does make it really hard to relate. Good people come in all capacities, of course, but I do feel very isolated and freakish. I'm so glad for you to be in such a fit-in environment!