I know that the fall is a bad time. I know that I’ve had enough change in my life in the last couple months to send any bipolar into some pretty intense mood swings. I’ve been trying to ride them. I’m clinging to some stuff to make sure I try the best I can take care of myself. But today I have lost my port. I feel like I’m in a boat that is drifting away from the shore. I can see it. If I had the oars I could row myself back in. But the boat is slowly moving away and I don’t have any means to get back.
So I sit here in a boat cut off from everything and everyone. I can sit here forever. And I find myself fascinated by the tiny place in the bottom of the boat that is thin and warn. Just a small strip of wood to peal away. I pull at it. Slivers come into my fingers, blood drips down them. Does the blood mean I’m alive or dying? I pull again, I no longer feel my fingers, and now water has started to slowly seep into the boat. It might take a very long time for it to actually fill the boat swamping me with no choice but to let go. Or I can continue to pull up slivers. The blood no longer means anything. Even that doesn’t feel a part of me. It is just something warming my hands a bit from the chill of the icy water. Or I could just slip out of the boat into the black. I can’t see what is under the surface but it is there, surrounding me. It calls me like a siren, the sweet song constantly singing in the back of my mind of peace and final rest. That would be a quick way instead of the slow painful way that I continue to pull up the wood.
I put my hand into the black water and the heat leaves my body through my hand, and in its place there is a nothingness. As I see my blood swirl with the current I can feel the calm and the peace of the depths of frigid water. This is a place I know at least a little. I have visited it briefly. Times when I needed to not be here during my childhood. Other times for brief moments of extreme feeling. In that place there is no constant list of to-dos, no needing to balance on the head of a pin, no bad parenting, no being a bad friend, lover, person. It is quiet and I would no longer feel. I could stop trying. I could stop struggling. I could stop. Stop. Stop. Just one short quick decision to roll out of the boat and let myself fall into the void.
Last night I had a conversation with R about our “houses”. It is an analogy for being able to go into our safe place into our minds and shield ourselves from the world around us, or people who put out to much to take.
I have never used shields and therefore have no house. Not having shields is a conscious choice. It has to do with the first post today - the healer, the empath in me doesn’t want the shields up so that I can help if needed. And sometimes, that empathy leads me back to myself. So I have never had a “house”. I have a room. It exists in my mind. It is a beautiful room. It too is a siren. It is not the deep cold of icy water, and I would not sleep. It is painted in deep rich colors, warm and inviting. There is a fireplace and there are floor to ceiling windows, 2 of them. They have sheer curtains that blow in from the breeze coming off the ocean that is just beyond the beach outside. Through them I can step out onto the deck and smell the ocean, feel the salt breeze against my cheek, and get lost in the sound of the constant and steady heartbeat of the waves against the shore. The one piece of furniture is the chair my mother had when I was small that I sat in with her. We crowded into it together to watch tv. It is a safe chair; a safe room. There are books everywhere. Floor to ceiling on every wall. Some of them I will not open because they show me things I do not want to see. Some of them I’ve read before. Some of them are simply books to occupy my time. And some of them are dusty and have been given to me by my ancestors. The room has all I need. But there are no doors. There is no way off the porch. It is a one way room. Once in there is no way back out. It too is just as attractive as the water. The only difference is in the water I would not be aware. There would no longer be a me. Just the floating and the ice wrap of current flowing around me and through me. No more thought, no more feeling.
Both of these places have always existed. They are safe places my mind can go if I just can’t survive outside any more. There have been times I have been very close to walking into that room. It too, like the icy water dragging under my hand pulls at me. And there was a time I walked to the boat, and put my feet in. Someone stood on the shore and threw a rope that caught it and pulled me back in. I’m not sure I’m always grateful.
As I feel these feelings, of all that has happened in the last week, I realize that in my efforts to take care of myself, pull myself in, feel my despair, and deal, I will likely push away the people who have the most chance of helping me. Why not? What can I possibly offer them? Besides I don’t want to put them through this drama anymore. Hell, I don’t want it anymore. I’ve spent time this last few days wondering about the course of my life. How things are circular for me. Wondering if I’d destined to be like this the rest of my life. My mind shys away from that thought because it is something overwhelming and something I just can’t look at if I want to stay here. I know that I can pull away and they won’t notice. All of my friends would believe the lie that I am just busy, I’m just studying, that I need to do stuff around the house, with family. There are so many excuses that are so real, and I can be such a good liar. I imprison the person in side me, become ice and stop myself from living. But it beats this pain.
But will I always attach myself to people, then disappoint them, frustrate them, drive them off? Will I always turn around and end up alone? Am I incapable of seeing that I do have people around me? Why when I need people I love the most do I want to just push everyone away and crawl into my deep bed of ice and wrap it around me and not fucking feel any more. Or worse, walk into that room with no doors and not come back.
A friend of mine who has just been diagnosed bipolar in conversations with me over the last week repeatedly asked “why can’t life be fair on MY side just this once?”. I don’t know. I know I echo that. There are certainly times when I have seen the good, seen the beauty, been happy to just take breath and exist next to my children. When walking into a physics class or a dungeon was enough to feel sunshine melt my ice.
But when I feel like this those memories mean nothing. Instead I start to think about how I’ve spent my life alone. That people who would have loved me, my family, are all gone. Talk about wanting life to be fair. Why - why does that thing that everyone around me takes for granted, why is everyone allowed to have someone that they can complain about, bitch about, but who has something in common with them that I no longer have on this earth? No one shares my blood but my children. No one has memories with me. No one walks this earth along with me that I can share with. What did I do to piss God off? Why am I destined to be so alone? And scarier still, what is wrong with me that I seem to be able to push everyone away so that I continue to be alone? What is so crazy about me, or is so wrong with me that I seem to drive everyone screaming from me? Or maybe not screaming. Many have just blended into the woodwork never to return. The result is the same, I’ve managed to push anyone out who might have loved me.
I came to the realization today, that regardless of what I try to build around me, that ultimately I am alone. That at the end of the day I have only myself. That regardless of what I’ve tried, how I’ve worked to make myself well it just doesn’t matter. And even if my brain is telling me that that isn’t completely true and I know there are friends who care about me that ultimately if I were gone tomorrow they would mourn for a bit, but their lives would go on. Of course that isn’t true about my children. And for their sakes I would not do that to them. But it is hard to put one foot in front of the other simply because I must exist in this world for their sake.
Part of me, the one that wants to put up the good front, the lie, says toughen up. This is stupid. You have everything going for you now. Just walk away from it. Better yet, let’s just amputate that part - let’s get rid of it permanently. Never to feel again. Never to feel this pain. Is it worth the joy to feel the pain? Right now might not be the best time to have a rational answer to that question. But truly it isn’t even a rational question. I’ve pulled in on myself, I’m retreating from the world. Even if I amputate the entire part of myself that feels joy and pain, will I not still be alone… ah but then I won’t care. Last night another friend talked about the suicide test he uses. He puts a gun that only he knows is unloaded in someone’s hand. If they pull the trigger, then they go to the hospital, if they don’t they go to a bar to talk. If I had no children I would gladly pull the trigger.
What has brought all of this up? I don’t know. Facing death last night? Being frightened again of caring about people? All of it? None of it. Hell, maybe it is just that the leaves are turning. But it is too bright, I’m too scared and all I know is I need people, but I can’t reach for them. And so likely instead I will retreat, again to be alone, and this time I don’t think I will try to come back. This is just too fucking painful.
