Stationary

Swing swing swing....I am actually not swinging anywhere. I am sitting on my parents' futon, staring at this computer screen trying to make some wonderful words pop from my brain. I have none! What I could say is that I am happy that life is smoothing out (knock on wood) and that my heart is not in my throat because of a guy I am in love with. I am excited that I have some place to lay my thoughts before I head to bed so I won't be up all night wondering if I should get up and write on my blog spot or not. I love each person who reads this blog and hope that in some small way, it will impact their lives so they will come to a better understanding of me and of who I am as a person who suffers with an illness such as Bi-Polar Disorder.
I am already getting myself ready for my plane ride back to Oregon. I am praying that the knock-the-wind-out-of-my-guts feeling will stop if I can just trust in God enough. I HATE TO FLY....and yet I dream of traveling the earth. So I will sit and pop my sleepy pills and be happy....oh if only it was so easy. I just read Psalm 91 over and over and over and ask to hold the hand of the person next to me, male or female. I can't wait until I am married and that poor soul beside me getting the bones in their hand displaced is my loving husband of ump-teen years. Oh marriage...why do you avoid me?

It is Finished!

The tiles were the same color as when I was walked through the doors a year ago Good Friday. The smell was the same as a year ago. Mike the nurse was beside me as I was walked through the doors the the same ER I was walked through a year ago. I felt the emotions, I saw the faces of the nurses, the scrubs, the glass doors and the curtains. "You would have been back there," he said kindly, "Do you want to walk around the corner to get a better look?" We walked around the corner and I spotted a nurse that had been my nurse when I was there. I waved...she looked annoyed. I laughed at myself....here we are in the ER, one of the craziest places on earth and I am waving like an idiot to a busy ER nurse who was a hardass on me. I looked down the way and saw the rooms I had been in...the Psyche rooms for the "crazy people" the mentally ill people, the terrified people. No panic swept over me, no worry or fear that I was back there. I was in my street clothes, not green scrubs. I was normal not crazy and yet I am mentally ill. I suffer from Bi Polar disorder and here I was feeling like I was getting away with something. I turned to Mike and said, "I just want to say thank you. Please pass that on. When we are sick and brought in here we are mean and say bad things because we are scared. We are not in our right mind and you guys do your best to care for us. I am so sorry but I want to say we don't mean it." He looked down at me with kind blue eyes and said, "We know that. We know you are not able to be who you really are. That is why we are hear to take care of you. We realize it is not you."
Moments before Dad and I had walked up to the 5th floor...the Behavioral Unit they call it...hahaha...not the loony bin, or the crazy house, or the psyche ward, the Behavioral unit. So PC. I looked in the clouded window and saw the shaped of people walking the halls like I did, the TV room and the front desk. I saw down the hall to my room and dad and I sat in the waiting room and just prayed. Thanked God for me being healed, for our family becoming hole because I was broken, for how strong we were now, and for the nurses and the patients, that they would be made whole like I was. It was amazing to stand on the outside of a lock down facility, where I was kept for 9 days as I was put back on medication and watched carefully. Where I was fed and brought back from terrible anorexia and paranoia. Where I was locked in, just wanting to get out, talking to other patients, learning how to play the sane game and get out sooner. All of it flashed back, but mostly in the ER with the smells. When I was down in the ER bathroom the smell of the Ward just washed over me and I was paralyzed in the bathroom. I just closed my eyes and memories flooded back, my next door roommate, the woman in the "quiet room", the food and the classes, the constant supervision and sleeping with the night light on even as a nurse checked on me every 45 min.
What a Good Friday. I can now say, it is finished! Amen!

Life, Love and Laughter

Spring is here in Oregon, along with rain and clouds. They say we are in a deficit for rain but I am already wishing for a break and for some sunshine. Today I woke up early to eat breakfast with my father who has come out to Oregon to be with me and do some counseling at a camp this weekend. It was so good to wake up and see him standing over me as he woke me up. It is even more amazing to hear him tell me how proud he is of me, of how far I have come, how much thinner I am getting, and that he loves me. I have been working so hard to get out of depression, I am getting to the gym every other day, I am seeing a trainer, I am getting my eating under control and eating healthier, I am pushing myself to get out of bed at 9am and go to bed at 9pm, I am pushing myself to hang out with friends who call me even when I want to stay in by the fire and hibernate. I have been pushing for about 3 weeks and then Pop died and all of a sudden I was not pushing anymore. My body was being propelled into life without much effort. I can get up, I can make it to the gym, I can hang out with friends, it is like all the work I put in before Pop's death is paying off now. And now Dad is here and sees all the pay off and is so proud of me. My counselor and my Nurse Practitioner are all excited I have not gone off my meds or even attempted to since being out of the hospital. Good Friday (next weekend) will be one year since I was put in the hospital. Dad and I are going out to dinner to celebrate my "birthday" of being healed and well into recovery. I am leaving this morning to go up to Washington State to go camping with my girlfriend in the Olympic Mountains. We are headed for hot springs but it is chilly and I am not sure we will be hard core and sleep out in the snow. We might, we might not. This trip is the first big trip I have planned and done on my own since the episode, besides going back to NY. This time I had to get all my clothes packed and in the car, I had to find my sleeping bag and get everything organized. It was almost stressful...it still is. But I will be ok. I just am a tad bit of a homebody now adays. The adventurer is on vacation in my soul at the moment. But, my how far I have come...and how far those reading this will come if they keep on keeping on. It is not the end of the rope having or living with someone who has bipolar....it is a terrifying adventure that can be worth every moment if you change your perspective. I have been so close to dying, I have scared my family and friends, I have whole parts of my family who do not talk to me anymore because of past actions when I was manic, but I am who I am and I know that the person I am is coming back to life, at last!