Feeling Fear, Doing it Anyway
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Some things go together. I can see how me feeling better about me makes me more able to take a risk and share personal information in a relationship. When you have bipolar disorder and have gone several bouts in the ring with it, you have some history that may be difficult to explain. I’m in the process of knowing you and letting you know me, so when do I risk sharing the not so shiny pearls in my past? It is risky because several times I’ve seen people turn and walk away from a friendship with me, no longer call on the phone, drop out of sight.
I had some lofty dreams of a future time when I had wrestled with bipolar disorder and came out a winner even though bruised here and there. When I came back from the wars with it I saw myself only then becoming a super therapist. I had been there and done that and understood it from the inside – I would be the real deal, the super therapist. In the final scene of this dream I would lock arm in arm with other bipolar recoverers and together and together we would make My dreams were lofty and of a time when I had effectively wrestled bipolar disorder to the mat with success! Then I would come back from the bipolar battlefront with ribbons and maybe a purple heart. And then I would become a great counselor and better work with others in their recovery. Been there done that people are more effective, aren’t they?
Yes, but what if I’m a better cook than a therapist? Look what I cooked up with a recipe for diseaster. The ingredients were perfect for a nervous breakdown supreme. When you mix and stirred together (1) wrong medications (2) stress triggers (3) alcohol (4) and a tendency to tell psychiatrist and therapists to go to hell, the result was – well, what it was.
When you come to my pity party contest, the deck is loaded because I’m going to win first prize with my story. What a journey. I had gone from an intern therapist who was in training to counsel; I was in a healthy relationship with a future; I had bunches of inherited money in the bank, student loans paid and I had the world by a string and felt like I was sitting by a rainbow. What happened? The bipolar monster crashed my party and chewed me up and spit me out. The pitiful part is that I became homeless, without a partner, hungry, broke, and at times sleeping under cardboard when it rained. Some say in order to find yourself you had to bottom out. I did.
I had to start from where I found myself. How could I think of having a romantic relationship until I could afford a mirror to see myself in. I do believe in this, how can I love you when I am not good at loving me? And a relationship, ones that work, seem based on I’m okay and you’re okay. The type where one person rescues the other just don’t seem to do well.
Now that I’m over a year away from my major meltdown, a relationship is more likely but I see that as some time off. I still have work to do on me. If I take a moment to look at my positive qualities, I’m not bad looking, I’m not stupid, I’m not insensitive and I’m not a bad listener. Yes, I’m positive I have some history of which I am anything but proud. What I am doing is working on making better history in the present that offsets some of the other. I realize that when I find someone who cares and I care about, there will come a time when I will let myself trust them and share some of the rest of the story, just enough. If I don’t learn to trust and take risks, being alone doesn’t sound so good. I prefer another outcome.
I’m sure there will be instances where I get rejected, and though they’ve happened before, they are still painful. I wrote this piece when a person asked me after her own rejection, “How much do you tell them or even bother?” It is risky and can be painful, so maybe the answer for me is to feel the fear and do it anyway.
