I intended — and would still like for — Delicate/Demanding to be a place where I talk about mental health issues in general and bipolar disorder in particular. I envisioned more frequent posting, however, and thought that I could clearly delineate between me (shoesonwrong.tumblr.com) and what my mental illness is doing to me (delicatedemanding.tumblr.com). I’m finding it not to be that simple. I can’t always tell where the “real” me trails off and the “bipolar” me picks up. I don’t know that there’s a clear dividing line. As Marya Hornbacher says (in one of my favorite memoirs about being bipolar):
I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing.
I’ve grown into it, and it’s grown into me. I don’t think that’s how it will be forever — and maybe I’m wrong — but that’s how it is right now. When I first learned I was bipolar, I was angry and sad and scared, but mostly I was determined that I was going to get better. I had A Plan. I was going to follow prescribed medicine and exercise and diet regimens, go to therapy, and be just fine. The days of deepest, darkest depressions were gone and I would never have one of those pesky (terrified me straight to my core because I thought I would have to be hospitalized) mixed episodes again.
I am not fine. I take my medications regularly, I exercise as much as I’m supposed to (though if the Good Lord had intended us to use the stair machine he would not have invented the elevator machine, now would he) and don’t drink alcohol. I attend therapy. And I am not just fine.
I’m not trying to say that all these things have been useless. I walk this tightrope of dosages and stair climbing and talk therapy (all the while always, forever, painfully sober), and if I stray from it even a little, I start to fall. The Plan does help; it keeps me always bending, never breaking. The Plan has not made the illness go away, however. And that was what I expected from it — that I could do everything right and everything would turn out right.
I know, I know. If wishes were horses. Something about a beggar riding it to McDonalds in the eighties and making it into a hamburger.
My point is, when I started this thing, I had very different expectations for how things would go. I could blog about Crazy Annie here and Regular Annie here. But they’re mixing, fighting each other, and I cannot objectively tell where one starts and the other one stops — if that’s even possible. More days than not, I suspect that Crazy Annie has won and eaten Regular Annie to gain power from her corpse.
