Perfect

Within the confinements of the glass

It is I who is resting last

The pressure building from within

I wonder when I shall see me again

Glimpses of what is underneath

A mask shields me

Truth betold I am lost

A label beseeches the person

Who am I to say this is wrong

An outsider no longer gone

Visions may lead the way

Heart and head astray

1/11/2011

Barely a month ago. My mind in a total different place then it is now. The screaming inside my muddle mess has at least stopped echoing. Now it is just a whisper of a conversation. 

The thoughts are still chaotic, random, never ending cycle. At least it is slower at times compared to before. 

Staring at pictures of myself a month ago, two months ago, I have been able to find my lack of hair attractive and suiting of me. Even now the face staring back is emerging to be someone other than a stranger.

My baby sister has shared a video with me that I feel fits my muddle mess almost perfectly. I am in awe of her understanding of me. The way she has been able to break through a barrier that few are allowed to go past. 

Watching this video has brought me back to my thoughts and writings from highschool. The anxiety I had walking into a room of my peers. The continual thoughts that people pitied me. Felt sorry for me, misunderstood, and disliked me. Not fitting in.

To this day I sometimes struggle with that. Trying to find a place of safety, a place to belong. Very few who are close to me are allowed past the gates of my inner thoughts. Fear of rejection is high, self esteem low. 

This is soemthing that is being worked through and worked on. Exploring the identity of me. Trying to change the way I view myself. Change the voices in my head.

I just want to say to my baby sister, thank you and I love you. Maybe I can start hearing the other voices around me that have repeated or tried to tell me the same thing you have. That you love me for me. I am perfect to you just as you are perfect to me. 

"Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship." ~ Margaret Mead

My Spiritual Journey ~ Part 1

Through my short stay at the hospital I made it a goal to determine what my identity is. My previous blogs reek of the reoccuring theme that I have no idea who I am.  Sometimes I get close. However, I know I am still lost on this. Time to start with some building blocks.

One of those building blocks I belive is knowing where you stand spirituality, or a lack of spirituality.

The faith that many people posses has always left me in awe, bewilderment, and sometimes even a bit envious. How is it that they just know? That fire that burns inside. No need for scientific beyond the doubt proof that a God exisits. Hence it is called faith.

This has always had me focus on finding the right faith. A religion that made me burn with surity and bring me peace. Faith, trust, truth, acceptance. 

Many of you reading this are thinking, believe in Jesus! He and the heavenly father will love you unconditionaly. If you accept Jesus as your personal savior and have a relationship with him. 

I do not have that burning truth. That faith is not within me. Then again, neither is it with Judiasm, Hindusim, or the Wiccan faith. What am I?

Up until a few weeks ago I would have said I believe in reincarnation. Now, I do not know. There is no scientific proof of that. Perhaps I have been using that as a crutch. Maybe my fear of living for the now, using the next life will be better as an excuse. How is that different then saying, Heaven will be better?

I feel very connected with the Earth as being my creator. The wind, water, soil, and crops bring me peace. I admire the sun and the moon. A connection that was once beyond the scope of our understanding between the Earth, sun and moon is exciting and amazingly great. This brings me peace.

So there will be a series of blogs in regard of my answer to this question. Where do I stand in my faith or a lack of? I need to stop walking along the fence post and decide. Dedicate and commit myself finally to something. The process by which I have been trying to do this has not worked. Time to change it. I have been striving to answer the question of what do I believe in. The question I should be answering is do I believe a God of any kind can even exist.

If the answer is yes, then I must go to the next step and find that faith. What religion?

If the answer is no, then I must finally accept that and know I can still live with compassion and acceptance. One does not necessarily need a God to be those things. 

"In our tenure of this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage—propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders—all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence—the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth." ~ Carl Sagan

Yet, I feel that humans desire and yearn for a higher being. Is this a desire out of need or is it something more?

As for now, I am going to start my journey. I have some amazing resources from my Atheist friends, a bible, some great blogs to read, and of course my instinct to follow. This is not going to be easy. 

No matter what the conclusion I still want to raise my children to be knowledgeable, accepting, open minded, and compassionate people. I want them to learn and be equipped with the right tools to make this choice for themselves someday.

Chaos

“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

“Chaos theory is a field of study in applied mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions; an effect which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.[3] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behavior can be observed in many natural systems, such as the weather.[4] Explanation of such behavior may be sought through analysis of a chaotic mathematical model, or through analytical techniques such as recurrence plots and Poincaré maps.”

A thought has hit me tonight while wathing  a movie, Chaos Theory. Nature is very artistic to me. Purposeful, with reason, and yet mysterious and vivid. 

The fields of corn that I love so much are full of symetry. Each stalk looks similar to the next. Look upon them closer and you can see the hairs sparatic, the lines of the leaves running parrallel, and the kernals all in little rows. Purposeful. Beautiful. 

Look at the same field after a hail storm and it is a whole new picture. Mutilated, broken, chaotic.

Pehaps mental illness is natures chaos, the hail storm for humans. Each disorder and disease we have labled has a pattern a sense of reason behind it. Is that because we as humans need a reason so we group it all together? Label it?

With our ever growing need to feel in control and knowledgable, the human race is striving to understand the things that are in nature chaotic. We developed a theory for just that over a century ago.

Sometimes with the overbearing need to understand, have a solution we push the barriers to a point of  breaking. Beyond any ability to understand or for the picture to become clear. Chaos is sometimes necessary. It can be beautiful and with reason. We just need to accept it as is.

The chaos of my mind needs to be found beautiful by me. If I can think of it the same way I do my children, water, or corn, then perhaps I can embrace me. Through embracing and accepting perhaps my identity can be revealed to me.

So here is to chaos, taking chances, and writing my index cards. 

“Chaos is a friend of mine.” ~ Bob Dylan

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

"Gone"

On Saturday, February 5th, I finally did what I should have done a long time ago. I had myself committed to the mental ward of St. Catherine's Hospital in Garden City. The negative attachment associated with this is at the forefront of my mind as I openly discuss this. Perhaps some things are better left a secret or kept to ourselves. Yet I cannot help but try and at least share a little of this experience and the impact of seeking help. 

For some of you reading this, it is a blog you have been patiently waiting. Others I realize it is a blog that is bringing on new information and maybe even a little pain. For that I apologize. My intention is not to open old wounds or to make anyone feel hurt by not telling you sooner. My only fear is that this will not explain to the extent that is needed for understanding. As my youngest sister so eloquently pointed out, “What matters is the central idea not so much the words that go around it.”

My husband told me that when I was pregnant with our son I had desired so badly for our little boy to be happy that when he was born he took all my happiness and left me with none. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps I have been depressed for that long. Almost two years of living in a world that is bleak and dark. If so, then what kind of person does my son see? This is all he knows of his mom.

My anger, hurt, pain and frustrations have been a part of me for a long time. The journey that I have struggled with to find myself the past few months has been long and exhausting. 

You would think a person who has lost loved ones to suicide would not have those thoughts in their mind. That assumption is wrong and is what led to my seeking more professional help. The constant feeling of being shoved against a  corner with no where to go, no answers to questions, and no solutions had quickly worn me down yet again.

Taking with me to the place of “gone” was a couple days clothes, toothbrush, and Cthulhu. Later my husband brought one of my little Buddha statues and a blanket. Almost childlike bringing a stuffed toy and a blanket. Cthulhu was popular with others and a source of comfort. Clinging onto my green friend during group sessions, meals, and consoling with after individual therapy I felt as though I were but a child lost. 

The extensive individual therapy I received while there has brought up old wounds and correlation's that I have denied even existed. None of us have a perfect life, all of us have skeletons. The key is how we work with those. About six years ago I was diagnosed as Bipolar. A couple of months ago this diagnosis was stated as incorrect. Now, while “gone” I am given a new label. Two new labels. Major Depressive Disorder and the big one Borderline Personality Disorder. 

Taking the DSM III test confirmed these suspicions of the doctors and therapists. Good news is my new medicine for the depression is much cheaper, and I am allowed to take an antidepressant. As for the new labels, they are only labels after all. At least that is what I keep telling myself. For so long I associated a part of my identity as being Bipolar. When that was removed I was left with this empty hollow space that said now what? What is my reason for being so odd? The new labels leave a feeling of detachment from myself. 

Borderline Personality Disorder. A condition in which people have long-term patterns of unstable or turbulent emotions, such as feelings about themselves and others. These inner experiences often cause them to take impulsive actions and have chaotic relationships. People with BPD often are uncertain about their identity. They tend to see things in extremes and their views of others may change quickly. Other symptoms of BPD include: Fear of being abandoned; feelings of emptiness and boredom; frequent displays of inappropriate anger; impulsiveness with money, substance abuse, sexual relationships, binge eating or shoplifting; intolerance of being alone; repeated crises and acts of self injury such as wrist cutting or overdosing.

My background growing up is consistent with those that are diagnosed as BPD. 

Home again with anxiety issues and facing the huge task of getting “well” I feel exhausted and yet lighter. The demons I have to face and work through seem large and overwhelming at times. The new medication has given my mind a bit of a rest, allowing laughter and happiness to flow. Rationality is becoming my friend again. 

Yet, I do not believe this diagnosis is the end all be all. It cannot be the full reason for my complete and utter breakdown. At least I have a starting point.