Sleeping with the Lights On, Wrapped in Garlic (or How to Battle the Boogeyman)

The thing is, I think I can control my bipolar disorder without medication. In fact, I know I can. Hey, after all, it's only Type 2. So like I said earlier, it's no surprise that I have these problems because of how susceptible I've been made through heredity, but the point is, now that I am aware of what's going on, I can work at staying in normal phase. Right now, I'm in normal phase. I can feel it because I have both feet on the ground, but I'm not feeling particularly depressed. Basically, my litmus test for being in normal phase constitutes two criteria: if I can feel like my life has purpose but can still dish out sarcasm, I'm in a happy medium. I'm feeling both, so I'm all right.

It's weird though, because sometimes I feel like I have no control over what's happening. It's like being an addict. Sometimes you just want to dip back into disorder again so that you can lose control. Sure, losing control has some innate fear connected with it, but there is also a sense of freedom from responsibility. It's also a cry for help, and if you're the kind of person who still sometimes wishes for a knight to rescue her, depression is a whimsical state to be in. As I write this, I can feel it creeping in. I can feel myself losing grip on normalcy. I feel it asking for another round. But I don't want to be a victim of "susceptibilities" and "vulnerabilities" anymore. It's kind of like being the Hulk. That guy has to work so hard to keep his blood pressure down so he doesn't tear another decent pair of shorts. It takes discipline to have enough self-control to keep from slipping away. Sometimes I wonder if I will end up like the Hulk. I wonder if mental instability is something I will have to battle until I die, or if it is something I will one day conquer and extricate from my body once and for all. I certainly hope it is the latter, and something tells me that it is. Or perhaps mental illness is like a virus, eventually it stops harassing you, but all the little dead bugs stay in your blood forever. That's sort of like a compromise between being permanently sick and being permanently healed. Then again, having little dead buggies in your blood does help defend against all the other buggies of the same kind...so the dead buggies have their upside. Yeah, mental illness is a lot like a virus. If you're lucky enough to get well again, the inactive crazy cells stay with you forever to remind you of the crazy you caught in the past and defend against attacks of crazy in the future. It also leaves a way cool battle scar that you can show all your friends! haha.

One thing I've discovered that really helps while I'm still trying to recover from mental instability is humor. Humor is the #1 healer of any illness in my opinion. I've read stories about people who have been diagnosed with inoperable cancer, and instead of wallowing in misery, they chose to laugh, and they laughed until the cancer disappeared, much to the consternation of their physicians. So if laughter can work for someone with a physical illness, then laughter surely can work for mental illness as well. And it's true, because whenever I feel blue, if I can will myself to find humor in a situation, I always feel better. The trickier business is finding a way to overcome the manic phases. Those are harder to control because when you go into manic phase, you lose total touch with reality, so if you don't catch it on time, it would never occur to you to come back down to earth. You're just too far gone to notice that you're gone at all. And it sneaks up on you, too. So it's the manic phases, the Hulk phases, that are going to be more challenging to control. It might involve refraining from participation in overly stimulating situations, at least for a while. After all, these shorts are nice.

Basically though, I think I have an advantage now. I have the best advantage you can have in this kind of situation: I have awareness. I also have determination, which is a plus, but the awareness is the most important thing. Once anyone is aware of whatever brand of crazy is going on in their head, they can work towards catching it ahead of time before it sneaks in and takes over again. Sure, I have a whole host of little problems that together make living suck quite a bit sometimes, but maybe if I take them apart one at a time, then it won't seem so daunting.

I can't really think of much of anything else to put in this post except I should probably do some research on good meditation techniques and basically start counting my days "normal" like a junkie counts his days clean.