Writing As A Form Of Therapy

[outlander]

It is both a gift and a burden being this way @PeppiPatty not sure which one is better yet.
I do see a therapist currently but not for grieving. I see her for other things.
Thanks for thr chats. I do enjoy them but i know you have to go so until then i will love and leave you ❤❤

[Silenus]

Being Bipolar is not fun...

It's the hypomanic highs that do me in... I haven't quite got to grips with them, and numbing agents like weed and alcohol can only go so far, doing a certain damage of their own along the way...

My life philosophy and meditation get me through, just...

But not always...

Most people know almost nothing about Bipolar... heck, I was one of them... I knew diddly squat about Bipolar, and yet I've been living it, all large and uncontrollable inside my skull, since childhood...

It wasn't 'till 2011 that I woke up to it... I was 39 years old, and as ignorant as a babe in the woods...

The 2-year hypo bin.ge of endless energies and fun...

That's the "good" part of Bipolar that the big stars usually end up in police mugshots from... then it's only one drop down to the tabloid gutter...

I feel for them...

I only fell apart in private...

I did my Humpty Dumpty putting-myself-back-together-again all by myself to start with... it took me a while to get stable enough to reach out for help, support, and knowledge...

But yeah, back to it...

The 2-year hypo bin.ge of endless energies and fun...

Followed by a 6 month to 2 year Depression that sucked ass...

I repeated that crap cycle probably 7 or 8 times in my life, maybe more...

I'm learning to turn Bipolar into bipolar, but you cannot argue with a bio-chemical shitstorm in your head forever...

It's like the core of the sun in here... [points at head]

7 months of full time work and 35,000 kms of driving have taken their toll on my hypermobile body and my hypomanic mind...

This Bipolar stuff... it's like a force of Nature sometimes... standing up to it is impossible... all I can do is to just observe it, hopefully without amplification...

That is the important part of dealing with my Bipolar... as harmlessly as possible, dissipate the enormous energies of hypomanic Bipolar...

Use it if I can in creative pursuits, or just white-knuckle ride it out until it's over...

The higher you go, the harder you fall...

This is a simple truth...

And so I best manage my depression and my hypomania by taking a holistic and self-aware big-picture view of it as "the observer"... in the process, I find the best way to manage it all is to tackle the "fun times", and not let them get too out of control...

My default final resort is to hunker down in a hole for a while until it's all blown over...

Pity that this is difficult to do when you are a contractor. If you don't work, you don't get paid...

[Silenus]

It's scary how decades of pain and struggling with my mental health have done so much to rob me of laughter...

I have become way too serious, I feel, in the past 6 years...

I have rebuilt myself, but some parts of me are so broken that they can never be restored...

The secret to coping with this is to not get too caught up in the past, in constant measurement and comparison of where I feel I "should be" in my life journey, constantly in conflict with where I currently am...

It is okay to grieve for that which I have lost within myself, but it is not okay to enslave who I am now to some nostalgic ideal of myself that I never even was...

[PeppiPatty]

Dear @Silenus

I feel like your teaching me about bi polar: something that my oldest son struggles with.....

Thank you 

[Silenus]

Oh @PeppiPatty ...

It is my greatest pleasure and calling to share my life experiences, mistakes, triumphs, pleasures, and pains... for I hope that some of my bumbling steps toward useful practical mental health wisdom will help just one person to shortcut past a whole lot of pain and soul-crushing depression, bipolar, anxiety, ObSeSsIvE cOmPuLsIvE dIsOrDeR, or whatever else gift-curse lurks in our minds and bonds with our selves at the very deepest levels...

Bipolar...

(I speak of it often, not because I am ignorant of other mental health issues, but because out of respect I have no wish to speak of things I personally know nothing about...)

It's this simple... if you haven't personally experienced it, it may very well be total bullshit...

I am no authority on any matter except one... my self...

I don't know how to fix as complicated a thing as the world... I don't even have much of an idea of how to fix as complicated a thing as myself...

Then I got to thinking... every single human being ever is united in this...

We are struggling from ignorance to a slowly growing wisdom as we journey through life... don't feel ashamed... this is a natural thing... everyone starts from the point of knowing nothing... we were all equal at the start... the same gasping babe, shocked into the world from the womb of our mother...

Leaders of state, leaders of religion, spiritual leaders, in fact every single human being ever... people we put our trust and faith in... pillars of the community...

Just the same as the lowliest homeless beggar, down on their luck vagabond, struggling artist, thief, cheat, whatever...

All of us united in this great struggle; ignorant, subconscious, or otherwise; to understand what we are...

Stand before the mirror... go on... try it...

Personally, for decades I hated mirrors... I hated looking myself in the eye... going to the hairdressers was the worst... surrounded by f***ing mirrors!!! I couldn't avoid falling into the depths of my own eyes...

And down the rabbit hole this Alice went... hahaha...

But seriously... I had (and still have) many issues... we ALL do...

I hated myself as a kid... did stuff to myself that would be detected by the safety filters on this fine forum and deny these words from being posted...

Here's the short of it...

At age 8, we moved from Denmark to the land of Oz, just mum, dad, and I (only child).

My link to every family member and friend ever was severed by a 30-something hour flight back in 1980...

I don't live there now, so safe to say without giving anything away... western suburbs Sydney... the Wild West... 3rd class... started school 2 weeks after we arrived... I could not speak a word of English... nobody was told... all the teachers just assumed...

I got to learn one word real quick... w.o.g... it's what most of the other kids called me...

Fast forward through another 8 or so years of bullying and typically ignorant hurtful behaviour of children... (this we learn, and often carry into adulthood, ignorantly, shamefully, or proudly)...

Both parents way too busy to notice... building a new life in a new country, with all the double jobs and long hours that entails...

So there I was... just me... at the age of 8... abandoned and hated... so... what did little Silenus learn from this? To hate himself...

That is why he hated mirrors... that is why I am still not a huge fan of falling into my own eyes in the mirror...

Anyhoo... back to the main point of this Ramble...

All of us struggle to understand ourselves... it is indeed the true journey of our lives, whether we know it or not...

Coming together to share our experiences, our hard-fought-for and hard-won wisdoms... that is something magical that not even the gods would have expected...

The fact that broken things find each other in the night, and then help each other to heal, welll... that right there is the greatest of wonders...

I live for that...

I wish you, your son, and every other person alive much luck in your healing growing journeys... we walk together, no matter how far apart...

[Silenus]

I may have become afraid of my past boisterous laughter, because although it is a part of my very nature to laugh, it is closely tied to my hypomanic self, and that is the part of me that, if allowed to get out of control, can lead to depression, collateral damage, and worse...

And so I do not laugh as much as I used to... it is, perhaps, a small price to pay...

And still I laugh from time to time, and the corners of my eyes crinkle with knowing smiles as well...

[PeppiPatty]

Dear @Silenus

My son is luckier than you were. My son is an Australian citizen.....Denmark is a country people know very little about.

I'm so sorry what you have gone through it is awful. 

Do you know much about Denmark? Would you ever start up a folio about fascinating insights on your original country ? Is this something that you would do?

Yes, I understand.

[Silenus]

Awful perhaps... but it helped to make me who I am Now, and therefore even the greatest past pain is a gift beyond imagining...

Most people fear pain... I don't fear pain... it is my constant companion, and a great motivator...

[Silenus]

The town I was born in... Kalundborg... wonderful town... the church I was christened in was built way back in the 1100s, or maybe in the early 1200s... noone knows for certain...

But I've hugged those 800 year old walls, and have felt the thrill of that in my very veins...

Funny how us semi-civilized monkeys like to cling to our caves (or trees, or whatever works)...

Hahaha...

[Silenus]

The colour green, @PeppiPatty

Spring in a Danish forest... birch and beech trees everywhere... the delicate spring sun, shining through the fresh green shoots and leaves...

Never will I know its equal...