We are such stuff as dreams are made on...

I'm bipolar.

Don't know how politic it is to have that out there. But it should be no more or less stigmatized than having cancer or diabetes or arrhythmia or needing to wear glasses because your parents left you genes for eyes which really don't want to settle down or stop getting more terrible.

It is, though. And I hate that, and I hate that I have internalized it so well that I have been so scared of saying it for so long that I planned to build up to it over time, and then when failing to keep a journal online, never did.

This has been heavily implied here before. This is the first time I'm saying it directly, here and now. After a very stressful morning, Dad suggested I write about it, and about what happened to me, because every time I describe it to him he learns something new. I held off for about two and a half weeks, partly due to a suddenly busy schedule and partly because, again, the prospect of actually saying this out loud, to the internet, including to people who do not know me and for whom this may be their first exposure to me--especially as I am job hunting--is a really scary endeavor. But it shouldn't be scary, so I am going to put that out there.

I suppose I won't talk about it much in this post--it really is quite late, there are other things I want to write for fun tonight, and I have serious work to do tomorrow before another installment in "the endless rehearsals that make up this month."

But for now, we'll start here: I'm bipolar.

It's not the only problem, of course. I had various psycho-social traumas which kept building for years, one after another, approximately any time I was close to healing from the last one and the various bipolar episodes they set off. But shortly before I first posted to this again after two years, something just clicked into place.

It's strange, now, because I woke up metaphorically one day--I had been Not Sleeping for some hours before that--and realized I had... basically no idea where or when I was. I was confused, because it was 2008 or 2009, right? I was 18, 19. I had options and a future. And then suddenly here I am, 26, many good things about my life change but also many things that I am just confused about because I... can match dates to events, because I am good at memories like that, but I honestly can't even tell how time passed in large chunks of that. It's a grey blank.

Hypomanic episodes do not last a month--and that is what it is nearing--and I am learning to balance things, and how to de-stress after a crazy week, and how to say no and how to let go. And I have been absurdly productive at times.

And there are ways in which I am simply not hurting anymore. For the first time in years, I actually have hope that the future will not be The Worst Thing. I have hope that I can take actions to make my life better; I have reason to believe my brain is actively trying to make me happy, not drowning in an endless quagmire of despair.

Nothing will ever really change that I am ill, and that it will need to be managed, and maybe one day if trauma happens yet again it will spiral out of control. But I can well and truly hope it won't. Being safe and loved and supported really helps with that, and not feeling alone, and knowing maybe in the future I really won't be alone. We'll see.

I am still not doing everything I'd like to, and putting things off, and indulging in silliness. But even so, I am hacking away at real life plots and may be solving them at something like a steady pace. That is a relief unlike any I can describe.

But for the first time in seven years, maybe more like ten or twelve, I have some kind of hope for a day when I am secure, happy, and no longer in pain.

I had trauma, and I am bipolar.

I can hope it will get better.

I think there is a difference between depression, bipolar, a condition, whatever, and being broken. I'm not entirely sure how to characterize the difference right now. I don't have quite the words and almost don't want to because introspection can get really unfun. But while two conditions can feed each other, you have to live with them anyway--I don't think it's a reason to avoid reaching out to people, in whatever form, no matter what lies your brain tells you. Broken... shouldn't be a reason to curl up either. And there are different forms.

But I think I've been avoiding things because I thought I was broken. And I think in some ways I am. But I guess it's mostly ones I've done to myself by listening to the lies my brain tells me. Bad side, it still hurts. Good side: I... think I can stop listening. If I find a way. Some things wrong with me are just part of me. I've been scared of what it will do to me and that I won't be able to stop it from controlling me, and I think the result is I've been letting it. Fear is a paralytic and all that.

I can get... not unbroken, maybe, but reforged. I do think I can, at least in this moment, which I expect is not one that will last. I'm having an odd moment of clarity after a prickly moment. But I also know this is the basic hurdle. I need to find a way not to be scared. Rather, to make myself act despite being scared, not caring. And need to stop letting broken break me more.

Because I want to reach out, I do. I don't want to let it shut me in. I don't want to feel like I can't place the burden of knowing me on anyone--because it shouldn't be a burden. I know this.

Honestly, I don't know how not to be terrified anymore. I hope I'll figure it out soon.

Until then, I'll smile. However much it hurts, I'll smile.

Right. About that ‘I will write more.’

Tomorrow, in honor of Singles’ Awareness Day and V-Day, I will start with a thing on love and then move to my things about The LBD and Once Upon a Time. As far as today goes: also on the sexuality side of things, I absolutely adore Twelfth Night. I desperately want to write a sci-fi, action-packed, has-an-arc-besides-that adaptation of it. I mean, really. Twelfth Night, in space.

(It really is true, everything gains a cool factor by virtue of the words ‘in space.’)

E’en so (too much Shakespeare for me in the last twelve or fourteen hours) I have watched Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night several times over the course of this sleepless night, and finally landed on something which had been bothering me for a while. The entire production is fantastic, and I love it, and I need the DVD desperately. And I need to talk about Viola and why I love her so at some point. Probably also Beatrice.

What I figured out, though, has basically nothing to do with the play or the movie.

Signing off for now. At least I didn’t pre-write the next post, so I’ll have to actually write tomorrow. Right now I have a date with a tissue box to keep.

So, that epic sluggishness and total lack of inspiration I have been attributing mostly to my predictable-in-several-ways drop-off in energy?

Last night, just after I’d closed the computer for the night and headed off to bed, my roommate got home and we instituted a House Cleaning. I had done some, and did a little more, but I was feeling light-headed and stuffy and just entirely off. Now, as a rule I run hot (somehow I need colder living environment than the others) but I was switching between that and freezing. ‘Oh well, it is winter,’ I thought. My roommate saw how I looked, told me to take it easier. I thought to myself, ‘huh, she was sick last week. Funny, that.’

Hah. Ha ha. Ha.

Yes, yes, I know. I should pay attention more often, but there you have it. It’s only a low-grade fever, and it’s not so bad. It does explain the lethargy and the greater-than-usual lack of appetite. Despite all that, I dragged myself out to lunch with K today (thankfully my ear-warming headband arrived before then, or it would have been painful). Better, only Roommate J’s boyfriend and two very dear friends turned up at our Monday Night In gathering, so I actually stayed in the living room and chatted with people till almost midnight.

As such, I am a little bit people’d out and my brain is still simmering. So I’ll just say ‘night for now.

The world is white.

I love it just after a snowstorm.

Everything is so quiet and still in the immediate aftermath, and then just that slow awakening as people dig themselves out. And I know the latter is perverse, too, because all that ‘digging out’ isn’t even remotely romantic. The snowploughs came through, of course. It was kind of hilariously glorious, too, because this resulted in a pile of snow outside our house that was over six feet tall. I got a picture of my roommate and her boyfriend atop that pile.

I’d kind of intended to go out and do things today, mainly like play in the snow. But with the roads all stopped up, my ear-warming-headband-thing I’d ordered isn’t here, and I kind of don’t want to go out without it just yet.

And—I don’t know, guys. Sorry. I’m feeling really off. I’m just doing the ‘swore-I-wouldn’t-minutiae-out’ thing to make sure I actually keep in the writing habit. I think I’m just going to go play my JRPG some more. I’m getting suspicious of the plot progression.

Well then.

I am still lacking in inspiration, so I suppose I can spend some time today on tabletop campaigns. My house was supposed to play host to two campaigns, one Dresden Files and one Laundry Files. Sadly, I am/was the GM for the first one. That one had all three of my then-current roommates as players, although one moved away before we got started, and he Skyped in. I had a really bad fall that time, though, so that fell through. One day I’ll plot enough to do that properly. Bah, humbug.

(‘Skyped.’ ‘Googled.’ Once upon a time it was ‘phoned,’ I’m sure. Developments in the English language are fascinating, even if some of them make me want to kill people.

( Playing at preventing Cthulhu summonings in Her Majesty's Occult Secret Service )

Cookies to the one who guesses which I play—but store-bought, it ain’t hard.

Huh. I thought I had this written, and then it turned out I hadn’t. I suspect falling asleep before writing it and then hallucinating that I wrote it to be the culprit here.

( Unfortunately, not a lot happened today... )

Sorry today’s post is a little minutiae-full and not as interesting as I’d like it to be. I guess it’s just kind of what happens when a day somehow vanishes without my understanding quite how.

(Side note: I am working to become a mastermind.)

Apparently ‘per day’ means ‘per sleep cycle,’ due to the bizarreness of how my sleep is currently functioning. Then again, I’m not entirely sure when it has been regular any time in the last… what, two years, probably more? Maybe ever. I really do need to do something about this.

Most of my non-cleaning-time today was spent playing Ni no Kuni some more. It remains the epitome of A Tales-x-Pokémon game as done by Studio Ghibli, or else An Interactive Studio Ghibli movie as presented by Namco (à la Tales-x-Pokémon). Either way, it remains highly entertaining and, rather shockingly, non-trivial. Battles seem to remain interesting and difficult for longer periods of time. Not only that, but resources seem rarer and more expensive, and money isn’t as powerful as I’m quite used to/would like. All in all it’s really being a wonderful playing experience—and to think I’ve got… probably at least another four major dungeons left to go. It’s exciting.

I will be off at an open mic thing tonight, and as most of yesterday was spent asleep/feeling sick/etc, with some gaming thrown in, I will have another entry up once I have slept and had another ‘day.’

(Sadly, my schedule and the world’s are not aligning well yet. I’m working on it.)

In the trivial-minutiae update: Sleep schedules are really, really hard to manage. Blah.

( To pick up where I left off yesterday... )

I still needed one other push to actually start this journal-blog-attempt, though. More on that—well, maybe not tomorrow. Tomorrow might be drowned in chatter about The Hobbit. We’ll see.

*This is a split infinitive I'm okay with using. I feel like I'll eventually end up doing a rant on this subject. Why, brain, why.

Having had an hour or two on my hands, I decided to do a bit of singing, and on a whim recorded. And re-recorded ad nauseum. I'm still not entirely happy, but they'll do.

"Mal's Song," Firefly filk, by Michelle Dockrey

Online recording software >>

"Come by the Hills" by Loreena McKennitt, Take One: a l'alto

Audio and voice recording >>

"Come by the Hills" by Loreena McKennitt, Take Two: a la soprano

Audio and voice recording >>