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.

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.

Barely twenty-four hours into this new resolution, I can already tell what the main problem with this whole endeavor will be. Like I said, I’m bad at following through on projects. The past forty-eight to seventy-two hours have been the out-pouring of creativity and obsessive-compulsive organizing behavior that precedes this. I am willing to bet very good money that it will dry up within the next couple days again. But I’ll try to keep it up this time. Hopefully it won’t just be me dashing to post the first thing on my mind, or hysterics or random (and possibly unmerited) gleefulness. I’d kind of like this to be worth it. It’s an odd feeling, to say the least.

Hmm. I was about to type ‘maybe if I get badgered about it by people, I will keep it up this time.’ But that’s actually the wrong approach, isn’t it? This needs to be for me. It doesn’t stop me from hoping other people will enjoy it, of course. I like entertaining and informing and educating, assuming I know enough to educate.

The other, very real danger with all this is that I might do an outpouring of material, saved on my computer, and then decide to post that ‘instead of writing that day’ due to having a backlog. So, I am going to set some ground-rules:

• Each day will have new writing, at least a hundred words, preferably closer to five hundred.
• If I think I may develop an overabundance of backlog posts, I will begin writing down ideas, but not write out the entry itself. If I lack material for that day, I will post that instead.
• If I feel, for some reason, that I have something which must go up sooner rather than later, I am allowed two (max three) entries for the day, bar emergency needs.
• I am allowed to schedule posts as I feel the need to talk about them, but make myself pace things.
• I may use a separate tag for such extra posts, to distinguish from the daily entries.
• Every week I will post a ‘fractal image of choice’ or maybe a song/CD/whatever.
• I feel something is really too private, I won’t feel obligated to post it. If I do post, though, I will not, absolutely will not be afraid to say what is on my mind (bar some allowance for discretion).
• Corollary: I will try not to have knee-jerk reactions. No promises.
• If I really feel the need for some emotional release, I will actually do so.
• After the initial post or two to set the tone, I promise I’ll use cuts. Non-scout’s honor.

You have been given fair warning. Will you follow me into this attempt to find some order in the chaos, while letting it flow free?

Finally, if anyone wants to point me to places for awesome icons, make/find me a pretty profile layout, and/or suggest/make/whatever a good journal layout (though I’m fond of the one I have), I’d love that.

(I think I successfully avoided split infinitives in this post! I am so happy.)