Apparently a favorite manic pass time is charging up and over those credit limits on plastic. I have never spent more than a few hundred dollars in one pop, but I have decided on a whim to take a 12 hour road trip by myself. I have also adopted a large family dog without consulting anyone else in the family. She was a German Shepard/Lab mix and very friendly. In fact, her down fall was that she was too friendly. We couldn’t keep her in the yard. She never wanted to be alone. She would make friends with anyone and then follow them home. After a week and a half I finally had to take her back to the Humane Society from where I got her. She eventually was placed with an owner who had the patience for her. My most recent acquisition is a kitten. Holding her is very therapeutic. She is such a hoot to watch. Each of our three children has his/her own guinea pig. Since they are from the rodent family I was concerned that she would be a threat to them. At this point the “pigs” are larger than she is. The funny thing is that she actually crawls in their cage in order to sleep with them. I guess she considers them siblings in stead of food. I think that a cat is a very modest manic thing to “do.
Tears January 25, 2008
A friend died yesterday. She wasn’t a close friend, but I do consider her a friend never the less. Her son and mine have gone to school since they were learning to read. She has suffered with cancer for over a year and her family has suffered right along with her as well as her friends. We all knew that she was very close to death, but it didn’t seem real until I heard the news. I was shocked never the less. Now begins the grieving. It is precisely at moments like this when it becomes difficult to stay balanced. Do I allow myself to cry like a baby like I want to or do I just try to kid myself in order to stay “stable?” It seems like such a luxury for me to wallow in sadness. For me depression is a very familiar place and therefore comfortable in a strange way. Unfortunately it becomes exponentially more difficult to “snap out of it” the lower I go. When something like this happens it is like an emotional slap on the face that reminds me how fragile we are.
Moral Weakness December 21, 2007
For so long I tried to “cheer myself up” and “snap out of it.” I didn’t feel well in so many ways, but had lost my reference to what “well” meant. I spent so much energy trying to feel like 95% of people feel naturally with no effort at all. Why couldn’t I control my feelings? Then I would feel guilty because those closest to me started to think that I wasn’t trying hard enough. How frustrating it must be to deal with someone with erratic behavior.
I discovered this website that discusses the topic of moral weakness in depression. I found it interesting.
Insight November 11, 2007
Pole to Polar nails it when she writes, “The one thing the secret manic depressive is often missing is insight. If you’re talking to your manic depressive pal and they are trying to iron the chicken because it didn’t cook fast enough, don’t expect them to sit down and engage in intellectual discourse into how this mood episode occured. In 90% of the cases, in our heads, our behaviour is normal and you, my friend, are the problem.” See her site in my links for tons of insight in to manic-depression.
