I was on the verge of slipping into my bathroom, finding a clean, unused razor in my medicine cabinet, and going to town on some hidden part of my body, the way I have done many times in my past. I have had a lot of triggers in the past two weeks that have stressed my body, mind, and spirit to the absolute max (for me), and I am not proud to say that suicide has been in my "Top 5" of revolving door thoughts this week.
But as an example of how quickly a bipolar mind can change, I wanted to write here and explain what happened five minutes ago as I was washing dishes.
Washing dishes has never been a displeasure for me. Most people complain about the chore, but I rather like it and usually will volunteer to do it. It's like a bubble bath for my hands, and as a bonus, it gets my kitchen clean. Hey, that's a swift sell for me. And doing the dishes usually gives me time to break the cycle of chaotic darkness that is constantly swirling in my mind. I can focus solely on the task at hand, aaaand maybe also allow my mind to create a little world in the basin- islands of soap bubbles, surrounding oceans of oyster-gray washwater, with murky depths that hold treasures of clay and steel (a.k.a., my dishes) below. I like to imagine that time is much faster in this little water world. Continents of soap are reshaped in a matter of seconds. Tidal waves destroy mountains of suds in an instant. And a single swirly motion of my hand can wipe the entire world away...
I'm getting away from my point. Sudsing up my dinnerware in the sink, my mind drifted away from my lousy situation and into a sudden realization (one that would probably make anyone else roll their eyes and say "Duh.", but I'm far slower than most people). The realization that no one is perfect.
This is an old chestnut that gets tossed around all the time, but I guess today its meaning really attached itself to my personal situation. I have issues. Yeah. No one is denying that. We could list them all and still not be finished by tomorrow. But when I think of the people I compare myself to the most, and the people I distance myself from for fear that they will judge me for my issues, and the people I am afraid of because I hold them in such high esteem? I realize now that they have their own issues too. Some are just as serious as mine, and some aren't. But the point is, they are there. And if those people are in my life, with all of their own issues in their own baskets, and they aren't clutching those baskets tightly and running for the hills every time they get a little freaked out... why am I doing that??
I stopped washing the dishes for a moment and just allowed that thought to sink in. I am running away from people who say they care about me. I am pushing away people who say they want to be my support system. I am getting angry because I am convinced that no one understands what I am going through, but the harsh reality is that they aren't obligated to understand. They just want to be there. And I'm making it really hard for them to do that.
No one is perfect. We all have our body issues, our mental illnesses, our laziness problems, our financial woes, our fears that we just can't seem to conquer, and our impulses that always get us into trouble. We can decide that those things are deeds punishable by life sentence in solitary- away from everyone we need in our lives in order to keep going. Or, we can see those things for what they really are: human conditions that we are here to overcome and learn from. They are not reason for us to be unloved or isolated. They are not reasons for us to be alone forever, or to shut ourselves away from the rest of humanity. They are not reasons for us to constantly punish ourselves and allow ourselves to be punished by others. If anything, these issues that we all have, are all the more reason to reach out and give one another all the love we can offer.
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