I have come to realise that while the last four months have been a period of accelerated learning about myself, it has also been a period of mania and possibly also mixed mood.
I don't know if it has been Bipolar, Schizoaffective, Schizotypal disorder or Schizophrenoform. It could be a simple as Bipolar 1 cormobid with BPD. I don't know that I fit neatly into any of the diagnostic criteria. And it really doesn't matter to me.
Who I am, where I have been and where I am going, is all that matters to me now and what I DO have coming out of it all is drive. Something that I have been missing since my late teens. The ability to make myself move forward rather than being weighed down by depression and circumstance. I still want to do all of the same things that I wanted to do two weeks ago when I presented to Calvary hospital for the umpteenth time!
I still want to go back to uni and study. I still want to work with kids and families in developing healthy, wholistic family relationships and individuals. I still want to start an all-inclusive, allergen-free preschool. I still want to start an organisation that lobbies and advocates for equal pay and standards for self-employed nannies. I still want to work in social policy in an attempt to restructure our medical system effectively - especially in the area of mental health. And I still want to sing...
None of it is urgent though. None of it has to be done tomorrow - and this is where I was coming undone - I thought that I would be able to achieve all of that in the space of five years and have been awarded 8 academic degrees in the space of 10 (at varying levels of study) - and that is impossible (even for the brightest sparks!).
I want to apologise to all of you who struggled to know what to do with me in the past few months or so. I did not see that I was unwell because my mania seemed normal to me - and I WAS sleeping mostly! I have never been manic before (at least not that I know of) and so that everything fit neatly into place and that everything had an answer and could be deciphered by logic seemed perfectly normal to me. But that brought me to a place where my brain never shut down - maybe that is why I slept - because my brain needed me to shut down occasionally...
Hindsight is a brilliant thing - it gives us perspective.
What am I going to do with that perspective? I am going to use it as a yardstick. Now I know what mania is like, I can be better equipped to know when I am getting out of kilter. When everything makes so much sense that it looks like there is too much sense - then I will know that it is time to talk to someone. When God reveals something to me and then tells me not to tell anyone else because they will not understand - then I will talk to someone. When I start thinking that I am going to become one of the world's most influential people - then I will talk to someone.
And until then - I am just going to live my life out in this quiet little country town. I want to go back to Canberra but I am still not 100% sure on that one - living away from my family and in a big city - it may be too much for me. But then again, it might be as Rob suggested - that I need to build up my emotional muscles first. I don't know....
But for now the plan is simple: Sleep, walk, knit, write, talk, listen, play, study, work, pray.
Simplicity, wisdom, integrity, surrender.
Love you all
--
Simply Fi
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