When you sink into your low points, the pro/con ratio presents itself. You search for reasons to stay or go. It’s pathetic that a lifetime bottles down into a risk vs. reward scenario.
My question is, do you really need a reason? Do you honestly have to maul over the burdens that make living desirable?
It can be true that most of life’s setbacks are temporary problems. But some linger and will never be resolved. When they continue to stack up and never find a working solution, hope is in decline.
So I find it’s not as simple as hovering over one reason or a couple. It’s not a matter of finding meaning or purpose. It’s more about the numbing reality that you do not find yourself in the puzzle known as life. Once hope flees, what’s left?
12 comments
Hope and despair are like the tides – they ebb and flow, like life itself. Nothing is really permanent. Using change as a means to escape the monotony of a stagnant life can be risky, but it can also be rewarding, even in its failures. It’s just hard to start trying.
Somethings are permanent. There’s no erasing a mood disorder that keeps you from moving forward.
No, but in time, you can find effective coping solutions that help mitigate the impact it has on you. I have OCD – for no reason at all, sometimes I’ll get this overwhelming sense of imminent doom, usually whenever i’m doing any paying work involving art, and I swear to god, it amazes me every time that nobody ever notices how badly i’m freaking out because of it. But the only way I can actually manage my way through that quagmire is to understand that it’s a feeling, and it has almost no reasonable cause – it just happens. I’m stubborn and refuse to pay attention to random emotional states, I guess. I wish I knew what bipolar feels like, though – I know it’s got to be a lot different, and anything I say might not have any relevance at all, so I hope you’ll take it with a grain of salt if that’s the case.
I think bipolar is different for everyone diagnosed with it. 98% of the time I’m in some level of depression, and the other 2%….I’m euphoric and out of my mind with mania. The mania is the best feeling in the world but it’s an illusion and mind trick on reality. It’s a means to an end. The cycle is very one sided with depression, and mania transitions into the worst forms of depression available.
Medication, therapy, healthy diet, exercise, clean living…..all these things help bring rise to the depression that always hits a wall at mania. There’s no happy medium. Mania is the desired destination that really isn’t healthy,long lasting or worth the continued journey of an empty yo-yo existence.
BEWARE – off topic comment –
@lorax
do you know the work of jeffrey schwartz on ocd — specifically the book, ‘Brain lock: Free yourself from obsessive-compulsive behavior’ ?
@duderino: I believe I’ve read some stuff by him, but I don’t recall exactly. I’ll look it up. I do know that I’m always dubious from the outset when people say they can cure OCD – I don’t think it’s like the common cold, or influenza, and can be simply cured by following some process or another… but coping with it and mitigating its impact? Sure, that’s do-able. I also don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about coping strategies like the one I use, but it works pretty well, all things considered. I just get all irascible and say, “Screw you, random mental state. I don’t care and I’m going to continue doing the thing I’m doing right now as best I can and you’ll go away in your own time. La la la, I can’t hear you, la la la…”
@Bipolar American: If the mania is an illusion and trick of the mind, so also is the depression. Reality lies in the neutrality that results from juxtaposing both states against each other, but finding a way to balance them is probably a helluvalot harder than it should be (and I can relate to that a lot).
@lorax
i’ve only read summaries of schwartz’s ideas, but from what i seem to recall they’re very similar to what you just wrote…are you secretly him ?
@duderino: If I am, it’s news to me – one of the hallmarks of OCD is freaking out and worrying that you’re secretly someone else (like, “Oh my god, maybe I’m secretly a serial killer!!!!!”) so anything’s possible. Haha..
I can say from experience being bipolar is a *****. I used to induce mania because that was the only time I felt joy (unless it was the bad mania)- I think the one thing that has helped me most is to really feel it. To own it, to create with it, and to embrace the suffering as though you knew you were stronger than it. It reminds me of labor- it hurts so so bad and you just dont think you can carry on, but you do- your body says so, and there you have a birthed a new little creation. We are programmed by nature to survive, even though sometimes it doesnt seem that way. Its the one primal part of us that is absolutely necessary. Life can change in a heartbeat, why check out before you get to see how its gonna turn out? 🙂
@nocoincidence7, being creative with bipolar? The bulk of my time is a depressive state that limits me to doing minimal things. And the mania is an aimless product which yeilds nothing but a mess to clean up. Since life has been an ongoing cycle of this bothersome existence…..the next heartbeat is predictable and not one worth waiting for….
BA: Would love to talk some day about the roller coaster that is this disease. Like you, it ruined my life. Still trying to recover after what was supposedly the “last time” myself. Always curious how people determine if it was their mania or a truly bad situation at the root of what “took them down.”
@dragonfly_whisper you have to realize my “normal” mood is an uneventful and depressive state. When I go lower than that, I’m pretty much lifeless and not wanting to do anything. When you’re not motivated to eat, have sex or get out of bed, what is the sense in living. So typical and sustainable life for me is just existing. That’s why mania is so welcomed when it comes around. I’ve had three bad episodes over the course of my life and the fallout after them, horrible.
I understand why mania is formed and what fuels it. Basically flipping the switch the opposite direction of depressed, your mind, body and soul embrace the great feelings. Anything will intensify it, and with the new found feelings where anything is possible, your confidence soars. I can’t contain my manic swings.
I spent over a decade building up my education, career, credit and reputation. It was a long and mostly depressive journey as the majority of it was a struggle to simply exist. All of that hard fought ground was lost in the matter of months during mania.
The shitty part is…..that decade wasn’t living. It was existing and as it was happening I told myself,”So glad I won’t have to do this again!”
But to get back to functioning, I have to do it all over again. It’ll be harder this time and I’m not seeing a prize at the end of it. Doing this to simply exist?
wtf? Why