A Time to Embrace and a Time to Refrain from Embracing

For everything there is a season.

This is especially true for those of us who have mood disorders, those of us who are susceptible to the influence of the swinging of seasons, the ebb and flow of climate and daylight. Those of us who find ourselves put out by the darkening days of winter, those days that take us out, render us useless in the increasingly dark afternoons, evenings. Those of us who wake up in the spring from some sort of mood hibernation to find that life is beautiful, exciting, glorious.

Because I am treated, and because I am aware, I do not swing wildly with the swinging of seasons. But I do feel the effects of them. The winter evenings did make me want to sleep, made me want to throw away my afternoons in exchange for three or four hours of silence, quiet slumber with my face pressed in the corner of my room. The past few days have been so warm and bright, and all I want to do is drive around in my car listening to The Arcade Fire, Blaqk Audio, Belle and Sebastian, with the sound cranked up and the windows down. The past few days, I've wanted to go running up and down the city streets, let my feet propel me where ever they may. I want to be active. I feel alive. I feel full of love for my boyfriend and can't stop thinking about being with him in two days. I'm more productive than I've been the rest of the semester--I've made study sheets for almost all of our neuro lectures. I can sit down, Zune and mind plugged in.

Some of this is, possibly, encouraged by the "medication experiment" I'm on. This is not a huge experiment, but it is something I am definitely keeping a strong and steady eye on. I have started taking birth control again for the first time since starting Lamictal. I am doing this under the close observation of my psychiatrist and my friends, because both medications can decrease the efficacy of the other. With the birth control, this is not a problem to fix. With the Lamictal, decreasing the efficacy could, of course, have detrimental effects. So, I'm doing my best to probe, all day long, how I am feeling. What do I feel right now? Is this "normal," how I'm usually feeling? I'm watching my words, my trains of thought. When I watch myself jump from one topic to another to another in a minute, I recoil. I pay more attention. I try to be more deliberate.

So, this is it--welcome to the constant mindfuck of bipolar disorder. The constant stress of "How am I feeling?" The constant stress of "Is this normal?" The constant stress of normality, itself--what is normal, and will I ever know?

Learning to trust myself, my emotions, my experience. Trusting that I will know when to get help, if I should ever need it. Trusting that I will be able to recognize bipolar patterns if they should ever arise and not act on them. Trusting myself--the hardest part.