an update, of sorts.

Dear Diary,

It has been quite a while since I sat down to tell you about my life. I won't apologize for my absence, or make promises about writing more frequently. We both know that apologies for not updating are just as hollow as promises about carving out the time and inspiration to write.

Today, though, I felt the pull. It hit just like it used to, in the car, in the quiet, sentences crawling their way into my ears and rolling around on my tongue as I spoke them. The ride was quiet today, Bea was asleep (a rarity these days) and John wasn't there to keep the chatter flowing.

Today was a social day for me, much more "out there" than my normal day as of late. I can't compare it to a routine, because routine is something that doesn't exist in my daily life at this current moment, no matter how much I crave it. Long ago, I learned that to quiet my brain, to quiet my anger and fear and anxiety, I needed a predictable set of events. Mundane tasks, repeated at the same time during the day or the same day during the week, to help me regain control. Sunday for shopping and meal planning and sleeping in and booze in my coffee. Saturday for social visits and plans that aren't the norm. Wednesdays to connect with John and sit in my pajamas while we catch up on TV shows. When I was in school, it was easier to carve these days out based on homework load and class schedule. Now, anything could happen at any time. We moved into a new house in December, having outgrown our last one. Our work schedule isn't set. The shop has new employees. Things are in flux. Bea is in a new phase of mobility, having started walking last week, and her world is rapidly changing, and that change is upending our universe. Anyway, in all that activity and capacitive dissonance, I've been hiding at home, hunkering down to try to ride out the hurricane in the eye instead of braving my way through the worst of the edges.

This hermit phase has really left me lonely. I have been feeling depressed, worthless, and ugly of spirit and form. I am the heaviest I've been since 2002 and have the least time to do anything about it that I feel like I've ever had. John has noticed the change in me, and has been pushing me to find friends that fit my life right now, that fit my interests and focus and time willing to put into friendships.

To say that I don't make friends easily is an understatement. Through the years, I've been badly burned, used, and discarded, again and again and again. I talk a big talk about not letting that discourage me from allowing myself to be vulnerable, but actually putting that into action takes an energy that I often find myself lacking. Even cautiously sticking my neck out from time to time, the energy I seem to attract is exactly the kind that often leaves me feeling drained and used: People who abuse my trust and lie to me. People who cannot or have no interest in trying to keep my confidence. People who quickly see me for who and what I am and instantly call bullshit on all my crazy, and run from my life without explanation. So, I haven't been inclined to try very hard on the "making new friends" front. It mostly has seemed to end in the kind of heartbreak that gnaws at me years later, waking me up at night to point out another sign I should have seen or something else I could have done, maybe another way to respond that would have better protected my interests or even my own integrity.

But I can't just sit here alone, cursing the past and fearing the future while yearning for connection in the present. What kind of model does that set for Bea? I don't want her to be as fucked up as I am.

So I'm pushing myself. I have very cautiously chosen to befriend a few select moms from my local Facebook  mamas' support network. They generally are ladies who swear, who have great capacity for joy, who snark back at shitty remarks, and who make me laugh actual belly laughs. I have been trying to meet up with at least one of these new friends a week, putting in time and effort  to nurture and grow relationships slowly instead of jumping in with my typical oversharing two feet. Today, I had a great time visiting with a mom who was a giant help during Bea's early nursing struggles. Tomorrow, I am going to go spend time with a fellow nerd mama who loves Doctor Who and video games and other nerdy sci-fi stuff. Thursday, I am going for a run with one of the women I met who I can say has honestly become a solid real life friend, a person I text when I need to vent and who I can gossip with and know she'll keep my secrets while supporting my day drinking penchant.

Today was also a really long day at work, having gone in early, worked 6 hours and then headed back after my visit to work again and give John a break. It was particularly challenging due to the nature of a few people who regularly get so far under my skin I feel like I might have to surgically remove them. I do not know any other coffee shop owners who can tell you that they spent their morning cleaning out and bandaging a small wound on the hand of a homeless regular, then cleaned up the exploded bathroom self same regular destroyed 10 minutes later, and then went through a rush where the new trainee ran them out of drip coffee while another regular put on a one person louder than life super duper shitshow on the other side of the counter.

The upshot of all of this social time and my 12 hours out of the house today is that I can feel the mania there behind my eyes. I feel too loud, and shaky, and too warm, like coming into a sun heated house after a swim in a cold lake. My chest is pounding and my jaw hurts from teeth grinding. My shoulders ache from being held tense. My scalp feels too small.

This is when the words come easily. This is when writing the sentences that crawl into my mouth and form in the back of my throat is catharsis. This is when telling you what my brain is like is simple for me. I could draw you a picture in high definition. Every piece of my disorder is crystal clear. Separated. Diagrammed. I am no longer a jumble of things I can't give voice to and vague anxiety or restlessness. I have a focus. I am honed and drawn thin. I am a taut bowstring. I am an arrow aimed at the center of a target. I am coiled. Sharp. Ready. I am all of it and none of it. I am ON, in big letters, big sounds.

This is me without any kind of medication and no routine. This is what characterized the set of bad decisions and terrible romantic entanglements and blur of drinking in my early and mid twenties. I know that I can write, I can tell you all what it is like to live in my skin, because my disorder is keeping me from sleep, making me quick to anger, and enabling me to be fucking brilliant. This feeling, this being ON in big sounds, big letters, big words... this is what I thought being alive felt like.

Now that I am a mother, a wife, a business owner, a figure in my community, this ON, this big sound big letter me just doesn't feel right. The writing, the brilliance, the seeming ease of personality, comes at a cost now that I cannot pay. I have much more to lose. I have a walking, learning to speak and interact reminder that I need to model good self care for my daughter. Bea's chance of having Bipolar disorder with two bipolar parents is something like 80%. Think about that for a minute. If you don't live with a disorder like this, with something that eats holes in your brain, especially where your impulse control resides, you probably can't adequately picture it. Imagine trying to fly a plane with no autopilot function and being completely unfamiliar with air travel. Imagine that the devices in the cockpit are written in another language. Imagine that if you cannot figure out how to stay in the air, you will die and take people with you. That is what bipolar feels like to me. I can't regulate my emotional responses without intense concentration. If I crash, I will take my daughter and my husband and my business with me.

I need the small words, small sounds, of being "on" in a small way. I need to make connections without overexerting myself. I need to take hermit time at home, even when I think I could do anything and can tackle anything. I need extra sleep, extra long baths, and glasses of wine in the dark with breathing meditation. I need to hold my small daughter as she falls asleep, matching her breath for breath as she slows down, and smell her sweet head and soft skin and kiss her tiny fingers that are always reaching reaching reaching for my face. I need to find the time to make the words flow out of my brain without feeling like they crawled there in the first place. I need to watch mindless television, knit, drink beer, and sit in my flannel owl pajamas with my phone turned off and the internet unplugged. I need to let John kick my ass at yet another round of TriWords.

More than anything, I wish this weren't my reality. I wish I didn't have to wonder what the break from meds caused by pregnancy and now the breastfeeding is doing to my brain. I wish that this reality that John and I live with would bypass my daughter, and that she won't have to know this feeling of "other" and "self" that coexist in me. I wish that I could stop worrying about what kind of parents we are going to continue to be. I wish that I could just BE a good role model without having to think about also being a positive example of what a will to manage a chronic mental illness looks like.

I wish I could write when I'm not manic.