"I don't need dessert. I have you." Dave Reed
"You just bought those pants, but they're not going to fit in a few months." Dave Reed
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I'm going to attempt to describe for you what it's like inside a bi-polar person's head. Stick with me if you can, this is going to take some imagination.
Picture if you will a beautiful glass shop. Enter the shop, look around and you see extraordinary works of art in glass. Organized just right by size, shape, theme and color. The shop is lit to perfection by incandescent light that casts the most flattering colors for all skin tones. Each bit of glass perfection shimmers and glows. Each aligned with the next seeming to float in mid air on their glass shelves. Painted calligraphy in gold leaf across the broad and clean display window is the name of the shop "Beth's Perfect life".
Now picture if you will the Tasmanians Devil in one of his snarling rampages. As he stops spinning for a moment, breathing heavy from the effort of his tornado like whirling, you see one of those little white sticky labels on his forehead. Written in a thick bold font, like the one used in horror movies you read "Bi-Polar"
Now combine the two. See the little glass perfections shatter and blow. See shards of glass in every color of the rainbow scatter about the room so fast they embed themselves into the walls. See mirrors explode, see large pieces of art whirl about the room smashing and scattering into every bit of glass until there is but one, single bit of glass left whole. As glass tornadoes spin about you; you stare at this one remaining item. It's a butterfly. You wonder for a moment if it's glued to the wood floorboard because it is unmovable in the glass storm. Objects wiz past it but never touch it and you wonder if it's encased in some sort of force field. You note its wings of cerulean blue with tiny dots of lavender, its body is lime green, even its delicate black antenna’s are still in place. You reach out thinking something is going to prevent you from lifting it but nothing does. You turn the butterfly over and you find a word painted across the underside of the body, tiny and nearly illegible. The word is "Hope".
That's my life during a bi-polar storm. From the outside, all you see is the shop. It looks rather ordinary and shows no sign of the storm raging within. However, if you get to close, you may just get cut by a shard of flying glass. My life today, is the exact same life I had a few days ago when I was sucking the fumes in my happy-bubble. There is no reason, no spark that light the fuse, no logic behind the shift and there's little I can do but hang on to the little glass butterfly and protect it with all the inner strength I can muster. I used to not have that butterfly to cling to. I created it bit by bit out of the tools, skills, lessons and blessing of the last 3 years and I struggle to keep it safe. It's how I can find moments of balance in the midst of the storm. My joy and my gratitude are with me but they are like the pea under the stack of mattresses. I can sense they're there, but the distance is to great for me to be connected so I cling to hope. The hope the storm will pass before I do something stupid or hurt someone I love.
In the midst of my glass storm, I reach for my gratitude and find it painted Cerulean.
Today I'm grateful for:
my husband. He made the wind stop blowing. He waved his magic wand and turned the Tasmanians devil into a butterfly. He proved I could do it all.
Cerulean. It's the color of sea and sky. I've been obsessing over this word for days now. It's at the end of one of my favorite new songs and I had no idea what it meant till I looked it up. Once I discovered it's meaning I loved it even more. Here's the video if you wanna hear it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQqhjFgubWE&feature=related
Evening walks. My day was crap, seriously, one of the WORST days this maintenance superhero has ever experienced in my current position. In the midst of a bi-polar blow-out I'm struggling to keep it together and just get home. My husband the prince of paradise, convinces me I have time. I can make dinner, do my walk and still have time for my list. So, I walk. Just me and the little dog Roy. I walk hard and I walk fast and I lose myself in the evening sky and my soundtrack. The little dog walks beside me perfectly, no tugging or pulling tonight. The cold night air making my nose run but I'm warm within my Joe Boxer jacket and I'm lost in thought. I'm trying to figure out how to describe a bi-polar storm. I'm trying to figure out what to put on my list when I can't "feel" anything but agitation and disconnection. I'm trying to let the cerulean sky and the music of my life reconnect me to my blissful life, at least for awhile. It worked.
successful new recipes. The
Chicken Piccata was a hit.
hand holding. The man and I held hands and watched American Idol and he said the following "I don't need dessert, I have you" AND "you bought those new pants but they wont fit in a few months." (meaning I'll be to thin for them) Yeah, I know, my husband is like the bomb diggidy bomb bombbadist. He stopped that swirling glass storm in one shot with that one right there. It may start up again tomorrow, but for tonight, here in my slice of paradise with my Prince snoring in the next room, all is calm and the glass shop is once again returned to perfect order.
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My cerulean sky
