Why am I writing about this?
Well, even though this is terribly embarrassing, I can't move on. I don't know how to. I have been in such a dark place. People who love me, people who care... tell me to just let it go. Walk out into the light. They don't understand. The darkness is inside and I can't run away from myself.
In the past when I've gotten upset about something I wrote it out. It's like a personal horcrux. My demons go into the pages and I am free. Not a perfect metaphor, but I'm going with it.
I haven't been able to write about this.
It's mortifying when people post their drama all over Facebook. Personally, I could not deal with that.
Writing in a private paper journal is difficult because my thoughts are so disorganized. I can't get it out or go back and make changes or additions to what I've written. So, in frustration, I abandoned it.
Writing this part of me out on the family blog is really no different than drama sharing on Facebook; something I'm not willing to do.
Then something dawned on me. This week social media has been frothing at the mouth over a recent event. The non-stop posting of outrage looked to me like thoughtless mob mentality and was like fingernails on a chalkboard. I tried to open up a dialogue with an old high school friend by responding to something she posted on the subject. But, rather than debate me or disagree, she deleted the comment, unfriended me and blocked me forever. It really hurt because she was a girl I've always admired.
Nobody wants to hear dissenting voices on Facebook? Really, all you self-righteous hypocritical sheep?
Doubling down, I wrote it out in a new blog to vent privately. Thought about it. Got familiar with new details. Revised several opinions. And then deleted it. While it was still a fluid work I shared it with my therapist. He didn't agree with me. He didn't say so, but I could tell. By the time it was deleted, my opinion on the matter morphed into more of what everybody else has been saying all along. I'd rather be sure about something than have my opinions formed by social media hysteria. But, I had to work it out like that. What stuck out to me though, was rather than judge me or disagree openly, my therapist agreed that I was a powerful writer and emphasized that what was most important was that writing it out made me feel better.
The incredibly freeing feeling of being able to vent and fully express my frustration on that issue helped me to realize that perhaps what I needed for coping and learning to live with being bipolar was to write it out. Writing from a place of darkness. Write my way out.
Write out of the darkness...till right...into the light.
Up till now my therapy sessions have sounded like a broken record:
Me: I remember. I'm embarrassed.
Him: You need to forgive yourself
Me: I don't know how.
He pulls more brokenness out of me. I don't know how, but he does. It's his calling in life and he does it well.
Him: What's coming up for you right now?
<Damn you.>
I always leave with my eyes puffy and red and feeling emotionally exhausted.
I refuse to go to group therapy. I'm not willing to spend money on the co-pay so I can be around other broken people and talk about how we're all crazy. I've never known how to deal with mental illness and so I avoided people with it. Now I'm the one with mental illness and I can't avoid myself.
So on this blog I reserve the right to go back and make changes, additions, deletions. Because writing for me is fluid. It's a process.
This is my group therapy. Me and the internet.
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