Blending the Light and the Darkness

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I love my happy mind, the one that enjoys activities and people and the simplicity of a clean, colorful home, the mind that delights in playfulness and whimsy, quick to laugh at the silliest of situations. That mind swears it can always be this good, if I stick to a schedule, if I keep up motivation, if I don’t stop because I’m tired or even overwhelmed by all the positivity.

When my cynical mind comes back around to claim its time, I’m not loving that, and in fact, I’m angry. I ask why it’s such a downer. But then, I’m more familiar with it than the happy mind, as it seems to be more of who I am. Happy mind is a more elusive state, less connected, and highly irritating to think of when my darker side prevails.

Yet I pursue happiness as my ultimate goal, as if I just haven’t yet hit on the secret to holding it. Depressed days, certainly not as dire as before medication, mock me as if they’ve been holding echoes of my anguished cries and are now releasing them into the air.

I’ve only recently realized that I pursue ways of feeling good to somehow conquer any sadness or despair about the world. And when I have joy for a few days, unrealistically I’m envisioning a near future of being out with people and finding work and having a life of fulfillment in the normal, typical way, with beauty, exercise, socializing, occupational, home, and family routines, packed with meaning and intent and self-affirming accomplishment. I will have won.

So, there I am, turning happiness into an assignment. And being down is just more failure because I didn’t stick with the joy plan, and that’s my fault. Maybe if I’d just pushed through my own inconsistencies and doubts, the grey days would’ve stayed at bay. Maybe I just want to be a loser. Maybe I’m just lazy and undeserving. Maybe…

And then I started to picture it all another way. Bipolar disorder is a part of me, an illness that affects me emotionally and interferes with life, with what I want to do, with how I relate to others, with every facet of every day. If I can stop with this concept that I’ll overcome it through better planning and seeking out mood lifting, spectacularly amazing experiences, I might make some peace with myself.

Lately I’ve thought more of how great-to-bad times intertwine and mix until it’s just life. And I appreciate life more often if I’m not cursing the darkness and waiting to catch the next happy train, hoping to be carried away forever from those inevitable blues. There really isn’t a happy mind versus depressed mind taking turns in my head. I don’t control the switch through my every action. All of it is me on a regular basis. The difference now is that I treat bipolar for what it is, for the condition it is, instead of blaming myself and forever chasing highs as some kind of cure, like holding up a cross to ward off the vampire, like acting as if part of me is the enemy.

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