Can I even believe anything I tell myself anymore?

Have you ever broken a promise to someone you care about?

It feels terrible. We feel guilt, disappointment, and if you're like me vow to make it up to them however we can.

Why is it not the same when we break a promise to ourselves?

I remember a time, a younger happier time, when anything I decided to do or told myself I was going to do got done. It wasn't an issue. There was no question. If I wanted it I went out and got it. If I told myself I was going to do something it darn well got done. I made decisions, albeit it easier ones than those I face now, with confidence and ease. And once a decision was made, that was it. There was no second guessing, no doubt, no decision paralysis, no problem. Decision made, action taken. Every time.

I don't remember the first time I broke a promise to myself. I wish I did. I wish I could remember if it was hard. If I felt the same guilt, disappointment, and need for redemption that I have felt the times I broke promises to other people. I wish I could remember the second, third, and fourth time as well. I wish I could remember so that I could see just how quickly any negative feelings disappeared. So that I could see just how quickly I went from dependable and constantly following through, to not believing a damn word I say to myself and breaking every promise I ever make to myself.

The loss of trust in myself is bad enough. If it ended there that would, on it's own, be sad, damaging, and darn near incapacitating. Unfortunately, as with most things, it doesn't just end there. When it becomes easy to tell yourself you're going to do something and then just not do it, it also becomes much easier to give in to the evil voice in your head that is Bipolar. It becomes easier to binge eat to stuff down your real feelings, to stop seeing friends so they don't see your decline, to stop cleaning your house because what does it matter, to stop getting out of bed, to stop self-care, to stop exercising, to stop going to work, to just give up. After spending any significant amount of time telling yourself you're going to try and then just not doing it, any conscientious effort to begin trying again is infinitely more difficult.


"I'm going to stop bingeing on junk food, eat healthy regular meals, and start being active again" gets met with "shut up fatty you're too lazy and sugar is delicious, you'll eventually cave and eat a cookie so just eat an entire box right now instead of going for a run".

"I'm going to clean my apartment this week, organize things, and keep it that way" gets laughed at while your front room begins to look like an episode of Hoarders.

"This time I'm not going to get scared and drop out of class, this time I will graduate" may last for a month or two, but is soon replaced by "you're dumb, everyone is laughing at you, even if you do graduate you'll still be sick stupid and useless so just quit now".

"I am going back to work. I am going to be strong, beat this, and take care of myself again" very quickly becomes "don't even try. People will just laugh at you, you're qualified for nothing, you're just gonna screw it up again so why go through the anguish?"


Once you make it nearly impossible to trust anything created in your inner monologue the acts of dreaming and goal setting become non-existent. Early on in the promise breaking you still attempt to have dreams and still attempt to set goals, but once you abandon enough of them you begin to abandon the concepts all together. You don't bother dreaming, what's the point? You stop setting goals, or even being able to think of goals you might want to set.

You then stop making decisions. Without dreams and goals there is no direction, and without direction how do you know what path to take? Without confidence in yourself and your abilities the ability to make even the most simple decisions disappears. Decision paralysis sets in so deeply that your life quite literally stops. You are alive, but there is no action, there is no growth, there is no healing, there is no anything. Years, in fact a decade, can go by and you have no idea where it went or what you actually did for ten years. Suddenly you are ten years older, your kids have grown into teenagers, and it feels like you missed it. There are snapshot memories here and there, but there is no real involvement or appreciation. All of the sudden you are a 25 year old in a 35 year old's body. Everyone around you has grown, changed, accomplished things, but you are no better off and no different than you were in 2002.

That is a very frightening and regretful place to be.

Fear and regrets accomplish absolutely nothing, but when a decade of your life has disappeared before your eyes while stuck in a state of complete inaction it is damn hard not to let them creep in.

The only answer is to jump back into life with two feet. Start with small goals, accomplish them, rebuild your faith in yourself, learn to trust yourself, and learn to feel worthy again. Simple right? Ya, sure. Ask me in another ten years.

Just a boring Monday night????

I was sitting around a a few hours ago and I thought to myself, "ugh it's Monday night and I have absolutely nothing to do."

I sat there bummed out for a few minutes until a now rather obvious thought hit me like a truck; I have a ton of shit I could do, why am I not doing any of it?

I have clean laundry that needs to be folded, dirty laundry that needs to be washed, the bathroom could use a good scrub, the kitchen could use a good scrub, the floors need to be vacuumed, a good dusting wouldn't hurt, my kitchen cabinets are screaming for a reorganization, my front storage room/office is a disaster, my bedroom closet needs a good purging and reorganization.

Ok, so I don't have anything fun to do on a Monday night.

Wrong again. I could knit, read one of the 12 books that I have started in the last year and not finished, paint, listen to music and dance around my apartment, do some pilates, head out for a walk since it stopped raining, text my daughter, call my mother, write my grandmas each a letter, learn some speed reading exercises, organize my photos, search online for fantastically awesome and thoughtful Christmas presents to buy my family, or research volunteer opportunities and toy drives in my city.

At any given point there are probably well over 100 things I could be doing. I am not well enough at this exact moment to be working so I have a ridiculous amount of time to choose to anything at all that I want. Despite this fact, at any given moment I am usually sleeping, watching tv, eating, sitting around, or perusing Twitter and Facebook mindlessly clicking on links and whatnot.

My brain just smacked me upside the head with what a waste that really is. Sleep is good, but not 12 hours a day. TV and movies are great, just not 8 or 9 hours a day. Twitter and Facebook are fun, but not 104 times a day.

So then I says to my brain I says, "brain, why on earth is I bein so stupid?"

No, but honestly, why?

It took a couple of hours and some pondering, eating, and distraction, but I think I have it figured out. It is not that I never have anything to do, it is that I never have any want to do anything. And not just the tedious obligatory cleaning related stuff, but a want for the fun and productive stuff is missing too. I pretend I do. I tell myself the little white lie that I really wish I had more to do, but I often don't. This is what an incredibly long and painful illness has done to me. I don't want to do anything and I don't care that I don't want to do anything. Or at least I haven't cared up until this point, as I have done nothing to change it. This is the apathy and surrender that the horrible depression associated with my Bipolar 2 has caused.

This realization got me quite motivated. For about 6 1/2 minutes. Then I just got sad. Then numb. Then sad again. Then discouraged. More sadness. And now I am writing about it all.

So how do I get my want back? I assume, as with most things, baby steps. Start small. Day 1 do one cleaning thing, one fun thing, and watch just a little less tv. Day 2 increase that, and so on. My problem is not only resolve, but follow through and commitment. Sometimes I will get all motivated and attempt activity and productivity for a few days, and then I will get either bored, distracted, depressed, or scared and I will stop. I have a SEVERE inability to set goals and actually see them through. This pisses me off. Before my Bipolar 2 symptoms began I was one of the hardest working, most dedicated and driven kids you would ever meet. I have not been that person in a very long time. That makes me angry, and sad. Feels like something else stolen from me by this illness. Another area where control has been lost, and it is such an exhausting fight to get it back.

My only hope right now is the old saying, "the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem". It is true that there are certain periods of time in my life where it is not that I don't want to do things, it is that because of my symptoms I literally can't. But this is a smaller percentage of days than 95% so I need to get off my ass and do something.

Hi. My name is Cristina and I am a TV and Internet addict. I hide in these activities because the real world scares me. I am afraid of failure, and even more afraid of success. I don't think I'm likeable or interesting so I shut myself off in order to avoid humiliation and hurt. I hide away inside my illness and myself because so many years of fighting have beaten me down and worn me out. It is easier to hide and to not try, than to go through anymore rejection, failure, blame, and judgment.

Hi. My name is Cristina and I am sick of hiding and taking the easy road. Whether motivated by lack of focus, motivation, energy, and direction, or by fear; I am tired of it. I have resolve at this moment. I will take baby steps. I will try to keep fighting. And although I have said this before and not followed through that does not mean that I cannot follow through this time. I CAN succeed, and if I slip up I will forgive myself and start over. Because the only failure is in not trying. The only way I truly fail is if I give up. It will take however long it takes, but if I am still trying and fighting then that is success.

I need to remember that most success is not big, huge and quick. It is a series of small successes. A learning curve. A string of slip ups that you pick yourself up and then learn from. I need to practice patience. And I need to be kind to and forgiving of myself.

It's really all I can do.

A lesson in gratitude....

While waiting for the bus on W Broadway today I was reminded of something that I too easily forget. Even with all my struggles and problems, I've got it pretty darn good.....

Behind me was an older woman. She was sitting at one of the outdoor tables mumbling to herself and occasionally yelling out random obscenities mixed with gibberish. She was clearly, to me at least, schizophrenic or severely manic and in some sort of dissociative state. Those sitting near her and those walking past glared, whispered, passed judgment, and looked down their noses at this poor woman who was resting her feet, completely oblivious to the fact that she was out of place or bothering anyone. I, however, looked at her with concern, pity, understanding, and an extreme thankfulness that I was not in her same situation. I do not pretend that this makes me any better, kinder, or more informed than the other passersby. I feel so differently than them because deep down I am much more similar to the mumbling old lady than the offended onlookers.

I wonder where she has come from. What she's done earlier today that's brought her to the McDonald's patio at 4:30 on a Saturday. And where will she go when she leaves here. Does she have a home, a place to stay, a warm bed to crawl into tonight and forget her troubles for a few short hours? She is shabbily dressed, not exactly clean, and carrying a back pack so it is impossible to tell where she might have been, or where she is headed. I feel a deep sense of gratitude and a feeling of luck wash over me as I realize that but for a couple twists of fate I could be that woman. I want to help her but I don't know how. A couple dollars or a sandwich is merely a "band-aid" solution that does nothing to truly address her problems or help her in the long-term. She has clearly been let down by the health care system and is either unmedicated or self medicating as the drugs to treat schizophrenia or extreme mania are more expensive than even I can afford. While pondering what possibly I could do to help this woman or people like her the bus arrives and my thoughts turn to my own situation...

I am sick, but not as sick as this woman. I have had wild manic bursts but nothing to the point that would have me mumbling on the street corner or yelling at strangers. I have been unable to work for quite some time now, but by some glorious twist of fate I landed a government job a year before my illness totally took over my life and incapacitated me so I receive disability that makes it possible for me to live a semi-normal life. I can pay the rent in my very nice apartment, in a safe, quiet, secure neighbourhood. I can pay my utility bills, cel bill, and there is always food in my cupboards. I won't be taking any tropical vacations this year, or buying any of the designer shoes and clothes I love, but I've got it pretty darn good considering. I spend my short bus ride being ridiculously thankful for that glorious twist of fate and the things I do have, for if it weren't for the disability I receive I would be either homeless or living on a farm outside Podunk Saskatchewan with my parents. Neither of which sounds like a very great situation compared to where I am.

I spend so much time being mad at the fact that I have this illness, and longing for the me that was before it took over. I dwell on what could of been, what should've been, and all the potential that will never be realized. I forget too easily to just sit back, breathe, and be thankful for what is. For what still could be. And for not having worse than I do. I may never fully get over the pain. I may never escape the darkness and hurt and self-doubt that consumes me, but I hope that I never forget the light that I do have. The luck that has brought me a safe place to keep my things, and a warm bed every night to escape, even for a few hours, the craziness that is my life.

(I have yet to come up with any ideas of how to help in any way the woman I saw or people like her. It seems almost futile and pointless as the problem is soooo big and so complex. This makes me sad. I wish somehow, someway, there was something I could do to pay my luck and gratitude forward...........)