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 little bit lost and a lotta bit stuck (a rambling, babbling teary-eyed post)

I feel like am supposed to be so much more than what I am right now. Like I should be doing something real, and meaningful, and important. Like there is so much in me that just needs to come out, and be fantastic, and take on the world. I just don't know what. Or how. Or where to start..... When I was a kid it was so easy. I wanted to be a gymnast, and go to the Olympics, then be a Dr and a lawyer and a singer all in one. Well I didn't do any of that. And now that I'm older a horrible mix of fear, illness, bad luck, circumstance, past experience, bad decisions, broken hearts, and bogus expectations is keeping me from even being able to sit down and figure out what it is that I truly want now. I want to be happy - ok fine, just be happy I want to be successful, and busy, and inspirational - at what and for what???? no idea I want more time with my girls - I'm doing all I can, but illness, geography and finances make it a constant struggle and it's never enough I want to love myself so that someone else can love me and I won't die alone - don't even know where to start I want to be secure and safe and taken care of - again, no clue how I want to feel important, and worthy, and useful - but I don't. deep down I really truly don't. and until I do, nothing else is possible 18 years of Dr's and meds and therapy and treatment and I'm no better off, no closer to an answer. I'm really tired of being stuck. I'm really tired of not having any of the answers. And I'm really truly so damn tired of hating the person that I spend all my time with; the fat, useless, lazy, pathetic mess that stares back at me from the mirror every day and taunts me with glimmers of hope but delivers nothing. I wanna fight. I'm just so damn tired. And so damn lost. And so damn stuck. And I really truly honestly have no idea where to even begin. "you don't have to see the whole staircase, just the first step" - well it feels like I am in a hole, inside a well, 10 feet away from the first step with no ladder, no rope, and no flashlight. What now? No seriously, what now? Gratitude..... ok I am grateful for my daughters, for my sister, for my family, for a roof over my head, and a warm bed to sleep in. I am grateful that I have food to eat (even though eating brings more shame and self-hate). I am grateful for a safe country, and basic human rights. I am grateful I'm not dead yet (most days). I am grateful that I have it better than a lot of people. Gratitude exercises are great, until they make you feel like a whiny, even more useless, waste of space than you did before you started them. I know it takes work. I'm willing to work. If I could find some actual direction, purpose or anything to work toward. I don't like or trust myself enough to even know what is that I want. What it is I should be doing. And I don't know how to start. Overcoming that much self-doubt, distrust, and loathing is something I long for so badly, but don't even know how to begin to tackle. What now? Seriously, what now???