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.

Can changing a Twitter handle change your life???

Earlier this week, out of nowhere I had an idea that prompted 2 thoughts. One: I spend way too much time on Twitter. But more importantly, two: how can I ever escape the trap this illness has locked me in if even I define myself first and most importantly as bipolar. Forget my name, my likes and dislikes, education, occupation, any of my personality traits, the biggest and most important label that I put on myself basically tells the world that I'm female and I'm crazy. Now, you may be thinking it's just a Twitter handle who cares? That would be the case if I had invented some weird meaningless pseudonym containing a clever pun or inside joke, but I didn't. I chose a handle that explicitly explains the label that I sometimes feel is tattooed across my forehead. I chose it for two reasons; first: when I originally joined twitter it was simply to connect with other people living with mental illness so that I would have someone to talk, second: it is what I see when I look in the mirror, what I think of first when describing myself, and what I'm afraid I project to the rest of the world. 


This second reason is that part that is currently troubling me. When I look in the mirror I don't see a cute blonde woman with nice eyes and a good smile. I don't see a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. I don't see an intelligent, funny, strong, determined soul. I see crazy plain and simple. I put the label on myself before anyone else could and I am afraid that I have let it blossom from just a simple description of my illness to a jail of my own making, filled with fear, anger, resentment, regret, pain, frustration, guilt, shame, self-loathing and self-doubt. 


"Well, I would go back to school but I failed before because I'm crazy so I better not even bother trying again."


"Wow, I would really like to ask that guy out but I'm crazy so I'm sure he'll say no."


"I had a fantastic job before, but I screwed it up because I'm crazy so I might as well not even try to work at all."


"I'd love to start working out again, but I'm crazy so why bother when I'll just quit eventually and start bingeing on junk food again."


"I am lonely sometimes and would like to make new friends, but crazy people make horrible friends so I better just keep sitting here alone."


"Every one I pass on the street must know that I'm crazy, insecure, and fat so I'll just stop going outside all together."


These are some of the common rationales that play in my brain which have allowed me to sit back, hide, and miss out on life for most of the last 10 years. 10 years! A decade. An entire decade wasted in my self-made jail. As I wrote those, well basically excuses, it occurred to me that I have made an interesting connection in my own mind. Crazy=Failure. In my mind failure sucks, and is embarrassing, and results in judgment so why bother. I have set myself up for failure for the last decade and have succeeded brilliantly at fulfilling that prophecy. 


Where am I going with all of this??? I have no clue. Not yet anyway. Can changing a Twitter handle really change the way you see yourself and in doing so change your life? I don't know. I'll keep you posted, I'm off to think up a clever pun or inside joke.