I Admit I Bit You, It Was A "Thing" (An I Love You Letter To My Sister)

Two friends have recently had to endure pretty shitty things done to them by their sisters, and my heart cries for them because nothing hurts quite like sister-hurts.

There is also nothing quite like being loved with sister-love, and laughing with them, watching "our shows" with them, and from what I hear from others - pulling pranks with them. I would like to make it clear that my sister and I don't pull pranks as neither of us is clever in that way, but we enormously enjoy watching them being carried out, and if they are clever/funny enough so that we can enjoy them afterwards we don't mind being the target of them.

I was a ferocious biter when I was a child. My 5-years-younger brother was the recipient of the Biting Incident of '84 "...In Which Dad Was Woken Up While Exhausted, And Didn't Ask Why There Was Screaming Before Smacking Ensued...", but Dani received her fair share. She doesn't recall them, but I do as my mom would give me flick me hard on the cheek when I got caught.

Man, she was annoying though, always hanging around and making me feel like an evil ugly Cinderella-Stepsister, jealous of how fucking adorably cute she was. Looking back at pictures from our childhood, I can see that it wasn't really like that as much as it seemed to me while living through it, but there's no way for me to fix it now. My readings over the years reassure me that this is a common occurrence in sibling relationships, and I saw it repeated with my daughters.

Getting back to the love part...
We have't had an hours and-or days long conversation in weeks. I'm not doing so well. She offers to drive over for lunch on Sunday. I begin weeping with happiness. Because even though my partners will be there and I'll also talk to them, there is Nothing like talking to and being with my sister.

My dearest sister, you went through it too, that crazy family stuff, and since we married brothers, the crazy other family stuff too. And you keep loving me, and accepting my love back.
Do you know that whenever you say you miss me it's like having a rainbow bloom in my heart?
I bit you, and acted like a pretentious teenaged jerk, and condescended to you, and more, and you still love me and miss me when you don't see me for a while, I think each time you tell me you love me

I am fairly marvelous, this must be said, but still...

I love you, and miss you too, when I don't see you. You have this clarity and insight, as well as hilarious cluelessness. You have this goofy adorable infectious sense of humor. You cry and bring me to tears. You are fierce and meek, humble and proud. You are intense and so very smart.

Thank you, dear one...

I'm Special-ized

Having undependable emotions presents unique interpretations of reality.
I've heard of a few different methods, and have a partial inventory of my own.

Believing you are special.
From everything I've been able to gather, this is a bipolar I specialty. I've not met, read a book of or by, or heard of a bipolar II who is able to successfully utilize this method. I've glimpsed small sparkles of how this is achievable in my very rare (hypo)mania states. I would immediately and utterly ruthlessly squish those sparkles with all of the abundance of evidence to the contrary, but if I lived in mania more often it would be a lot harder, possibly impossible.

You can't live without me.
Ahhhh, caretaking, my drug of choice, the favorite of bipolar ii's everywhere, from what I've seen, read, heard. What was a toxic mix of dysfunctional family dynamics gave me was also a helpful coping mechanism for a bipolar eldest child. It's a money-mix of distractions from one's own problems, and a heady sense of imaginary control over emotions. Sure it's not our own emotions, but it's control!

Intellectualize Everything.
I can't feel, therefore I am. It's how I'm still alive.
No joke.

If I can't see it, it's not there.
Intellectualization also requires compartmentalization, although the reverse isn't true. The ability to compartmentalize is hardly a bipolar specialty. Getting through a workday successfully when we're worried about our sick dog, or through a Friday when we have a party that night both require compartmentalizing emotion. It's a skill where you successfully or unsuccessfully slice huge chunks of reality off and shunt them out into the netherworld either forever or temporarily. If it's temporary, and you can manage to re-integrate that reality intact (or relatively intact, let's be real here) then compartmentalization is a healthy coping mechanism. If chunks go into the netherworlds and never come back in any recognizable form, it's pretty crazy-making for everyone involved. And if we're the ones gas-lighting our own-damn-selves, it also gets really truly absurd.

It's a war zone out there.
A huge number of bipolar ii's have agoraphobia - ie, a fear of places. I'm riddled with it.
The speculation is that the unexpected can trigger swings and so we learn to fear places where either swings have happened, or might happen. This rings astonishingly true to me. Knowing this, while it gives some reassurance that there's a logic to my crazy, does not therefore make it go away. Going to places I've never been makes me sick with fear.

To Thine Own Self Be True

I'm in a very precarious stage in my life right now.

I'm trying to learn new things.
Perhaps I should re-phrase: I'm trying to learn if I might like different things than I've ever thought I would like.

Given the number of people in my life who are used to me being a certain way, this has now caused the first amount of distress.

This shall not be the first post on this topic.
I have developed a certain amount of rigidity in my life, as a coping mechanism for correspondent chaos. I don't feel bad about the rigidity, anymore than I feel bad for my rigidity about breathing -it helps me survive. But in going through this period of growth, I am looking certain fears straight on and challenging them.

And then doing what I've always done and charging straight at them, sometimes falling off the cliff that was between them and me.

I used to sigh about Roland doing this, without realizing that I do the exact same thing. I never found it strange that I always understood Exactly what he was doing and found it something to admire. Of course, I don't even realize I'm doing it unless I fall off the cliff, it's so instinctive, it's so how-I-do-things.

What I'm going to take away from this is that it would be a good idea to try to be self-aware enough to warn people - " Hey, I'm pushing a limit here, that I developed along through my life-fumbling-around in, and I might have some emotional cliff that I won't see coming and suddenly Totally Freak The Fuck Out on you, and It's Not Your Fault."

That presents certain uncomfortable scenarios in and of itself though.
Being self-aware requires awareness of discomfort with certain unavoidable things - like people who I may or may not know, deadlines, expectations, locations that are unfamiliar, and such.

Does this mean that the horse that goes in front of the cart is growing into a comfortability with discomfort? I'm not sure that I can afford this nice tidiness. I'm not sure that life and growth can be so easily arranged.

Words of wisdom from an 8-year old:
“If you cannot control your peanut butter, you cannot expect to control your life.” ~ Judah-ism

And yet, dear nephew, I make excellent peanut butter sandwiches. Perhaps I should content myself with this and make everyone around me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk.

It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside

Every time I think about describing how bipolar II works it crazy thing in my brain, I automatically start by humming the lines sung by the Duke in Moulin Rouge.

Here's a link: "It's a little bit funny...this feeling inside" Spectacular, Spectacular

Poor man was told the girl actually loves him, and acts like a goofy idiot because of it...

Unreliable information...

There's been something that has been simmering around in my brain for a while, ever since I started talking to autists and their experience with something called Sensory Processing Disorder. What happens to them when experiencing sensations seems really similar to how I experience feelings with bipolar.

There are difficulties of modulation - it's too strong, too loud, exhausting, too weak, too quiet, ephemeral.

What really got to me was the question of - what happens to a person when they cannot experience the world reliably through sound, vision, touch, balance?

It's the profoundly unreliable experience that really got to me. I get that with an understanding that prickles along my skin, aches in my bones.

What happens to me because I can't reliably gauge whether something will make me happy or sad? Or -too happy- or -too sad-? Or have any feeling at all?

___________________________________
There's been additional insight into SPD actually being a THING, since the oh-so-lovely invention of fMRI's. I really hope they are getting bipolar brains under those electric microscopes.
Sensory Processing Disorder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_disorder
Intense World Theory Interview: http://www.wrongplanet.net/article419.html
Intense World Theory Science-y stuff: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/
SPD Study Science-y stuff: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039906

When I discovered my Religion, developed my understanding of Economic Theory, and That Bright Shining Moment

For a lot of people it was the stories of Ayn Rand. She was the person who told the story that touched their souls, helped them understand their place in the world and the world That Could Be.

For me it was another story. We were visiting my aunt and uncle. My cousin Matthew rushed me to the kitchen table, "You have to read this story!"

I raised my eyebrows, I'd never understood his taste in literature even though we both preferred the same genres.

"It's not long, read it." I took the stapled pages, obviously a high school assignment handout, knowing that in his notebook would be the accompanying "Write three paragraphs about your understanding of this story." Ick... Teachers didn't usually assign stories with elves...

"With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea..."

So now I say, "Read this, it's not long."
Ursula Le Guin - The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas


I stood at the kitchen table and read this not-long story. And at the end, hands trembling, pulled out a chair and sat and read it again. And again.

It was That Bright Shining Moment when I understood that Terrible Beauty, my world crumbled and was rebuilt in those moments. I walked through the fire, I had my moment on the Damascus Road, I beheld an old man, I emerged from the cave.

I was 16, I think. That's a good age to have some morality smash it's way into a human being's soul.

Throughout my life I was informed of the general principles of objectivism, given that they were the guiding forces of the terribly destructive "self esteem" social experiment that started on my generation, and then hideously refined with the succeeding one. I understand the comfort of those principles, given the radical social changes in such a short amount of time. There were no existing guidelines and social structures that could teach us how to understand what birth control was going to do to our society. The codified principle of following one's instincts must have been a huge relief.

I could understand objectivism, but I've always felt that objectivists can't seem to grapple with the child, and each person's responsibility for the child, to oneself, to everyone else. This question cannot be answered or contemplated using objectivist principles without a complete denial of responsibility to anyone.

We don't live in Omelas. We aren't shown the child as a rite of passage.

But the child is still here, everywhere. Do you take responsibility, understanding deep within your soul that every action has a cost, that every act of goodness, kindness, gentleness, graciousness can be a way of honoring and thanking the child?

"Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free."

I have wavered back and forth over the years, but right now at my time of life, I'm pretty sure I would not walk away. But I never stop thinking about it.

"Sometimes also a man or woman much older..." and how not?
The responsibility can be heavy.

Calling for an ancient Sesame Street clip

There is a song that I will be singing every time I write a post here.
It's apparently a Sesame Street song, but I never watched it. It was sung to me for the first time a few months after I turned 20 by my recently-wed husband, who sang it while acting out the adorable puppet-y scene.

I want this clip on YouTube, so that you can sing it with me. I might do a video of Roland and I doing the strange melodic cacophony that we do together.

It'ssss... FRI-day
Friday'sgreeeeeeat
I put on my Friday hat
FRI-day is where it's aaaaaaaaat

And there have been Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Teusday, Wednesday and Thursday versions.
This is a song we sing to each other to psych ourselves up to face the day, armoring ourselves with a little bit of goofy cheer before we go out into the world. It's our longest standing ritual, but it's a little meme that hasn't spread beyond the two of us. The girls have always been completely, irrationally, hostile to the infectious cheerfulness of this song, or admittedly it might have been the aforementioned cacophony...