My Fight for Lemonade

Welcome to my highly functioning bipolarity. I have been able to thrive without medication for 9 years. NINE years. I have kept a pretty decent balance of mind/body for a loooong time now. No new scars, minimal toxins, a physique that I have maintained in a healthy manner. A strong & happy marriage. A healthy, well balanced child I have raised. A home, a car, a job. I am a functioning and contributing member of society. I am good person with very few enemies. Soooo, what's the problem? Why the disconnect? I don't sit on my butt and beg for others to take care of me. I don't mooch off the backs of others. I don't expect or ask anything from anyone. What is left? Something must be left. I've been given these damn bipolar lemons and I feel like I've tried juicing them, cutting them & squeezing them. Hell, I've tried sticking julienned pieces of my bipolar lemons through a garlic press to make some fucking lemonade and I barely get a drop. WTF?!

How do you push, pull, or pick yourself up? Gather up those lemons & try again? I understand the logistics of it...one foot in front of the other, one thing at a time. BUT- Why does it seem like every process is so damn hard for me and not for others? I'm "slow to develop" is one reason I've been told. Fuck that! Why is it not my turn? I sound like a little kid pouting. Yuck. But seriously, how do you love yourself and accept yourself for who you are when everything, every sign around you tells you you must be better, you must be prettier, you must be skinnier, you must be more talented. You must, you must, you must. More, More, More. It's survival of the fittest, isn't it? Clearly I am not one of the fittest. I'm not nearly as hard as I think I am. I was not able to handle NYC because my emotional/mental state would not allow me. Everything sucked that much more. The smallest rejection sends me spiraling out of control. I immediately want to tear down the world. Eat & drink everything terrible for me, want to ingest anything that will give me even just a moment of comfort. I want to scream at everyone, "What the fuck is so wrong about me?!?!?!" I say terrible things about me. I would do terrible things to me if I were still there...in that dark spiral that I found myself in in NYC. I would not could not in NYC. But here...here I can.

Here I have reasons to keep it together and fight. Here, I have my husband, my security by no bounds. Unabashed love and comfort that makes everything better. Here, I have my son. My son. Even saying it now brings a wave of warmth over me. His energy resuscitates mine. His voice and the light in his eyes smacks my wobbly weakness back straight. I have my mom, and all my amazing family. The purest love without condition. I have fantastic friends that remain even when I disappear into the dark place. It matters that I am depended upon. I depend on all of it more than I care to admit. I'm a fighter that needs a coach, that needs a training team. I have always had my eye on a prize, but when my eyes get beat til they're swollen shut, it's so hard to see. I have to accept I cannot do this alone. I have to rely on my heart and my ears. My sense of touch. From getting knocked around so, I lose sense of space and time. I have to accept that the prize cannot be all that I am. If I let success in this consume me I will crumble. I don't have to suffer in silence. It's okay if I cry, scream, and want to crawl in a hole, lean on the ropes. Just like every time before this I must return to the corner no matter what shape I am in, look at how far I've come and realize it's not over yet. I still have my team in my corner, and fans in the seats. Put the f'ing cold compresses on those eyes, let the energy of the room soak in through my feet and raise me up. Just get up. No matter how much it hurts. Get up Heth'r. GET UP. GET UP!! Eat some lemons and sweat, cry, bleed out some fucking lemonade.