I'm not sure what to write this morning. I am kinda anxious about my whole dream of being a 'real' writer, a.k.a. an author who makes a living selling books, is going to be completely tanked by the fact that I have bipolar and the depressive and mixed episodes leads to months of complete disorganization. My bullet journal helps me but it is really hard to push through the ennui to post things and my social phobia gets ratcheted way up high when my mood is anything less then ok. I have the lines I heard about how no one wants to hear or read what I have to say when I am not presenting 'happy' things hammering in my head all the time when I am in a low mood.
It is a struggle to even keep a journal. I am pushing through those struggles and trying to get myself back to where I was before my brain went 'explody' and maybe find enough proverbial spoons to have a part-time writing business. I know that being a full-time stay at home mom gets challenging and makes time for writing difficult. It is a bit easier now that the kids are in middle childhood and not quite as demanding for me to entertain them. But they're still quite distracting.
I don't know how other people do it. They carry on full time jobs, raise their family, and manage to keep things moving forward in their writing life. I don't know if my difficulty is because I am disabled or if there is some crucial thing that I am missing. I don't know, maybe both of those are the same thing and I'm over thinking things again. I try not to let my disability run the show.
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder does weird things to your brain. Bipolar does even weirder things to your brain. Seasonal affective disorder just sucks. I am learning that if my blood sugar is off kilter, I get to have all kinds of questionable fun trying to get it sorted out and it has an impact on my mood and pretty much everything else. I feel like the deck is stacked against me. It is discouraging and some days I just think that maybe I should just give up.
I try not to indulge in that kind of thinking much. But some days I really do feel like I should just give up on being a professional writer. Because it seems like whenever I start to get my feet back under me and I can begin to manage the stuff in my life that is making it hard, something else comes along to kick my feet out from under me. I had my CPTSD more or less under control, then came postpartum depression (which really started when I was pregnant). In the process of dealing with the crisis that created, I got my bipolar II diagnosis. Lo and behold, with the bipolar's depressive episodes, I get to experience psychotic features (I hear someone screaming horrible, horrible things at me. It's awful.). I start to get a handle on my bipolar and then I get diagnosed with diabetes.
I feel like I spend most of my time managing my symptoms and what time I have left over I spend running the household and managing my kids. It is exhausting and demoralizing. Someone suggested at one point when I was expressing frustration that I needed a vacation. I restrained the urge to laugh in their face. I can't afford a vacation and if I did go on vacation, all of my problems come with me. And I get the added stress of burgeoning agoraphobia. (I am beginning to panic going to places I'm not familiar with and traveling a good distance from my home on my own. It sucks and I know it is because I am afraid that I'm going to have a diabetic emergency with out anyone there to help me.)
No comments:
Post a Comment