Ok something kinda magical just happened for me…. every week or so I get updates from the “about.me” site telling me who has looked at my page, etc., and I think that’s cool little function. So I’m sitting here, trying to get some of these reports out of the way as I’m a little behind and have a very busy couple of days ahead, but I took a break and clicked on the link, just checking out a few pages.
The last few weeks – and this has been no secret – have found me pretty much scrambling to latch on to something mentally. “Things” weren’t where they were just a few months ago and as I’d written on my personal blog I was starting to feel that all that personal growth, all that work, all that really hard work I had done in the last year on “me”, and finding me again was really starting to look like it was lost. Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that all that positivity was being wasted, not received, not worth it somehow….I can’t tell you why. It was as if I was losing my will to exist. That is definitely a road I don’t want to revisit and I was honestly scared I was driving myself to it again. A very, very real fear was starting to grow inside me; one that I was feeling I just could not escape from.
But then I went to the page of this guy who’d viewed my page…and something he’d written just slapped me – mainly because they were words that could have been written by me a very short time ago, and I realized that I STILL BELIEVE THEM. They were:
“Be an encourager and you’ll be contagious! You are loved! You are special! Keep moving forward toward your goals and dreams! Let me know your hopes and dreams, and let’s believe and work for them together! Today you are one day closer to your destination! You may be rejected– love anyway. You may be misunderstood — communicate anyway. You may not succeed — try anyway! Never give up!”
I know this is the message I was giving not only to myself but to others as I plugged these changes into myself, and I had so many people writing me telling me how much they were encouraged to change for themselves. I look at the difference in myself physically from just 8 months ago and while I’m not DONE I’m a billion steps closer than from where I started! I should be hugely proud of what both myself and Ed have accomplished physically, and all of my other goals are still rolling right along toward those bigger dreams. MY PLAN IS WORKING! So I have nothing, absolutely nothing to be upset with myself or to feel let down about in this area.
In terms of managing the other issues, mainly the Bipolar Disorder….it’s just maybe gotten the best of me right now, and in harder/different ways than have happened since I was diagnosed 6 years ago, and the frustrations of this are really difficult to detail. It was “under control”, and very well. So the things that are coming up now, that I’m having to still learn…..well, they just suck. But I need to make something clear to people about BD. BD is a MOOD disorder, NOT AN EMOTIONAL DISORDER. There IS a difference, and while they can be connected, they are not the same, and it is very frustrating when people equate the two or even worse, somehow assume you’re less intelligent simply because you have a MOOD disorder. That’s just silly. It’s not hard to get educated about what Bipolar Disorder is, especially when it involves someone you care about.
Maybe I am an emotional anomaly. I have ’em, I love ’em, and they’ve gotten me through many many times, both good & bad, and I experience them as fiercely as I can. And for the most part, I just freakin’ love everyone I meet until they hurt me or treat me badly, or perform some action that makes me think “hmmmmm…I dunno”… and even then, there’s a love for them but it might be confused and/or mingled with concern. I might still be figuring that out. And maybe I need to learn how to pull back on that somewhat, but at least people know most reactions from me are heartfelt and honest, and you can’t always say that about a lot of people.
So I feel a return to that encouraging of everyone, showing everyone that you CAN do what you set your mind to, that reaching for your dreams IS possible, and that you don’t have to rely on the opinions of others to make up your own mind about what YOU can do. If you have a dream, a desire, a wish, then it is up to you to go for it. It feels too good to do so and the best part of it is, helping someone else believe in themselves is the best thing of all.
