Good Days!

These last few days have been heavenly. I have felt so good, so much like myself again. I've thought several times, "I won't go back to where I was at. I won't let myself fall from this good place." But I know better than to believe that. It's not that I don't have hope or optimism or faith. It's that I know from experience that it's not healthy for me to think that I have somehow overcome this beast. The darkness will come again, and it's better for me to accept that rather than try to deny it. So instead of thinking that I've beat this once and for all, I'm simply savoring, thoroughly enjoying, and relentlessly giving thanks for every good day, hour, and moment while this lasts.

It's days like this when I am able to remember that good days always come after the darkness. It's worth holding on through the deepest pain. I'm doing better than I often think I am. I am loved and needed by my family. I can be a mom to another child in the future. All those lies (I'm not worthy, I'm worthless, I'm failing, I'm unlovable, I'm dumb) are indeed lies, and I can't let myself believe them when they scream at me for days or weeks at a time again.

I'm in such a good place right now, and I can see how much growth and progress has taken place in my life in the last year. This is a good thing, a very, very good thing! And it will continue to be a good thing, even when I am overcome with the burdens of mental illness again.

Finding Joy Through "Beating the Blues"

When I am depressed, I struggle doing anything.  Partly because I have no motivation or energy to be productive, and partly because there's no feeling behind anything I do.  I feel like I'm constantly wandering around with no purpose or direction on those down days.  I try to do something, but as soon as I start, I wish that I could be done and go back to bed.  I try to check a few things off of my to-do list, but that's all they are-- checks.  I don't feel happy during or accomplished after.  There's no feeling at all, except sadness of course. 

It feels like eating food and not being able to taste it, watching a movie of my life instead of experiencing it myself, or being alive but not actually living.  There's nothing satisfying about it, which eventually makes it seem pointless to even try. 

This is how I've felt the last few weeks since it has started getting cold outside, but especially this last week, because of some other circumstances.  When it started getting cold and I could feel myself slipping into a winter darkness, I decided that I needed to come up with some things that could help me "beat the blues."  My rules for these activities were that they had to be things that could bring me a feeling of accomplishment when I completed them, and they had to be things that I could find a way to enjoy, even when there's not much feeling to be felt in anything.

I got to work setting goals for myself, and this is what I came up with:

1. Make as many crocheted nativities as people order.  Seriously, doing this has helped me beat the blues so much, because it is relaxing, it feels good to get each piece done, it makes me push myself, and I get to see the joy it brings to other people when they receive them.  
2. Practice and learn more about photography.  Every time I take advantage of an opportunity to take pictures, it brings me joy.  I feel good seeing myself improve, and I enjoy having the chance to be creative in a way that isn't stressful for me.
3. Work up to swimming a mile.  I have grown to love swimming in the last while since I started going to the gym.  I started out being able to only swim a few laps before feeling completely exhausted, but I have seen myself grow stronger and push myself harder to do more.  I love the feeling of accomplishment when I get done swimming farther than I thought would ever be possible and finding the power within myself to overcome the heavy weight of depression.  It feels freeing, like I have finally found something that doesn't let the depression win over me.
4. Sew spring dresses.  I don't always love sewing, but I do love making little dresses.  Lately, I have enjoyed looking for discount fabric in the scrap bins at the store and using the cute fabrics I find to make lots of little girl dresses.  Something about making a piece of clothing and then seeing a little girl wear it fills me with joy!

I still have days where I struggle so much doing even these things, and I am learning by force how to be more flexible and patient with myself, but I am finding so much joy in doing what I can to overcome the beast that mental illness is.  I will make it through this winter, and I will beat the blues!!

That We Might Have Joy: Brad's Story

I'm Brad Jones.

I have tourettes, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, non-verbal learning disorder, bipolar, and I am very shy.

I feel extremely awkward in almost all social settings, regardless of big group settings or small group settings. I function the best one-on-one, focused talking back and forth to just one person. I am used to being bullied directly, from a distance without even being spoken to, and behind my back in venues where I'm not present.

I'm that guy no girl is willing to date or marry, because my illnesses make 99% of LDS girls that know me or know of me consider me an embarrassment to be seen with, despite how I am high functioning and have have dramatically refined my social skills, despite still struggling in them. They see dating and marrying me as a lot of babysitting, where marrying me would be an eternal babysitting job.

I have found joy in this huge stack of problems by feeling more appreciative of the people who treat me right than if I were not having struggles.  Also, these constant struggles make me feel very inadequate, and in turn, keep me from becoming arrogant.

Perspective

Ever since Saturday, I have been thinking about perspective.  Last week was so bleak and dreary every day-- rain, very little sunshine, and lots of depression for me.  I love a good thunderstorm, but days and days of drizzling rain get me down, almost without me recognizing why I feel so awful!  

All day Friday, the drizzling continued.  That evening, my husband gave me an extension tube set for our camera to allow me to take macro pictures.  The next morning, I went outside to try it out.  What would have appeared to be wet dreariness everywhere only the day before transformed right before my eyes into beautiful, delicate little beads of rain on EVERYTHING.  I could hardly contain my excitement as I took pictures of every little drop I could find.  It felt like a whole new world had opened up to me, and I wanted to spend hours capturing it.

The ability to see the world in a new way changed how I felt about the rain.  What used to be dark and gloomy turned into something beautiful and something I could appreciate.  It filled me with joy in a way that I never thought would be possible, but now it is.

Likewise, my personal perspective on bipolar disorder often includes words like "sorrow," "discouragement," "difficult," and even occasionally "unfair."  I try to find joy through it, but sometimes it feels so hard to find the good in this.  It hurts and has changed me in ways that I don't want to change.  I'm different now, and sometimes I just want to go back to how everything used to be.

But recently, some good friends and good experiences have opened my eyes to see this disorder from a different perspective.  What I often see as not being a good enough mom because of this struggle has been explained by several people as an opportunity for my daughter to learn compassion and to realize that hard things happen to everyone and that we keep going without giving up.  What I see as me not being able to keep up with any of the big or little things I used to do has become an opportunity for my husband to appreciate every little thing I am able do now and for me to appreciate his efforts to help me and my good days.  What I see as one hard thing after another in the last year, God sees as a heart that has been softened and that has been opened to the heartaches of others.  What I sometimes see as misery, God is helping me to see as miracles all around me every day!

Whenever I find myself falling into the hole of self-pity, I know that I simply have to change my perspective, which is not easily done but very worth my time.  I have to try to look through different eyes and see things the way they really are, not the way my broken heart and broken brain like to see them.  For me, striving to find joy is my surest way of changing the way things look.  It gives me the ability to see my trials as stepping stones instead of stumbling blocks.  Sometimes I have to look really hard to find joy in what I am experiencing, but it's always there and always possible to find it!

Next to Normal

Last night, we went to a musical at our local high school called "Next to Normal."  Basically, it's the story of a woman who has bipolar and how she deals with her illness and how it affects her family.  I was very hesitant going to this musical.  I doubted that bipolar could be accurately portrayed on stage, and I was somewhat worried about how I would react to seeing a musical that relates so closely to what I experience.  I wanted to go and see how such a musical would be done, but I was sure that it would have some negative consequences for me.  I didn't think there was any way it couldn't.

But I was blown away!  The acting was incredible, especially for high school students.  The plot was so well-written, and the writers were able to find a way to address some very deep and emotional subjects in a way that was not offensive or inappropriately light.  It was seriously spot-on!  In fact, my husband and I often exchanged glances during the musical when the woman with bipolar would say some of the exact things I have said about how it feels.  It was amazingly well done in every way, and I am so glad I went to see it.

I hurriedly wrote down the things that I remembered after it got done, so I want to share some of the specifics about this musical that touched my heart.  Spoiler alert!!  I share many details of the plot, so you might not want to read this if you're planning on seeing the musical.

• Diana, the woman with bipolar, said that relaying her story to a counselor felt like telling someone else's story.  I have said that exact same thing to my husband before.  This doesn't feel like something that actually happens to people.  At least not me, right?  It seems so far from who I really am that surely it must be someone else's story, not mine.
• At one point, Diana was going to see a psychiatrist for several weeks as he kept changing medications, dosages, and combinations.  She felt frustrated that it wasn't ever a for sure thing that the medication would help, so she felt like an experiment.  Another spot-on moment!  
• Diana kept telling the psychiatrist about the side effects and how she was feeling.  After several weeks, she said that she no longer felt anything, at which point, he labeled her as stable.  It seems like that is the goal with mental illness often times-- get the person only to the point of feeling no ups or downs anymore, not to actually feeling good.  
• But as happened in the play and often happens in real life, Diana missed feeling happy and wanted to go back to feeling the ups and downs as opposed to feeling nothing just so she could feel good some of the time.  She got rid of her medications without talking to her husband or doctor.  Unfortunately, I have been there.
• At another point, her husband says that he understands, and Diana sings a whole song about how he doesn't know.  While I have had conversations similar to this with my husband about how it's impossible to really understand what it's like without experiencing it, I've also felt this same feeling repeatedly when others say that they understand how I'm feeling.  I know this is meant to be a comfort, but often, it does the opposite.  It makes me feel more alone.
• Diana said that she didn't want to be a shadow anymore, but she wanted to actually live.  Yes, yes, YES!
• One of the hardest parts about watching the musical was watching how the mother's mental illness affected her teenage daughter.  A couple of times, it made me tear up, and I had to remind myself repeatedly that everything is going to be okay.
• Diana's son died when he was young, and in the musical, he was her pull to commit suicide, not actually him, but what her brain told her as if it were him.  I thought the pull of suicide was so perfectly represented.
• Diana gives in to this pull and attempts suicide.  She is then admitted to the hospital for recovery.  The hospital part brought back so many memories of being in the hospital last December and was a very emotional part for me.  In fact, I started to cry just before the intermission started and all the lights went on.  It was great  :)
• The first part of the play was really hard to watch.  Honestly, it felt like it was rubbing on these super painful, open wounds, and I wanted to unsee and unfeel everything from that first half.  I thought I was going to go home and cry the rest of the night because of everything I felt while watching, but thankfully, it got much better.
• During the intermission, my husband and I talked about how impressed we were with the acting and the musical in general.  We wondered if other people in the audience were confused about what was going on, because so much of it had become familiar to us over the last year.  We both talked about what we thought would happen next and how it would end.  
• Diana tries ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) to heal and ends up losing a lot of her memory for a time.  Her and her husband talk about whether the symptoms or the cure are worse.  This is exactly how it feels.  Every treatment option has side effects and sometimes the side effects are worse than the original symptoms, and it's so frustrating!
• The musical portrayed a lot of marital conflict surrounding Diana's illness.  While we have had our fair share of heartaches surrounding my disorder, we have reached a really good place.  I am so thankful for my husband and for the support and love he gives me as we fight through this together.  He is an incredible gift in my life!
• One thing that really made my heart sink was when the psychiatrist told Diana that this is a chronic illness, and she would have relapses.  That has been one of the hardest things about this diagnosis is that it won't just go away on its own, even if we find a medication that helps for a time.  But I felt comfort in the doctor and Diana's family saying that they were here for the long run and would continue to help her through her whole life.
• In the end, I was totally bawling as the mom and daughter had a conversation about how their life was "next to normal" and that was alright.  
• The last song kept me bawling as there was no happy ending, but they basically sang that the light would come again and good days would be ahead.  I really appreciated there not being a happy, fix-everything ending.  That might sound odd, but in reality, that's not how it is.  It doesn't just go away or improve suddenly, and I feel like that would have given a false hope for handling mental illness.  Instead, I LOVED the message found in these lyrics:

Day after day,

Wishing all our cares away.

Trying to fight the things we feel,

But some hurts never heal.

Some ghosts are never gone,

But we go on,

We still go on.

And you find some way to survive

And you find out you don't have to be happy at all,

To be happy you're alive.

Day after day,

Give me clouds and rain and gray.

Give me pain if that's what's real.

It's the price we pay to feel.

The price of love is loss,

But still we pay.

We love anyway.

And when the night has finally gone.

And when we see the new day dawn.

We'll wonder how we wandered for so long, so blind.

The wasted world we thought we knew,

The light will make it look brand new.

Day after day,

We'll find the will to find our way.

Knowing that the darkest skies will someday see the sun.

When our long night is done, 

There will be light.

Sons and daughters, husbands, wives.

Can fight that fight.

There will be light.

While I'm not sure that I can recommend going to see the Broadway version of this musical as it was made more appropriate for a high school stage and was on the border of inappropriate in some parts, I think this musical has a wonderful message and brings understanding and hope to all.

This Time Last Year...

Right now, I feel like I am constantly thinking about this time last year-- last year when all of this started, last year's Halloween, last year's birthday, last year's holiday season, etc.  Tomorrow is my 25th birthday.  25 just happens to be the median age for the onset of bipolar.  I guess I got lucky and got to experience it for an extra year  :)

Last year for my birthday, we went to a middle school musical to celebrate.  I remember sitting in my seat feeling manic and wondering what was overcoming my body for the third time in 2 weeks.  It was all so new and confusing and painful.  I wanted to just sit back and enjoy the play, but my mind was racing, my heart was squeezed tight, and my legs were shaking.  I didn't have a name for what was going on, so I sat there trying to hold it all together.  I do remember enjoying the musical, especially when the boy I taught piano was in the scene, but I also remember feeling somewhat disconnected.  I didn't feel like I was totally there.  I wasn't enjoying it as much as I usually would have.  The day after my birthday, I felt so sad.  Why wasn't I able to fully enjoy my special day?  Why did it feel like I was pretending to be happy, not really feeling happy?  

This year for my birthday, we're going to another musical, this time at the high school.  It's called "Next to Normal."  It's about a mom with bipolar disorder and how she is trying to cope and manage her mental illness.  Sound familiar?  :)  At first, I didn't want to go see it.  I mean, why would I need to see a musical about this when it's the story of my life?  Then, I worried about what would be portrayed and how I would feel watching it.  And now, I'm a mix of a lot of emotions, but mostly excitement.  I want to support this effort to speak out about mental illness, and I am so curious to see how bipolar will be portrayed on stage.

Although hitting the one year mark since this started has been way harder than I thought it would be (actually I didn't think it would bother me at all so the fact that it has been hard surprises me), things are looking up now.  Sometimes I just have to take the waves of grief as they come.  It might sound weird to say grief, since I haven't actually lost anyone, but in many ways, I feel like I lost a big piece of myself to this last year, and I'm still grieving the loss of feeling like me.  It's hard not being able to control how I feel, and it's hard that I can't make myself feel good for my birthday or Christmas, but I'm doing better with accepting that things are still good and I'm still very blessed, even though I struggle sometimes.

Just like this picture my husband made for our conference frames says, I will always be able to control how I react to the difficulties that come in my life.  And I am determined to be like Brooklyn, get up and keep chasing those ducks, even after I fall down  :)

Choosing Joy in the Beginning Winter Depression

As the weather gets colder, I find myself sinking farther and farther into depression every day.  I already know it's going to be a long winter!  Every day, I wish that I could spend all my time in bed, hibernating until spring comes again.  After I get up, I can hardly make it an hour or two before I crawl back into bed and either cry or stare blankly at the ceiling wondering why this weight is so real.  Eventually, I find the courage and strength to get up for the second, third, fourth, etc. times, but it takes everything out of me, and I immediately want to lay down again.

At the same time, every day I feel like I am ruining my child's life.  I take care of her most basic needs, but that's all I can do.  My days of trying to do fun or creative things are gone (for now).  I often wonder what kind of memories she will have of her childhood and wish that I could erase any memories of me struggling.  And yet, the older she gets, the more I know that she will soon begin to remember some of this, even when she's grown.  That hurts me more than I can describe, and I really struggle adding the "but if not..." to my prayers when asking God to take this away.  I just want it gone.

But as I pray and the painful tears stream down my face, I remember JOY.  There must be joy in this.  Where is the joy?  And then my mind is opened.  There's joy in my daughter getting older and inviting me to do the tea parties, puzzles, or movies and snuggles with her.  There's joy in people inviting us to do fun holiday things, so I don't feel quite so guilty about being a less-than-super mom.  There's joy in using my hands to create things that bring other people joy.  There's joy in using my strength to serve whenever and wherever I feel I can right now.  There's joy in finishing a workout at the gym and recognizing that I have the power in me to beat this.  There's joy in the little tiny tender mercies that I would normally miss noticing but now they seem so obvious to me.  There's joy in hearing my husband say that he's sorry that this is so hard, that he loves me, that he's thankful for my effort, and that the ways I've changed in the last year are overall for the better.  There's joy in having people ask me how I'm really doing and knowing that they care to hear my truthful answer.  There's joy in seeing how blessed I am and how my testimony is still growing stronger.  And the list could go on forever probably.

I hurt so much right now, but something inside of me tells me that there will be an abundance of joy to be found, even in the bitterness of the long winter months.  Finding joy is my choice, so I will choose JOY!