bipolar adventures

Brains Can Be Sneaky

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Being Bipolar is an adventure.

Sometimes, I can feel the shifts in the cycle coming, like the ache in my joints when the weather changes, only the ache is in my brain and it feels less like an ache and more like an electrical current under my skull.

Other times, it jumps out from behind a corner, beats me up, takes my lunch money, and leaves me wondering what in the world happened to get me here.

This week has been an example of the latter. I have so many things to be excited about, and so much to work on to get there, and yet DepressedBrain has decided to come to visit. I’m so tired all the time, and I’m spending way more time than seems necessary feeling paralyzed by the sadness.

With DepressedBrain has come what feels like a particularly paranoid iteration of AnxietyBrain. My internal monologue seems to get stuck on an endless stream of worst-case scenarios if I let my mind wander. Which, as you might imagine, is a super fun time while waiting to find out if my insurance is going to cover this otherwise extraordinarily expensive surgery that’s now less than a month away.

Still, it does feel like things are falling into place, and I am tentatively hopeful that everything is going to work out.

Dealing with Disappointment

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

In last week’s blog, I mentioned that I was preparing to play my longest-yet set on Sunday. I spend a fair bit of time practicing, there were a handful of people who were planning to come see me…and then, as I was on my way to the venue, I got a Facebook message informing me that the bar had double-booked, and my set had been cancelled.

As you might imagine, I was disappointed. My immediate reaction was to turn around and run home, where I would have spent the evening sulking. Thankfully, my partner had a rather clearer head in the moment than I did, and suggested we try to meet up for drinks with one of the friends who had been planning to come to the show.

Our friend was up for drinks, and while I was still super disappointed, I actually ended up having a really lovely evening. I was able to get past being angry pretty quickly. It made me particularly thankful for friends who are super supportive and who were angry on my behalf.

I ended up spending Tuesday evening recording most of the songs that would have been in my set. Most of them had been posted somewhere on my SoundCloud page in the past, but I had a few new ones to post by the end my little recording session, and because I don’t have much else to write about this week, I’m going to post them here, too.

This first song is one that I wrote back in the songwriting class I took in January/February. We were given the assignment of being “dream collectors.” I posted on Facebook asking my friends to tell me their most interesting dreams. I got a bunch of fantastic responses, and it was hard to choose just a few for the song, and harder still to distill them down to a verse each, but I’m really pleased with the result.

This song is one that I wrote in my most recent songwriting class. The assignment was to write a “nice” breakup song: the sort where you wish the other person well. I think this song might make me seem more evolved and less grudge-holding than I sometimes am, but oh, well.

And finally, here’s another one I wrote in the most recent songwriting session. This is one of the weirder songs I’ve ever written, musically. It started as a word list, and turned into something that’s one part theology, one part blasphemy, and one part social commentary.

Has Anyone Seen My Motivation?

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

I’m having a bit of an off week, it seems.

I stayed home on Tuesday because I was starting to feel sick. I wanted to do the same thing Wednesday, but I recognize I need to use my sick days extremely sparingly until surgery in October, so I went back to work.

I’m just…really struggling to care. About work, in particular. The rest of my life is pretty interesting. I think there are just a lot of things I’d much rather be doing, and work is not super compelling these days. I have things I can work on, but I don’t feel especially engaged in my job. I’m just sort of getting by.

I need this job, and I need to stick it out at least through the end of the year – where else will I find such conveniently placed holidays to schedule surgery around? But I’m not enjoying it.

I’m also just really over the heat and humidity. It’s not as bad this week as it was last week, but the weather is definitely not helping with my lack of motivation. It’s also making me pretty achy and ornery, and that’s not particularly enjoyable, either.

Mostly, I’m trying not to be sick and not being entirely successful. My  head feels like it’s full of cotton balls, and so even if I was remotely motivated, it would be hard to focus on much of anything.

In happier news, we’re planning to go see Ghostbusters again with friends this weekend, and I am super excited for that. Potential bowling hangouts after the movie are also a reason to smile. (Bowling is one of those rare activities I can absolutely suck at, but still enjoy.) I’m also expecting new glasses to arrive at the end of the week. I ordered them online, and just kind of had to guess at how they’ll look on me. This could be a disaster. Thank goodness for free return shipping!

Things I Have (Re)Discovered This Week

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment
  1. Meditation is hard, especially when manic. I’ve always known that my brain is busy in my manic phases (I tell my partner that it’s like having a head full of bees), but nothing has ever made that so starkly apparent as making an effort to sit in stillness for ten minutes every morning for the past couple of weeks.
  2. Meditation, like many things, gets easier with practice. On Tuesday, for the first time, I had a few brief moments where I was really able to find that place of stillness inside my head, where I could sort let thoughts pass through my head without chasing them around. On Wednesday, it was harder again, but I do feel like I’m making at least a tiny bit of progress.
  3. Recognizing that I’m manic and actually preventing myself from acting out because of it are two different things. I’m not the best at financial stuff in general. I’m really, particularly bad at it when I’m manic. My biggest manic impulse is to spend money. I’ve gotten better at talking myself out of things, but sometimes I forget that the acknowledgement that I’m acting manic is not the same thing as reining myself in. I’ve not done anything particularly stupid this time around, but it’s felt a little harder than it’s been in a while.
  4. Music makes me happier than almost anything else. The Square Roots festival put on by the Old Town School of Folk Music happened this past weekend, and even though there were huge numbers of people there and that would normally feel overwhelming, there was music everywhere, and that made it fun. I ended up working the merch table for a series of shorter sets by several different bands, and I had a blast – every band had a totally different sound, and every one of them made my heart happy in a different way.
  5. Even if I sometimes feel like I’m not being very successful at adulting, I’ve come a really long way. We have friends coming into town this weekend, and even though we’re a bit behind on chores, we don’t need to do any marathon cleaning sessions to make the apartment presentable, because we keep things pretty well picked up these days. I never really thought I was capable of being that sort of person, but it turns out I actually like having a relatively tidy apartment. It feels like a major milestone, even if it would be something insignificant for a lot of people.

Anxiety Management

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Some of you may have noticed that there was no Accidental Fudge post last week. I did not intend to take a hiatus – truth be told, I spent most of last Wednesday and Thursday more than half convinced it was Friday, and it was Thursday night before I realized I hadn’t posted anything, at which point I felt like I really didn’t have much to say. So I apologize for that.

July is a packed month for us this year – visits from family and friends, plus a music festival, all on different weekends. It’s a little overwhelming to look at it all at once, so I’m trying to stay focused on a week or so at a time.

I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed and distracted the past few weeks. ManicBrain has come and settled itself in with no indication of when it might vacate the premises. Which isn’t so bad, as long as I can remember that it’s the reason I’m overwhelmed and distracted. It’s when I get so distracted that I forget…that’s when problems happen. Thankfully, I’ve been managing to stay pretty on top of things.

One of the biggest things I’m working on right now is managing my anxiety. I deal with differing levels and types of anxiety depending on where I’m at in my Bipolar cycle, but it’s pretty omnipresent lately, and that’s no fun. For anyone who’s interested and/or looking for ways to do this themselves, here’s what I’ve done so far:

  • I quit drinking regular coffee. Cold turkey.
    • I will still indulge in some decaf cold brew from our favorite coffee shops (or that we make at home), but mostly, I’m just getting really into tea.
    • Caffeine in small amounts is okay…in coffee-sized amounts, it does seem to amplify my anxiety.
    • I’ve been drinking coffee since age 12, so this was a big step, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. Mostly, I was just really sleepy for a couple of weeks.
  • I cut waaaaaaaaay back on my access to social media on my phone. I didn’t go as far as the author of this article, but I used some of the ideas there.
    • I deleted a lot of apps, including all the retail apps I sometimes get into the bad habit of searching late at night (Amazon, eBay, and Etsy were the big ones).
    • I removed the shortcut to Facebook in my phone’s browser, and turned off the “frequently visited sites” feature. And I committed to logging out of Facebook whenever I’ve finished checking it.
    • I also disabled my phone’s ability to use the web browser over anything but WiFi, which further limits the time I spend compulsively checking my phone.
    • Maybe it just means I’m lazy, but the fact that I’m not a couple of taps away from my news feed means that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve checked Facebook in the past ten days.
    • I left Instagram on my phone, because that’s my happy social media, which is way more carefully curated than my Facebook feed. Facebook has its uses, but it mostly just makes me sad/angry/stressed out.
  • I started developing a morning routine for myself.
    • I’m a creature of habit. As much as I sometimes like to be spontaneous and try new things, I am most comfortable in familiar places and patterns.
    • I was already kind of in a morning routine, but it mostly consisted of getupbrushteethgetdressedrunoutthedoor.
    • I’ve been pushing myself to get up earlier, so that I have time to do more calming things in my morning routine.
    • Now the routine regularly includes a quick tarot spread, a few minutes spent jotting down thoughts about the cards, and at least ten minutes of meditation. Which brings us to the last point…
  • I joined Headspace and started mediating in the morning.
    • This was unplanned. At the end of my company’s employee appreciation week last week, we were given a link and a code to get a free year of full access to the site. It sounded interesting, and since it wasn’t costing me anything, I figured I’d give it a try.
    • The little ten minute meditative sessions in the morning have been great, and I tend to feel a lot less stressed before work when I do them.
    • I do get distracted a lot, but the whole system is very low-pressure, which is really helpful for my scattered brain these days.

This is not a foolproof plan, and I’m still dealing with anxiety. But I feel like I’m building up a good selection of resources and healthier coping mechanisms for dealing with it.

How about you, friends? How are you managing anxiety these days?

Solstice Musings, Summer Edition

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

The summer solstice was on Monday – the longest day of the year.

Summer is an interesting time of year for me. I love the longer days, I love the sunlight, I love the green and growing things. But the heat and humidity of midwestern summers can make me physically ill.

The long days of summer make me think about where I’m putting my energy (and where I want to be putting it), because it feels like there’s so much more of it to go around than there is in the darker times of the year.

I’m thinking a lot about the fact that top surgery is happening in under four months, and one of the places I want to be expending more energy than I have been lately is to get myself feeling healthier before that happens. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that means, what that looks like.

I’m thinking about where I’m wasting energy, about things I’m putting off because as much as I want them done I don’t want to actually go through the process of doing them, which creates anxiety, which is an enormous energy dump.

Summer feels like it’s full of potential. In some ways I’ve been feeling very stuck lately, but there are reminders out there that progress is possible and in some cases is actually happening. I just need to pay attention.

Pre-Birthday Musings

/ Alyxander James / 1 Comment

Tomorrow is my birthday.

In some ways I feel like it snuck up on me this year. On the other hand, it’s been on my mind for the past week or two, so maybe it didn’t.

I don’t have super strong feelings one way or the other about being another year older. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but I think I should be more grateful than I am.

The truth is, I still don’t know how I made it from 16 to 17, and so the last decade and change, when I think about it, sometimes feels like borrowed time. My junior year of high school was a special sort of hell that somehow has yet to be matched for awfulness in my adult life (possibly because it left me better equipped for what came later). I don’t hate my life anymore, and I don’t hate myself, and while I’m not at all where I expected I’d be at age 28-minus-one-day, most days I feel like I’m doing okay for someone who hasn’t hit 30 yet.

It already feels like 28 is going to be a big year…I have a lot of plans, and I’m never sure how my plans will work out.

On that note, here’s a song I wrote based on the first card of tarot’s major arcana: The Fool, who is all about striking out on a new journey despite (or sometimes in oblivion to) the risks. Enjoy!

Feelings

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been a week of feelings.

I’ve been in a manic headspace for a couple of weeks now, which usually means I’m in a pretty good mood…except when it means that I’m just super anxious about everything and nothing, which is what it’s been this week in particular.

Sunday was Mother’s Day. I had to excuse myself from social media halfway through the day, because I was blindsided by a lot of emotions (none of them particularly nice) as I saw post after post from people who have lovely relationships with their mothers. I’m happy for those people. I really am. But…well, there was a time in my life, back toward the beginning of college, when I had a pretty good relationship with my mother. Then I came out as queer, and our relationship was strained, but we tried to make it work. I started dating my partner, and he came out as trans, and my mother didn’t know how to handle that. Hurtful things were done, and the strained relationship started to fracture. Then I came out as trans, and I tried to pretend I didn’t care when she consistently misgendered me and called me by my old name, but eventually, I couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t currently have a relationship with my mother, and I can’t currently imagine a world in which she accepts me as her son. And I thought I’d worked through most of those feelings in the year it’s been since I cut off contact with my family of origin, but then Mother’s Day rolled through like a sucker punch to the gut, and I was thrown into the weird space that is SadManicBrain, which is sort of like DepressedBrain, except that I still have some energy and feel all the things, instead of almost none of the things.

Tuesday morning I was supposed to have my consultation appointment for top surgery. Monday morning I got a call from the very apologetic scheduling person at the surgeon’s office, saying they had to reschedule me to next week due to an emergency surgery. I spent much of the rest of Monday feeling miserable and fighting off anxiety attacks.

The week is getting progressively better, but I’m kind of exhausted from the number of different feelings that have been rocketing around in my ManicBrain in the past five days. I’m getting better at just kind of letting them come, though. As with everything else, this too shall pass.

Stage Fright, Take Two

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

On Monday, I played my second ever non-class-recital show. Last time I did this, I ran out of material a couple of minutes early. This time around, I over-prepared and didn’t get to play my last song, but that was better than walking off the stage early, for sure.

The show was a lot of fun (in a completely terrifying sort of way). I realized the morning of the show that music has really become a place of home for me, and it’s nice to be able to share that with other people, even if it makes me unbelievably anxious. (Turns out ManicBrain and pre-show jitters are a SUPER FUN combination, if anyone was wondering. By which I mean Monday was not the most comfortable for my brain.)

Thanks to the friends who came out and the ones who couldn’t come but sent encouraging messages throughout the day. My people truly are the best people. And hey, we recorded the audio of my part of the show, so you can get an idea of what it sounded like even if you weren’t there:

Reminders of Wholeness

/ Alyxander James / 2 Comments

According to Facebook, six years ago today was the day I got my first tattoo, on the inside of my right forearm:

FirstTattoo

I’d wanted a tattoo for as long as I could remember, and this symbol in particular since high school, and in a mid-semester fit of mania, decided to go for it my second-to-last semester of college. I went to someone a former roommate had recommended. It took about 45 minutes, and by the time I left I was shaking, slightly queasy, and not sure I’d ever be able to do it again. Twenty-four hours later, I couldn’t stop thinking about getting more.

I didn’t tell my parents ahead of time that I was getting a tattoo. I didn’t really have a plan for how that would go down. As it turned out, my mother called me as I was driving home from the appointment. She asked what I’d been up to that afternoon. I figured then was as good a time as any, so I told her. There was a long pause. “I don’t know how you expected me to respond to that,” she finally answered. “Neither do I,” was all I could come up with in response.

There are a lot of opinions on the internet regarding what the triquetra, or trinity knot, symbolizes. The idea that it could symbolize the Christian Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit softened the blow a bit to disapproving family members. The meaning that stuck with me, though, was the idea of the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit. I had finally been diagnosed as bipolar about a year before, and had spent a lot of time since then learning how to ride the waves of mania and depression, which often left me feeling pretty fractured. The knot on my arm served as a reminder that I was a complete person, even when my brain felt like it wanted to jump ship.

It was about a year after getting this tattoo that I started exploring the idea that I might not be a cisgender woman after all, and the idea of wholeness started becoming even more important as I started to consciously wrestle with dysphoria on top of the dysmorphia I’d struggled with most of my life.

I am not defined by any one part of my being, but by my interpretation of the interconnected whole. And regardless of what the darker parts of my brain or the crueller parts of the world might try to tell me, I am whole. Yes, there are times when parts of me need healing, but at my core, I am not a broken thing in need of rescue and resuscitation.

So today, amidst feeling a little frazzled and anxious about the weeks ahead, I’m going to take a minute or two to pause and appreciate the reminder that past-me had permanently written into my skin.