I don’t know how much longer I will keep the balls up in the air.
I find myself waking each morning with renewed purpose, every single day, and wondering where this resolve has come from. The want to live more healthfully, efficiently, frugally. Where did I get this sudden gumption for better, with action on top of it all?
This is not the usual simple case of mania, because, surprising to me, I’m not manic. I fully expected by this time, given the winding up I was feeling a couple of weeks before of my down-slide, that I would wake up one day with a need to do it all now and the inattentiveness to accomplish anything.
This is kind of the opposite. I feel normal.
Which is kind of a misuse of the word, since I’m not sure what normal really is – I’m always swinging from one side to the next, there’s no in between – but I have the feeling like this is it.
Normal.
I’ve got the shit on the to do list that is limitless and constantly replenishing, but you know? It’s okay.
I’m finding myself raising my voice and feeling a moment of guilt, to be followed with questioning to Isobel, “do you not hear me? I’m speaking to you. I said we need to….” And I’m without worry of her emotional scarification because I spoke loudly and without please and thank you.
I haven’t shaved my legs, or tweezed my brows, or worn makeup or gotten laid in whoever knows how long. Well, I know, but anyway. It’s okay.
It’s all okay.
The state of my bank account and credit card balance. The fact that because of a need for wheat and dairy free foods (and Isobel’s affinity for snacking), we now spend at least half of a month’s rent on groceries. The four dirty dishes in the sink. The overstuffed duck chair I’m sitting on to write this, as my back cries out in agony – therefore, the lack of furniture in our apartment as a whole.
It’s cool, man.
What the hell is wrong with me, I ask you.
I think that it has something to do with the feeling of accomplishment that’s being earned everyday. Every big task I’ve dealt with and filed away, each small one that needs daily massaging – they’re adding to a weird sense of harmony. Maybe it’s as if things are working out, because I’m working towards something; usually, I’m fighting to stay afloat, after all.
Fighting against versus moving forward.
I think I could get to like normal, even if everything in my abnormal psyche tells me that normal is boring and usual and not something I want to be, whatsoever.
What? You didn’t think I used being bipolar and other forms of crazy as a pillar for being okay with myself? It was something, much like I once compared anorexia to in a group therapy session when I was 13, that makes me special. Different. Deserved.
I’ve never used it as an excuse. But I’ve used it as a sneer toward fitting into slots nice and smoothly. Because I never have, and I needed to be okay with that. Needed to be a beautiful, unique snowflake.
And by writing this, I think we can all agree, I’ve totally just jinxed the normal.
