Someone I know has been writing a lot recently about his struggles with mental illness, and it’s got me thinking about how I feel about that label, particularly since it seems to apply to even such an everyday demon like anxiety, which I realize I battle.   Do I have mental illness?  Does he have mental illness?  Do most of us have mental illness?  Maybe there are varying degrees of mental illness.  I don’t feel mentally ill.  I feel more like a beautiful mind – but I saw that movie, and that guy definitely saw people who weren’t there, and that’s not right.  He figured it out, though.  I try to figure things out.  I don’t see people who aren’t there.  I just have what I self-diagnose as manic episodes, like Thursday when I got a couple of hours “to myself” at work and started catching up on things and it led me to think about everything I could get done, and I stayed until after 10:30pm.  So yesterday I was really tired, but I made it to Asheville and somehow stayed up until 1am, and I wasn’t even ready for bed then.  And today my husband says I’m still processing things at a manic speed, making plans for the day.

All of this might not matter to me if I didn’t know from observing other people (and maybe myself) that manic (if that is truly what I experience) only precedes a crash.  I also did some shopping Wednesday.  This is another symptom of manic, now that I think about it.  Nothing crazy, but again, I am aware.  I am also aware of my lows.  Times when I am inexplicably sad and just want to be alone . . . and write.  Today I am hyper and writing because my head is noisy.  Not noisy because people are talking to me – it just won’t stop working sometimes.  Because it’s beautiful and there’s a lot going on in there.

I knew a woman who said she was perfectly normal until her 40s.  She had a job, children, a husband.  Then she became symptomatic and was diagnosed bipolar.  She will be medicated for the rest of her life.  She is permanently disabled.  Lovely lady, can’t handle stress, can’t hold a job.  I fear this.  I don’t want it for myself.  I cite this not because I think I am bipolar, but because I am very self-aware and also not immune to anything.

One thing I have learned is that mental illness, or things that might not be mental illness but are things people struggle with emotionally and mentally, can be very divisive and lonely if not talked about and shared.  These things can also be stigmatized and take us down when we talk about them openly, because people, jobs, insurers will use them against us.  So this is risky, but if you know me, you know I’ve never shied away from candor.

These are just some thoughts.  And I am seeing my therapist this week and will share all of them with her.

Also, I dreamed about the house this week.  Still processing that loss, obviously.  I was inside it when the new owners came home, at which point I realized I wasn’t supposed to be there.  I was upstairs, in the master bathroom.  The new male owner was singing, “Our house, our house,” and I came downstairs and explained that I was so used to going by there, I forgot it wasn’t mine anymore.  I apologized and asked why they hadn’t moved any furniture in yet.  I don’t remember what he said.  Then I left.

I’m not sure this blog has convinced anyone I DON’T have mental illness. 😛  Thanks for reading.

I feel tired a lot lately.  I wonder if I am fighting something.  I saw something recently that said sometimes we have to let go of burdens just because they are heavy.  I think maybe that is why I am so tired.  I think I am burdened.  And when I am burdened, I write.  I let it all out here to free myself of the weight of whatever is wrestling around in my heart and making my mind so noisy.  Let’s see what’s in there tonight.

You may know that at this point, my husband and I have just one cat.  I keep thinking how not too long ago, we had three cats.  Dinnertime was a challenge not to trip over one or all of them.  It was one of the few times Julius came inside the house.

I realized today that our cat Zenith died almost a whole year ago.  It will be a year in September.  It feels like it was just a few months ago.  We lost Julius in Easter.  We don’t know what happened to him and we’ll always feel guilty about being the reason he was set free to disappear.  Although I know guilt is worthless, I can’t shake it.  And maybe some of you who read this aren’t into pets or especially aren’t into cats, so reading this for you is like I’m writing about snails and you feel nothing.  I feel like two-thirds of my kids are gone.  It hurts a whole bunch sometimes.  The cat I have left, Ditto, is probably going to be the last cat I have (because I am tired of them ruining furniture and my apartment complex wants $12.00 a month pet rent), and Zenith was the first cat I had.  Look at that – a whole full circle cat mom moment.  But for all the expense and damage and stress, these animals – as you know if you love them – are family.  Ditto is pretty much my best friend these days.  I come home and we sit out on the balcony and watch traffic.  Or I watch TV and he snuggles next to me.  Or we eat dinner together.  If I’m not out, this is my life.  He is a faithful roommate, never put off by my not-always-pleasant moods, always willing to listen.  And that $12.00 a month doesn’t even get him a jar of cat treats downstairs in the lobby.

My husband and I closed on the sale of our first home together last week.  It wasn’t the first home we lived in together, but the first one we bought together.  We bought it in 2009 and in 2012, we began working in different cities.  The family who bought it from us Friday seems perfect to grow in this house, and I am so happy for them and our neighbors.  I am so relieved that the house has life in it again, and people to watch over it and keep it safe.  But as with every house I let go of, handing over those keys and knowing I CAN’T go inside again hurts a little.  We had a lot of good times there.  We put a lot of love and effort into that house.  And letting it go means letting go of possibilities like the amazing patio we imagined adding one day, the kids we thought we might have, the covered front porch and storm doors I wanted, the master bathroom remodel we never got to, painting the master bedroom closet that never happened (apparently this closet only bothered me) . . . but it also means we never, ever, for the foreseeable future, have to spend any more time mowing the yard.  So, here’s to carefree weekends in one of our two cities, trying to become people who DO stuff instead of just people who ARE somewhere.  I have made so many promises to travel and visit friends and family, and I realize that these are actually challenging promises for me since my job never stops and I find it stressful to actually say, “I am not going to be at work for these days.  I am buying plane tickets.  I am going away.”  I think I really must work on this.  These are chains I put on myself, actually.

An alarming number of my friends at work are seeking happiness at different workplaces.  Yea for them, woe is me.  I’m not going to write a whole lot about that because this is a public blog, but as you can imagine, there are just a whole bunch of different emotions and challenges that come when people quit a job and you don’t get to see, enjoy, and depend on them every day.  Fortunately, we are staying friends in real life, so there’s that.

Something else I won’t write a whole lot about that because this is a public blog, but something which I think is actually causing me a lot of anxiety, is that we have had a lot of technical difficulties at work in recent weeks, unrelenting since the weekend.  This has caused work to pile up.  I can’t stay late or come in early to get ahead of anything, because every day I still don’t have resolution of the technical issues.  It is starting to wear me down.  It’s like watching a slow leak in your boat fill, and you know what ultimately happens?  I drown.   Well, that’s how it feels.  The reality is probably that I’ll get through this fine, just have several days of working my a** off to play catch-up.  All the more reason to buy plane tickets and go somewhere soon, right?

I also have the concerns and challenges of my friends and family weighing on me . . . things that are beyond my control, but things that matter to me because those people matter to me.

My mom’s best friend died last month of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  She was a vivacious, funny, lovely woman who became a friend of mine, as has her sister.  Ultimately, her physical life was so difficult, coupled with mourning the loss of her husband who died in January (on her birthday), that she was ready to move on to the great beyond.  But she is missed.  She was a treasure.

I found out today that two women I know have cancer that has spread to different parts of their bodies.  Having lost my father to cancer (the same cancer that John McCain has, actually) and my mother to pneumonia-caught-while-on-chemo-for-cancer, I really, really, hate cancer.  These women have children, and in one case, I empathize with the adult children and in another case, I keep thinking how horribly cruel it is when anyone loses a parent while they are still a pre-college-age kid.  I think of the spouses, the patients themselves.  I just think it SUCKS.  My sister said tonight that she wonders when her diagnosis is coming.  I feel the same way.  Some days it feels like EVERYONE has cancer and we’re just waiting for ours to show up.  That’s a terribly bleak outlook, but some days, it really does feel that way.  I guess it’s good that we aren’t hospice nurses.

I don’t have a lot of silver lining in this blog.  I still feel pretty heavy, mostly because a lot of things aren’t resolved.   And because I feel tired.  I think it is time for me to exercise and/or go see my therapist again (neither of them right this second).  I also think this was a pretty lame blog, more like a journal entry.  If you made it to the end, thanks for reading, and I’m sorry for the dump.