Sleep, metaphors, and stuff

I got some! 12 hours, baby! I'm under doctor's orders to not drive until I feel un-sedated, which is actually pretty much now, but hey, I missed you guys, so I'm blogging before I go off to study Luke with the other women at Bible Study.

I woke up and read a sermon by my dad's favorite preacher, M. Craig Barnes. He used to be the head dude at National Pres in DC but he recently moved to da Burgh to teach at PTS and since then also has taken up pastorate at Shadyside Pres. In the sermon I read this morning, he talked about how he had just moved and how moving could be a metaphor for life: "it's messy!" (well, the ! might be mine). Okay, here's the actual quote: "Somewhere around Thursday, I mentioned to Annie that moving is a metaphor for life. But when you're just trying to find the bar of soap in the morning you're not really interested in metaphors. I discovered that. But I still think my thesis is right. Life is like moving. It's messy." (May 2, 1999) (For you, bobbi!)

My blogging co-horts have made a habit of listing their long mp3 playlists that they're listening to, but my tech hasn't gotten that far (and I'm waiting til I upgrade to xp, which will be soon, so don't raz me!). So I'll clue you in that I'm listening to The Fire Again: Kim Hill (the album) (Yes, it's an actual disc that you put into your CD-ROM player...) It's skipping, which makes me wonder if there's a way to clean the player...(yes, you can comment on that!) (Actually, looks like the disc is scratched, darn! and is gummy...)

So, on the theme of metaphors, I thought I'd blog on the one that I think of most often: having bipolar disorder is like having an email account. I have bipolar disorder. I see it as much a part of me as my freckles, which were very prominent in my childhood and are still there but not many people notice them anymore. I was diagnosed 8 years ago, and the first couple of years were full of object lessons. Right now I'm in a place where all my doctors tell me how healthy I am. I smile and nod, knowing that they only see me on display. They don't see me Tuesday evening, when I get home late from work and I can't do anything but crawl into bed. But I do acknowledge that I am in about the healthiest place I've been in a long long time. Especially since being healthy isn't just necessarily the absence of unhealth, but the knowledge that so much of life is maintenance. Which brings me to my metaphor, that having bipolar disorder is like having an email account. Bipolar disorder used to be called manic depression, which I actually prefer, since it's more descriptive and I don't like the thought of having a disorder. bi=two, polar: manic, depression. Whateve.

So depression is when you have 500 emails unread in your email account and 500 more that you've read but you don't know what to do with them, so you just shut off your computer and go sleep. Mania is when you open your email and the 500 unread emails start cascading in and you read every one and you act on every one: buy Viagra, start a new business, book a ticket to wherever Southwest says is the best destination this week. Being healthy is when you delete 90% of the emails that come into your account on a daily basis.

Now, many of you may not have that much junk mail, but that's just another part of the metaphor, and of the consequences of the reality: there was a time when I believed I could be the next Internet millionaire, when I signed up for scads of "free" stuff and not so free stuff. I got into a great deal of debt and believed a lot of nonsense. The result: until I change my name, my work email will be overloaded by all the spammers that know my first and last name, my mailing address, and think they know what I want. The metaphor here: having bipolar brings a lot of junk into your life that you didn't mean to bring in. And getting rid of it takes daily daily maintenance. Which, let me tell you, is a royal pain. But it beats the alternative, which is living obliviously and foolishly.

I didn't actually have email until I was diagnosed bipolar: I didn't have a computer at home. And in retail, email is not the way you communicate between colleagues unless you're a manager. But when I moved in with my folks (I was airlifted during a particularly manic episode), I got my first hotmail account. Like my diagnosis opened my life to finally knowing why I spent almost a year of sleepless nights and living my life in fast-forward or dead stop, talking it out, getting medications that helped me live a normal life, my hotmail account helped me stay in touch with my Pittsburgh friends while I lived in Virginia. It was a movement of health.

As I listen to Kim Hill, who was CCM's darling, left the Christian scene to do country music, married a man who she later found out was only a nominal Christian, got a divorce, and is back in the Christian music scene, living out the pain of her life in the open, I think, yeah, life is messy. But we get another chance. Every day, we have a choice. Every day, we screw up at something, be it running a red light, cursing our place in life, over-working, or watching too much TV. But every day we have a choice: will I let this event shape my life or will I let God shape my life?

When I first moved to Virginia to live with my folks, I had six months of paid medical leave from Fox books. Pretty nice--I got I think 60% of my salary, week in and week out, as long as my doctor faxed them a letter saying I was still in recovery. During those six months, I volunteered at two thrift shops, The Orange Crate (for the Humane Society) and Joseph's Coat (for a woman's shelter). I was surrounded by older and wiser women, some who knew why I wasn't working for a paycheck, some who didn't ask or care. I sorted books, I sorted socks, I determined if an item was saleable or not, and for how much. I watched a lot of movies in the afternoons. The one I would like to see again is The Remains of the Day.

Well, perhaps that's enough of a confessional for today. The other morning when I was trying so hard to get some sleep, I explored my site meter (which you can do too--it's that unobtrusive box at the bottom that looks like a rainbow.) I saw that I have a lot of visitors from California, Canada, and once, a few weeks ago, Argentina! So I know there are a lot of folks that read and don't comment and I don't know how you found me, but thanks for showing up. And if you do nothing else today, clean out some of the debris in your email account. Do it for me. It's a good thing to do, just to keep fresh and healthy.