A Dark Night (A rumination on bipolar and personal relation)
This isn't my normal Sunday post, but I had a dream and I feel the need to talk about it and explore the things I felt during it. Ever since I've had a kid, I've had very unique dreams. Rather than them being about a malevolent force stalking me down to kill me, or some terrifying entity on the outside, the monster was me. And it wasn't in the sense of supernatural fantasy, but the dreams I had were always me, in my life, after having done or doing something awful.
In one dream I was a single parent who had slept around, in another I had beat someone up in a rage, (in one other one I had stolen an Xbox but I was quite young and find this more funny looking back) and I'm sure there are others I can't remember. But the consistent truth between all of them is that when I woke up, for a small chunk of time 2-10 minutes, that was my life. My brain hadn't fully realized that what I had experienced was fake and that that wasn't my reality. Once I walked over to a non-existent crib, and another time I walked over to play my xbox (which wasn't there).
I've chosen to view these as a comfort, a short of peek at my life in an alternate form, where I'm a worse person than I am now, and in that light they've been wonderful, sobering visions that reaffirm my worth as a person. And when I was asleep just a moment ago, I was a stalker.
I don't really know how to describe how I felt, and I'm glad that the strange dream was more tame than the ones I had had in the past, but it did the trick and when I woke up I immediately took to social media, looking for a person - that doesn't exist. I've had a handful of romances in my life, sadly all of which have been either disappointing or inane romps where I did nothing but lie to myself about the reality of my own feelings. Whether I can blame a large part of these failures on bipolar, it doesn't really matter, regardless I take responsibility for them and have learned a lot. Only twice has the end of the relationship made me want to pursue the person further and "get them back", but I've never done anything extreme or criminal in any sense, and eventually would either give up with no real communication from them, or have a true conversation in which things were ended.
The point is, I don't consider myself a stalker, and I never have - even when the desire to be so, and my own feelings were intense enough that it was tempting to go to those extreme lengths. And "being one" felt truly awful. Maybe these dreams are why I find stories of redemption so powerful. I violently wept watching "Miracle of 42nd Street" and did the same at shows as simple as "The Lorax," I believe simply because after long or intense periods of suffering, emotional catharsis is reached a complete way, without lingering questions or doubt about their worth of that forgiveness or resolution. I'll probably spend much of my artistic life seeking to express that complete catharsis I'm describing, while I can't expect this catharsis for most of the mistakes in my own life (however small the majority may be.)
For the majority of my young life, bipolar has ravaged my peace and ruined my social life. I didn't know it at the time, but people and how great or bad they would be and the intricacies of public interaction would regularly spark mania's in me, an attractive state until they ended. And then with unnecessary bitter tears my mood would tank into a fraught desperate depressive state. Only recently, frankly through learning to isolate myself and being happy with this separation, have I found peace from this vicious cycle. But I think I'm ready to make a step into a more socially vibrant life. I only hope that I can find people who can be understanding enough to put up with my instabilities, and find fewer people who run at the first sign of trouble or blame me stoutly refusing to give me any resolution. Sadly, and I do find this sad, I can't blame anyone who does this - but that doesn't me it doesn't hurt and I shouldn't like it. Sometimes it feels like I have some terribly flesh eating disease and the only options I have are to pretend I don't have it, or brashly show it off to everyone I know and meet and care about to warn them before-hand. Because, eventually they'll find out. And I don't know yet whether it's better to be accepted at first when everything is on the table and then rejected anyways afterward or if it's better to hide those features until you can't anymore and they know. One just lets you feel like you can blame the other person for not maintaining their conviction, the other lets you blame yourself - not sure which one feels worse.
But that's a very dark interpretation of my situation, and one I don't believe is that extreme or unpleasant. I'm a weird dude. And I can leave it at that without making it a moral evaluation. One thing about having a disease that warps your emotional perception, is it makes you constantly re-evaluate what is real, a talent that is not nurtured in many without that sort of affliction.
Anyways, this is just a little rant, sparked by a terrifying dream that then went into the implications of those feelings and then tried to comfort myself from those feelings, so kind of a wild ride. I may not even publish this, may too. Usually I find it better to let things into the ether, unless they're negative about others (I'm looking at your Honest Abe).
In one dream I was a single parent who had slept around, in another I had beat someone up in a rage, (in one other one I had stolen an Xbox but I was quite young and find this more funny looking back) and I'm sure there are others I can't remember. But the consistent truth between all of them is that when I woke up, for a small chunk of time 2-10 minutes, that was my life. My brain hadn't fully realized that what I had experienced was fake and that that wasn't my reality. Once I walked over to a non-existent crib, and another time I walked over to play my xbox (which wasn't there).
I've chosen to view these as a comfort, a short of peek at my life in an alternate form, where I'm a worse person than I am now, and in that light they've been wonderful, sobering visions that reaffirm my worth as a person. And when I was asleep just a moment ago, I was a stalker.
I don't really know how to describe how I felt, and I'm glad that the strange dream was more tame than the ones I had had in the past, but it did the trick and when I woke up I immediately took to social media, looking for a person - that doesn't exist. I've had a handful of romances in my life, sadly all of which have been either disappointing or inane romps where I did nothing but lie to myself about the reality of my own feelings. Whether I can blame a large part of these failures on bipolar, it doesn't really matter, regardless I take responsibility for them and have learned a lot. Only twice has the end of the relationship made me want to pursue the person further and "get them back", but I've never done anything extreme or criminal in any sense, and eventually would either give up with no real communication from them, or have a true conversation in which things were ended.
The point is, I don't consider myself a stalker, and I never have - even when the desire to be so, and my own feelings were intense enough that it was tempting to go to those extreme lengths. And "being one" felt truly awful. Maybe these dreams are why I find stories of redemption so powerful. I violently wept watching "Miracle of 42nd Street" and did the same at shows as simple as "The Lorax," I believe simply because after long or intense periods of suffering, emotional catharsis is reached a complete way, without lingering questions or doubt about their worth of that forgiveness or resolution. I'll probably spend much of my artistic life seeking to express that complete catharsis I'm describing, while I can't expect this catharsis for most of the mistakes in my own life (however small the majority may be.)
For the majority of my young life, bipolar has ravaged my peace and ruined my social life. I didn't know it at the time, but people and how great or bad they would be and the intricacies of public interaction would regularly spark mania's in me, an attractive state until they ended. And then with unnecessary bitter tears my mood would tank into a fraught desperate depressive state. Only recently, frankly through learning to isolate myself and being happy with this separation, have I found peace from this vicious cycle. But I think I'm ready to make a step into a more socially vibrant life. I only hope that I can find people who can be understanding enough to put up with my instabilities, and find fewer people who run at the first sign of trouble or blame me stoutly refusing to give me any resolution. Sadly, and I do find this sad, I can't blame anyone who does this - but that doesn't me it doesn't hurt and I shouldn't like it. Sometimes it feels like I have some terribly flesh eating disease and the only options I have are to pretend I don't have it, or brashly show it off to everyone I know and meet and care about to warn them before-hand. Because, eventually they'll find out. And I don't know yet whether it's better to be accepted at first when everything is on the table and then rejected anyways afterward or if it's better to hide those features until you can't anymore and they know. One just lets you feel like you can blame the other person for not maintaining their conviction, the other lets you blame yourself - not sure which one feels worse.
But that's a very dark interpretation of my situation, and one I don't believe is that extreme or unpleasant. I'm a weird dude. And I can leave it at that without making it a moral evaluation. One thing about having a disease that warps your emotional perception, is it makes you constantly re-evaluate what is real, a talent that is not nurtured in many without that sort of affliction.
Anyways, this is just a little rant, sparked by a terrifying dream that then went into the implications of those feelings and then tried to comfort myself from those feelings, so kind of a wild ride. I may not even publish this, may too. Usually I find it better to let things into the ether, unless they're negative about others (I'm looking at your Honest Abe).
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