Rollercoaster

(29 April 2011)

I’ve been working around the clock for three days now.  Yahoo!  I’m in a hypo manic cycle, feeling elated, energetic, and concentrated.  I was calling it a manic rip, but that’s not really accurate.  Wednesday I actually only worked until midnight, but as soon as I hit the sack I knew I wasn’t going to be sleeping for the night.  Thoughts were zipping all over the place and bouncing happily off the walls.  I wouldn’t qualify them as “racing thoughts,” an official symptom, which is an understatement, by the way.  When your thoughts are flying faster than the speed of light, and you can’t even keep up with words, but you can keep track of what’s going on in your mind, that’s more than just “racing.”  So I’m not in imminent danger of a full blown manic episode, I’m just feeling safely and securely out of depression.  Bipolar is life on a permanent rollercoaster, which sometimes stalls for years, and sometimes speeds up, losing all mechanical control and throwing passengers in the air.  When you land on the ground, you know the meaning of down.

Wednesday morning, I played checkers online for hours; this is my usual routine, one of my ways of coping with early sobriety.  Switch one addiction for another.  And then I feel bad about all the hours I’ve wasted playing….  I called my sponsor in a panic; panic is common in early sobriety.  (I’m coming up on a year, but this is still early sobriety.)  I was panicking about getting into action, which meant either cleaning or doing my photography homework.  Both were terrifying prospects.  Every time I think I have to do something, having a drink pops into my mind.  ”I can’t clean without drinking, that’s impossible.”  ”I can’t sort photos without drinking, that’s impossible.”  ”I can’t write without drinking, that’s impossible.”  Mary, my sponsor, suggested starting with what I most felt like doing.  That was an easy decision to make, but it still scared the heck out of me.  She said just to start and call when I started panicking again.  So I started by downloading the photo homework I’d shot and sorting it into different files.  At first it was difficult, but then it started coming together like a jigsaw puzzle picture.  Then I started stressing again when I couldn’t identify one of the sets of pictures.  So I called Mary again, and decided to face my swollen email inbox.  After working on my inbox, I went back to sorting portraits, which I’d shot as a class exercise.  Much to my surprise they turned out really cool, the technical problems that I thought would doom the pictures actually gave them a really interesting effect.  I sorted the portraits twice, once to find the best ones for class, and then again to find the best ones for the model and myself.  Sorting on the computer is a real nightmare—I’m hoping my teacher Pascal will have some suggestions about that.  But as I started making progress and found pictures that were great, I got inspired to sort through my portrait portfolio selections, the sorting of which has been waiting on the back burner for years now.  And I finally finished sorting the most difficult set I’ve ever had to sort, several years after taking the pictures.  Getting back into my photography triggered elation.  I’d made two weeks of solid progress sorting photos for my portrait portfolio a few months ago, which was the first time that I’d been able to do my photography since getting quagmired by the last batch of depressions.  The prospect of getting my various series completed, printed up, and being able to show them to Pascal really excited me—having my work read by someone with his experience will be a tremendous help.  I’ve been working in isolation since I left my ex-husband.  He knew me so well, knew my work so well, and had such a strong eye, that his input was always helpful.  That I could really get my art photography career going again, no longer seems impossible.

I checked my inbox again, and there was an email from a friend with a link to a blog she’s started about discovering after many years of marriage that her husband had been leading a double life, that he was a sexual addict, and how has affected her.  I’ll add a link to her blog on my blog.  I was reminded about how when I was actively journaling “The Room,” several people had suggested blogging it.  I looked into it but didn’t follow through on it.  (It turns out that “The Room” is already the title of a book.  It’s hard to give up that title after so many years of working with it, and feeling that it was perfect.)  Suddenly a blog seemed like the perfect idea, possibly a great format for getting the different sections put together.  I would have so much more fun if I spent my morning hours writing rather than playing checkers and watching TV.  The idea got me totally revved up, I kept thinking about it while I was sorting, and was planning to shift over to writing after sorting.  I was ready to go all night.  Amazingly, it feels like I could write while sober, fuelling myself on water instead of whisky.  Over the years, I’ve made repeated attempts to get back to work on what I’m now calling “Rooms within Rooms,” to no avail, but I felt I just couldn’t do it without alcohol, and only managed to write a bit while sober.

I spent all of yesterday and yesterday evening on building the blog.  I skipped meetings two nights in a row, including my favourite.  Putting anything in front of your sobriety is dangerous.  It’s a recipe for going back to living in the hell that you’ve spent years living.  But I’m skipping again tonight, and cancelling work tonight, and possibly tomorrow night’s work.  Tomorrow I’ll be forced out of my room for my belly dance class; we’re practicing the choreography for our performance.  After that I can catch a meeting, and two meetings on Sunday.  Get back on the train and stay on it, girl!

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