The other night I had a very unpleasant dream that began with myself and my two sisters in some kind of golf-cart thing, except the youngest one was suddenly eight again, and she was driving. She also didn't understand slowing down for turns or steering. This would have been stressful enough, but later I found myself wandering in a foggy town, seeking out some shred of human company, which was possibly worse than tipping over in a golf cart at sixty miles per hour.
I finally found a place where people were playing some weird game of throwing their shoe into a basket or something, with a series of disturbing variations like having to be in a glass coffin full of water while making the shot. I was terrible at it and after a few rounds, I gave up and walked out with only one shoe, back to wandering the foggy, lonesome town alone, now irritated and angry and resentful of the terrible game that had stolen my shoe.
I don't even own a shoes like these...
I am sure dream interpreters would have a field day with this, and that there is plenty of symbolism there indicating feeling out of control of my life, or like someone completely incompetent is driving my life, and obviously lots of feelings of isolation and not fitting in anywhere. I'm not worrying about that at the moment. What that dream meant for me was that I woke up feeling anxious and stressed out and irritable, and carried those feelings with me throughout the day.
There were other factors that added to it, of course. Being late everywhere, not being able to drive myself anywhere, and the fact that because of an unfortunate error with one of my work tasks, I was unable to get anything done, which set me behind for my weekly quota. All in all, not a great Monday.
I have never been great with stress and anxiety. After last night's DBSA meeting, which was the one thing that finally helped me to feel better, I know that I am not the only person with that issue. Most of us at the meeting have bipolar disorder, and most of us have difficulties with getting stressed out easily and dealing poorly with anxiety. It seems that I am more the rule than the exception, which is kind of a relief in many ways.
As I try to stick to the routine and the medication that are helping me, and remind myself that these things are helping, there is often a sense of loneliness and isolation. Sometimes Monday meetings are the only time I don't feel oddly severed from the world, like a phantom limb, except people actually miss their limbs after having them amputated. I sincerely doubt that friends of mine who have moved away, or who I've moved away from, even think about me. I know that old boyfriends don't miss me, and the one who claimed that he did hasn't spoken to me in over a month, which kind of proves that he was just full of it.
Speaking of that issue, I did finally grow enough self-respect to toss all his old emails into my Junk folder, where they belong. I also blocked him from all social media and then emptied my Junk Mail folder. I know he'll never e-mail me or call me again, but at least if he does attempt to, it'll get sent to Junk Mail and I can just bounce it. It doesn't make it suck any less that I'm accepting the fact that he probably only got in touch with me in hopes of sexting or getting a few photos to look at while he... yeah.
I'm not the girl I used to be, and I'm really proud of that. I don't want to be with someone just to abate the loneliness for a short while, and I definitely don't want to get attached to someone who doesn't care about me so much as they care about getting some. I don't do drugs or drink or go for days wearing sweatpants (although with the current heatwave I seem to be living in a slovenly combination of shorts and shirts I don't mind sweating through). There are still days when going back to that seems a bit appealing, and that causes me more anxiety than anything, the thought of backsliding into my previous oblivion.
Unfortunately, having a mental illness means that there will always be cruel people ready to tell you that you're faking it, just trying to get attention, or boring, or whatever other childish pettiness they can come up with. There will always be people who don't understand because they don't ever want to understand, people who don't care because they don't care about anything but themselves. But there are genuinely good people out there in the world, people who may not understand but will still try to help, people who will bother to educate themselves, people who will care even if it's hard to.
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