This song is almost old enough to run for President.
In case you've never heard it before, this is by
Queen and David Bowie.
We've all felt pressure, from society, from our families, and from ourselves. I will freely admit that, likely due to the fact that I have bipolar disorder, I do not deal well with pressure. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and hide, or break down, or do something really stupid like self-medicate. When three different people are all talking to me at once, vying for my attention and demanding my help, it tends to send my anxiety spiking into the stratosphere.
Since right now I am living with my parents as I try to get back on my feet, or get on them for the first time, this multiple-people-talking-at-me thing happens more often than you'd think. I do have a bad tendency to isolate myself by hiding in my room, but too many times when I walk downstairs, I get bombarded. I could just be trying to slip out for a cigarette, or I could be leaving for five minutes to check on the neighbors' dogs. The moment I open the door is usually the best possible moment for my dad to ask about tax forms, my mom to ask about how to use the computer (she's still hoping they're a passing fad), my oldest brother to ask when dinner is, and my youngest brother to ask about homework.
It was between this guy and a zombie
horde tearing someone apart.
Lately some of the pressure has increased, specifically from my mother. Now I realize that she's under much more pressure than I am: she is a teacher in an inner city school with a new curriculum and a bunch of obnoxious kids that hate her for being a teacher, she has five kids, her husband has a brain injury, her daughter has bipolar, the list goes on. I realize that I will never be under the same amount of pressure she is, largely because I will 1) never be a teacher, not even if they actually start treating them well and 2) never marry and/or reproduce.
An actual photograph of me.
Anyway, at the risk of sounding whiny, because my mother did make a much better effort to try and understand my illness, I do sometimes wish that she would stop asking me to put more pressure on myself. I am not trying to dive headfirst into doing everything at once. I have plenty on my plate right now, and I am trying to keep up and incrementally increase things once I've got a handle on them. But it often seems that I am not doing enough.
The other day she told me I "can't settle" for working at a part-time work-from-home job that will only afford me a low-cost apartment and some basic living expenses. She also told me that I needed to put more effort into my appearance by wearing makeup every day. She made sure that I knew that "better is not well" and just because I'm doing better doesn't mean that I'm well enough to be a facilitator at DBSA. And she decided to tell me all of this before I had my coffee.
Now, I've accepted that with a mental illness of this magnitude, there will have to be some settling in my life. I have to settle on a lower-stress job, which means I have to settle for something part-time, most likely. I have to settle for taking a handful of pills every day and not ever having a beer or a joint or going out to a wild party. I have to settle on knowing that many people will treat me differently because of my illness.
Just because I have to settle for these things that my mother and many others would find terribly depressing and pathetic doesn't mean that my life is over, or that I can never enjoy myself again. I will probably never make much money, but since I will also never have a family, that's really not an issue. I will never be able to drink again, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy other pastimes, like tabletop gaming. I will never be able to have shallow friends again, but... that's actually a blessing.
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