"Coming to terms with medication"

Today I'm not up, or down. Ron's playing James Taylor, who's also bipolar. "Fire and Rain"

Not up or down. Today, I'm baseline - babble-speak for a normal mood, as it were. Today, I realized that an average mood for me, is going to be exhausted.

I love a properly medicated mania. Housecleaning, yardwork, I'm full of energy. It all gets done. Then I get depressed or baseline and I hardly have the energy to wipe my butt.

I'm not whining today; I met a waitress who "Didn't like" what lithium "Did to her" and is now running around unmedicated. She had a pretty good mania going, I was a little envious.

Now Ron's playing "Gloria" - which we feel also describes someone with bipolar disorder. I think of the homeless guy under the overpass "They said I was bipolar, and gave me pink pills (lithium), but I didn't like them so I stopped." Now he's an alcoholic, living under an overpass, begging for beer money.

God's always giving me examples of why I need to remain medicated, if I'm ever foolish enough to forget the horrible mixed episodes, wanting to die at the same time I felt like I drank a whole pot of coffee, and literally bursting out of my skin with pain. Let's not forget the hallucinations and delusions either... really quite scary.

It's awful to feel invisible bugs on my skin, hear laughter that isn't there, or my personal hatred, the music that doesn't exist. I hear it fairly often even on the meds, but I'm not interested in increasing my doses right now.

It's a hard balancing act, when it takes four tries to spell "balancing", and keeping the moods at a reasonable level. Dull roar, kind of. I wanted to talk a lot and do a lot last time I was manic, but I didn't spend all my money. Good balance. Depressions; where I have to make myself do things I enjoy but I can still do so.

I'm not average, I'll never be average (can't spell average either today). I'm OK with that. I accept that I will have to make some significant sacrifices in order to manage my illness. I don't like it. I think it's sad, but then I've never really been able to rely on my brain anyway.

But even on a bad day, I'm going to make sure that some of the energy I've got is going to fun things that bring me joy. I deserve that, even if it means that sinkful of dishes remains unwashed.