UPS AND DOWNS

Keeping it Steady

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Love hurts. Sometimes we love our adult children so much that the interaction ends up hurting us. Giving them the wings to fly May take a mother having to push them over the edge. I love all my children the same. I just know that in order to love them more I have to love myself.

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What does not kill you makes you stronger.

Fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me three times. This proverb keeps me strong. Sometimes you must give tough love to the people you love the most. Keeping in mind that self care and love should be your #1 priority. You can not love, help, and take care of others if you do not do this to yourself first. If someone is toxic, disrespectful, and untrustworthy, you should keep your distance. That type of behaviors is contagious. Move on to a better place. Enabling others bad behavior is not love.

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What do you love? Sometimes it is good to remind yourself of the things you love, and do them. This is the Providence River. I love to look at water. Living in Rhode Island I should do this more often. We have bodies of water everywhere.

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Good morning. This is how I start my day. Most of the days I brush my teeth first this is an accomplishment. Other days I just get up and start seeing all the chores and things that I have to do. Things that did not get done the day before. The never ending to do list. So on the days that I brush my teeth first it feels good to accomplish this.

Then as I look into the kitchen, I feel down. What happened here? I cleaned it all up before I went to bed last night. OTHERS. I live with others. After I go to bed and early in the morning the others that I live with (spouse and adult children) come into the kitchen and once again leave this out to be done later. The later that will never arrive because I just might as well clean it all up, before the fighting starts up. I am just so tired of all the fighting. I rather see a clean kitchen.

"Making your bed every morning is corelated with better productivity and a grater sense of well-being." Chales Duhigg

I don't always make my bed in the morning. I feel as if I am not a morning person. When my body feels down I can oversleep, sometimes up to 12 hours a night. So I have to really make my self get out of bed. I run out to the bathroom and feel like I do not want to return back to my room as if the bed is calling me back to sleep a little longer. On this day I forced myself back to my room to make my bed. And yes it made me feel more productive. I felt up.

Then I walked into the living room. Oh snap! I still haven't finished with this little organizational project. Took a couple of thing out of my home office to make it look nice and the ex hoarder in me came creeping out. So many bad memories of a time that I didn't throw anything away and just kept adding to the piles. No matter how many episodes of Tidying up with Marie Kondo I've watched these piles seem to pop up once or twice a year. I must say though, my laundry is nicely folded.

My happy place is where my plants are living. I inherited a green thumb from my paternal grandmother, she always had the most beautiful garden. There are many benefits to having indoor plants, they really help people with mental health see link for more details https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-home-guide/benefits-of-indoor-plants#7-benefits

All this in a morning in the life of me. It was 1pm and I haven't even had breakfast yet. Well at least I am still trying to keep it steady.

[gigglesri]

Step towards being proactive with my mental health. So many times I’m not sure if I took my meds or not. A friend of mine told me about people accidentally overdosing because they are not sure if they took a medication or not, that will not happen to me. Part of being stable is not skipping days.

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Just a little low

Every day is a new day. Today I was feeling just a little low. Phycologists call this being depressed. The D word. I do not like to use that word, it makes things feel so gloomy. Managing my mental health is something that I have been able to do with time. Now I felt a little low and I thought I reframe it. Reframing, in the therapeutic sense, is about looking at a situation, thought, or feeling from another angle. So the other approach I took today was that I needed a break from my daily to do's. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with things that are not really necessary. My body needed self care. I took a brake and this equaled two daytime naps. In the past I would stay in bed and feel worthless, full of the time to quit thoughts of inadequacies. But now I know that its ok to take a nap. I deserve it. Recharge and start over. Tomorrow is another day. Hope to be leveled and accomplish more.

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MANIC

One of the sides of being Bipolar is being Manic. Some people see this side of it as a Superpower. You feel like you are invincible, but what really happens is that your focus goes too deep into something it shouldn't. Today was one of those days for me. I woke up, skipped breakfast, didn't brush my teeth and started to clean the oven. By the time it was 1pm I noticed that I had not taken my medication. I was already off and do not know by how many days. I choose not to leave the house because in this state I tend to drive reckless. But by racing thoughts just kept going and seeing so many things to do. It could be called procrastination, by knowing that I have more important things to do than to mop the floors five times. Today is not my laundry day and I even did that. You would think that my house is spotless on a day like this, but it isn't. It's like an Avalanche that I set off to continue non stop at tasks that are not important. Next thing you know it is 9pm and the main thing I wanted to do today was catch up on my reading for my University classes. Now I am sad. I feel as if nothing was accomplished even though I did about 30 things. I did do something good yesterday that I will use to help ground me. I bought a sterling silver ring that states "If God brings you to it, he will bring you through it." Isaiah 58:11. It's going to be 10pm I think this verse has given me the strength to accomplish one thing that I had in mind this morning when I woke up. I am going to brush my teeth, take a shower and get some reading before I fall asleep.

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Good reason to have a cat in the house.

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This is my cat Stanley, this is the look he gives me when I argue with him.

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First day in person class this fall at URI

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Never too old to learn new tricks

Next month I will turn 50 years old. I am currently a student at the University of Rhode Island. I thank the Finish What You've Started program for the push I needed to come back to school. This is part of my digital writing class assignment. Looking forward to improving on my writing skills.

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