(no subject)
It is 9:00 pm and I have three hours to fill before bedtime. I just returned home from the quilting group at church. Who knew I would like quilting?! I have never been very crafty, but for some reason I find quilting soothing. I think it is the comraderie of the group that I enjoy the most.
I am working to undo decisions I have made that were way too extreme. Like my Y2K preparations. I have $500 worth of dry beans in my garage that I am going to give to some local soup kitchen. I honestly thought I could set up myself to be totally independant of everyone and everything - no electricity needed (hence I have a 55 gallon drum full of charcoal! to cook our food in a small camping stove called a pyromid. It even bakes, so in theory you could bake bread and muffins.) I also have at least two 14 gallon containers full of corn, that can be ground to make corn muffins. That's alot of muffins! I guess I thought I was preparing for the 7 year tribulation Scripture talks about. One of the features of my bipolarness is a little paranoia thrown in for good measure. I over react to everything. So I also have 2 pressure canners (to can all of the food I was going to grow in my organic garden), more mason jars that I can count, a dehydrator (which I used once to make applesauce fruit roll-ups). My organic garden has 2 compost piles - one that is "cooking" and one I am filling. But alas, I found that I could not compete with the weeds, and bugs and diseases, so I have produced very little in my garden, certainly not enough to can. So I spent our little bit of financial security on the notion that we could live here totally cut off from the real world. (Oh, and did I mention the compost toilet I had installed in 1999? It cost no small amount to install it, and then uninstall it. The toilet now sits in our garage, and will probably end up at the dump.) The childrens father always worked so hard to stop my extreme thinking and behaviors, but it is hard to stop someone who is "inspired" by God, and can of course support their thinking with Scripture. David had no hope of stopping my extreme activity. He just goes along with whatever I think. So now I am left to "clean up the mess" and try to recoup at least some of our money by selling stuff on ebay, or in the local newspaper. We have no financial security, and what little we had I squandered because of my extreme paranoid thinking. How to prevent this in the future? Moniter myself for bipolar thinking and feelings. How I wish I had known what I know now about mental illness, and had been willing to accept the possibility that I might have a severe mental illness. You can't treat what you don't acknowledge (a famous Dr. Phil line - but very true). So now I watch myself carefully, and have enlisted the help of at least one friend to help me manage my thinking and feelings. I still struggle with the idea that I have caused all of this (the mental illness) because of a choice I made when i was 19 years old. Rationally I know this isn't true, but alas the nature of mental illness is that it is not rational.
So now I am working to remain emotionally "up" so I can work to maintain some sort of balance in my life and can work on creating a future that might actually be worth living in.
I am working to undo decisions I have made that were way too extreme. Like my Y2K preparations. I have $500 worth of dry beans in my garage that I am going to give to some local soup kitchen. I honestly thought I could set up myself to be totally independant of everyone and everything - no electricity needed (hence I have a 55 gallon drum full of charcoal! to cook our food in a small camping stove called a pyromid. It even bakes, so in theory you could bake bread and muffins.) I also have at least two 14 gallon containers full of corn, that can be ground to make corn muffins. That's alot of muffins! I guess I thought I was preparing for the 7 year tribulation Scripture talks about. One of the features of my bipolarness is a little paranoia thrown in for good measure. I over react to everything. So I also have 2 pressure canners (to can all of the food I was going to grow in my organic garden), more mason jars that I can count, a dehydrator (which I used once to make applesauce fruit roll-ups). My organic garden has 2 compost piles - one that is "cooking" and one I am filling. But alas, I found that I could not compete with the weeds, and bugs and diseases, so I have produced very little in my garden, certainly not enough to can. So I spent our little bit of financial security on the notion that we could live here totally cut off from the real world. (Oh, and did I mention the compost toilet I had installed in 1999? It cost no small amount to install it, and then uninstall it. The toilet now sits in our garage, and will probably end up at the dump.) The childrens father always worked so hard to stop my extreme thinking and behaviors, but it is hard to stop someone who is "inspired" by God, and can of course support their thinking with Scripture. David had no hope of stopping my extreme activity. He just goes along with whatever I think. So now I am left to "clean up the mess" and try to recoup at least some of our money by selling stuff on ebay, or in the local newspaper. We have no financial security, and what little we had I squandered because of my extreme paranoid thinking. How to prevent this in the future? Moniter myself for bipolar thinking and feelings. How I wish I had known what I know now about mental illness, and had been willing to accept the possibility that I might have a severe mental illness. You can't treat what you don't acknowledge (a famous Dr. Phil line - but very true). So now I watch myself carefully, and have enlisted the help of at least one friend to help me manage my thinking and feelings. I still struggle with the idea that I have caused all of this (the mental illness) because of a choice I made when i was 19 years old. Rationally I know this isn't true, but alas the nature of mental illness is that it is not rational.
So now I am working to remain emotionally "up" so I can work to maintain some sort of balance in my life and can work on creating a future that might actually be worth living in.