Bears.
This entry is building on recent posts about being bipolar and mental illness in general, here, here, and here, but it stands independently. I wrote this a few weeks back. It's a bit late. Sorry.
Long ago, a particularly tactless email contact implied that all suffering is transitory, and that I was missing a wonderful opportunity for spiritual growth by letting my mother's painful death upset me. Unsurprisingly, I completely stopped talking to that person.
The difficulties of a person's life are a lot more than an opportunity to build character. Sure, one hopes to get something out of one's suffering, but nine out of ten times the last thing someone in dire pain wants to hear is that it will make them stronger. Somehow. In the future. But not right now. So just have fun with that pain, there, Sparky. The worse it is, the more virtuous you have the chance to be! All this hair-tearing and screaming until you are hoarse? It's secretly awesome! Really builds up the ol' lung power.
I don't have a problem with people telling me to hang in there, that it will get better again, as long as they are not trying to tell me that there's nothing wrong. I mean, I want to be reassured and all, but if you tell me that things will get better while simultaneously denying that things suck right now, I am going to assume that "better" means that things will still suck, because clearly your scale is off.
I truly do want to make something of the mess that is my life. Oh my god, do I ever. But I don't so much want to have other people telling me what to make of it, or telling me that it's really a fantastic life after all.
I think the best I will ever be able to say is that this is an okay life, I am in no hurry to throw it away, I know I am lucky and I have loads of advantages, I love my friends and my home, and I treasure the short time I am going to have here . . . but my life has its moments of pure unrefined suck that are actually not really related to the outside world and all the fantastic things in it, and those moments of suck need to be acknowledged, as does the fact that if it weren't for the bipolar part of me, I would be able to do a whole lot more with what I have. My uncomfortable truths, let me show you them.
Sure, some people will succeed at making good from bad, but many, many others fail. They don't fail because they fucked up their spiritual origami lesson and didn't learn to fold a paper crane out of the car wreck that killed their entire family. They fail because it is not always possible for a given person to turn a particular shitty thing into something beautiful. At least, not with the tools available to them at that time.
I would venture to say that you have a much better chance of making good out of bad if you actually understand how horrible, harmful, and frightening the badness really is.
To use a metaphor, let's talk about bears.
I think bears are wicked cool. Obviously, with a bite force measured at around 750 pounds, they are deadly. People like my erstwhile penpal above are the sort of people who will tell you "Hey, I bet you could learn all kinds of things from that bear if you made friends with it!" People who are so focused on you making that fucking lemonade that they will shove the lemons right up your ass.
Look, bears have their place, but if a bear is trying to eat me I am not going to try to "accept" its gustatory overtures and become its very special friend. I am going to try to kill the motherfucker. If I try to treat it like a bunny in the hopes that it will act like one, it will tear my arms off and eat me. If I treat it like a bear, I have much better odds of avoiding a particularly unpleasant demise.
And this mental illness is not just one bear. It's a succession of bears who want to fuck my shit up, and I have no guarantees that one of those bears doesn't have my name on it. Sure, some people can make friends with their own personal bears, and when that Tarzan shit really does happen, I think that is fucking awesome, but the fact that I can't, or haven't, made friends with my bears? That does not make me a lesser person. That does not mean I am weak or stupid. And it sure as fuck does not mean that at some point I turned up my nose at the chance to make friends with my bear. I tried to be friends with my bear for something like 29 years. What happened? It fucked my shit up.
What's that you say? Friends don't fuck your shit up? Why, I suppose you've just discovered my point!
Spending my life fighting bears instead of writing or painting or riding horses or traveling or learning to speak Latin has not been fun or particularly rewarding. It has not been worth the occasional bear trophy. It still sucks.
Looking on the bright side of a hostile bear is pretty hopeless. I am sure that a bear would be quick to point out the bright side of being eaten, but it's not one that is easy to appreciate from inside the bear.
"When life gives you bears, make bearskin rugs!" is perfectly sound advice. But it's not a therapeutic technique. It's not secret bear-fighting wisdom passed down through the ages. It's not always possible, and it doesn't always work, and the person who is best suited to evaluate the validity of the approach is not the person standing on the sidelines who has never fought a bear in his life, or who has been fighting different bears, or who already has the right weapons, or who can talk to wild animals.
The person best suited to deciding whether or not this particular bear has a bright side is the person fighting the bear.
We are the ones who have to face down bear after bear. Maybe it's best if we decide how wonderful those opportunities really are.
Long ago, a particularly tactless email contact implied that all suffering is transitory, and that I was missing a wonderful opportunity for spiritual growth by letting my mother's painful death upset me. Unsurprisingly, I completely stopped talking to that person.
The difficulties of a person's life are a lot more than an opportunity to build character. Sure, one hopes to get something out of one's suffering, but nine out of ten times the last thing someone in dire pain wants to hear is that it will make them stronger. Somehow. In the future. But not right now. So just have fun with that pain, there, Sparky. The worse it is, the more virtuous you have the chance to be! All this hair-tearing and screaming until you are hoarse? It's secretly awesome! Really builds up the ol' lung power.
I don't have a problem with people telling me to hang in there, that it will get better again, as long as they are not trying to tell me that there's nothing wrong. I mean, I want to be reassured and all, but if you tell me that things will get better while simultaneously denying that things suck right now, I am going to assume that "better" means that things will still suck, because clearly your scale is off.
I truly do want to make something of the mess that is my life. Oh my god, do I ever. But I don't so much want to have other people telling me what to make of it, or telling me that it's really a fantastic life after all.
I think the best I will ever be able to say is that this is an okay life, I am in no hurry to throw it away, I know I am lucky and I have loads of advantages, I love my friends and my home, and I treasure the short time I am going to have here . . . but my life has its moments of pure unrefined suck that are actually not really related to the outside world and all the fantastic things in it, and those moments of suck need to be acknowledged, as does the fact that if it weren't for the bipolar part of me, I would be able to do a whole lot more with what I have. My uncomfortable truths, let me show you them.
Sure, some people will succeed at making good from bad, but many, many others fail. They don't fail because they fucked up their spiritual origami lesson and didn't learn to fold a paper crane out of the car wreck that killed their entire family. They fail because it is not always possible for a given person to turn a particular shitty thing into something beautiful. At least, not with the tools available to them at that time.
I would venture to say that you have a much better chance of making good out of bad if you actually understand how horrible, harmful, and frightening the badness really is.
To use a metaphor, let's talk about bears.
I think bears are wicked cool. Obviously, with a bite force measured at around 750 pounds, they are deadly. People like my erstwhile penpal above are the sort of people who will tell you "Hey, I bet you could learn all kinds of things from that bear if you made friends with it!" People who are so focused on you making that fucking lemonade that they will shove the lemons right up your ass.
Look, bears have their place, but if a bear is trying to eat me I am not going to try to "accept" its gustatory overtures and become its very special friend. I am going to try to kill the motherfucker. If I try to treat it like a bunny in the hopes that it will act like one, it will tear my arms off and eat me. If I treat it like a bear, I have much better odds of avoiding a particularly unpleasant demise.
And this mental illness is not just one bear. It's a succession of bears who want to fuck my shit up, and I have no guarantees that one of those bears doesn't have my name on it. Sure, some people can make friends with their own personal bears, and when that Tarzan shit really does happen, I think that is fucking awesome, but the fact that I can't, or haven't, made friends with my bears? That does not make me a lesser person. That does not mean I am weak or stupid. And it sure as fuck does not mean that at some point I turned up my nose at the chance to make friends with my bear. I tried to be friends with my bear for something like 29 years. What happened? It fucked my shit up.
What's that you say? Friends don't fuck your shit up? Why, I suppose you've just discovered my point!
Spending my life fighting bears instead of writing or painting or riding horses or traveling or learning to speak Latin has not been fun or particularly rewarding. It has not been worth the occasional bear trophy. It still sucks.
Looking on the bright side of a hostile bear is pretty hopeless. I am sure that a bear would be quick to point out the bright side of being eaten, but it's not one that is easy to appreciate from inside the bear.
"When life gives you bears, make bearskin rugs!" is perfectly sound advice. But it's not a therapeutic technique. It's not secret bear-fighting wisdom passed down through the ages. It's not always possible, and it doesn't always work, and the person who is best suited to evaluate the validity of the approach is not the person standing on the sidelines who has never fought a bear in his life, or who has been fighting different bears, or who already has the right weapons, or who can talk to wild animals.
The person best suited to deciding whether or not this particular bear has a bright side is the person fighting the bear.
We are the ones who have to face down bear after bear. Maybe it's best if we decide how wonderful those opportunities really are.