Jesus to a Child

I love this song.  I’ve posted before about the link I feel between homosexuality and bipolar disorder and I just feel like this song encapsulates the struggle of being an outsider and the desire to find meaningful connections.

 

I Love to See the Temple

Yesterday, after I posted about slicing and dicing, the children's song, “I Love to See the Temple,” got lodged in my head.

Here’s a link for it if you’re not already familiar: I Love to See the Temple

There’s a lot of talk in my church about bodies being temples.  It’s not a weird Mormon idea, because I googled and saw all kinds of other Christian links to the scripture in Corinthians (which I believe I’m supposed to have memorized).  Strangely, associating cutting with the idea of my body as a temple wasn’t particularly upsetting (i.e. I should feel guilt for defiling my “temple”).

Instead of feeling guilty, I started thinking about what it’s like to be in the temple and participate in its ordinances, and how relieved I am to be endowed and to know more about God’s plan for us.

I know I’m messed up, and sometimes it makes me feel unworthy to enter the temple, but at the same time, I know that God loves me, even when I do stupid and harmful things.

Anyway, I didn’t want to get too far into the saccharine, but having the thoughts of cutting replaced by a song about the temple was an instant blessing and a good reminder of God’s daily role in our lives.

Sharp instruments…

Unless they are for food, you cannot show them to me.  Immediately my brain goes to thoughts of cutting.  It’s irrational; it’s absurd; it’s OCD and bipolar of me.

It’s not necessarily that I WANT to cut, it’s that the IDEA of cutting is lodged in my head the rest of the day.  I can’t stop thinking about how it feels and what it looks like.  And my gut gets all twisted and I want to cry, but I STILL can’t stop thinking about it.

It helps that I have a four-inch scar on my thigh.  I can tame things a little by thinking about how awful the night was when cutting finally sent me to the ER.  I never want to feel the way I did on that exam table, with my sister crying in one of those stupid chairs and the doctor trying to help me by telling me it’s a first-world problem.  I just lay there feeling broken and wrong; I don’t want to feel that way again.

The thoughts still come, but I can CBT them a little by thinking about my thigh.

I gave my mom my utility knife

and I totally regret it right now, so looking at razor blades on Amazon is my new porn.  My utility knife sucked at cutting, but it hurt and I could do a series of quick shallow cuts.  And now it's gone.  I'm not sure why I cut; it's adult onset--I only had one episode as a teenager, but I desperately want to.  I guess the driving emotion is that I need to make up for what I didn't get done today and provide a mark for the things I did wrong.  I wasn't perfect, I guess, and cutting will make up for that.  I shed some blood and it makes things okay; I've balanced the scales.  I also get distinct satisfaction from watching the blood well up from the shallow wounds and the stains it leaves on my clothes the next day.

But I'm not cutting tonight; I have to go too far and draw too much attention to get an effective tool.

Also, I'm really trying not to hurt myself, so I'm writing about how I want to, and lusting after a 12-pack of nice, sharp, cheap, efficient tools, remembering the satisfying hairline scars left over from the last time I sliced and diced with a razor blade.

It's completely illogical, but cutting is a great example of the disordered brain at work. Surely if I punish my body, I won't say or do stupid things, I won't be lazy, I won't mess up.  And the crappy thing is, all of this is reinforced by the freaking endorphins that come with pain.  I'd be better off masturbating, if that didn't make me want to cut myself as well.

So what's an effed-up adult-kid to do?  I guess I'll read fanfic and pop a benadryl and try to sleep the urges off.  Tomorrow I'm getting sliced up at the doctor anyway, so I'll have to "enjoy" that.

Homosexuality and Bipolar

I’m not homosexual, although part of my disorder has involved strong sexual attraction to members of both sexes.  I’ve chosen not to act on my attraction to women, but it’s still there, so I guess, officially, I’m bi.

But that’s not what the post is about.  Aside from the sexual attraction thing, I really resonate with GLBT music and the way they depict their struggle in society.  I connect it to my mental illness in the LDS community.  Both are kept under wraps, and it is often shameful to admit a problem; both open you up to judgment you’d rather not have to face.  I hear songs like “Philosophy of Loss” by the Indigo Girls and the words, “the doors open wide to all straight men and women but they are not open to me,” really resonated with my situation.  What had I done wrong to be excluded?  All I’d done was have a mental illness and I could feel the exclusion all around me.  This was especially true in YSA wards, where I often felt as if I was treated as a diseased member of the herd, even though very few knew about my struggle.

I love Utah—it’s my home—but it’s a tough community to be very different in.  I don’t think Utah isn’t diverse, but there’s a plateau effect of complacency that comes over people very quickly.  There’s a big push to go along to get along and not cause any trouble.  But I am troubled and self-troubling.  I rankle under the gazes of my successfully married and childered friend’s mothers.  Again, I can see in some of their faces the question, “What did Folly there do wrong?”  Or, “Why can’t she be more like Tammie—who gave up her dreams of being a doctor to be a Mommy?”  Or being told, “Don’t forget motherhood in all your ambition!”  “I know someone your age!  You’d be perfect for each other!”  Always trying to fix what can’t be fixed or being vulgar and querulous about the situation.  I imagine LGBTs feel the same way.

So, as a closet case, I think I get a little bit of that world.  I don’t necessarily condone it, but I understand the attraction and I understand bridling under the judgment—cruel and kind—of others, who just don’t get it and never will.  Sometimes I hate them; sometimes I hate myself; but it’s usually a combination of both.  Only the patience of my mother, who I think suspects my “other” sexuality in consonance with my mental state, the kind words of my bishop, and, especially, the words of Jesus salve the sting and make the mess endurable.  For Him, Otherness isn’t a byword.  As He said, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”  I have hope in that promise.

I Hate Being Alone

While I might want to be left alone a lot of the time, I really hate being all alone in the house.  Not very grown-up of me, but then I hardly act my age anyway (30).  I live with my parents and my sister and my parents have been out of town visiting my other sister’s future in-laws.  Last time they both went out of town I ended up cutting up my torso with a glass scraper (torso cuts don’t show when you have the dress standards of an LDS woman).  Nothing drastic happened this time, but I was really depressed, barely slept, and hardly got any work done.  It just really drags on me when I don’t have familiar company, and as great as cats are, they aren’t a substitute for a good mom.

It frustrates me to feel so dependent on others.  I want to go to graduate school (again) and get my doctorate (I think), but I don’t know how I’m going to manage my health and my routine without assistance from my family.  As of right now, they are the only ones who understand how to help me—especially my mom—and support me during bad times like the entirety of winter.  The idea of moving away and living alone again is really daunting.  I don’t really think roommates are feasible because of my mental health; I’ve alienated people in the past because of my mood swings.

So I’m in limbo.  Trapped between being a fulfilled adult with a real career (*crossing fingers*) and being a perpetual adolescent living off of my parents, at least in emotional terms.  I’m not sure I’m capable of being on my own; I’m not sure I won’t cut more often and more intensely; I’m not sure I won’t try suicide again; and I’m not sure I can stay out of an institution.  I’m also painfully aware of the fact that bipolar disorder becomes more volatile as you age, making my chances of finding other companionship feel far away on depressive days like these.

Freaking the Heck Out, As Per Usual

So the time has come, once again, to freak out about the upcoming semester.  I start teaching next Wednesday, so that give me 8 days to get things in order.  As of right now, my brain is convinced that this is impossible.  “Didn’t you just teach this class?” you ask.  Well, yes, but I felt like a moderate failure in some aspects of the courses I taught and I completely blew it on the “no text” thing.  See, I thought that meant that the majority of the material would be covered by a combination of lecture and discussion without a lot of outside reading, except at the beginning.  Well, it turns out that it’s hard to have a discussion when you are dealing with cold fish first thing in the morning, and it is even hard to have a discussion when I am introducing new and foreign material to said fish.  Also, my boss assumed I was having them do readings when I was not, which scotched my peer review a little bit.  So while I have enough material to fill a semester, I don’t have enough appropriate material to facilitate classroom discussion.

My job, then, for the next 8 days, is to cobble together a series of outlines/quotes/short readings/discussion questions/short assignments that I can present to my students before they come to class so that we all have something to talk about.  This means scouring my files, the interwebs, and the collaborative 1010 site so that I can create this wonderful thing.  I also have to craft assignments to be turned in before class so that I can be a classroom autocrat and demand participation, while at the same time remaining benevolent and likable.  Top all this with my seasonal mood death and you have a bad combination.  Also I am fat and unattractive (according to my seasonally warped brain).

And to think this is my dream job (teaching).  Imagine if I was employed doing something else.