i’m cuddled under a blanket with a box of kleenex. i’m pretending it’s snowing. (it isn’t snowing. the high was 72 degrees today.) this lingering sickness has me all souped up in a fog. the kids are edgy. they don’t feel well. they don’t like it when i don’t feel well. which makes me pause. what did i do when my mom was under the weather? honestly, i don’t have many memories of my invincible mother being not so invincible. there was a particular birthday of mine that she was in bed because of her back. i think she had knee surgery while i was in high school. but mostly she just seamlessly got us from one thing to another. there should be a medal for that.

which brings me to books. i have been reading game of thrones by george r.r. martin for ages. i think i started in november and i just barely finished. at first i was pretty taken: i liked that martin spends most of his time dismantling any expectations you might have about epic fantasy. and that lasted a while. and then the raping and pillaging began. i knew that it would. and it did. and i couldn’t stomach it. i guess i’ll just have to make up my own ending to this series.

i’ve also been listening to the necromancer by michael scott. it’s the third or fourth novel in a series. or maybe the fifth. i really enjoyed the first, the alchemyst. it was everything i enjoy in an audio book. but the series is really starting to grate on me. i honestly can’t tell if it’s the reader or the book itself. scott’s writing is just tired. every sentence is the same. every character is described the same way. i want to know what happens in the series, but i don’t think i can listen to the phrase “her hands splayed” or “her eyes wide” one more time. i should probably just check them out from the library and skim to the end. how’s that for endorsement?

and now i’m savoring my way through if on a winter’s night a traveler by italo calvino. i read this book first when i was cute and little and 19 and living in london and knew so much more than i do now. a friend sent it to me and i think i melted through it in a matter of days.  i remember it leaving me breathless and moved which is why i picked it up for a little reread. it is beautiful. and startling. and disorienting. and requires so many more brain cells than what i’ve been reading lately, which tells me i need to start challenging myself again.

so any good suggestions for a little healthy brain flogging?

the kids are watching she-ra, eating pop tarts for dinner. i’m laying on the couch. i’ve got the flu. fever, aches, sore throat, odd dreams, and assorted wishes for sweet peaceful death, or at least a day off from mothering. (not that anyone got much mothering today, but i felt like i should be mothering. perhaps i just pine for a release from guilt–which might be a different topic entirely.)

yesterday was my sweet v’s three year birthday. also me and husband’s eighth anniversary.

the celebration(s) took second place in my cerebellum. husband is going through his mock denture board and has spent every day and most of every night at the lab for the past week. he didn’t come home last night until three in the morning. and despite my fever and sore throat and the nyquil, i woke up every hour or so hoping that he would be there. i get so frustrated sometimes that life has to keep going without him. or at least i try to keep things in motion for the sake of the kids. i think if they weren’t around, i would just enter suspended animation, forget everything around me until this torture of a residency is over.

i keep hearing little people in my head saying, “bloom where you’re planted” and “attitude determines altitude,” but sometimes i wonder, is there any motivational speaker out there who has a mantra like, “sometimes life just sucks big time and you’ve got to muscle through it”? because we might get along better.

at the risk of depressing you, click here to see a beautiful baby. and maybe, if you’re lucky, tomorrow i’ll tell you the story of when my psychiatrist fired me.

i just pushed the last of the candy canes off the counter and into the garbage can. i took a deep breath of january.

i used to be so bugged by the idea of new year’s resolutions–the rush to promise to do things, the madness of trying to fix everything at once. i hate doing anything that everybody else is doing. if it’s on the cover of oprah magazine (or any magazine, really), you can be sure that i’m running in the other direction.

but, i’ve come to love the idea of change in january. a dear friend in ohio pointed out to me the beauty of the world as it shifts from darkness to light at the winter solstice, which usually sits a week or so before the new year–it’s such a ripe time to revisit the idea of possibility. the world begins to blossom in sunlight again. we become more and more awake to the world and to ourselves. it’s so pagan. so ritualistic. so organic. i’m obsessed with it.

and this year as my days slowly fill with more and more light i’m determined to do one thing. last year i would have said, “this year i will be better!” but i think the brutality of 2011 to my mind and spirit have taught me a quiet little lesson: i have no idea what “better” means. i keep demanding better of myself, without pausing to be inspired. and so this year i am resolving to find out what better is and then to be it. i aim to redefine better for myself through prayer and meditation and study, not by listening to my inner, often misguided, perfectionist.

here’s to 2012. to quiet, mindful, grounded life. to being better, whatever that means for you personally. to your own quest for discovering.

i have so much i wish to say in response to both myself and all of you who left such kind comments on my last post. i still struggle and muddle and weep at all of this. i think i will spend a lifetime getting to know myself. and learning how to help myself.

but since it’s Christmas, i have something else to say. all the flotsam and jetsam could easily drown us. but this week we celebrate the birth of a baby, and that baby grew up to heal the world.

my favorite words in perhaps all of scripture are found in romans chapter eight of the king james version of the bible. all our struggles are different, but carry in them the same fear and tremor of hope. the same testing of faith and personal mettle. and i find the apostle paul was a pretty eloquent guy on the subject.

the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

i have rested in this scripture so often. when it has seemed impossible to pray. impossible to climb the walls of the depth of my mind. to think that even when we have no idea what to say, the spirit will make intercession. our own groanings which cannot be uttered will be passed on, and passed on intelligibly. what a gift. a gift that all started in a little manger in bethlehem.

and when, again, it seems too dark for light. when i have utterly lost my way. when i forget who i am and what pieces of my brain belong to me and what pieces belong to the disease, i find infinite hope in these words:

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

and take note, it’s not glory revealed to us. it is glory revealed IN us. and all i can say is hallelujah. somewhere inside of me are the seeds, seeds of glory, seeds of peace, and at the end of all this madness, i trust and know and hope that God himself will strip from me all the bits of darkness. and what glory will be revealed in me. what glory will be revealed in you.

and all because one woman was able to say “behold thy handmaiden.” and because one man was born.

it is beautiful beyond beautiful. it is the reason i can keep going day in and day out.

so, celebrate the season. there is no greater reason to celebrate. the birth of hope means the end of fear for all of us.

i haven’t been writing much. i could make up an excuse. (i’m good at excuses.) but i think the real reason is i’m afraid that if i write anything, i will write everything. there are some things (moments, ideas, enlightenment) that i keep to myself because they are sacred. and there are some that i keep to myself simply because to say them out loud is frightening.

but i think i’m starting to learn, over the past few years anyway, that saying something is usually better than saying nothing. it’s so much easier to capture and control a piece of your life when you can articulate the hurt and confusion, rather than mulling it to death in your own quiet mind.

i want to write down the troubles i’ve been having. maybe they will spare someone similar pain. or maybe it will give you an idea of how to relate to people who know the troubles i know. or maybe the only person who will feel a difference is me. in any case, i think i feel ready to have a discussion of the past few years of my life.

i want to repost here a little ditty that i wrote for segullah back in september because it sums things up. (and if you don’t already know, i belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so there are some references to the social aspect of church in the paragraphs below. if you need any clarification, please feel free to contact mitt romney. or me. whichever makes the most sense at the time.)

Hi. My name is Jes. I was recently diagnosed bipolar.

I’ve wanted to say that out loud for a long time—but there never seems to be the right moment. Not when my new Relief Society president is sitting across from me on the couch. “Are you settling in?” she asks. And I want to say, “I just found out I’m bipolar. I mean, you know, obviously something’s been wrong. I’m terrified. I don’t know what that means. I need help. I need friends.” But I don’t. It’s just so weak to tell someone right off the bat that I am not well. I don’t exactly want to be on the list of troublemakers in the ward; you know who I mean, the people who take and take and take, with some feeling of entitlement and not enough gratitude. No, you don’t want to be on that list and neither do I. I don’t want to be cast as the crazy woman before anyone even knows that I teach killer Relief Society lessons, have perfected the cheesecake,  and give a great series on writing personal history. The truth is, most days I’m just like everybody else. I get up and get on with things.

My diagnosis (I call it mine, but it still feels so completely other–something that happens to other people, people I don’t know) was a long time coming. I’ve had the hypomanic episodes: writing for hours at a time, glowing, feeling like I’ve managed to harness the universe. I’ve had bouts of crazy depression, but I always got out of it one way or another. I’ve had vague thoughts of suicide on a couple occasions, but no serious planning.

And then I had my two children. Suddenly my little problems weren’t little anymore. Suddenly they weren’t just between me and my mind anymore. I had this whole family to run, and I was incapacitated. One of the more unfortunate side effects of bipolar disorder for some, and especially me, is postpartum psychosis. After those nine months and hours of labor, I didn’t even get to sit and snuggle my little ones, enjoying their smells and coos reveling in the bliss of motherhood. I was insane. I heard voices. I was gripped with such panic that I held down waves of nausea. I was in such physical and mental pain that I would look at other families in church with pews of children and hold down the tears, wondering what made them so much stronger than me. What did they feel that I didn’t? Or, perhaps, what didn’t they feel that I did?

And now I’m riding the medication waves. I take one thing, then another, facing side effects that seem worse than the disorder itself. I’ll be fine for a few weeks or months and think everything is solved, and then I tank, hurtling down so fast I can barely breathe.

I suppose if I lived near good friends, near my mom and dad, near people I could trust, it might not be such a problem. But, in reality, I’ve signed up for a life of hauling myself and my problems across the country every few years, following my Air Force husband. The stability my condition needs the most is the thing I know I will never have.

It leaves me wondering, are there other people out there like me… Is anyone else afraid to trust their own brain? Afraid that they might not be able to take care of their family? Trying to keep and make covenants when they go for weeks or months at a time without being able to feel anything? Trying to enjoy the life of their little ones when most days they just want to hide? Is there anyone else denying the reality of their diagnosis? Anyone else who clings to faith, afraid to be open about their mental troubles in case they get holed up somewhere they don’t belong?

so, that is a little sad. boo hoo. i’m not sitting here feeling sorry for myself: just ready to get this off my chest. all i can think about these days are meds and brains and little birdies twirling around my head. i’m hoping that if i can force myself to write more freely about my real day in and day out without trying to edit out my condition that it will be easier somehow. and we all have something to grapple with, don’t we? so why not grapple together? (and i’m especially pleased with the way i used grapple in that last sentence.)