I’ve been feeling sorry for myself the last few days, I can tell you. It’s partly to do with this story I’m writing and all the stuff it’s kicking up from my past and partly because I’m still feeling very shaky about things in my personal life and relationship. I’m one of those people who is always looking for the next thing that will make me happy. And that next thing never turns out to be enough. I blame my childhood.
In fact, the more I look back at my past the more I realise just how often I was having episodes which could be attributed to bipolar (although mild, I think they were definitely there, and my husband agrees). I wonder now whether I always had it. This is a big deal for me. I was only diagnosed in my thirties and was happier thinking that it was brought on by my nervous breakdown than I was thinking that I was always a bit defective.
I was a very sensitive child. I could over-empathise to the point of driving myself into a worse state that the person I was empathising with. The thought of global warming turned me into a nervous wreck from the age of 8 onward. I even had suicidal thoughts then. What was the point of carrying on, it seemed, if we were all going to drown, freeze to death or perish under a fireball from the sun? I had terrible OCDs. I couldn’t fill an ice cube tray with water and put it in the freezer if I’d been thinking about anyone I loved because it would mean their essence would be frozen and they’d be in pain because of me! I was terrified throughout most of my childhood of all the man-made issues in the world, not to mention the issues of abandonment I was dealing with, the loss of people and things that meant a lot to me, a lack of love from my mother, no guidance of any kind from adults in my life and an inability to talk about my problems when there was no one there to listen anyway. Is it any wonder I turned into a little bag of nuts?
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/430212/group/Life/ – Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by 14.
My husband says that my need to be adored and desire to be the centre of attention is due to the bipolar but I’m not so sure. I don’t want to be the centre of attention. Not in the way you’re thinking. Yes, I want to be successful and happy, but in an understated way. I want my talent and what I can do to be recognised.
I think all that stems from being a little girl with no one to give her what she needed. I’ve spent my entire adult life, and continue to spend it, fixing the problems that that life installed in me. I think what he actually means is, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of becoming a little self-absorbed when every day you have to be very aware of your own feelings, thoughts, rationale, and logic in order to assess how well you are.
This is why, when I see others suffering, I feel bad that I am this self-absorbed person, always asking that my needs be met no matter how illogical or outlandish they might be at times. I came into work this morning and my colleague is in a bad way. He seems very stressed and exhausted. I know that his wife is pregnant at the moment but she had a miscarriage last year and I’m worried that something may be wrong with the baby. Because he’s a work colleague I don’t know him well enough to probe so in a roundabout way of cheering him up I asked him to help me with the new software licensing acronyms that we’re going to add to our asset management system. I’m pleased to announce that we came up with the following, and a job well done I might add:
Ass.LicK – Assigned Licenses Keys
U.Ass.LicK – Unassigned Licenses Keys
SNot.LicK – Secure Notes License Keys
My Family And Janice 