(First published: Sep 19, 2007)
I’m paraphrasing Clint in “Heartbreak Ridge” but the sentiment is true.
I’m heading in a slightly new direction today.
I truly believe that boredom can kill
And I fully know that it helps create bipolar disorder in some of us.
It took me years – decades – to see how incredibly powerful boredom was on my mind.
I get bored very easily. Well, I used to. My days have since filled up quite nicely with tasks I actually enjoy. But I feel my bipolarism and boredom fed one another.
There’s no way to discuss this without referencing “The Da Vinci Method“. That book opened my eyes way up beyond the point of awakening I’d already achieved. It pertains to creative type personalities.
If people like me are not building something and have it also be a something we care deeply about, we are miserable. We get bored.
We are an all-or-nothing mindset.
It’s the key reason why it’s so hard for us to stay employed.
The day is not truly ours to own and that’s just not gonna fly for some of us. It causes a guy like me to then head on out and stir up some good olde-fashioned chaos.
Nothin’ like chaos to get the blood pumpin’!
I was glad to find out that this was an asset and I had simply not been utilizing it properly.
Thinking and feeling this way brings on doom if not directed towards correctly fulfilling The Need. It’s why I drank so phenomenally hard during my teens and early twenties.
It’s why I went through bales of weed, pounds of shrooms, sheets of acid and more, then eventually back to drinking seven years after I’d quit.
Boredom was not the only impetus for my warped worldview but it was the biggest player outside the bipolar itself.
In my case, being bipolar caused me to need higher levels of stimulation to feel satisfied with life than the rest of the world.
But from there, I’d choose methods of stimulation that brought on destruction in every area of my life. It was a vicious cycle.
This may be you. It doesn’t apply to every bipolar person but it is common enough amongst we, The Deranged.
And usually, whatever I was doing wasn’t even enough to fill that hole in me that I had yet to understand.
My life has been unbelievably full of experiences, stacked on top of more experiences in every which way, shape and form, as I tried to fill that hole.
Not until a couple of years ago did I finally see what would fill it. I found my purpose.
Isn’t that a corny thought? I “found” myself. Nonetheless, it apparently is a real thing to be addressed.
This is something that your psychiatrist will probably never discuss head on or fully enough if he or she does.
They are more concerned with the short term. Shut down the symptoms. Long term plan? Keep doing whatever made the short term plan work.
You’re probably hurting enough that the same goal is all you care about too. I understand.
But once you’ve attained some sense of calm what then?
- What kicked off the whole mess in the first place?
- What must you do to keep it from returning?
These are issues you must confront, with a battle plan that consists of more than keeping up with your pill regime.
Eating meds as an answer is bunker thinking. You’re wrapping up in a cocoon of false safety.
There is a way through this morass. But it is an incredibly deep and dark pool to cross. There are undercurrents to battle. There are storms all over the surface.
Most people, sick or not, choose to hole up in a tent on the shore rather than face this massive lack in their life.
I chose that route for years and when it dawned on me that it needed attention, I went about it all wrong in many ways. But some of it was right. It led me to this point.
My life is far from peaches and cream.
But I derive a satisfaction out of each and every day that I have longed for since I was a boy.
I want so much more out of life and I no longer think of just myself as I dream my dreams. I want a herd of you to come with me. All it would take for you to begin the same journey is to learn my system. And I’m continually learning more.
There are things I’m discovering and implementing that are healing my broken body, calming my heart, and better focusing my mind, thereby bringing me even more satisfaction out of life.
I am becoming able to do things that I thought age and self abuse had made no longer possible.
All of me is just too busted up.
I thought.
How glad I am that I keep digging and talking to others who know more than me.
My health, in all ways, just keeps getting better. I will share these things with you guys one day. But we need to start at the beginning and work up from there.
Same as I did. Bite sized chunks. Easy to eat lessons.
The photographer of this post’s featured photo: Tim Bish