Between therapist and pdoc helping me figure out what was happening last week and this week, talk therapy, a lot of mental work while sitting around, clawing my way back up, a shit ton of ugly crying, and a med adjustment . . . . I’m seeing glimpses of the bad ass me that I know is in there. Mixed episodes and this kind of rapid cycling is far scarier and more destabilizing than I remember, and I’m really glad that I went so long without this.

My therapist asked me what my anxiety looks like, there is a piece of art hanging in her office, a random mashed together jumble of 3d mixed media stuff. I told her it’s this constant noise of thoughts and words that looks and sounds like the painting, all different colors and sounds and sharp edges and smooth, but 3d and even 4d isn’t enough to describe the amount of dimensions, it’s like a 20 sided die, but the size of the earth, and I’m an ant, or a grain of sand.

But it starts small, one thought, and if I ignore it, it echoes around and gets bigger, and bigger and bigger, so I voice it and it goes away. But at some point, the more I feed them the bigger they get and the more they multiply until I’m this tiny molecule surrounded by these swirling mixed media 20 sided die of thoughts and I can’t remember what I did yesterday, or even earlier today because I’m too busy trying to respond to every single thought and put it to rest so they stop getting bigger.

“Yes I’m good enough” “Nope, the house isn’t on fire” “No, that ambulance isn’t for my kid” “No, you aren’t going to screw it all up” “Yes, you paid that bill”

I keep trying to find answers for why I’m like this, or why I’m like that. I need a solution, I need to fix me so that it all goes away. But I’m not my labels, I’m not my anxiety or the adhd or the bipolar or the anxiety or the grief. Those things help me find ideas for solutions, it helps me look for coping mechanisms, but I can’t get too bogged down in trying to fix me because I’m not broken.

I’m still trying, and I’m learning how to put away what doesn’t work, and take a few steps back, and when the anxiety gets bigger than me, I need to learn how to go back and find the stuff that made me Self Saving Warrior Princess in the first place. I spent an entire year telling myself that I was enough, and then a few stumbles while I was learning some new skills completely knocked me down. I need to find what made me bigger than all of this in the first place, and figure out how to hold onto that, while still learning all of this new stuff.