ingratitude list (day two)

I’m utterly grouchy, check this out instead.

I take a word, a simple concept and I stare hard at it until I see every molecule, but the molecules vibrate (as molecules must) and I have no fucking idea what shape they ought to be. Gratitude. Gra-ti-fucking-tude. Wtf, tribe, wtf.

noun: gratitude
the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
“she expressed her gratitude to the committee for their support”
synonyms: gratefulness, thankfulness, thanks, appreciation, recognition, acknowledgement, hat tip, credit, regard, respect.
Origin: late Middle English: from Old French, or from medieval Latin gratitudo, from Latin gratus ‘pleasing, thankful’.

Out of all that, i think I can cope pretty well with the word recognition in its most basic form – acknowledgement. I acknowledge my good fortune, even when every fibre of me is screaming like uprooted trees.

Well it didn’t take long for me to get thoroughly irate at and about the whole notion of grrratitude lists. Emphasis on grrr. I’m obsessive, I’ve finally learned the art of distraction, of quietening the beast, but now I’m supposed to be fucking mindful. I do mindful in a whole lot of decent ways, I just call it awareness. Frankly, if I’m supposed to be mindful 24/7 my head will explode. This paragraph and everything that caused it, were a complete waste of time.

Gratitude:
A beautiful sunrise, happy dogs, an interesting walk, two cups of coffee.

Ingratitude list:
I was up early thanks to menopausal night sweats, friend’s dog leaves in two weeks and my heart is damn sore, my vision blurred a lot on the walk. Nothing wrong with the coffee though. I went into hypo mode after the walk, which was great until it very definitely wasn’t. You know what I’m talking about. Six hours later and the jitters hit hard and then the depression got itself back on track and so the afternoon was sad and the evening sadder. #middleclassproblems

Morgue was spot on when she said that mental illness has its own fucked up logic. There are so many days when even my usual solid gratitude list just makes me feel ungrateful and churlish. And I’m not going to escape the whole mess with logic because I’m fucking well bipolar. My baseline is depression, wtf do I know about any good mood that doesn’t end in disaster? I am suspicious of happy. In fact I don’t trust happy at all, I’m a sick fuck who knows that sadness is a hell of a lot safer. As for anxiety, I feel as though there’s battery acid galloping angrily up and down my aorta. And I’m freaking out at some mountains I’ve made from molehills, that I can’t bring myself to look at clearly, never mind talking or writing about them. The solutions are well within my grasp, but do you think I can marry the two together? Not. A. Fuck.

I blame this whole exercise for facilitating hypomania followed by depression and if I cycle one more fucking time anyfuckingtime soon, I’m going to declare it a mixed episode and then sue the pants off gratitude. The list that stays constant (dog, house, friends, tribe) feels real and I can acknowledge it no matter what. Having to process every genuinely good but transient thing just makes me feel helpless and hopeless, because they mean fuckall to me. Being in the now is fraught with all of the intensity of bad as well as good. Actually I don’t know what the fuck I think about all this yet, I’m trying to write my way towards some clarity.

Did I mention that I overcomplicate things? Well, you’re bipolar, I guess you do too. I fell asleep before I finished this, so I’m posting day 2 on day 3. I’m just glad I have the health and strength to do so. #sarcasmathanks

When I’m in this fucked up hyposadgitated™ space, poetry works well for me. Unfortunately I frequently forget the fact most days. Apologies to the two of you who visit life & death in the intertidal zone too (sorrynotsorry), but I’m posting the same poem on today’s entries, here and there. I have a feeling that most of you will identify with it as strongly as I do. 

From “Me Again” (Pablo Neruda)

The more bored I became
with my unacceptable person,
the more I returned to the theme of my person;
worst of all,
I kept painting myself to myself
in the midst of a happening.
What an idiot (I said to myself
a thousand times over) to perfect all that craft
of description and describe only myself,
as though I had nothing to show but my head,
nothing better to tell than the mistakes of a lifetime
Tell me, good brothers,
I said at the Fisherman’s Union,
do you love yourselves as I do?
The plain truth of it is:
we fishermen stick to our fishing,
while you fish for yourself (said
the fishermen): you fish over and over again
for yourself, then throw yourself back in the sea.

It’s 3am. I feel desolate. How much pain is too much?