Tag: decisions

Draw me a map to my self

Yesterday I took a small road trip with my son out to visit my parents. It’s about a two hour drive each way and this is the first time I felt that I had sufficient stamina and concentration to manage it since my breakdown in June. The countryside is beautiful but the journey did not really offer me more than time to sit and fret behind the steering wheel.  I thought about how I used to need a road map to navigate the back highways when my 86 year-old father’s ongoing retreat from civilization first drew them out there a few years back. I no longer need a map and know the route well.

Copyright JM Schreiber 2013
Copyright JM Schreiber 2013

I could, however, use a personal map or trail of bread crumbs to follow back to make sense of the past year or two of my life.  A mood disorder can wreak havoc on one’s internal compass. In the hazy debris of an extended period of hypomanic energy sliding into manic, I am finding it impossible to make sense of where I was or where I go from here.

At a deeper, more fundamental sense I have lost faith in myself. Or rather my ability to make sense of my self.

It is likely that this is the affect of depression. It’s hard for me to know because I have rarely ever experienced the sort of black dog depression that many others describe. I tend toward anxiety and a bone weariness that weighs me down, but I do not crawl into bed and pull the covers up. I don’t sleep well, in fact I tend to insomnia. But I don’t recall experiencing the all pervasive lack of physical energy that haunts me now. I find it hard to remember how I ever managed to accomplish all of the projects, personal and professional, that I tackled during the many years of relative stability I experienced over the past ten to fifteen years.

At the moment, the fact that’s really eating away at me is that the last impression I left at work was of a manager who was increasingly high strung and finally quite stressed and obnoxiously concerned that he alone had the skills and perspective to resolve the challenges facing the agency. The manic Mr Hyde side. But how long was he showing his face? And now that I am living with a shy, anxious shadow of my Dr Jekyll self (assuming I even have one) I wish I had GPS system of some kind to help me retrace my steps.

A good therapist would help, and I do have one, but at $180/hour I won’t be seeing her much and if I am going to spend that much I would rather wait until I have figured out where I have been so she can help me figure out where I go from here.

Or maybe it’s better to accept what cannot be changed and look forward instead…

What lies ahead?

Along the forest trailI took this photo almost a month ago. This trail near my home runs up and down along a steep embankment above a major river running through the large modern city I call home. It exists as an oasis of mountain magic lingering east of the Rocky Mountains. Today I could not possibly negotiate my way over the ubiquitous tangles of roots that emerge without warning on such forested trails. Although my health improves every day, I am stunned by how devastating the process of recovering from the brink of a full manic break has been on my ability maintain any degree of physical equilibrium. At the worst I was toppling over at a moment’s notice and hobbling along after my 24 year-old son as if I was in my 80s or 90s. This morning I actually managed a 10 block walk to Starbucks on my own. I no longer lose my balance when I turn my head and could even stoop to photograph a few renegade alley flowers along the way. Maybe I will even make serious headway in the novel I was reading before I crashed a few weeks ago.

But the question then begins to take on a more critical long turn.

What lies ahead?

And is this a path I am prepared to commit to knowing that the dysfunctional elements that ultimately contributed to my break down are deeply embedded into the structure of the work environment that I am, at this time, expected to return?

If I hated my job, the answer would be simple. But for nine years I loved my work, looked forward to the challenge, cared deeply for the cause, the clients, my co-workers and community colleagues. However, sometimes hard work and achievements mean little if the last impression you leave is of someone who is over tired, over worked and processing at lightening speed. You are assumed to be crazy, not ill. And labels once granted still await even once you cross the bridge to recovery.