Good morning, world! I woke up a couple hours earlier than I needed
to, so I thought I'd check in with you again.
Sitting alone in the morning is admittedly foreign to
me. I live in a modest studio with my
best friend slash fiancé (I mean that!), and I can't remember the last time he
had to leave for work or school before me.
But my work schedule changed starting this week, so I'll have lots of
opportunities to either (a) sleep in, or (b) greet the hot, humid mornings with
crusty eyes. I opted for the latter
today, and hope to continue to do so.
Sleeping a regular schedule is such a crucial part of my
treatment for bipolar disorder. Besides,
going to bed at the same time as my fiancé is an equally vital commitment to my
relationship. Not that an insufficient
dose of cuddling has ever landed me in a psych ward, of course, but I'm at the
point in my treatment/recovery where I am working more on enhancing life than
merely maintaining or prolonging it.
So the point is that I'm alone on my couch at 7:30 AM, picking
at breakfast and trying to make sense of my thoughts in writing. (Typing.
You know.) And that's just fine
by me. Which is fascinating for these
reasons:
- I'm awake early.
- I'm alone.
- I'm perfectly content.
I've never been a morning person, at least not since age
seven or so when my cycling sleep began.
A month or so of waking up exhausted after 10+ hours of sleep, a month
or so of my racing thoughts keeping me up until 3 AM. Repeat.
Oversleeping (we're talking twelve hours of sleep nightly if
no one stops me) is still a major issue today when I'm depressed. On the flip side, I'm learning techniques
(read: meditation) to slow down the mental races when they try to stop me from
getting rest. And when my mood is
normal, I find myself doing normal people things in the evening (laundry,
cooking, socializing, etc.), forgetting that I really do need to schedule my
sleep. In mentally healthy phases, I
need nine hours. So inconvenient.
They say that alcoholics are the only people who want to be
held while isolating. (Is it really only alcoholics who push others away and
with the expectation that these people will fight their way back in?) Umm, guilty.
At least when I'm not feeling life.
I've been fighting isolation for a couple years now with
solid success. At first, I had to learn
to not be alone when I wanted to isolate. Slowly, it becomes a habit. When I notice myself dragging through mental
molasses, I lift my seemingly thousand-pound iPhone and make calls. I meet people for coffee. I tell on myself. I get through it.
Pretty recently, I've started to recognize a tiny detail
that I had no way of understanding earlier: being alone is just fine when I'm not isolating. (Come again?)
There's times when I need to sit alone and process, or do productive
things, or work on myself. These times don't
happen if I'm in that dangerous mindset where I'd prefer to avoid people
altogether. Rather, they occur when I'm
perfectly happy either way.
This makes me think of the fifth step promises on page 75 of
the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. Most recovering alcoholics in AA familiar
with the oft-quoted ninth step promises on pages 83-4, outlining the awesome
spiritual growth we'll have as a result of making ninth step amends. The shorter fifth step promises indicate the
peace of mind we receive by sharing our inventories with God and another human
being:
"We pocket our pride and go at it, illuminating every twist
of character, every dark cranny of the past.
Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are
delighted. We can look the world in the
eye. We
can be alone at perfect peace and ease.
Our fears fall from us. We begin
to feel the nearness of our Creator. We
may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual
experience. The feeling that the drink
problem has disappeared will often come strongly."
Until next time!
