job | the otherwiser

One thing about rejoining the regular slaveforce — err, I mean, workforce — is that I have come back to appreciating Fridays. TGIF. Happy Friday. All that jazz. No longer just another day that signals the steady march to the due date of another bill I can’t pay, Friday has become again the end of the trading-your-life-hours-for-the-means-of-living in hopes of doing something over the next two days that might count as actually living. In my current situation, I’m coming around to accepting that I should prooooobably commit a good chunk of the weekend to sleeping. Because, well, I need more of that, and not-sleeping is Ingredient #1 in my personal recipe for Losing My Fucking Mind, served cold. And I’m realizing that, as jazzed as I am about having a job again and doing the grown-up human things and playing the being-a-part-of-society game again, I’m putting in pretty long hours and, oh yeah, I’m actually pretty screwed in the head still.

The only way this is going to work is if I strong-arm taking care of Number One. And as any one of the multitude of mental health professionals I’ve seen in the past few years can attest to, this isn’t really my strong suit. This is what happened to the career thing in the first place. I mean, I was doing really effing well back then. Back before “bipolar” and “mania” and “psychosis” and “dissociation” and “therapy” and “mood stabilizers” and “antipsychotics” were a regular part of my vocabulary, I was the muthafuckin’ bomb. Dude, I oversaving for retirement. Banks bowed to my credit score. The last job I had back then, I was signed at the interview at the salary I wanted. I was on fire.

But not far as the Care and Keeping of the Otherwiser was concerned. And, upon reflection, I was probably hypomanic for several years preceding the Big Bad Episode. So there’s that.

Back to today. Friday. So today I was like, “Hmm…I could do more work and ‘get ahead’ for next week, or be all like ‘peace out muthafuckas’ and get home and…well, let’s be real, lie down and rest.”

And here we are.

Going to bed early,

The Otherwiser

Yeah, so yesterday I titled my great, reemergence, here’s-what-I’ve-been-up-to-post completely wrong. The poem at the end of that one was “So Breathe.” “FREEFALL” is actually at the bottom of this one. Just goes to show that I really don’t know what I’m doing, and if you put enough monkeys in an Otherwiser’s brain I guess blog posts and poems eventually come out, but satisfaction not guaranteed. That said…

Today, I went to the job. I did the things. Or, at least most of the things. I even only made a limited number of strange noises and spent a minimal amount of time staring off into space before I was asked if I was “okay.” Confession: I said yes. But extra-special plus! There were only two occasions today upon which I desired to throw a chair out the door. I even have one picked out for when the temptation gets too strong and does eventually herald my inevitable termination. It’s kind of a broken swivel chair that probably needs to be tossed anyway. But today was NOT that day. I earned money. I think.

These are the metrics of my success. And I’m surprisingly okay with that right now. Is that therapy-voice talking? Unknown. Maybe. Or it’s the klonopin. Probably klonopin.

What I’m less okay with is the fact that ramping up on my new anti-brainfuck cocktail is making me piss myself at night. 0 out of 5 stars. I’ve had more fun in bed. Here’s to hoping that I’m not making a urinary-retention-for-mental-stability swap. I want to sit down with my brain and it’s fuckery and be all like:

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED???

Because seriously. How much more shit am I going to have to put up with? Actual shit? Oh, oh dear God I take it back. Knock on wood. Please leave me my bowels.

Aaaaanyhow, all that much TMI and verbal vomit later, here’s a much more eloquent poem I wrote about how it feels being me these days. I gotta say, I’m not sure what’s going on with my life, but something’s happening and I’m just going to roll with it.

And write.

Freefall

I am learning to fall in transit
Harsh wind rushing past my face
Limbs askew
My hands flailing about, unable to either grasp purchase or each other
So every now and then I pray like a skydiver
Spread-eagled
It’s nothing like the bedtime grace of bended knee —
But every bit as comforting as screaming upon the floor.

It’s been so, so long since I’ve seen the high place from where I started
A mystery still if I rolled off in my sleep, or was pushed. Or perhaps I jumped.
There have been too many collisions against the sharp edges that feel like rock bottom and I am bruised and bleeding.

Still I live a wingless life in freefall
Bracing for the ground
Hoping for a soft, or at least a sudden, landing
Or is it too late to ask for the miracle of a parachute?