Another reason for this blog is to document, educate and share in hopes that it may reach and help others. The sharing part may be a bit of a hyperbole because I am very selective with whom and when I share it and most never find the time or care to read it anyway. But I do share and I am fine with others sharing, though I know it is receives very limited views. So, I suppose, in reality it is mostly for me and my processing to stay sane.
Which is a long lead into what I came on here to write about today.
Mania
Mania is a tricky and very interesting place. I am sure it can be quite different for different people and I am certain that many conditions, details, and situations from each person's life can effect it and how the person experiencing responds and handles it. I have a feeling that most people are capable of reaching this culminating life event but I am certain the threshold is different for everyone. The neurologist Dr. Odd said something like that about seizures, I think mania is probably similar in that way.
This is something that I think is important to understand.
I also am fairly certain that is it a type of culminating event. Everything comes together, you have super powers, your are and understand everything while everything is breaking all at the same time.
Lately, as I realize I am still trying to piece together reality, I have been thinking, "A person really does not understand reality/their reality until they have broken from it or been broken by it." And when that happens you realize what your family really is and how they really handle things. You realize just how few friends you really have and how little we really can trust each other yet how much we actually need each other. The duality of reality and our human nature becomes very apparent. I suppose this not surprising considering that manic episodes and the bipolar reality is the extreme manifestation of duality.
here's a thought: Maybe manic breaks are simply a mirrored reflection of the duality surrounding us. As I think of my manic break and the few others I know that have had true manic episodes I see that those episodes were in extremes and reflective of the extremes. Maybe manics are actually the ones that are more in touch with reality and not the opposite.
I do believe there might be some truth to that.
But I'll try to get back to my intentions and focus on what I really came on here to talk about.
In my mania, very intense feelings and trust were played with. I broke at a time when a man was helping me to bring out and understand my buried story and TBI PTSD stuff. Part of that buried stuff was the hypo-manic and mood instability I had experienced in younger years. I had buried that stuff deep and it is no wonder; it is not acceptable in the "real world." And I know to well the stigmatizing and the ostracizing. Hell, I even did it to myself. It was better to bury it deep and forget about it.
But the TBI of the auto accident started bringing back memories. Initially it was not the memories of the Lamictal, giraffe spots, mania associated with let down, my blog, and bipolar like symptoms that I had worked hard to manage and avoid diagnosis of. No, initially is was the PTSD kind of memories; the reliving of symptoms and problems that had been more associated with the previous TBI than I had ever realized. I was becoming aware of just how alone and misunderstood I really had been as a teen. With the reliving of symptoms but managing them in a muscle memory kind of way that made me appear to be doing better than I really was, I was becoming so painfully aware of just how much TBI really had effected my life.
And it was painful.
But, compounding the problem even further, the injury sights of both TBI's are area's of the brain that can profoundly effect mood stability and impulse control. -Good thing I had so much experience with that already, that I had been raised to strictly adhere to high standards, and I have above average intelligence. With those attributes I am certain I have faired better than I would be otherwise, though I will admit I have found significant peace in allowing myself to let go, to some degree, of my rigid conditioning and standards and in allowing myself to be human.
As I continue to digress I might as well point out what many have lateral thinkers have pointed out to me lately: Most people think very laterally and I don't so much. My thinking is pulling, noticing, connecting and jumping a lot. I have noticed this seems to be a common attribute amongst TBI survivors. My friend Renee often calls it "kersplat-splat." In our neuroplasticity we had to take the scenic route and maybe others, like me, unconsciously decided that they like the scenic routes. Sometimes this is really a valuable ability, sometimes it causes us problems. Working backwards can help.
But right now, I think, what I am really doing is dodging and maybe a bit avoiding the internal work I am hoping this blog entry can help me with.
So this blog entry will be long, but also jam packed if you care to stick with me and try to follow.
back on track; to the mania that was triggered by and played with by a man that had much more power over me than I ever would allow on purpose or that care to admit...
In those breaking moments I understood better what was happening than I feel like I do now. Now it is so convoluted and my brain got so confused by how it was handled. Every time they told me I could not talk to him it was a manifestation of his profound and intense attraction to me. Logically I knew this was not true, not accurate, but my broken brain and very fragile stability, and my very broken heart kept grabbing hold of those ridiculous romantic ideas. Maybe simply to save my life because the reality of the rejection was literally killing me. You may want to blame and victim shame, but in his position of power and influence over me, and because I needed, trusted, and loved him so much, things he said ruminated and I could not entirely deny, even in my logical brain that their may be some truth to that fairytale fantasy that wanted to consume me.
And now I am finding I am having trouble writing my mind the way I intended... It is so very difficult to explain mania, especially moderately managed mania...
So maybe I won't worry about that but rather focus on the things I have to notice, the things I have to do to try and figure out my reality and ground myself in it. It is sad and too bad to me that I have to focus on negatives, that I have to find the faults in this man and the institution and then keep reminding my brain of them so that I can detach and live without them. I have to grab hold of every hint that he really did not care or that he might be a grooming psychologist, the hints and likely hoods that I was not something special to him and that he has possibly done this before. It is sad that I have tpofault him for things he said that were harsh toward others including his children and me.
In the beginning, when I realized, in my phases of waking up from mania -which is also, unfortunately, a downward spiral into depression in addition to a continued digression of sanity- I recognized the way he had worded things as neither confirmed nor denied but implied and I recognized that he may have intentionally used the things he said and the way he said them to manipulate me to protect himself. Seeing this, I found myself wondering exactly what type of creature I really was dealing with. I resorted to researching this mysterious man, and not terribly surprising, he is not very visible online. But there were some clues. My poor broken and manic fed heart still grabbed hold of everything endearing and any evidence of the profound love I seemed to have felt going both directions. While my messy, broken, childlike brain, that was trying to handle flooding memories and realizations in addition to the bipolar cycling, tried to discern and determine if there was anything to my findings and what to do about it.
... and as I attempt to share and confess, I find my brain and heart are still fighting and I am still maybe not wanting to pick apart this man that I know does not feel toward me what I thought I felt and even if he had, he does not any longer.
I know he his flawed and I can see, in such subtle little hints (Shaun White) evidence of what may have been going on psychologically with him and potential reasons for his countertransference with me, but I also know, that I really don't know and maybe I really don't want to think I do.
But there is also a part of me that says, "I know boys like you," and I am actually out of his league.* Not in the trophy girl kind of way that people usually think of but is that why he messed with me, drinking up my flattery and taking advantage of my brokenness? Having grown into himself is this a form of retaliation for all the girls that were out of his league? (* I would like to be clear here, though I feel this to some extent, I do not necessarily believe that I am out of his league -it is merely something to consider)
I don't know and maybe I flatter myself. But regardless...
I hurt for him. I hurt for his family. I wish I understood what happened and why he played with me the way he did, why he denied the mania -spirit animals, emails, laughing, overly confident, easily sidetracked to whatever direction he took, too intense, too quick to reply when I did not know really know why or even what I was implying...
I know he played with me. I know he was afraid he could lose his license because of me, but I did not understand why. I know he was afraid of me, and that he could not handle me or did not want to. I was too much for him once I went manic or he was using that to his advantage. That much I knew and still know.
That is real.
It is also real that he said he didn't need/want anymore friends and that he was going to "let it burn out." It is also real that he told me about himself, though those may have been manipulations, while I held boundaries and would not share things I felt would feed that attraction.
It is also real that he is not what I thought and I knew that but needed to see it and needed him to show and tell me that once I had broken and when I was trying to figure out reality. I needed him to set me straight in my misunderstandings.
This is not what I meant to write, I meant to point out his flaws, the things I see and tell myself to help me see him in a different light, one that is not so flattering and breaks the strange longing that is not entirely gone. But I just don't want to.
Why?
do I still want to hold on? or is it that I don't want to be unkind? or is it that I still have tenacious but confused hope of reconciliation with the institute and he that should not have exiled me?
Or is it simply because mania is intense and the feelings and experience of it are not easily forgotten and/or dismissed?
I do know I am likely more forgiving than the people I feel I have to report to because of how I was treated and how all of this was handled... I have found legal help because I want it done right and accountability is important but the waiting part of this is very difficult, especially for my impulse-control challenged mind.
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