One thing that has been strongly reinforced to me in my journey of self-discovery is that all our experiences and feelings are unique unto ourselves. This has become especially relevant since finding out that I had bipolar, because it went a long ways towards helping me understand the chemistry and reasoning behind why I felt certain ways and at certain strengths.

In the last week, I’ve had to think specifically about frustration and anxiety as relates to my bipolar brain, and how it relates to others in general. As you loyal reading folk know, I’ve been mulling over a dilemma of sorts this past week, and it’s gotten me to points of wahgarbling near-rage from not being able to express how I was feeling and why I needed people to step back. I’m sure we all have moments where we’re so frustrated at trying to make words make sense that we go off the deep end, but that was the default for a large swathe of my life. It has only been the past year that I’ve felt… cogent. Which is great, because it means I’m able to (for the most part) train myself out of descending into throwing rage-poop. It’s not something I wanted to do, and being able to stop the potential train-wreck feels wonderful. It’s not made my fear of offending go away; I still cringe at any single notification, whether it be a private message, an email, a comment, or a messenger messenger. I pray that response goes away some year, but I’m not sure it ever will.

One of the ‘good’ things (as I am one to take good from bad and make the most of my experiences) is that I can recognize it when friends are hitting that same wall. It stops me from being hurt when I shouldn’t be, and generally has gone a long way in helping me not lash out at people who probably are bemused to watch their own train of reason derail in an inglorious burning fashion. It feels good to not rise up; after all, bad breeds bad, good breeds good, and I desire to make the world a brighter place on the whole. And if I’m wrong and someone is just trying to be a troll, well… don’t feed ’em, ha ha. But I do prefer to believe that people on the whole desire to be good and do good, and I’m happy to not make their discomfort worse in situations like that. I know how it feels for people to think that you’re just trying to start a fight, or who the crap knows what.

Whatever the case, I do my best to remember that most wise mantra of the 1980s — be excellent to each other. It truly is the way to go.

<3