**This is a long post.  I apologize but after editing it and editing it, this is as concise as I can be**

I used to work with a guy who was prone to fits of rage.  If he’d been around 3-4 years old, we would have called them temper tantrums.  He’d get so mad at a client, he’d scream obscenities and slam his door so hard the ceiling tiles would fly out of place. 

I found out a few months into that job that he suffered from diabetes, and didn’t do a very good job managing his condition.  When his blood sugar would drop, he’d become irritable to an extreme.  Unfortunately, some of his clients got the brunt of it and equally unfortunate that his coworkers got more than their fair share. 

Many of us excused his behavior because oh, he had diabetes.  And he did.  When he managed his condition properly, he was a normal human being. 

So I wonder how different mental illness is from his diabetes. 

I myself have tired of hearing professionals and those of us who suffer from various forms of it say, “_____(insert condition here) is the same as diabetes or hypothyroidism or any other kind of medical problem.  It needs to be treated, and no one looks down on someone taking medication for a heart problem.” 

This is true, but the words sound hollow to me because let’s face it, telling someone I suffer from high cholesterol and take meds to manage it is very different than telling someone I’m bipolar II (always important to stress the ‘II’ part!  Because that means I’m half as crazy! It’s SOFT bipolar, dammit!) and “need” medication to “be normal”. 

The fact is, for many years I was misdiagnosed with simple depression.  No one, and there were plenty of people who knew, connected my eating disorder with my true issue.  An even bigger fact:  most people who knew me would have never known I was sick or suffering. I became a master at keeping my crazy all to myself.  It helped that back then, I was a “writer” and I was “artsy” because hell, all of us creative types were prone to moodiness and tears.  My eating disorder was also an excellent form of medication to keep the true symptoms buried deep. Some people compulsively shop, gamble, or engage in very unhealthy behaviors.  These are the regular types of self-medication. Mine worked very well for many years. 

It is not an understatement to express how grateful I am that I came undone at the end of my marriage.  It took me being able to realize how bizarre my internal thoughts were to also make me realize that something much bigger was going on.  Although I would rather poke hot needles into my nail beds than go through those things again, I am truly the healthiest I have been because of them. 

I’ve said all of this before. Why say it again? 

Because when I first decided to come forward publicly with my story, I spent a lot of time analyzing the pros and cons of it.  I knew that someday someone might try to use my words against me, call me crazy, fling insults, and just simply feel superior to me.  More than that, I worried my kids would somehow suffer from other people knowing about it.  At the end of my deliberations, I decided to write as openly as I could about it while still maintaining some semblance of privacy and hopefully, dignity.  All the others before me who had written honestly about their own journey had helped me so much on my own.  I felt I owed it to the people in my life and, in a weird way, people that didn’t know me, an insider’s guide to living with mental illness.  I still don’t regret that decision.

Honestly, my fears about coming out with it have come true on a number of occasions.  I’ve had to accept the fact that I can’t explain myself to those unwilling to listen.  I can’t control how others view me.  I just have to be okay with myself and the steps I’ve taken (and there have been many!) to be the person I am today. 

I think what’s frustrated me the most is that it’s so much more taboo to discuss mental illness and own it than it is to just live with depression or other things silently, all the while pretending you’re okay.  Because I’ve had years of therapy, a great psychiatrist and done tons of personally agonizing and difficult work on myself, I’m somehow “less than” a person who just chooses to ignore their poor life decisions, erratic behavior, self-destructive personality, etc. 

WARNING to FAMILY MEMBERS who FREAK OUT THAT I POSTED ABOUT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE:  You MIGHT want to STOP READING because OMG SOMETHING POTENTIALLY NEGATIVE HAS HAPPENED!  SOMEONE HAS JUDGED ME!  WARNING!!!!

(I do get the fact that those in my family who were concerned about me acknowledging what happened just can’t stand the thought of others judging me or potentially penalizing me)

It happened recently that someone found out about my (gasp) illness and was questioning Running Boy about it.  Did he know?  Was he aware? Was I on medication?  In a way, I was amused.  Did he know?  Come on, seriously? I may not wear a t-shirt that says “Kiss me, I’m Soft Bipolar”, but everyone close to me knows the truth and also knows how hard I work to be the best person I can. 

Actually, maybe I DO wear a t-shirt that says this!

I was okay with that part, but the niggling fear under my conversation with RB was, “Is this going to be used against me? Or him?  Is my presence in his life going to cause him more trouble than he deserves?”  The answer is yes, we could go through some crap.  However, I have people lined up to talk about who I am today – including the aforementioned therapy/psych people – and at the end of the day, I’d venture to say I’m more self-aware and stable than the majority of people at the grocery store in any given day. 

What’s truly sad is that you’d think from what I’ve said that I was some raving lunatic in my previous life.  I wasn’t.  Unfortunately, by being so “normal”, I went undiagnosed for years and years and years – which meant that by outsider’s standards, I was fine – but internally I suffered in various ways. 

I have a medical condition.  I am on two medications, at low doses, to manage it.  I spent many years looking at my internal thought processes and my various crutches that enabled me to live with it.  As I hiked Sunday with a good friend, she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this happy.”  I’m not sure I’d call it happiness as I don’t trust that word.  I would say I feel the strongest and most calm I’ve ever felt in my life, and this feeling has been with me for the last two years.  I still have good days and bad days like the rest of the population, and I still have to really manage my sleep patterns and make sure the people in my life are healthy people themselves.  But honestly?  Judging me because I’ve taken major steps to be a better mother, a better person?  That thought process makes me tired. 

I’m curious.  Delurk, even if anonymously.  Tell me how many people in your life have suffered from mental illness. Share what you can.  Have I helped you?  Hurt you?  What do you think the best way to combat this stigma is? 

A week or so ago, someone I work with was telling me about a major life decision she’d made.  She had been a single mother for almost 2 decades and had a rough time going from staying home with her daughters to being able to find a job, learning new skills, crawling her way up, one step at a time.  She shared that she was often frightened of taking unnecessary risks because she felt her footing was always so unstable, and her time always so limited.  There were a number of major decisions she’d made, but she was telling me how she knew she’d made the right ones and when to run from others.

“I’m at peace when I make the right decision,” she said, “and when I am going in the wrong direction, I feel out of sorts, chaotic.”  She has a very strong faith and talks about God using the types of words I reserve for therapy – asking for help, digging for the truth, relying on faith to get you where you are going, working hard to do the right things. 

I’ve rarely felt pure peace with the decisions I’ve made in the past.  Even going back to work full-time, though very necessary and much appreciated, has not been 100% peaceful.  Just last night Lily turned on the waterworks again over how much she misses me in the afternoons and how she wishes I could go back to being her mom that was at the bus stop and made snacks and hosted play dates. 

(note:  I really think she misses the play dates more than anything having to do with me, but it’s sweet nonetheless)

I think this is fairly normal, feeling bittersweet about things you’ve done in the past.  People often ask if I regret my marriage and the answer is always a solid “hell, no.”  I still care about and respect Mike in many ways.  We made two amazing children, had many good years and developed ourselves and our careers together.  I’m bittersweet about the pain the dissolution caused me and my family, and any potential permanent damage it may have caused.  Sometimes I look back and question all the steps that led me to where I am today.  At the end, though, it doesn’t matter.  I’m here, I’m me, and most of the time I like both of those things. 

One of the things holding me back was the plain old vanilla variety of fear.  Divorced people are the true walking wounded, dragging around dead love and bags full of sadness into their future lives.  Everyone carries their burdens differently.  I have friends who have literally jumped from the marital bed into another marital bed, almost without blinking.  I have other friends who grew intense distrust in their minds, a different kind of poisonous mushroom, and avoid relationships altogether.  Still others seek out destructive patterns almost as if they want to be reminded of everything that went wrong in their marriage.  Many of them have come out of it now, having shaken off the dirt of their interim periods.  For me, I dragged fear out of my marriage.  I dated people that weren’t by any means good enough for me or worth 2 minutes of my time.  I had friends in my life that made me crazier than I already was.  I surrounded myself with liars and cheats and in some cases, thieves – both of my time and the little money I had. 

This just made the fear so much worse. If I couldn’t trust my judgment (because obviously, my judgment is no good:  the person I married is no longer my husband, so that’s Failure – 1, Judgment – 0).  Then I continued to make bad decisions, wrong decisions, and suspect decisions.  I started to do the opposite of what my brain told me to do because there was no way it could be right when so often it had been wrong. 

Even as recently as August, I was struggling with self-doubt and against those things I felt were good.  I couldn’t find a job, my relationships with others seemed either completely disconnected or shallow, and my relationship with Running Boy was complicated by a whole bunch of external factors.  I was tired and at times it seemed like it was easier just to cocoon myself, make sure I didn’t hurt anyone, anything, or myself. 

So this fall, I took it slowly.  I made careful decisions.  I thought through my job decision carefully.  I eased into working; normally I come in with both barrels blazing ready to change the world. This time I let myself adapt to corporate life after all these years, one single toe in the company water at a time.  I stopped worrying about my relationships and what was going to happen and started focusing on the moments in between the worry – the moments where my life actually happened. 

And I realized:  I was happy.  Content.  Satisfied with my life and the direction, with how my children have adapted; hell, I was even pleased with how Thora had finally stopped eating my house or destroying expensive things (this was because I changed my approach to her, and stopped leaving those things where she could reach them). 

I’ve made some seriously major decisions in the past month.  At some point I’ll be able to talk about them, but not right now.  I’m still sitting with them, cautiously enjoying them, poking them to make sure they aren’t suddenly going to turn into monsters with teeth and hair and start biting me.  They haven’t.  When I made the biggest decision, I woke up the next morning expecting to feel dread or despair.  Instead, I felt peace and comfort.  I had the usual niggling worries, but none of the big screaming doubts and insecurities.  It felt right, and not just at that moment. 

Days have passed and I still wake up every morning calm and peaceful.  It seems like 3 years of terror’s chaotic reign has decided to pack up and move to more pleasant quarters.  I feel like I’m visiting myself in the past, when I had my shit together and I was a normal person who wasn’t stressed to the gills and ripping myself to pieces internally every day.  It was good to meet my old self, but with a new-found sense of security and conviction.  Do I know I’m 100% right?  Nope, never will.  But I do know this:  I’ve never felt more certain about any decision I’ve made. 

Eventually I’ll find the time to blog.  Right now it’s enough to say that I am:

- still employed
- finished with the Army 10 Miler (and still able to walk)
- getting better at balancing my life
- thrilled my youngest is going to be 7 years old tomorrow. 

I started my official job today.  I decided on a comfortable dress hand picked by Chelsea*, personal shopper extraordinaire at Nordstrom, threw on some very uncomfortable wedges (Chelsea swore they were better than heels!  She LIED!), and hit the road. 

I’m not really sure how to summarize the experience other than to say it was a good one.  It was also an intimidating one, but I’d say excitement won out over fear.  After being presented with my super-duper security swipe-card badge thing, then forced into a chair for a mandatory headshot, I spent the remainder of my day trying to navigate the hallways to the bathroom (got lost twice), figuring out which bank of elevators took me to my car or my floor, or sometimes a random floor or even another building, and filling out massive amounts of forms and learning the specialized lingo and jargon big corporations tend to have. 

Later, I found out that they actually provide floor plans to you so that you can figure out how to get around because it feels THAT COMPLICATED.  I totally should have studied them before coming in today. 

I was also amazed at how much is DONE for you.  Having been a small business owner for years, and before that working in primarily small to mid-sized businesses, I’m not used to anything like what I saw today.  While meeting one of the team members for lunch, a team of people were buzzing around my cubicle installing computers and phones and leaving me typed instructions on how to do everything.  Press a single button and a help desk person answers your call and remote controls your computer.  Need something shipped, even if it’s personal?  Send it downstairs; they’ll deduct the cost from your paycheck.  Someone set up my parking for me so fast that this morning, I had to take an hourly parking ticket and by the afternoon, I was swiping my new badge to get out of the garage. 

These little things impress me greatly, and yes, I realize that some of them are novel.  I’ve just never worked for a corporation so large and so segmented that every tiny task is assigned out and perfected into an art form.  Soon they’ll be expecting me to make art forms from my tiny little pieces of work, and I’m looking forward to that, but in the meantime it’s fascinating learning how a company this big remains fluid and able to react to the economy, client needs and general tweaks in planning.  Sitting through the benefits meeting was like shoveling fistfuls of cake into my mouth.  I’ve never seen benefits like these and could only sit there, marveling and drooling, over how this could make my life so much easier and so much better.

A small dent in my ego:  being escorted to my cubicle, I ran into someone who has been newly appointed a higher-ranking job than mine.  She’s someone I know from an organization, but mostly just by name.  We are both on an upper floor and she has a beautiful office with a huge window.  At the time I met her, I was presenting to the organization and she was in the audience, a newly minted marketing professional, me the seasoned expert.  It was a bit weird shuffling off to my desk while she tried to put together the pieces of how I ended up where I am.  Then I realized that the previous tenant in my cube had removed the fluorescent lights from above the desk and I was back to my normal happy self. 

The girls did well today.  It’s going to take them some time to adjust, just as it will me.  We were all tired tonight and I am still trying to piece together how I’m going to fit everything into my days.  A warning:  I’m going to drop some balls, and I apologize in advance.  That being said, I suppose I need to pack some running clothes so I can squeeze in a small run after work and before kid pick up, pack lunches and finish doing laundry. 

*If you haven’t had the personal shopping experience at Nordstrom, I recommend it.  Nordstrom may be more expensive than other stores but it is worth every penny of it, especially if you are fashion-challenged as I am. 

10 years has passed since I “officially” worked for anyone, though it seems like I’ve been working for people constantly - and I have.  The only difference is the benefits were non-existent and the paychecks came sporadically, usually long after I actually needed the money.  When I lost my business partner, I lost a lot of motivation.  It was too hard to keep selling as well as servicing the clients I had.  I was torn in three directions - and that is 2 too many. 

So a week from tomorrow, I’ll be channeling Ms. Parton (with a lot less in the top-heavy department; can’t even imagine what running with those things would be like):

Ironically enough, I can’t seem to get the legal sector out of my blood and I keep coming back to it.  I think it’s fair to say I like the challenge.  This job is different than others I’ve had.  The firm is huge and they have lots of people to do lots of individual things; I’ll be spending most of my time responding to RFP’s and figuring out how best to position the firm, and what attorneys should be teamed up, to get the business.  It leverages one of my strongest skills:  pulling the best parts out of people and making them dance on paper.  It also proves one CAN make a living with a degree in English and Creative Writing. 

My team is small and I’m excited about the amount of work and autonomy involved in the job.  I like to be left alone to crank out the work; writing is a solitary art anyway.  I’m also, frankly, excited about things like working with other people who are smarter and more successful than me, working downtown (yay for crossing into city limits!), meeting new people (cliche but true!), and having health insurance that doesn’t cost me 1/3 of a mortgage payment.  I’m nervous about how it’s going to affect the girls, or how I’m going to manage to fit runs in between a career and mothering, neither of which is very part time, and I’m going to miss the flexibility I’ve enjoyed so much over the last decade.  Sporadic paychecks are easier to swallow when you can set your own schedule, even though the truth is this:  if you own your business (in sole proprietor style), you are never on vacation and you can never fully disconnect. 

I say all of these things lightly but this was a very difficult decision for me.  The career person still buried inside me was yanking on the chain, wanting to be let loose to make a difference in a new environment.  Instead of intimidating me, the firm seemed to energize me and I realized what kind of assets I could bring if I could just get my foot in the door.  Back at home, I struggled and suffered through Lily’s tears as she begged me not to put her in after-school care.  She’s really had the Kool-Aid mom for as long as she can remember; I’m always arranging play dates and dragging kids all over.  Those days will be over when I start my new job, but I also felt it was important to listen to her and let her know that I too am sad about those things.  In the end, I told her, I have to save money to buy a house for all of us and that requires me to work. 

The hard cold fact is that I work very, very hard for someone who makes almost no money.  I’m tired of working for free, even if that’s for myself.  I can’t afford it and mentally, I have to find a better way to work like normal people do.  This means working during the day, and leaving the work at work.  It means I can read or watch television at night without my laptop open and on, laundry piled up in the corner, my refrigerator a mess because I forgot to grocery shop again and am once more eating cereal for dinner. 

It’s going to be a big transition for all of us.