The Day After

So, you know how at the end of The Usual Suspects

(a film I assume everyone has seen by now, but still I won’t spoiler it completely) there is that scene where the whole world whirls around him and all the clues come together and the detective finally figures out who Keyser Söze is?
That is the definition of epiphany for me, and that is what is happening to me today (it started yesterday I guess).
My bike got stolen, I just left it outside the school gate and then went with Maggie to the playground and then home, completely forgetting about the bike, still whirling and recovering as I was from the stupid panic attack.
So yeah, bike pretty much handed over. It was crap and falling apart anyway, poor bike thief won’t make much of it at all.

ANYWHO,

so yes, all these images and thoughts swirling. I booked an appointment with my favourite GP at my favourite time but it’s the 26th of April so I keep checking just in case she gets freed up earlier.
Of all the GPs she’s the one that I trust the most, a Muslim lady. Funny that. Of all the GPs here, nice men, nice women, a terrifying German lady doctor, I, someone who used to feel instant shame because of the amount of men I’ve slept with when faced with a woman, with my ungodly past behaviours and all that, choose a woman who deliberately wears a veil to mark her adherence to a pretty structured religion to trust over and beyond all the others. She makes me feel peaceful.
That is one of the many many reasons why my husband’s strict atheism (I call it militant but he doesn’t like it and he occasionally reads this blog so I don’t want to cross him) bothers me so much.  But anyway.
I’m not getting to the point, as usual. But yes, revelations. As I was reading the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder, I saw that a few years ago I could have ticked enough off the list to get that diagnosis, certainly before the kids, including the childhood trauma spoken of in the Medscape article I came across yesterday.
So today I thought hey, I mean, I was right when I said that I had come a long long way, and improved a lot. After all, if whoever I manage to get to see confirms it, I pretty much resolved the Borderline situation I had as a young adult and brought it to a more “manageable” Bipolar.
Most of the time even that is fairly contained and manageable, leaving only the anxiety as the serious one that I neglected. So, again, if this is confirmed, I was also right in thinking that what I need most now is something I can take when I feel something coming (and I can, I’ve become pretty good at feeling it coming on, whether it’s depression or what I now recognise as a panic attack), or when something takes me by surprise (an anger burst, a panic attack, a misstep into the downward spiral, and a cup of tea or coffee doesn’t do the trick. Just as reassurance. Rather than something continued and constant. But yeah.
One step at a time, first comes all my putting the pieces in place.
I won’t go into detail as I’ve already bored myself. Pieces of past, present and distant past, all coming together. Fears, understandings, nowwhats.
In the end, walking back from school with music in my ears, keeping my eyes on any plants I could find on the way to keep me from unwelcome meetings on the road and draw fresh and lively energy from the plants in  a very much non-wicca kind of way, I felt a mixture of peace and sadness. Sadness because I felt ah yes I am definitely broken, there will never come a point where it will all come together nicely after so many efforts and I will be level, a whole person, I will know who I am and how best to express it and be productive. That is never going to happen.
On the other hand I feel more inclined to be nice to myself, to see where I can go, to see myself not as a constant whirl, a fraud, a freak, a delusional being, a whatever, but just as someone who is everything she thought she was that was good, but also has some difficulties that I could, the more I become aware of them, either fix or, quite simply, avoid or accept.
Weigh up stuff in my life: do I really need this, or is this just stressing me out? And if it stresses me out, maybe I can just get rid of it, and not feel guilty for doing so, not feel like I’m wasting something. Perhaps even at some point, explain to my boys hey you know how I told you all these years to not be too harsh on your dad even though it’s wise to avoid him, because he’s sick? Well, mum is sick too. Fancy that!
No I’m not ready for that AT ALL, thank you.
Much as I have always been candid and honest with them. The best I can do is, as always, admit when I do wrong, be sorry if I lose my patience, and carry on reassuring them that I love them.
Ah well, now for some Vampire Diaries and a coffee.