Deliberately Being Sarah: January 2017

Being bipolar when the world is upside-down

1:45 PM

For those who don't know me, I'm a musician. Right now I'm also running a non-profit, and it's an amazing organization about which I'm loud and proud, but when someone asks me what I do, the first thing that springs into my mind is that I'm a musician. I studied at conservatories, I've practiced my flute more hours than I could ever begin to estimate, and the few times I've tried to quit I couldn't manage to keep it in my case for long. So I'm a musician, for better or worse.

I've always viewed my being quite sensitive as fairly normal, because aren't artists supposed to be dramatic? Aren't we supposed to brood over the weight of the world and then find that exultant space again through creating? But it turns out I'm not just a special artistic snowflake—I have Bipolar 2 Disorder, just like my dad, and at least one of my half-siblings, and who-knows-how-many-people on my dad's side of the family.

Bipolar 2 means I get depressed, sometimes for a good long while, and then a switch gets flipped back on and within a few days I am *fabulous*. My fabulousness is hypomania and not full-blown mania, though, so I can keep my shit together. (I must say, even when I'm depressed and can barely drag myself off the couch to eat, I do a pretty great job of keeping my shit together and finishing my ridiculous amount of work, a fact of which I'm quite proud.)

When I'm hypomanic I talk even more and have even more trouble not interrupting. I'm more social; I take on lots of projects. I also don't need as much sleep and can be a bit of an insomniac, because it feels like the internal clock that regulates the flow of my day shuts off and it's noon all the time. I'm brave, I'm impatient, and it feels like I'm going 45mph while the rest of the world is driving through a residential area. I sing heavy metal at karaoke bars, I make better eye contact, and I catch up on everything (like dentist appointments and meeting up with friends) that I let slide while in my off-work hours I was previously sad and binge-watching Netflix. Sound fun? Honestly, it is. Sometimes it just wears off and I'm normal. Sometimes the switch flips back off and I'm right back on the couch.

Why am I talking about this now? Well, one reason is because I feel pretty good right now and am well equipped to talk about it. I also really don't give a damn who knows; there's no sense being any more ashamed of this than I would be of my hair color or the sound of my own voice. I'm working hard to manage the brain I inherited as proactively as is humanly possible, and despite all of the hurdles I have to leap over that someone else might not, it also makes me creative and intuitive and awesome.

The other reason I'm mentioning this now is because this whole crazy time is extra crazy when your brain works like mine does. Do I just want to do everything in the world to contribute because I'm hypomanic? Or do we all need to be trying everything possible and this is how I should feel? Or should I be forcing myself not to do things because I'm supposed to be careful about pacing myself and maintaining a normal routine? Will I be able to live with myself later if I put self-care at the top of the list above stopping a fascist? In war-torn countries people don't get to take a day off from being bombed to go get a pedicure and listen to some Tycho, so where on that line are we right now? Not to mention I'm on new meds, and trying to nail down the right dosage while you spend your waking moments anxious that your country is collapsing in on itself is sort of a ridiculous task.

I don't think there are necessarily answers to those questions. But if I talk too fast or am being too loud or impatient, just tell me to take it down a notch and I'll know what you mean. If you want to help, I don't need chicken soup or a hug any more than I would on any other day, so maybe just call your senators and representatives and wear them down so they'll get rid of the bastard and we can all calm down together.

And in tangential good news, recent studies have shown a link between IBS and serotonin, and your gut is full of neurons and neurotransmitters. The combo of meds, calcium, vitamin D and fish oil that I'm taking to help my brain appears to be helping my inflamed guts, too, and I can now eat wheat for the first time in five years. So I'm bipolar but I can console myself with pasta and an olive loaf dipped in EVOO and balsamic. Hallelujah, and bring on the carbs.

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Why now?

9:14 PM

I've seen many conservative people point out that racism and genocide and all kinds of horrible things have been going on in the world forever, yet liberal folks are choosing now to take to the streets. Usually I see them say this to make the point that we're whiners and hypocrites who are just mad about losing.

But there's a kernel of truth in what they're saying, even if we don't like to hear it, so I've been making the effort to ask myself not just why I'm worked up now, but why I didn't get this worked up before. Why am I awake at night worrying about refugees when there have always been refugees? Why am I worried about the rural/urban divide when it didn't just happen overnight? Why am I so fearful for the troops when I've always had friends and family members in the armed forces and we've been at war for so much of my life? Why does this pervasive stress gnaw at me all day like the poke of a tag that needs to be cut out of a shirt?

The truth is, I've always been grateful to be an American partly because I thought it was a bit of a free pass. I thought I would live my whole life without any wars being fought on our soil, and I was under the false assumption that for every step back that we take, we'd end up taking two more steps forward toward equal rights. Think me a fool or a jerk if you like, but in my daily existence as a white middle-class person in Oregon, I didn't see much that would give me reason to think otherwise. People didn't share articles on social media until I was well into adulthood, so I used to read the local paper (which in Oregon is often biased more toward conservatives, believe it or not) and watch the local news (which is biased more toward stories about how the world will end when it snows). My insular life enabled me to underestimate the fragility of our democracy and how far we still have to go.

Now the Chinese are saying war with the US is becoming increasingly likely. Now my bubble has been burst by footage and stories of what it's like to have black or brown skin in America. Now I've seen the changes in my garden as the temperatures have risen. Now there is a man in the White House who seems to have little respect for this country or its people, who has a white supremacist by his side, and who thinks foreign diplomacy means Tweeting whatever strikes you while you drop a deuce. Now I've seen things I'll never be able to unsee, including two images of Syrian children, one covered in blood and dust with trauma in his eyes, the other crumpled and lifeless with his innocent face to the ground. The "Why now?" part is easy. The question of "Why not before?" is harder.

I've always been politically engaged—a friend and I put together Get Out the Vote drives in grad school and stood outside throughout a freezing Boston winter telling people about Howard Dean; I canvased and phone-banked for a Portland mayoral candidate; I've donated a decent chunk of money over the years to candidates and organizations; I even served as campaign manager for a national Congressional candidate (who, mind you, was one of the few out "Republicans for Obama" and won the Republican and Independent primaries in that election)—but I definitely feel more engaged now than I ever have before. Why is that?

There is a flow to everything, and we see things when it's time for us to see them. Bernie Sanders, for example, has been very consistently the same guy throughout his life, but he entered the broader national consciousness over the past few years because the right time had come. I see things going on of which I was not conscious before. Perhaps I see them because of social media or perhaps it's because I'm finally ready, but whatever the reason, now that I know so vividly of their occurrence, I find them unacceptable and have to do something.

We are flowing toward a turning point, and I'm sticking my foot in the water and hoping I can help shift the direction of this wave. America's founding ideals feel more alive to me than the blood coursing through my own veins. We have to remember that those ideals exist within us, outside us, before us and after us, and they are more important than any one of us.

We can shift the wave; we'll just need a lot of feet.

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Things I learned at my training to be a refugee helper

9:47 AM

*There are 65 million people on this planet who have had to flee their homelands. That is 1 in every 113 people on Earth. Of those, 19.5 million are currently classified as "refugees."

*The first hope is to get them back to a stabilized situation in their home countries—they want to go home. The second option is to let them stay where they are in the location to which they initially fled. The third and final option is to resettle them to a new location, at which point they've left their home never to return and then have to leave the camp or whatever couch they've been sleeping on to fly across the world to an unknown situation, sometimes with and sometimes without their family members.

*The actual vetting process (interviews, background checks, etc.) takes 18-24 months for our government to complete, but that doesn't start immediately because of options one and two. Average total time to resettlement is 6-10 years. Only 1% of refugees get resettled in their third location.

*When a refugee arrives here, they get one-time direct assistance of $1,125. From that is deducted things like the security deposit on an apartment and furniture. After that they receive eight months of cash assistance from DHS at $339/month and $194/month in food benefits from SNAP. If you think that is enough to live off most places, you are incorrect.

*Some arrive with almost no English skills. Upon arrival, they receive training in English so they can get a job, but they only have eight months to learn English and get that job before their DHS benefits run out.

*They are documented, legal immigrants and have a pathway to citizenship.

If a terrorist wanted to attack the US and the best option he could come up with was a 6-10 year entry process that involved a lot of background checks, uncertainty about where you'd end up going, volunteers checking up on you once you arrive, and poverty, that would be one lousy terrorist. We need to be doing more for these people, not less. And yes, we need to do more for people who are born here, too, but the one does not negate the other.

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Being bipolar when the world is upside-down

Why now?

Things I learned at my training to be a refugee helper

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Being bipolar when the world is upside-down

Why now?

Things I learned at my training to be a refugee helper

About Me

Blog Archive

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