Hang on to your hats, ‘cuz this will be a doozy.

I’m a crazy girl. Yes, I am crazy. CRAZY!

But really, I have a mental illness which rockets me around the universe. Some days I feel great. Other days I feel awful. Some days I feel both of these emotions several times. Or these emotions at the SAME TIME. But some of the time I am ok. Really ok.

When you have a mental illness, you are living in it. You are it, it is you. It can be “managed” with medications, therapy, and lifestyle changes. But you are still it.

I don’t think I want to be anything else. I am still me, the crazy me. A crazy me who also has boundless creativity and imagination. It likes to write, photograph, sing, cook, play, and most importantly, LIVE.

Consequently, I’m really ok with the crazy me for the most part, though in my bad moments I hate it absolutely. I am not entirely fixable. It is still THERE, lurking in the background. When the bad stuff hits, all I can do is ride it like a rodeo bull.

I know I won’t fall off. I survive. But it takes a toll on others. And I don’t know what to do with that many times. One day, feeling good, I could give one pat answer that would seemingly solve everything. The next day, it is scattered to the wind by another mood. And the thing is, both of those moments are real and genuine to me.

This makes it really hard to be in a relationship with anyone. And so, I have let go of D. I can’t put him through it anymore. It’s too difficult, and I do empathize with that. Though the heartbreak and sense of loss stuns me thoroughly.

When I was in college, people called me “Crazy Marie”. There goes Crazy Marie! I hated that. At one point, I joined a college evangelical group and was a fervent Christian. I even sent out daily Scripture quotes through email. When I fell down again, my tireless Christian friends prayed over my body, striving to drive Satan out. Uh, I don’t think so. I’m hardwired like this, and Satan doesn’t really exist in here anyway.

People can’t comprehend the reality of a crazy person. It isn’t like a physical disease. It isn’t a tumor you can cut out. Treatment is a subjective rule of measures. You chart your moods. You tell your doctor this is what happened this week, that is what I felt that week. The good doc listens, adjusts some milligrams, adds something else. And you hope for the best.

I’ve been reading bipolar books. I am overwhelmed by the information. Am I hypomanic? Am I depressed? Am I having a mixed episode? What is this mood? Is this a valid emotion I am feeling? Or is it the bipolar? Or is it real and bipolar? GAH!!!

Then there is the section on medications. The last few weeks have been awful. Should I up the milligrams of my mood stabilizer? Should I go on an anti-depressant? An anti-psychotic? They have side effects I feel trepidation about. I am scared of medicating my entire personality away. But then, what IS my personality? GAH!!!

An ex-coworker once said, “When you see crazy, cross the street.” I’ve seen crazy and never have. I was in a local hospital psychiatric unit for a week in December 2001. That was a revelatory experience I will never forget. There was the woman with manic anger who feverishly noshed on Oreos. There was the old farmer who was “disoriented” when he drove his tractor in circles around town. There was the deeply depressed man deciding to get electroshock therapy. I simply sat on the couch and watched everyone else. I also went to group. Mom would bring a board game and we played. They confiscated the cold medicine from my purse and gave privileges for good behavior. We went on a gas station “field trip”, and I saw a friend I went to high school with, though she didn’t see me. She looked great, filling up her nice car with gas. I felt profoundly alienated and disconnected.

I actually checked myself in by my own volition. I had been off Zoloft for at least a year, and was working a night shift at a local hotel. Bad idea, it screwed with my sleep. That and no meds screwed with my brain. Destructive thoughts started taking over, and I was at the edge of actualizing them. I was scared of my mind. I wanted it to stop. And it did stop with a drug cocktail and a year of therapy. I am not THAT destructive anymore, but the beast is still back anyway. He just chose a different form.

What I wish for the most is not a change that would cure me. I wish for a change in how I am viewed. The stigma is still there. It threads its way into my validity as a person who functions on this planet. In many ways, I am a highly-functioning bipolar person. The average person wouldn’t suspect it. I get up every day and go to work. Work is a blessing, because I don’t really have time for emotions. I am there to get stuff done. Work makes me feel good. I am DOING something.

I think a lot of us crazies feel bewildered because there is a disconnect between how we view ourselves and how we are viewed. We try so hard to make sense of our existence, while the world manages around us. Or manages us. There are so many times I feel like a burden. I am reassured that no, I am not, but I still feel that way anyway.

To be rejected or at best, tolerated, for something you cannot control is an awful feeling. You feel helpless.

Dad pulled parsnips last week, one of those maligned vegetables in the garden hierarchy. A parsnip is not a bright glamorous tomato. It is not a solid filling potato. It is not a slender elegant asparagus. It is not a sweet pea, fresh from the pod. It is a rather ugly root vegetable to most. But in my eyes, it is beautiful.

It is a luminous creamy white with brown “scars” semi-circling around its body. When it’s cooked, it becomes sweet. I am a parsnip. Despite my scars, I am really a sweet girl. I fight to be that sweet girl.

I made a spring stew featuring the parsnip. I used up the rest of my chicken wings from a previous blog post. I simmered them to tear the meat off. I went to the wondrous Cuba Cheese Shop the day before and bought cheese. Amish goat cheddar and Greek Myzithra. I shredded portions of those and included a bit of chive & onion cream cheese.

I started by peeling and chopping two parsnips and two carrots. I chopped celery. I chopped a shallot and a clove of garlic. (I do a lot of chopping. I do not have proper knife skills, lol.) I melted butter in olive oil. (My new favorite combination!)

I fried the garlic and shallot, and added the chicken and cheese.

Then I added the vegetables. I let it simmer until the parsnips were soft and the celery somewhat crunchy. I topped it all with a sprinkling of celery seed and sea salt.

Voila, it was done. It was different, but it was good. Just like me. I am different, but I am good.