Category Archives: health

Foam Roller, I Choose You!

So I just spent like an hour with my new best friend, the foam roller.

In the past, I’ve mostly just rolled my calves. Tonight I rolled errrrrrrrthang, then stretched, did shoulder stands and “air splits,” and then rolled errrrrrrrthang again. Even my back. Even my sides. Especially those weird hypertrophic glutei medii that are endemic to male ballet peeps. I even managed to roll my pyriformes (which really, really needed it). Okay, I didn’t think of how to roll my upper arms until just now, so I’ll have to do those in the morning. And my neck is out of scope for this roller, I think.

OMG, you guys, why haven’t I been doing this all along? Every part of my body feels better (and my foam roller only cost me $5!). Parts of me that I didn’t even know were sore feel better. It is like having a whole new body.

C’est tout. À bientôt, mes amis!

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Reflections on a Bad Day

Dec 4

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Yesterday was a bad day: a very bad day. The kind of day on which the depths of my disorder are somehow visible to the general public; the kind of day on which sensitive people ask me if I’m ill. The kind of day on which, for whatever reason, bipolar reveals itself in enormous dark circles under my eyes.

It was the kind of day on which the thought of talking to people is nearly unbearable — at once repugnant and frightening, since I can’t trust myself to speak in a way that doesn’t reveal the magnitude of my debility; on which I feel the fear the injured alpha wolf must feel — that my weakness will be revealed and I will be torn apart.

The kind of day on which I am wildly paranoid in an inchoate kind of way, but still rational enough to know that I am paranoid.

Yesterday’s venture deeper into to the dark and tempestuous waters of mixed mania was almost certainly precipitated by the use of a sleep aid the previous night. It’s a counter-intuitive outcome, but one I’ve experienced regularly. For some reason, antihistamines do things to my mood.

When I’m fairly euthymic, they render me a little groggy and down the next day; when I’m in my current state — skating desperately along the knife’s-edge of mixed mania — they’re a potentially-disastrous crap shoot.

The sleep-inducing medication in question is an antihistamine.

I seem particularly prone to the adverse effects of antihistamines, anticonvulsants, and other sedation-inducing medications — in short, depressants. Alcohol can also induce deeply unpleasant and even dangerous mood-states after its pleasant effects have worn off.

I would conjecture that I’m also unusually prone — relative to non-bipolar people — to the effects of stimulants, but I rarely experience those with the immense dysphoria typical of my reactions to sedatives.

Sedatives combined with stimulants, meanwhile, are a recipe for a day in Hell (whereby I probably should’ve skipped the iced coffee I had with lunch yesterday).

Yet, there comes a point at which one must decide whether the risks of a sleeping pill-induced bad day are worse than those of continued insomnia.

The after-effects of the sleeping pill, presumably as my brain attempts to re-regulate itself, wear off in a day or so if I don’t take another one. It is possible to get through one very bad day with a little help.

The effects of insomnia, on the other hand, will continue to accumulate and self-amplify indefinitely, until the current manic episode passes — and it is difficult to predict when they’ll jump the track and become manifestly dangerous. Worse, manic insomnia tends to beget manic insomnia — the less I sleep, the less I sleep — which induces further mania.

This is, perhaps, the heart of the problem with bipolar disorder: beyond its often-disabling nature, beyond the fact that non-bipolar people seem literally (and, perhaps, understandably) unable to comprehend what it’s like, it carries with it an immense sensitivity to all the factors that influence brain chemistry — including the very medications we use to treat it.

Worse still, perhaps, it is associated with great creative gifts — but also with the inability to utilize those gifts.

Bipolar disorder disrupts the ability to do sustained, concentrated creative work (or uncreative work; it may be even worse — the “worstest” — for that!).

The medications we take to counter the destructive aspects of bipolar, meanwhile, are equally capable of destroying both the creative faculties and the ability, physical and/or mental, to exercise them.

Lithium alone is associated with micrographia, Parkinsonian movement disruptions, and disturbances in balance and equilibrium, to name just a few of its adverse effects. For visual artists, dancers, and musicians, it can be devastating. Worse, these effects do not always ease up (as is often the case with other medications) as the brain and body acclimate: instead, they are often cumulative and even progressive.

In some cases (the tardive dyskinesia and akathesia associated with antipsychotics; the thyroid disruption associated with lithium), they become permanent: they will remain, perhaps treatable but generally incurable, even if the medication is stopped.

Artists living with bipolar find themselves trapped between hammer and tongs. The immense sensitivity that informs our work is at once fed, imprisoned, and subjected to danger of execution by the firestorms that rage in our brains and minds; when we bring in the fire crews, however, the ensuing flood too often downs all but the mere ability to keep body and soul together. Too often, the ability of the soul to soar is not preserved, nor even the ability of the body the function as it once did.

I have no useful advice to offer, here — just frustration to vent.

The question that all of us who live with bipolar disorder always face is this: are the costs of this treatment worth the benefits?

For many, the answer is a resounding yes — for many more, a qualified yes. For others, though, the answer is no, or not really, or I feel trapped; there is no right answer, here.

Too often, practitioners and caregivers still treat those of us for whom the existing medical therapies are not acceptable bargains as recalcitrant children who do not know what is best for us.

Sometimes, of course, they’re right — bipolar is a disease that does not want to be medicated, and sometimes it’s the disease talking; likewise, in our most florid moments, we bipolar types aren’t always rational.

However, I don’t believe that should be the first response. When an apparently-rational patient says, “I have tried these medications, and the side-effects were untenable — what now?” a practitioner would do well to listen, to consider alternatives, and — if need arises — to make a referral to someone else who may know if another strategy.

And always, always — even when we are manifestly mad, with all the attendant indignity of madness — patients should be handled with dignity and tact.

By way of illustration, there can be no doubt that lithium, in particular, saves lives.

So, however, does penicillin — and we find other ways to treat people who respond adversely to penicillin. We don’t criticise them or treat them as bad patients.

We who are or who hope to become practitioners would do well to keep that very simple example in mind.

When we express contempt towards mental illness patients who can’t tolerate the usual medical therapies, when we treat them as misbehaving children or miscreants, we are really expressing deep-seated cultural prejudices. Also frustration, of course, but that alone really doesn’t explain it; a doctor, PA, or NP may be frustrated by a patient’s inability to take penicillin, but that frustration isn’t generally expressed as contempt.

Instead, penicillin sensitivity (especially when severe) is generally met with compassion — It’s too bad the simple and inexpensive option doesn’t work, let’s see what we can find that will.

I know this because I, in fact, can’t take penicillin. I’m deathly allergic to it.

I am not, in fact, likely to die from lithium use, and I’m willing to use it as a short-term intervention should things get really, really out of hand. I am not, however, able to tolerate is effects over long-term treatment. The same can be said for antipsychotics.

I do the best I can to manage without — and I continue to research and seek and hope for an alternative. I also realize that, for me, a medical alternative may never appear.

I continue to understand that my current strategy may not always be tenable, either — that sometimes bipolar disorder gets worse with age, and that a day may come when I am no longer able to manage as I currently do.

Right now, the lesser of the two evils is bipolar: someday, that may not be the case.

If that day arrives, I may have to strike a different bargain. Bipolar, in the end, is the mother of many bargains.

Until then, I will struggle to make the most of my creative gifts, knowing that someday I may not be able to use them.

Until then — and indeed, thereafter, should that day come — I will continue to be immensely grateful for the fact that I have health and mental-health practitioners in my life who do not regard my decision to eschew long-term medical therapy with contempt, as the foolish decision of an irrational child, but rather with compassion, as the careful decision of a rational and intelligent adult.

That is an immense privilege; a great gift.

It is also a reflection of privilege: I am white, male, of “normal” size, well-bred, well-educated, and well-spoken. I am married to a medical professional.

Doubtless, all of these things factor in the quality of care that I receive — when none of them should. All that should matter is that I am a human being, and thus deserving of respect even when I’m irrational, stubborn, and wrong.

This, ultimately, is what every single person with mental illness deserves — even when we are irrational: respect. The essential respect of one human being for another.

This is basic human dignity in action.

It should be neither a privilege, nor something we stumble upon by luck.

Posted in bipolar, health, justice, meds, mitzvot

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A Little Too Much

Dec 1

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Sometimes, I make bad decisions.

In fact, I would argue that I am better at making bad decisions than the average person — which is to say that, because I am a tad impulsive, I probably make them more often than most people do.

I’m not normally prone to catastrophically bad decisions (once in a while, sure — but for someone with bipolar and ADHD, I’m doing a reasonably decent job not burning my house down because SQUIRREL!).

Rather, it seems that I rather often find myself saying, “…It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Anyway, this is one of those stories, but it’s an instructive one. For me, at least (consider this another “note-to-self,” I guess?).

Yesterday, I decided that I should stop at the grocery on the way home from the studio and pick up a few things. Dancers gotta eat. (Isn’t that a song? “Birds gotta swim; fish gotta fly; Dancers gotta eat if they don’t wanna die…*”)

*…So it doesn’t exactly scan, but you can force-fit it.

There were five items on my list; five — I think I finished up closer to twenty, including five pounds of potatoes, a couple of pounds of quick oats, and some other things that are packaged by the pound.

In short, my purchases were rather on the heavy side for carrying home without, say, a proper backpack (my dance bag is tiny), shoulder bag, bike with panniers**, or what have you.

**This was Bad Decision #1: I left my bike at home because I’m not willing to risk a fall on ice right now. There was no ice yesterday, and in fact the temperature when I left was a balmy 45F.

Anyway, just purchasing heavy groceries wouldn’t have been a terrible idea if I’d then decided that, as I usually do, I should call Denis to come collect me at the store.

Instead, as I was still in a mildly paranoid frame of mind, I decided that it annoys him when I call to ask him to pick me up, and that I should try to get home without doing that.

So I schlepped my purchases down to the bus stop and got on the bus.

…Which, in and of itself, might have been an acceptable decision.

Except then, without bothering to consult Transit App (Which, you guys, has made my life SO MUCH EASIER. I love living in the future!), I decided that there was no way the current bus would actually make a timely connection with the bus that would get me closer to home, and that it would make more sense to get off and walk 1.7 miles with my heavy-ass bags (I did have the sense to stuff my potatoes into my dance bag, at least).

WTF, you guys.

Um.

It seemed like a good idea at the time?

So I started walking.

And walking.

And.

Walking.

Now, 1.7 miles really isn’t that far (for me). I will walk that far for fun without even thinking about it.

But a 1.7 miles with twenty-odd pounds of groceries in flimsy plastic carrier bags (because I forgot my reusable bags, because ADHD I guess?) and no free hands with which to scratch your perpetually-itchy nose; 1.7 miles of which the last .5 mile traverses three transverse moraines with short but steep climbs?

That was no fun.

Needless to say, by the time I got home, I was both drenched in sweat and more or less ready to lie down dead on the floor. And my shoulders hurt. And my arms. And my hands. And, in fact, even my legs.

And it had taken roughly forever and a half because every five or ten minutes I would have to stop put my gloves on (because the bags were eating through my hands, even though I double-bagged everything), take off my hat(because it was too hot), take off my neck tube (ditto), take off my sweater (erm … thritto?), or scratch my by-our-lady nose, which answered my attempts to use Applied Zen with an escalating arms-race of itchiness that quickly approached Thermonuclear Zombie Apocolypse levels.

After arriving home and quite literally sitting on the floor for a few minutes, being angry at the world for … let’s face it, who even knows? Sometimes, when you have bipolar disorder, your thoughts don’t really make a lot of sense.

…Um, where was I?

Oh, right. So after literally sitting on the floor for a few minutes, I got up, put the groceries away, washed dishes, and made chili for dinner and the best freaking chocolate muffins in the universe (reduced-sugar version; the basic recipe is vegan, though these ones have non-vegan chocolate chips in) because Denis loves them and I am a sucker.

And then we went out to the live-in-HD production of A Winter’s Tale, capping off a day that might have already been a little much by staying up past our bedtime (though, to be honest, that has nothing to do with why it took me ’til 4 AM to get to sleep).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, today I am not feeling so very peachy. I woke up with my wildly-underutilized upper body muscles feeling like they were full of ground glass*** and the rest of me feeling, well, really just kind of meh. Puny, icky, achy, under the weather, and … I don’t know, swollen or something. If that makes any sense.

***Note to self: maybe stop picking on people who skip leg day until you stop neglecting your upper body completely? (Further note: in ballet, EVERY FREAKING DAY IS LEG DAY.)

And I realized that, in a sense, this was what I felt like when I was getting back to class after the recent Pneumonia Campaign (except, then, the ground-glass sensation was in my legs).

Which has led me to a revelation that really seems like, you know, it shouldn’t seem revelatory.

Specifically, that small expenditures of energy can still add up to one big expenditure at the end of the day, even with dribs and drabs of recovery in their midst.

You’re still burning matches, even if you don’t just light the whole book on fire and watch them all go up in a blaze of glory (or, alternatively, you’re still using up spoons, even if you don’t just throw them all at the smug-faced hipsters at the next table all in one … hm. Maybe I’m still feeling a little grumpy today).

Over time, of course, conditioning can help you start the day with more matches (well, not always: health conditions can get in the way, of course). The trick is figuring out how many you’ve got, since they’re invisible, and you don’t know they’re gone ’til you’ve used the last one.

So it turns out I might have overdone it a little yesterday, whereby I’m taking a rest day today (as if I ever do anything on Tuesday in the first place).

Some part of me, of course, continues to complain vociferously about this idea: You don’t need a rest day, it insists, You didn’t even do that much yesterday.

Except, as it turns out, I did — not just the walk (over the moraines) to the bus, then Brian’s class (which felt fairly easy, but was still pretty athletic), then the walk to lunch, then the walk to the other bus, then the walk through the grocery store, then the walk home with all those freaking groceries, then the cleaning and the cooking, all of which involves being up on your feet and moving … yeah. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

Does this mean that, the next time I feel the need to do two days of hard classes and all the other stuff back-to-back, I won’t?

No — in part, to be honest, because that’s the life I’ve chosen for myself. Dancers gonna dance.

But it does mean I’ll consider the process of conditioning, and maybe I’ll learn to go easier on myself when it is time for a rest day.

…But does it mean I’ll learn to make better decisions?

In all honesty, in a general sense, probably not.

But it might mean that I’ll learn, eventually, to figure out roughly how many matches I’ve got without burning the whole book and half of tomorrow’s book.

Posted in adhd, balllet, bipolar, health, life management

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Thank G-d Ballet Class Resumes Tomorrow

Nov 29

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Today I am feeling restless, grumpy, and depressed.

A week without dancing will do that to you.

…Or, well, not entirely without. I practiced turns in the kitchen and did a bunch of random ballet stuff all over the house (I’m suddenly really into développés, balancés, and sauts de Basque, though the last of these I can only do very cautiously in our living room). What I didn’t do — though I should have – was give myself a progressive class of at least an hour’s duration at least twice. Or, like, I might have at least done one of those ballet-centric workout videos.

Ah, well.

Today I plan to do laundry, loaf in bed, indulge my depression (and my cat, who is only too happy to have a People hanging out in bed), and write.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the studio with me, and about demned time. I am quickly becoming intolerable (though I think it’s cool that I am beginning to have insight into this process, instead of merely feeling as if it comes out of nowhere).

I sometimes sort of apologize for this, when I explain that I use ballet as a kind of medication. I imagine that people will think, “Well, you’re not all right all the time, so clearly it doesn’t work.”

I forget that psychopharmaceuticals mostly must be taken every single day,and that if someone concluded that psychopharmaceuticals don’t work because the effects wear off if you stop taking them, I would patiently explain that they do not cure, but only treat, bipolar disorder, which is a chronic condition.

I do best when I can take class as close as possible to every single day, just as I would do best on a drug therapy* if I took it every day.

It’s not that dancing doesn’t work: it’s that, like drugs, it’s not a cure. Like drugs, it rather holds a relentless disease process at bay; maybe even drives it back a ways — but neither dance nor drugs effect a cure. Neither can eradicate the disease process entirely. Cease treatment, and the machinery of the disease will shudder to life again, and sooner or later symptoms will arise.

When I take a “drug holiday,” as it were, from dancing, the disease process is able to advance just as it would if I were taking lithium** and stopped that. Likewise, just as there are other drugs that can approximate, to a greater or lesser extent, the effects of lithium, a break from dancing may be mitigated by the substitution of suitable physical activities: a great deal of walking and/or swimming, for example, can keep me on a reasonably even keel — but those must be taken in doses of hours per day if they’re to work, just as different medications may have different dose effects. Running and cycling also work — better (and thusly at somewhat smaller doses) than walking and casual swimming, but still not as well as the intense rigors of ballet class.

So there you go.

I am grateful that there are such things as blogs. In moments like this one, I withdraw from reciprocal socializing — but it is helpful to know that I can write, “I am having a bad day” and that there is a public record of it, even if I can’t always lay that burden at the feet of my loved ones.

I am intensely introverted when depressed, and the outlay of energy required to initiate and sustain a social exchange seems dauntingly high. Blogging seems to offer some of the benefit of doing so, but at a greatly reduced cost.

Notes
* The analogy that follows doesn’t extend well to Adderall for ADHD — Adderall has a very short half-life and doesn’t necessarily produce any changes that outlast its therapeutic window, while both dancing and lithium arguably do. Adderall doesn’t arrest the disease process of ADHD (if, indeed, we even use “disease process” as a model — where ADHD is concerned, it’s not a very good one). It simply mutes the symptoms to a greater or lesser extent until enough has been excreted that the therapeutic threshold is no longer met. As such, I’m disregarding my very effective working relationship with Adderall, here.

** This is, in fact, a poor analogy in my case: lithium is an immensely valuable tool for many, but for some of us, the side-effects are disabling; I was far more disabled on lithium than I am off of it.  Worse, I was unable to dance or to do creative work, without either of which I can’t feel whole. It’s still something that is, for me, a medication of last resort, to be used only temporarily and in extremis.

I eschew routine treatment with lithium not by choice, but by necessity.

Posted in balllet, bipolar, health, life, life management, meds

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My Brain Hates Me Right Now, And Maybe If I Write About It, It Will Shut Up

Nov 21

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As you may have gathered from Friday evening’s post, I am wrestling with insomnia. Possibly also a touch of dysphoric mania on-ramp action. It’s par for the course (onset of winter, hormones being wacky, somewhat stressed out), familiar enough, but still difficult.

In a comment on my earlier post, Cabrogal referred to that state in which your mind is still blazingly awake and alert but insomnia has begun to make your body tired. I can relate: that’s where I am tonight. I felt tired at 9:30 PM and crawled into bed. Despite many efforts to sleep, I’m still awake.

When I close my eyes, my mind whirls away at 3,000,000 miles per hour: musical compositions (which arrive with regularity at the onset of mania) playing themselves at various tempi (often inappropriate ones), sometimes elaborating themselves into staggering crab-canons that wheeze and clatter along like seige engines. Hard and bad thoughts intermittently surface. I try to just acknowledge them and let them go, but they persist. None of this feels like a conscious process; in fact, the music leaves little room for intentional thought.

When I’m just having difficulty falling asleep (read: almost every night), I tell myself stories. Apparently, my stories are very boring, because often they do the job. (Okay, so actually I think they just distract me from the horrid life-long anxiety about being unable to fall asleep — another trait El Roberto and I share)

When my brain won’t stop musicking, I often can’t tell myself stories. I can’t “hear” them (more like see/feel/smell/hear them) over the din of my mental calliope hammering out my setting of Psalm 137, which is actually a lovely piece of music, but not like this.

It’s almost 3:30. If a miracle occurs and I get to sleep soon, I should be okay in ballet class. I don’t want to keep missing class. I don’t want this to be my new reality, always sliding away from the thing I love the most (after Denis, anyway).

Posted in balllet, bipolar, health, life

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First World Ballet Problems

Nov 5

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Yesterday, I struggled to get my développé to 90 degrees, let alone above. The muscles whose job it is to carry the legs just said, “90 is all you’re getting today, and you’re only getting it at the cost of immense effort.”

I blamed my lack of condition, of course — which was fair, but missed a critical element: the cross-training problem.

” Cross-training” means training until you’re feeling cranky and irritable, then kvetching at your poor innocent husband for no good reason.

Wait, that’s not right.

“Cross-training” means, in short, mixing it up to keep things balanced — tossing in a little cycling if you’re a dancer, or a little dance if you’re a cyclist.

The operative phrase, here, being “a little.” Or, well, “just enough.”

Last week, I banged out several hours on the bike, including a bunch of zippy climbing sprints, and basically none in the studio.

Should it come as any surprise, then, that I’ve managed to lose a bunch of the ground I had gained in correcting the muscle-balance problem attendant in being someone who, for several years, spent around twenty hours a week riding a bike and did essentially no cross-training?

I am lucky, in a sense, in that my body adapts very readily to exercise — but I tend to forget that, as in everything else, if I want the balanced muscles necessary for ballet, I need to make sure I’m not essentially overspending in one area while underspending in another (an aside, here: it says a great deal that autocorrupt — ahem, that is, predictive text — recognizes overspending as an existing word, but not underspending).

While a trained cyclist does make some use of the muscles that flex the thighs, it’s paltry in comparison to the use made of those that push down (I’ve touched on this before). Especially for someone like me — one who straddles the line between light rouleur and climber, and thus relishes his ability to crank out brutal speed on short- to medium-climbs — it’s all too easy to lose sight of how quickly that can add up to a disaster at the barre.

When I wrote yesterday’s post, I had forgotten that a couple of Saturdays back I was enjoying easy extensions well above 90 degrees even though my right hip was still weirdly tight.  A couple of classes before that, I wrote about the fact that getting the leg higher made a promenade en dedans in écarté derriere (or was it avant? I’ll have to check that later) much easier — and when I said higher, I meant “hey, my toes are basically at shoulder-height right now!”

So basically, I’ve now created a situation in which I’ll need to overcome a muscle balance problem again, one which I’d sorted before.

In short, this means dancing more and riding less (and more gently; probably no more 20+MPH sprints on the rolling climbs for a while) — in short, shifting the balance back so I’m actually allowing cycling (which I do as a matter of course, although I love it) to act as cross-training for ballet (which may be the one thing I love more than cycling).

I’m not sure yet how to achieve this balance — or, well, the exact details elude me.

The “pushing down” muscles in the legs already get a greater workout in daily life (one word: stairs!) than the “pulling up” muscles (or the “pushing up” ones that lift from beneath the buttocks and thigh in ballet), so I need to take that into account.

Regardless, this is entirely a First World Ballet Problem. I recognize that it’s the result of something in my body actually working well (maybe too well), and I’m grateful for that (not that I feel grateful right now, but I’m rationally aware that this is a Good Thing). I also recognize that “développé at 90 degrees” is a goal that many adult dancers find elusive, and I shouldn’t complain too much.

Yet again, I’m reminded that ballet is a great analogy for life (tl;dr: It hurts, and there’s always someone yelling at you — wait, no, that’s not the analogy I wanted ;)). You have to work to keep everything balanced (and not just when your instructor hairy-eyeballs you and growls, “You know you can balance in passé relevé without the barre.”).

So, um, yeah. There we go.

I plan to write about this a bit more, as there are tons of articles out there that day,” Cross-training is good for you!” but not too many aimed at explaining how to figure out how much cross your training actually needs. I should probably Ask Denis about it and just post an interview. Maybe even a video.

Speaking of which, I have not forgotten that I owe all you guys a ballet video about balancé. I’m trying to figure out where to film it.

So that should be coming along soon, too.

Posted in ballet lessons, balllet, fitness

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Getting By: Food

Oct 23

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Occasional forays into the world of fast food notwithstanding, most of the time, I eat pretty well — blah blah, varied diet, lots of fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, cook from scratch, etc. I can’t really gloat about that, by the way; it just happens that if you made a Venn diagram in which one circle represented “foods I really like” and the other “foods I find easy to prepare” basically includes all that stuff. I am lazy; I like leaves, therefore, salad.

I don’t bother my pretty head about the hot micro- or macronutrient of the moment, I don’t place anything off limits (except walnuts and their relatives, because I’m deathly allergic); there are just some things I eat less often and/or in smaller portions. If I want to eat steak, I eat steak; if I want to eat cake, I eat cake (isn’t that a Cat Stevens song?). Consistently excellent basic health indices — blood pressure, pulse, cholesterol, triglycerides, etc — confirm that this strategy works just fine for me.

When I’m struggling with Bipolar crap, though, sometimes that goes out the window. Depressions represent the tanking of, among other things, dopamine levels and the attendant ability to perceive pleasure. Manias represent … jeez, who even knows, let’s call it wild over-activation of so many systems … but they obliterate the small capacity for planning and patience required by my normal diet.

What this boils down to is that, sometimes, I more or less live on bread and butter for days. Denis is my saving grace; usually, I have to feed him at least once a day, so I generally manage to feed myself as well … though sometimes what I feed us is macaroni and cheese from a box, because that only requires one pan and, like, twelve minutes.

Meanwhile, I find baking bread pretty therapeutic. It’s one of the few things I can reliably do during depressions and manic episodes — there’s a lot more stomping and cursing involved during mixed manias, but even then it still gets done almost every day. I’ve baked enough bread now that it’s essentially an automatic process (though when I tried to bake bread while still fighting off the dregs of my most recent illness, I was sufficiently out of it that I forgot to add yeast).

A few minutes ago I was “woefully wonder(ing) why, my dear” (because depression) I have abandoned actually eating real food in favor of sort of grazing on bread… and then I realized, “Oh, right. Depression.”

And then it occurred to me that, while it’s not an ideal solution, it’s one that gets me by, and I guess that’s okay.

Depression can be reductive like that.

Personally, I don’t believe that worrying about what you “should” or “shouldn’t” eat is a very effective strategy in the first place — it’s much better to work your way in, cultivate a taste for a group of more health-sustaining foods, and allow yourself room for foods that other people might call “bad,” but less often and perhaps in smaller portions, if you find they’re affecting your health. Arbitrarily declaring foods to be “bad” and “off-limits” is far too often a recipe for cravings and disaster.

The acute phase of any depression, meanwhile, renders the whole point moot. If you’re someone who just plain can’t eat anything except bread (or chocolate, or boxed mac-and-cheese, or things prepared by other people, or curry takeaways) during the worst parts of your depressions, there’s a good deal of sense in doing so.

Better to eat a ridiculous, unbalanced diet for a few weeks (or even for years) than to starve to death — especially if something within that ridiculous, unbalanced diet grants you even a little pleasure.

Every drop of pleasure counts when you’re fighting a tidal wave of depressive anhedonia (in short, because neuroscience). That argument breaks down a bit when you’re talking about things that can swiftly create much worse problems — acquiring an addiction to a substance that can wreck your health overnight probably isn’t really going to help, for example, so it might not hurt to try to avoid doing that, if possible … though it’s not always possible; it’s not always as simple as “just saying no”  when you’re trying to reach the other end of the tunnel alive.

Which, I guess, is kind of what I’m saying. Like physical illness, acute episodes of mental illness take the niceties of life off the table. The idea is to survive; you can sort the collateral damage later on.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some bread and creep one day closer to the light at the end of my tunnel,which I hope won’t turn out to be an oncoming train.

Posted in bipolar, food, health, life, life management

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Danseur Ignoble: Practical Considerations

Oct 8

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Yesterday, I signed up for the GRE, which doesn’t sound like it will be too bad.

It’s also possible that none of the programs for which I’m applying actually require it, but I might as well get it out of the way.

I’m not worried in the least about the writing and language bits; my only concern was that I’d have to do a whooooole lot of math review, but it looks like it should be very doable, provided that I don’t leave it all ’til the last minute because SQUIRREL!

As a matter of perspective, I’m much less worried about the GRE than I was about my audition piece.

Curiously, having done the audition has somehow made me feel much more confident and capable, even though the audition itself was kind of a mess due to the fact that there was absolutely no way I could be really adequately prepared under the circumstances. I don’t know, just getting up and winging it, doing it anyway, was a huge confidence-builder.

There’s something about actually doing creative work that is deeply edifying. I may not have had much of the work done in time for the audition, but the part that was done looked like … well, it looked like real dancing, if that makes any sense? And, since then, I’ve been rocking along creating and revising, which feels really exciting.

I’m learning to think of myself as an artist (not just in terms of dance, but also in terms of the visual arts), which is something I’ve always been hesitant to do. It seems somehow hubric to do so — and yet, at the same time, I’ve realized that you have to take your own work seriously, or you don’t give it the time it needs to get done.

…Or, well, that’s how it works for me.

I’ve also started organizing information about application deadlines and stuff for graduate school. Eventually, the most pressing details (application deadlines and materials needed) will go into a table or spreadsheet or something so I can just check them off as I go.

I’m not organizing cost-of-attendance data yet, because every time I look at cost-of-attendance I really rather feel like my eyes are going to explode. I know I’ll figure it out somehow, just like I figure everything else out somehow, so for now, except for looking into scholarship opportunities, I’m more or less ignoring that whole zone.

So now I’m contacting graduate schools, signing up for open-house days for their DMT programs (in this sort of devil-may-care, I’ll-figure-out-how-to-get-there-later kind of way), and so forth.

It’s a weird place to be, somehow. A couple weeks ago, I was all, I don’t know if I’m going to be ready for this; I don’t actually even know if I want to do this. A lot of that stemmed from being persistently sick for a rather longish period, though: eventually, I’ll write about what that does to me emotionally, but I can’t figure out yet how to put it into words.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I woke up, remembered what I want to do and why, and felt ready to get started … so yesterday, I did.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that this happened within a week after getting back to class.

The structure that ballet provides is so essential to my life. While I actually do very much like being a homemaker, I seem to do best when I have a schedule imposed upon me from the outside. It forces me to organize my time in a way that’s really quite difficult for me to do otherwise.

Moreover, going to class is, for me, a signal that things are normal; that life is moving along in its usual rhythm. Not going to class is a signal that Something Is Very Wrong (usually, that either my physical or emotional health has imploded).

That said, I didn’t take Wednesday class yesterday because I don’t quite yet feel like my respiratory system is up to the demands of Brienne’s class. Lingering cough is lingering.

That said, I forgot that Margie now teaches a Wednesday morning class which I could have taken instead. Derp.

I’m hoping to be back up to speed next week, but if I’m not, I’ll do Margie’s class on Wednesday morning (I’m trying to avoid doing evening classes except on rare occasions, since this time of year it means getting home at 10 PM, which is problematic for a number of reasons).

I wrote in yesterday’s post about the relative costs of therapy and ballet as part of my defense of the cost of dancing — not to say that ballet should replace therapy, but it augments therapy rather beautifully. For me, the sense of structure and, I suppose, of belonging are an enormous part of that.

Dancing is part of what makes my life whole. For practical reasons as well as purely impractical ones, it’s terribly nice to be dancing again at last.

Posted in balllet, health, life, school

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Pas de Don’t

Oct 1

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Please forgive the Giant Stupid Whiny Rant to follow.

Yesterday, I had an absolutely lovely conversation with my therapist about trying to learn to sort of honor what I am, including the delicate-respiratory-system part.

Today, I’m just frustrated.

I feel like I make so much progress, then get sick and lose so much ground, and like this is an ongoing thing for me, and like the smart thing, the good-zen thing, the Good Mental Health thing to do would be to learn to accept and embrace that.

And then another part of me is all, “Ain’t got time for all that, I’m a dancer.  Dancers gotta dance.”

(The painful corollary: if I’m not dancing right now, do I cease to exist as a dancer?  What a freaking terrifying question.)

I have written, occasionally, about Making Dance Accessible.

I am forced, now, to admit that my own internal prejudices, or whatever, have left a potentially huge group of people out of that thought process — that is, people like me, who are talented and have been given bodies that look and in most ways act like classical dancers’ bodies but who are afflicted with chronic illnesses that make sustained training problematic.

Truth is, I don’t see a workaround for someone like me. Or, well, yes — here’s something. Short-term projects; an approach to training that recognizes that even the longest spell of good health will eventually be interrupted by illness. A willingness to be flexible about classes; to step it down a level when the body demands it.

I admit it: I don’t feel ready for the physical demands of Brienne’s class yet — and a part of me is angry about that; just furious that my body has failed me.

Another part understands that it doesn’t help to think of it that way; that this is just another wave in the ever-changing ocean. After the ecstacy, as it were, the laundry: after a stunningly-long period of quite good health, the pneumonia, the period of recovery.

And still it is painful, yet again, to run up against the limits of my being; to be reminded that I am working with mortal clay and all its host of flaws (though, on the flip-side, I remain grateful for the great gifts I have been given, and I recognize that if this is the price, or only part of the price, I have so been given an amazing bargain, here).

I also recognize that the day I accept these limitations will be the day they stop hurting me so often: I’m like a stubborn horse that doesn’t want to stay in its field, startled every time I run headlong into my fence*. The fence is always there; if I just accept that, I won’t crack my legs against it anymore.

For what it’s worth, I was thinking about backing out of the audition (haven’t felt up to extended rehearsals with Denis), but instead I think I’m just going to change horses midstream, maybe: channel all this into a dance, albeit indirectly.

It may not be a dance about all this; I have something else in mind, though something equally topical in its own way — it relates to my other ongoing struggle: how do I learn to live as the androgynous person that I am when, in a very real sense, I’m afraid to do that for reasons even I don’t understand? 

That, or else something about living with bipolar (perhaps unsurprisingly, that was my first idea anyway).

Either way? Cue Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.“

Notes
*This is actually a terrible analogy. With few exceptions, horses don’t do this kind of crap unless there’s a good reason to get out of the field in question. Will they bolt through an open gate just for a lark? Sure. When they bash themselves repeatedly against a fence for absolutely no reason, though?  Better check your pasture for locoweed (or scary plastic shopping bags — horses be cray).

Posted in balllet, bipolar, health, life

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Danseur Ignoble: I’m Feeling Much Better, Really?

Sep 24

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Okay, so as always, this recovery process has been slower and more annoying, with more minor setbacks, than anticipated.

Someday, I’ll learn to take the Hoped-For Duration of Recovery and simply multiply it by three or four.

“I’ll be over this in a week or so” will then mean “I’ll be over this in, I dunno, three weeks or a month, give or take,” and I’ll be much less frustrated when, after a week, I’m not Good As New.

Anyway, I am feeling much better, but still not perfectly well. Still also tenaciously clinging to the hope of having something worth auditioning on the 4th. If we bust our buts (yes, pun intended: You know, “When the deadline’s neeeeeear, and it don’t look good — Who you gonna call? BUT BUSTERS!”), we might … maybe? … SHOULD! be able to at least put together a respectable audition, if not one that will make everybody say OMG WE MUST HAVE THESE GUYS!

Maybe.

In other news, we saw The Scorch Trials today and spent the whole movie making Burning-Man related jokes.

It actually wasn’t too bad: its storyline was fairly predictable “twinks versus the old ppl conspiracy versus alien zombie plague” fare, but both installments in the Maze Runner film adaptation series have done a good job mostly avoiding cringe-inducing romantic subplots whilst providing enjoyable visuals and action scenes, even if elements of those action scenes do frequently make one ask, “Haven’t you guys ever seen a movie? Hey, maybe standing around and waiting for all of the alien plant zombies to awaken within two meters of your tasty still-fully-human faces is a bad idea. Wait, what the … WHY ARE YOU CLIMBING THE STAIRS?!”

Oops, potential spoilers below for ppl who care about that kind of thing, so here comes a More Tag:

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Posted in balllet, health, movies, review

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