Realizations

It's been an interesting week. Some good things have happened and some bad things have happened and some very stressful things which are ultimately good have happened. Part of me would like to be more specific, but I am not going to share the details right now.

Today, however, I had a kind of spiritual epiphany. The background: As I've mentioned before, I have had depression on and off over the past few years, and even in the times when I'm not actually depressed, there are bad days. Bad days often manifest themselves in despair and the desire to quit current major life projects (school, romantic relationship) for no reason. I was talking to A once about vocations, and saying that I needed to find something that I could live with on bad days as well as good, because I would always have bad days. He said that this was an entirely too negative way of looking at the future. I disagreed. We let it go.

Fast forward to today. I was walking to Mass, thinking about depression and the shadow it has left on my life, and thinking about the future, and I thought, "Some darkness just never goes away." Then I thought of John 1:5: "And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." And two things occurred to me.

First of all, darkness does not understand light. No wonder I don't know what God is doing. He is light, and there is so much darkness in my life. Secondly, darkness cannot overpower light. Light always wins. If the darkness never goes away, it's not because it lost the battle with the light, it's because I held the door and windows closed and refused to let the light shine in.

This afternoon I went to an area meeting of People of Praise, a charismatic Christian group. From some of the things the people said I gained a few additional pieces to the puzzle. One man got up and said that the Lord had moved him to share that His forgiveness was so perfect that there was nothing you could do that made it impossible to start over. Another said that God's forgiveness was a perfect forgiveness, and the belief that your relationship with God was damaged if you had sinned and been forgiven was a lie. And the frequent requests for the Holy Spirit to come helped me to ask God to shine His light into my darkness. I imagined myself opening the door to a closet containing the things I try to keep secret from God and letting Him in.

So overall, this is what today has taught me: A was right. There don't always have to be bad days. I can't get rid of them, but God can.

I have always known this, but today I think I started to believe it.

Me and Madness?

I was kind of crazy on Friday night when K was here. I was overtired to begin with, and quickly got overstimulated. This is a really bad combination. I got hyper. When we were outside, I was running and sliding on the ice. A and K were getting freaked out that I was going to fall and hurt myself, but I could not walk slowly. If I had stopped sliding, I would have had to run, spin, or do something. Later I was seriously having trouble watching the movie. I literally could not sit still. I was moving around, resettling myself, getting a drink just so I could walk around some, etc. When I was still, I was flapping my hands, chewing on my jacket sleeve, kicking the table, etc. (I said to K, "I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't actually have ADD....")

I'm not sure what was up. It was a sensory issue to some degree, I think, but it had some seriously freaky features. I could not stop my mind. We went back to our rooms around 4am, and I lay awake in bed with my mind racing till at least 5am. I was awake at 7am (I'm not sure when I fell asleep), and stayed awake until 8:15, at which point I gave up and got out of bed. It's now 4:30pm, and I have slept less than two hours since 6:30am on Friday. I'm only slightly tired, and my mind is still going faster than I want it to.

I looked up the definition of hypomania out of a vague memory of relevance, and these are the diagnostic criteria (from Wikipedia):

The DSM-IV-TR defines a hypomanic episode as including, over the course of at least four days, elevated mood plus three of the following symptoms OR irritable mood plus four of the following symptoms:

• pressured speech
• inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
• decreased need for sleep
• flight of ideas or the subjective experience that thoughts are racing
• easy distractibility and attention-deficit similar to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
• increase in psychomotor agitation
• involvement in pleasurable activities that may have a high potential for negative psycho-social or physical consequences (e.g., the person engages in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, reckless driving, or foolish business investments).

I put the ones I was experiencing in green. Five where three are required, and the elevated mood. The only thing missing for a hypomanic episode is the time span.
From farther down the page:

When a patient presents with a history of one or more hypomanic episodes and one or more depressive episodes that meet the criteria for a major depressive episode, bipolar II disorder is diagnosed.

This is kind of freaky to me, because I've had a major depressive episode (atypical, I believe related to seasonal affective disorder). The only thing separating me from bipolar II disorder is that this episode only lasted about 24 hours. Edit from later: I thought I was back to normal when I wrote this, but it actually wound up being about 48 hours until I was really back to my usual self. The peak was about 24 hours though. Bipolar disorder has a genetic component, and it is present in my family history. So that's not super cheering to me.

Now obviously I don't have bipolar disorder in a way that affects my life enough to require treatment (if I did, I would know). I don't even fit the diagnostic criteria. But it does concern me how close I come. Something to keep an eye on, I suppose.

Today has not been a good day

I have been feeling angry and irritable all day for no reason. This has been happening more than I would like recently, and I am thinking it may be a sign of depression coming back. The reason why I hesitate to say this is because the sun has been shining more than usual over the past week, which usually correlates to a better mood for me. I also haven't been having anxiety problems, which is usually a more reliable way for me to track depression than depression symptoms themselves, which (in my opinion) are more subtle. On the other hand, I've had to take a 2.5 week break from running due to a hip injury. So maybe those balance out. Anyway, something to keep an eye on--I really hate feeling this way and would like to nail down and eliminate the cause.

I was going to do homework with friends with the super bowl on in the background, but plans fell through. So I was going to do homework alone (I have a paper due this week on top of my normal workload), but so far I have done nothing since dinner. Go Patriots, I guess, since I have family from New England. Can you tell how much of a football fan I am? (I have never watched a super bowl.)

About my hip: I've been having pain in my right hip joint/groin since about the middle of Christmas break. I was initially diagnosed with a hip strain by university health services, but after two weeks of rest and naproxen (an NSAID) didn't fix it, they are looking for another answer. It appears to be something muscular rather than structural (pressure hurts), so they scheduled an ultrasound for Thursday. The good news is that since running didn't seem to bring on pain, and stopping running didn't help much, I have official doctor go-ahead to run. So I went running this evening, only for 20 minutes, but still. I went a little over two miles, which is a decent pace for me (I know I'm slow). In terms of long-term running goals, I think the half-marathon I was planning to run at the end of March is out of the question at this point. So maybe I'll run the 10k they have at the same event.

Lastly, more good news: I've officially been matched with a child to pray for on Reece's Rainbow! Reece's Rainbow is an organization that helps to facilitate international adoption of children with special needs (with a focus on Down Syndrome). One of the ways to help, if you can't adopt or donate money, is to offer to pray specifically for one child every day. I emailed them, and they gave me Kurt. He's four and a half, and he has mild CP. That's him on the left. Isn't he cute? I kind of want him to be mine, but of course hope that he has a family by the time I'm old enough to have any children of my own.

Well, I need to go take a shower and then work on my philosophy paper. It's about Descartes, whom I happen to dislike very much. :/