Running Wild

When I started Honey Mama Runs Wild last fall I never anticipated it would be about me, running wild (with bipolar mania).  I envisioned the trails I’d run and write about or the wild experiences I’d be having at The Moose Lodge and the captivating narrative I would share with my readers. I never would have guessed that the blog would take a turn and be about my mind running wild.  Honey Mama: Runs Wild.  Life is just full of surprises.

“I feel like I'm a snow globe and someone shook me up and now every little piece of me is falling back randomly and nothing is ending up where it used to be.” ― Amy Reed, Crazy

I never fully appreciated the phrase “easy does it, one day at a time” until I had my breakdown spiritual awakening, but here on the other side of my life it is the only way to live, one day at a time.  More often it is: one moment at a time.  The depressive side of life that I am currently experiencing has sucked the wind from my sails and simple activities like walking and yoga seem impossibly hard, running has taken a back seat as I “easy does it” through my reality, living in the moment, slowly, slowly.

“Bipolar illness, manic depression, manic-depressive illness, manic-depressive psychosis. That’s a nice way of saying you will feel so high that no street drug can compete and you will feel so low that you wish you had been hit by a Mack truck instead.” 

― Christine F. Anderson, Forever Different

I was on the phone with one of my best friends the other day and we came to the conclusion that this experience is like being a foreign exchange student who has returned to their home country only to find they feel foreign at home.  Knowing the rules and social customs, but feeling a disconnect from moving fluidly through life is what I am experiencing as my present reality.  

I stopped driving any distance over 5 miles back in early May on count of this disconnected feeling and I had anticipated by now I would be back to “me”, now I am realizing there is no going back once you’ve had a break awakening like this, only forward, one day at a time. 

“I actually stopped talking. I actually listened. So I knew that I wasn't all the way manic, because when you're all the way manic you never listen to anybody but yourself.” 

― Terri Cheney