The Rhythm of Illness

My episodes have always followed a predictable seasonal pattern. Imbolg, beginning February 1st, I will begin to feel the tilt of the earth and the shift toward the light. Between February 1st and April 1st, has been the usual manic time of year for me. I was diagnosed as Bipolar One from about 2002 to about 2007, and took Depakote as my regular medication from about 1997-2006. I asked to get off of this medication because it caused me PCOS, which began to show up as chin hair when I was 22. Then in 2007, I spent over three months, in a psychotic state, which qualified me for what was then a somewhat new diagnosis, Schizoaffective Disorder. There were three major factors that contributed to this episode, the first one having been switched to Lithium. I allowed a family member to interfere with my psychiatry regime, as they had heard, while actually knowing very little, that Lithium was the new best thing in Bipolar meds. At the time, I was enrolled in a college program for the third time in my life, (not including many attempts at accruing credits in community college), which itself generally leads to over-achieving and chronic compulsive behavior related to school. The third major contribution to this psychotic break in 2007, was that what I was studding, was Massage. I had become enraptured with Psychosomatic healing, and was practicing this on my trial patients. I also was receiving massage every day at school, as we would practice on eachother’s bodies, as students.

Over time, I have learned, that what I am good at, is not always good for me. Massage, being one of those things, as I am incredibly sensitive to touch, and I suck poison out of people with little effort. While I was making. an effort to transfer and heal the trauma of my clients, I was not, however, successful in purging the poison, or finding a place to put it. Teaching young children, as my main resume career has been Early Childhood Education, has always felt true to my heart. Not only do I love and adore children, while resonating with early childhood psychology, and working with the young minds and bodies that I have taught, I would find passage into my own early-childhood experience, and find ways to heal areas of pain and trauma from my early-childhood years. Unfortunately, I became frustrated with our Early Childhood Institution here in the States, after attending a couple conferences, and going deeper into my studies, and so I decided to move into the career of Massage. I believed I was ready to try a college program once again, because I had had a couple of stable years, where I did not exhibit episodal behavior in the Spring.

My point, both of these careers involved me tapping my compassionate and empathetic centers, in a way that I had found that I had talent for, but that also exhausted my resources extraneously. Pretty quickly, I learned, “How can I be healer, when I have so much healing yet to do within myself?” 

In Massage school, about half way through, I found my self lying in my bed, quickly spiraling into a psychotic state, and feeling every injury and broken bone, that I had experienced in this lifetime. This was a lot, a broken wrist, a broken leg, a mid-spine that I had smashed on the ice over and over again while snowboarding, in attempt to land the table top; which I had never even felt. Sprained wrists, smashed skull, etc. And then, I quickly found myself traveling back into past life experiences. I was a wife, who had had her wrist half-severed with a hatchet, and I was a Roman general, who had been beaten within an inch of his life. I was feeling this actual pain. Whether is was half in my mind and half in my body, it didn’t matter. I felt it and it was excruciating. When it started, in the morning, having come on so rapidly, I just could not get myself to make it to class, and I knew I was never going back, because I had fallen, sunken, and receded into a deep deep hole in my soul’s past.

Now, it is 2019. I had a milder psychotic break in 2016, and I have spent the last three years meditating in my yard and woods, and enduring medication adjustment, after medication adjustment, all the while beginning peri-menopause. However, these last two years, I have begun to reflect further into a premonition that I had during my psychotic break in 2016. I felt a polar chill in the air, coming down from the North. In 2018, I left reality for 4 months, between July and October, though we are calling that experience a Hypo-manic episode. I was able to attend appointments, feed myself, manage meds just fine, and carry on conversations pretty well. I concurrently processed huge amounts of grief, sexual trauma, assault trauma, and rage that was buried very deep, psychosomatically. I am grateful this came out etc, but I had to come back to this world, and in forcing myself to do so, I found myself actually experiencing true suicidal feelings for the first time in my life. 

I am sensing that “Winter IS Coming”. If you look at the obvious, and see the world as an Oracle, you will see that about 7 of the 8 billion people on planet Earth are chanting this like an anthem, or at least have seem some airing of The Game of Thrones. What I am observing, is how I used to be very in tune with the seasons, and over the years, these seasonal indications helped me manage my illness better, and to become increasingly stable over time. So yes, it is very much peri-menopause, and turning 40 that has me all out of wack, but I wonder, what are the current patterns with mentally ill people on the rest of the planet, today? We are the gifted, perhaps we speak for the planet. It seems to me, things are in an obvious transition.