I played violin from when I was five to ten years old, so approximately from 1995 to 2000. I played the trombone from when I was ten to thirteen, but that's beside the point. When I practiced the violin, my violin teacher or my mom would make me use a metronome. Years later, when I was to play the trombone, I would have this electronic metronome the size of a credit card that would make these annoying beepy sounds, but that's beside the point. The metronome I used with the violin was a piano-top metronome and was basically an oscillating rod that would go to and fro, back and forth, ticking out a rhythm that you could set by shortening or lengthening the torque of the rod or something like that. Shorter rod goes ticktickticktick, longer rod goes tick -- tick -- tick and so forth and so on.
And now I am about to make a pretentious metaphor. As a bipolar person, I am a metronome. Certain factors in my life shorten or lengthen the rod, increase/decrease the torque, etc., but my time in equilibrium is always limited.
Last night I had a panic attack. The semi-serious type where I hyperventilate and get a tingling sensation in my hands and feet and go partially numb. Immediately before the panic attack I was in my room by myself feeling really dismal about the condition of the human race in general and crying silently to myself while my boyfriend studied outside. And then the crying got kind of not-so-silent and then I had to tiptoe outside and show my boyfriend I was crying and have him comfort me.
I was a very emotional, easily-affected child and many nights I would not be able to sleep because of my anger/excitement/sadness. I would start out crying and then I would think to myself how sad it was that I was crying in my room all by myself so then I would usually make a big show of it, kicking the walls and so on, until my mom or dad came into the room to console me.
I was thinking about all this while I was crying by myself last night in fetal position on my bed. At 22 years old, I really am just a large child or a larger version of myself at 8 years. Still prone to the same temper tantrums and meltdowns. But only now is it considered a serious problem, requiring medication and therapy.
I was explaining to my boyfriend last night in ragged breaths that my mind kind of snowballs out of control at times. I will start worrying about one thing and more worries will make themselves known and stick themselves to the original worry and before I know it I have this humongous mass of anxiety sitting in my head making me cry out and shake and stopping me from being functional.
And then I kind of think to myself, I can't go on like this forever, you know? I'm technically an adult and I just can't freak out like this. I'm going to be older with bigger responsibilities and children, I hope, and I really don't want them to see me freak out like this because I think seeing my own mother freak out like that really traumatized me from a young age. But then he tells me to just take it one day at a time, and I guess that's the right way to think of things, but it just sounds very trite.
I think my favorite piece of advice when I'm depressed like that is something my mom says. "Alina, just think of life as simple. Just think of life as easy." I feel really lame for quoting this next bit, but a Switchfoot lyric is "Living is simple, breathing is easy." When I'm completely wrought with anxiety and overwhelmed with what I truly love in life and what we're all going to do when we're older and if we're all going to still take care of one another, I just try and meditate on that fact. Alina, just stop thinking of life as so complicated. Or as my mom says it, "Don't think of life as so complicate." (My mom is very bad with adjectives... She often asks me if I'm boring when she means bored.)
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