Tired

I’ve been tired a lot lately. That makes doing a lot of productive things harder to do and definitely harder to get done. This is not the same kind of tired that comes from not sleeping enough. It wasn’t too long ago where that was going on. I remember. This is a tiredness that isn’t related to sleeping enough. I’ve been sleeping enough, seven to nine hours a night, usually in one long slumber.

This tiredness arises from being depressed, the other polar-expression from my mania of January. (Yet the mania is still here mingling with the depression thoughts. This is called “mixed-states” and is a key identifier of my Bipolar II Disorder.) I haven’t been here in a while and it is not comfortable. It is a hard place to explain to someone who will never be here, and even those who are “here” with me don’t understand it.

I’m left feeling isolated and alone even in a crowd. I have felt this way before in relationship to my alcoholism. People don’t understand what it’s like to not be able to take their offered “just one drink.” One drink is all it would take for me to get started and a start is all one drink is for me. I heard at an AA meeting last week the solution to that kind of loneliness. A meeting filled with other alcoholics who do get it. People ask why I still go to meetings after more than a decade without drinking. What was said at the meeting was that people who ask that question never will understand why meetings are so important to our sobriety. It cannot be explained in a way that will make sense to someone who has not experienced the craving, the required second, third, fourth, etc. drinks that always follow the first one.

The same is true for Bipolar Disorder (probably for type I or II). However, there are no AA-like meetings for this issue. And, I don’t think there are any “groups” that will help either. Those groups would be like the blind leading the blind, I’m afraid. So, I feel alone and having to trust the professionals with the training but no personal experience to tell me what works. Right now, I don’t trust them very much and so nothing seems to be working.

I will go on being tired, for now. Tired of being alone. Tired of being sick. Tired of being tired. And, getting by the best I can.