I’m either motionless or I’m a tornado.
Something like that, anyway. Maybe my perception is skewed, but it seems like it some days. I can tell when I’m on the downswing of my pendulum. I don’t want to go anywhere, talk to anyone, do anything. I gravitate toward the things that hold my attention without requiring effort – books, computer games, movies. The cleanliness level of my house hovers on the threshold of “barely acceptable.” Laundry piles up. The dishwasher is run, but sits waiting to be unloaded. I feed my children precooked meals and agonize that I’m not giving them proper nourishment. This might go for a few days, the nadir of the the needle on my internal meter.
Because I do this in solitude, even people who know me well do not believe that there is even such a setting on my dial.
At times I loathe these slow days. I pummel myself mentally for not being a better person, for being lazy, for just doing the bare minimum required to get by.
Eventually, though, the weight on the end of the string returns, as it must, to the apex.
Ahhhh, mania. The siren call. Irresistable, welcome, intoxicating mania.
In my younger years these were the days of binge partying, spending sprees, life in the fast lane. I was a car with the pedal pushed all the way down. Its like watching your life set on fast forward, all the time. Who needs sleep? Everything is there to be done, and demands that you join in the fray.
Years later, with the gravity of real life with children and a lot of work to be done, the incessant restlessness of my mania sends me out into the barn, the yard, the pasture. My floors are clean, my dishes done not just every day, but every meal. I cook. I wash clothes. I read endless stories and dance with my children in the living room to the loudest music imaginable. I laugh, I call people on the phone and make plans. I live. And I hide the checkbook. I have learned.
As I grow older, as I manage myself better, I have fewer days where I am at either of these extremes, and many more days where I am somewhere rather in between.
I am so incredibly blessed to have the understanding of my own experience. With every year that passes I see these not as symptoms of a disease but as hallmarks of a life lived on every tick of the emotional scale. I have known the highest and the lowest, and felt every moment of joy and pain. As a mother, my life on the pendulum helps me understand how to listen to, advocate for and support my daughter.
If I could choose to have it any other way, I’m not sure that I would. No, I don’t think that I would.
