Directionless?

In the last week or so, my life has changed in oh-so-many-ways.  This has led to me wondering, "am I directionless?"

I've broken up with my long-term boyfriend. That's the first major thing.  Well, he broke up with me.  It's a long story and it was sudden but he has a lot on his plate and I have a lot on mine.  It's for the best.  That's okay.  The way he did it was far from glorious (would it ever be?) but this is the first time I have had a breakup and haven't worried about my ex running to badmouth me publicly every five minutes. That's kind of a big deal.  Our relationship was good until it wasn't.  I took on a lot of his emotional baggage and it stressed me out.  I had no clue how much stress I'd endured on his behalf until it was over and I finally slept for the first time in weeks and had a good sleep.

When it all came crashing down in the end, there was no warning.  He made a decision and it stung.  But, despite that, I feel okay.  I cried a little and then moved on.  It does hurt to love someone and then lose them.  But you also take the good with you.  The things you learned are always priceless whether they be good or bad.  And, in this case, they were mostly good.

With that finished, there was the usual department drama and then nothing.  Dead silence.  The grading for the class everyone loathes to TA the most was done.  And it seemed the clouds had parted.  Then, my roommate suffered and awful kidney stone and I have seen hauled her to the ER twice in the past week.  She's in misery and it kills me to see her in pain.  She's one of the only people in the world I would trust with my life so I care a lot about her.  She was the one that saved me when I needed emergency surgery back in 2011.  She held my hand and was with me until I was in recovery.  She drove me to that ER.  It still means the world to me that she did it.  But it still stresses me out because now I feel like I can't take the meds I need to sleep.  None of this is anyone's fault - like most things in life - but life is rarely fair and makes sense almost none of the time.

I'm exercising and forcing myself to eat because of this lack of sleep.  Three things reset my body and make me not so prone to upswings in mood (code: mania).  One is eating. I tend not to eat when stressed or upset.  The second is exercise.  I need this to stay balanced.  The biggest one is the third - sleep.  People with bipolar disorder are all different but many will face trouble sleeping and will need medication on board to do so successfully. This is my problem.  If I take the med I need the most, I really can't drive.  But, if my roommate needs me to drive, I need to be able to do so.  It's a catch 22 that I hate but I have no control over it, unfortunately.  So, I don't sleep.  And I would rather do that then let her down.

Not sleeping means mania and mania is bad.

It hasn't all been bad, though.  However, I felt initially that I was directionless post-breakup.  We had been making plans.  Things seemed to be more in control until suddenly they weren't.

Now, everything is open again.  In some ways, this is good.  I don't have to worry about another human being during this transition phase.  I'm my own woman again making decisions just for me.  However, it still feels as though I have very little structure.  And as someone who loves structure - enough to devote a life to studying that structure in the form of bureaucracies - it's really a bitter pill to swallow.

However, they say when one door closes another door opens.  For me, that's in the form of random responses to cold emails I sent out last week.  I have gotten some great offers to come up to Canada at the end of June.  I hope one of the places I go will sponsor me for a Fulbright. It wouldn't come at a better time. I need something (well, something other than comps).  So, they are saying "come on up" and I am going to go.  I'm going to make the best, most epic road trip know to man or womankind out of it.  I'll visit friends and see new places and make a long ass drive through some of the prettiest country I could imagine because that's what I do now, I guess.  I don't have any other obligations.  I just have this.

So, maybe directionless is a bad way to put it.  Maybe, instead, I should refer to it as a new juncture.  It's not that I lack direction.  It's that my future is wide open.  And maybe that is a good thing.

When You Get Hit with A Dissertation Topic

So, I go to my advisor's office with a paper idea for both publication and for her class this semester that she has indicated is a really good idea.  It's about gun control, which is something political scientists rarely ever tackle.  It's a comparison across states.  She tells me that's good, but that she doesn't want me to do that.  She wants me to choose a policy area that I will do my dissertation on and do a comparative study.

Ummm... wow.

So, I'm a second year.  She says I should decide early and then make it work.  So, I go home and cry.  Why would she put this pressure on me now?  It's too early.  She even admitted she hasn't told anyone else this, just me.  Because she wants to push me and feels like I have potential to figure it out now and just "do" it.

Fuck.

I don't know what to do.  I went in circles all Friday and Saturday.  There were tears.  I screamed into a pillow.  I ingested an entire bottle of wine and then set out the next morning to go to a local coffee shop just to sit and watch a blank screen until I found something.  The problem was that there was NO seating anywhere except those damn barstools that my 5' frame cannot cope with.  I went to the second hope and it was randomly closed.  Fuckity fuck.  I drove all around town to find something, feeling the whole time that the world was against me.

I was terrified until I had an idea.  I ran to the library like my legs were on fire.  No one has written on this - no one.  It's perfect, right?  And I can get TWO papers out of this because it qualifies for another class, too.  Yes!

Now I can just hope she doesn't shoot it down.  It would help me with grant applications for Canadian studies, too.  It's just hard.  And now I'm on an upswing mood-wise.  It frustrates me to no end that anytime I can be this creative, I am on a mood upswing.  Now, I'm not sleeping and am working nose to the grindstone all day.  Seeing the shrink tomorrow in hopes that I can adjust my meds and get back to where I need to be.

Now I know why people with mood disorders are artists, great thinkers, and inventors. I am so, so creative when I am hypomanic. And it leaves me with little incentive to control it because I always feel great until the crash.  I've had enough now, though, that I am terrified of them and want to control that mood.  That means tuckering myself out exercising, forcing myself to eat right, and taking meds that knock me out in hopes I get to sleep.  It needs to stop!