Wandering Around In No Man's Land

"There's nothing ever wrong, but nothing's ever right

such a cruel contradiction"

Those lyrics from Shinedown's song "Burning Bright" describe perfectly the what I call "blah" feeling that comes along with being bipolar. It happens when you are floating between mania and depression but your mind seems incapable of deciding which of the two it would rather be. You know you are not in a full state of depression but you can feel it creeping up on you. It's that shadow that keeps following you around, but when you turn around to catch it there's nothing there. Then you just feel paranoid, like maybe everything is fine and you really aren't about to be sucked into that black hole of depression. This in-between time can be agonizing. The small bouts of mania that come about are a blessing and a curse. They keep you motivated and productive. But they are unpredictable so you may have no energy to complete your daily tasks during the day but then all of a sudden at 2:00 AM you have so many things you need to do. And you must do them all right now of course because you don't know how long this energy is going to last and quite frankly you have fallen a little behind on life while you were meandering around in no man's land.

This "blah" time is so frustrating to me because I feel off, but I can't quite place what it is exactly that is making me feel this way. There isn't really anything particularly wrong. I can still go to work and do my job well. I am still hanging out with friends and being my normal self. It just takes a little bit of extra energy to do all of that. I know I have all of these great things happening in my life so I should feel really happy. I want to feel happy. But instead I am ambivalent to everything. A part of my mind is screaming at me, "Come on, wake up! Stop coasting through life on autopilot, LIVE damn it! Stop wasting your days away. Do something. Feel something. Snap out of this funk you are in." And I want so desperately to do just that but somehow I can't. 

The good thing about "blah" time is that it is just a phase. Soon enough this too shall pass. When I feel overwhelmed or frustrated by this I remember this verse, "When you go through deep waters I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficultly you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you." Isaiah 43:2 That is all I need to hear. I know that no matter what life may throw at me I can and will cling to my faith. He has gotten me this far, I know He has much bigger things planned for me ahead. So I pray for the courage and the strength to do what He wants me to do and take it one small step at a time.