Accepting Reality

Accepting Reality

I’ve worked very hard my entire life for everything…in college, my career, mostly as a single mother.  I say this as a precursor, as if I need to justify my current life to everyone, including myself…and maybe I do, or at least I feel right now like I do.

I’ve been disabled (Bipolar II) for about two years now.  Before this most recent diagnosis I was pretty fucking successful in most aspects of my life, certainly when it came to my career.  I took great pride in my success, my ambition, my competence and capability and skill.  I didn’t really know what it was like to fail in this arena.

For the past month I have been working at an (unpaid) job with one of my best friends.  She has her own company, and I asked her if she could use me in some way.  Together we created a position that would be tailor-made for my particular skill set and limitations.  I was able to use my knowledge and expertise in the sales, marketing, and social media fields to help with her brand.  At the same time, I was able to work from home, at my own pace, on my own schedule, with no defined hours or deadlines.

The first couple of weeks were amazing.  Not only was I having a great time working with my friend, but it felt so good to be back in the game again.  I was still there!  The education and talent that I had built and honed for so many years hadn’t left me after all.  I was able to be productive and useful, and I felt like I was a part of something that I had been missing for such a long time.  My friend was also very appreciative of my help and made me feel very good about myself and my performance.  I had energy and motivation and purpose.  Not all of the time, but more than I had had in a while.  I was full of ideas and plans.

A couple of weeks into the project I noticed that I wasn’t able to stay focused for as long or as frequently as I had been.  My mood began to shift.  I doubted myself and my decisions.  I began to unwind a little bit.  Then things would pick back up.  I was losing momentum and needed a break.  How did things dip so quickly when nothing had changed?

I had an appointment with my therapist at this time, and I talked this through with her.  I came to a few really stark and harsh conclusions that left me shaken.  Over the past two years I know I have become comfortable referring to myself as disabled.  But did I truly accept that?  Was there a small part of me that still believed that if I truly had to that I could return to my former high powered career full time?  There must have been.  But seeing that I couldn’t manage this perfect-for-me job for even a month without folding gave me a serious fucking reality check.  I was fucking disabled.

I really thought I had accepted that.  I truly did.  But it hadn’t sunk in until now, when I realized that I couldn’t do a job that I should be able to shine at for even a brief period of time.  I did not have the option of working again…ever.  That chair had been pulled completely out from under me…for real this time.  There was no going back.  There would be no going out on top.  I had let myself down, and I was ashamed.

So that’s my new reality.  After two years of being disabled, guess what?  I’m fucking disabled.  I had talked the talk, now the hard part was going to be to walk the walk…and it was going to be a long walk.  I had never grasped what being disabled would truly mean to me until now.  All of the things that I worked so hard for that made me so proud now had no place to go.  That education, those skills would go unused, unnoticed.  I would go unused, unnoticed.  I would be irrelevant.

That’s my new reality.