A glass of wine and an epiphany.

So I've had a headache all day, am possibly a bit dehydrated, and have generally felt like crap, most likely due to a minor case of altitude sickness, yet I still let my cousin talk me into a glass of wine. Which I don't regret because it was the first red wine I've ever enjoyed and it was delicious. But as I was sipping that glass, I was looking through my facebook feed, and then I had an epiphany. The hit-you-in-the-face holy fuck kind of epiphany.

When you've spent more than a decade actively fighting the effects of your Broken Brain, epiphanies are something that actually happen pretty often. Some stick a little better than others, others disappear almost as quickly as they appeared.

And then sometimes you're pretty sure you've just fixed your life.

The most amazing part is that the ones that you're pretty sure just fixed your life are usually the simplest ones.

And this one is simple. Just a quote a friend posted in his status.

"Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.” 
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

And holy shit, that's it, isn't it?  In my head there will always be the terrible shit - the capital-D Depression, the self loathing, the Anxiety - and there will always be the hilarious shit too. I will always have the grief and the high delight... but I don't have to run back and forth between them.

But wait, Mk, isn't that how the cycling works?

Yes, Imaginary Blog Reader, technically that is how the cycling works, but let me explain. I will always feel the highs and the lows, but I don't have to let myself get lost in them. That's what I tend to do, let myself become totally consumed by the feelings. There's having Depression, and then there's letting Depression have you. There's having Mania, and then there's letting Mania have you.

And yes, this is absolutely something that is easier said than done, but I can talk myself into all kinds of shit.