Random thoughts...reflective again

1) New baby Carter arrived November 21, 2011! What a happy day, happy baby, happy family. I was terrified he would be born with some deformity due directly to my taking so many bipolar meds during pregnancy. I still catch my breath in fear anytime anything seems amiss with him, because the guilt would be overwhelming if he has any developmental problems....but so far he is a perfect gem of a boy. I felt great for his first four weeks, but then had a mini-manic-break last week marked by anger, anxiety, paranoia and religiousity. I went promptly to my psychiatrist and adjusted the Lamictal and the Risperdal up. Stopping breastfeeding and starting birth control had a clear impact on the effectiveness of my meds.

2) With a few minor blips, I have had a lovely and lucky year....since I graduated from the concept of god earlier this year. If I feel so strong and happy without him, how can it be wrong?

3) Saw Girl with Dragon Tattoo last night. (Spoiler alert) Wow. First, a great movie. Good acting, a quick plot, and it followed the book nicely. Omitted the chaff from the book but kept to the story with integrity. Mikael's disdain for God and religion of course intrigued me. Europeans are as a whole much further along on the graduation from God than Americans. We as a country seemed lately plagued by a paroxysm of religion, as if the country is "burning with God's love" and is about to trap us all in the flames of religious oppression.

Second, the violence against women angle was....intriguing to say the least. My emotions about the visceral scenes are myriad. I have worked for years in the prevention of violence against women field. When I was a court advocate for the victims (both the women and their children) I was shocked at first by how much the women I was trying to help hated me. Hated me for not being a victim myself. Hated me for "interfering" in their lives. Hated me for judging them involuntarily when they dropped all charges against their male partner at the last minute. Hated me for giving that male partner just one more reason to despise them, namely, for the audacity these women had to seek help through the courts. The complexity of emotions on all fronts was...to repeat myself, myriad.

I couldn't believe that the male author of Dragon, Stieg Larsson, could get inside those distinctly female emotions. How could he know that every victim's dream was to sodomize and terrorize the perpetrator in retaliation. To make him live in fear ten times worse than their own fear. To tattoo "I am a rapist pig" on their chest. To get away with all that. How could Larsson make a book themed in violence against women so appealing to men? Random thought: The premiere of this movie could not be worse timing for that bastard, Jerry Sandusky. Men in the audience could themselves retch at the perversions of sexual sadists out there.

It struck me that some of the men and women in the audience last night laughed when Lisbeth got her ghastly revenge against Bjurman. The cycle of sexual violence, no matter who the victim, is no laughing matter. But still, some chuckled.

4) My mom is wonderful. You all know I have had some problems with her in the last few years. It's been hard for both of us to change roles. I became mother and wife. She became grandmother, and found it difficult I think to relinquish her role as my number one caretaker. She did save my life and nurse me back to health after the big bipolar break in 2000 after all. She was a first stringer in the battle against my illness back then, and her move to the second or third string has been hard for both of us, whether we realize it or not. So the roles have morphed into something new, and I think many of you women out there know this phase of the mother-daughter relationship is hard. I've nearly wanted to write her out of my life.

But get this! Things are REALLY getting better between us. She has listened to me and learned how to hold her tongue when need be and stand in awe of my accomplishments when need be and not worry when need be and take a 10,000 foot view when need be instead of the 10 foot view. And she gave me a gift for Christmas, not one wrapped in a package, but a real gift. She is going to read this blog. No matter how it may unnerve her, she is going to share in this personal journey, which makes my heart soar.

I wrote an email to her a few years back that prophesied that she would have to stretch in untold ways. That our roles would evolve and her growth would be hard. That her mettle would be tested if our relationship was to last. I don't know how, but I just knew that. She is meeting the challenge, and I am proud of her. And I am beginning to love her with abandon again.

5) I hit upon another analogy about my bipolar. It's a helmet. When I am feeling healthy and my meds are balanced, I have a helmet on my head. The everyday slings and arrows of stress bounce off me. I have the healthy armor up that everyone normally has. When I begin to get sick again, the helmet starts to come off. Little things bother me when they shouldn't. People's offhand comments strike my brain and make me defensive and vulnerable. My brain actually gets hot or "boils" when this happens. I get a piercing headache. My illness has a real physical manifestation and that is hot arrows slicing into the soft matter of my brain.

With the right medication and the right talk therapy, I get that helmet back on and we all feel better.

6) Notice how people (and books and movies) are talking more and more about the end of the world, and about what heaven is like and when we will get there, and about how the rearrangement of some tenets of quantum physics will change our lives? Neutrinos, time/space suspension, dark matter, the God particle....we are moving along toward the end of the world as we know it, the end of religion (or the end of religion's divergence and scorn for science), and the beginning of the best epoch in human existence. I know it's coming, and as I always tell you, I can't wait for you to see how beautiful it is. I can't wait to show you.

Merry everything and happy forever. Love.