Comfortable

this place is comfortable land worn down by time and weather
the jagged peaks of the rockies
are newborn mountains formed by pressure

but this place is comfortable
rounded mountains worn down rocks
covered in the oldest trees
with moss and leaves as a carpet

this place is comfortable
it feels like a soft comfy bed
the clouds above a comforter
wrapping me in a most relaxing sleep
I wrote that nearly five years ago.  This place I’m in now is not comfortable.  I’m starting to wonder if I’m really cut out to make it here.  I don’t have connections and friends and comforts the way I had in NY, either end of the state.  I must have gone through some point of not having friends in college.  I must have gone through at least a period of being alone and struggling to figure myself out.  I think about that first semester and the girls in my suite really reached out to me.  Granted when you’re living in a dorm suite where we share our bathrooms and hallways, its hard not to become involved in each other’s lives.  We were constantly banging into each other.

This place is different.  I don’t live in a dorm.  I don’t even live in seminary housing.  Which I do think is a good thing.  I need space and distance, but just not all the time.  I wish I could connect better with people.  I wish it wasn’t so difficult for me to trust and reach out and allow people into my life.

It doesn’t help that right now I’m sick and my temperature keeps going up and down.  I hurt and I’m tired, but I’m tired of sleeping.  I don’t want to sleep anymore.  But I’m too sick and weak to do much of anything else.

I want to feel like I fit in, like I belong, as if I’m really supposed to be here.  I need to sort that out because I do believe I’m supposed to be here, but I don’t feel like I fit.  I’m odd-shaped.  I’m prickly and complicated.  Not like other people aren’t complicated too, but I’ve got a bit of craziness coursing through my veins.  Well, maybe a bit more of craziness.

The shrink I was on Monday last week showed me the results of my psych testing.  Hundreds of questions which are fed through a machine and then spit out a personality evaluation.  Its much more complicated than that and its more accurate than it really sounds.  So I got to see on paper in chart form just how outside the norm I really am.  "This is where most people sit at.  And you… Well, you are way out here." Made me feel so great about my ability to function on a day to day basis.  Sure, I think I can handle grad school and helping people and even the basics like getting out of bed and getting dressed.  After looking at those charts and graphs, I’m not so sure.  How exactly am I capable of functioning and living?  According to those charts I should be curled up in a tiny ball, chewing on my hair.  The doc kept asked me about my support system.  What supports did I have in place?  I said I had friends, old tried and true friends, spread out over the country.  I had family, I had options, I had some coping mechanisms.  But I’m not foolish or stupid enough to think I’ve got all the bases covered.  That I’ll never struggle or that things won’t get bad.  Its just a matter of how bad they’ll get and how quickly I can ask for help and sort myself out.  The doc kept telling me I needed a closer support system.  Really?  Gee, I never thought of that.  Thank God for the suggestion!

But I only moved here 2 months ago.  Nothing is familiar yet.  Nothing is comfortable.  I don’t blame anyone.  Its just time.  I don’t trust and I don’t open up easily.  And even if I did, creating a support system takes time.  I don’t know how people are going to act and react to my going crazy.  Its incredibly easy to think you’ll know how to handle things, but if you’ve never actually done it.  If you’ve never actually seen someone completely lost in their mind, its impossible to know what to do.  Its just like addiction.  If you meet a recovered addict, and have never seen what the addiction does to that person, you can’t really imagine the hell of falling off the wagon.  You see a healthy, warm, honest and open person in front of you.  They tell you they’ve done horrible things, treated people they love with hate and anger.  You might think you understand, but you really can’t.  Its hard to imagine this respectable looking person would steal $10 from his 8-year-old for his addiction.  Its the same with bipolar.  My new friends here look at me and I know they can’t really imagine me being cruel, cold or depressed and angry.  I’m always smiling and laughing, warm and caring.  The hell I go through is something they can’t even begin to imagine witnessing.  So how can I actually expect them to know how to react to it?  How can I know they will be able to help me, or even will know how to help me?  I know there comes a leap of faith and a little trust at some point, but its difficult.

I’ve trusted and I’ve been burned by that trust.  I opened up to Rob and became incredibly vulnerable to him.  He didn’t betray me, but he did leave.  He did prove that I can’t count on him.  And someone else I completely did not expect stepped up and took his place.  James, whom I thought was immature and clueless, proved to be a better friend than Rob could have ever been.  But all that took time.  I didn’t immediately trust either of them.  It took time and effort and…. just time.  Longer than two months for sure.

I’m out of my element.  I’m treading water but only barely.  I’m trying to keep my sanity, but I can feel it starting to slip away.  A part of me really just wants to let go and give in.  But I don’t want to listen to that part.  At least not yet.  I want to prove that I’m strong enough to figure out a way to make this work.  It doesn’t have to be the same way everyone else makes things work.  But I don’t want to just give up.  I want to make friends and understand them.

I want to find people that I can be completely comfortable with in silence.  I want to find that support system.  It just doesn’t happen overnight.