This may seem like a strange title today but it is fitting of my thoughts. The story of Cain and Abel is one known by anyone familiar or unfamiliar with the bible. Don't run yet, this is not a bible lesson. How does this story tie into being bipolar? With being bipolar, some things for me, and I speak of my own self here, became more prominent. The imagination and to be able to sit and write as if I were the book and it's characters myself was one great gift.To travel past this "dimension" and go with your mind to places most wouldn't dare is both a gift and sometimes, very much a curse.There are thoughts and processing of thoughts that most would run from in an instant but that many people that are Bipolar dwell on an all to often basis.
There are other things that come with being bipolar that can render one totally crippled in advancing from one simple project to another. Are you Bipolar? Do you have friends or loved ones that are? Look around or ask your loved one this. How many projects do they have half finished? How many things have they started and somewhere in the middle or perhaps right at the end, they just walked away from them and started something new? Something new to be left for another in just a short while. One of the reasons that writing is so appealing and so therapeutic is because we can start and stop and go back to or leave it for eons and come back to finish it when we are ready.
And again you ask... what has this got to do with Cain and Abel? Another part of being bipolar is the ability to love so many at once. To truly mean that you love them when you say it and yet know that you will love another also because you are certain that Love #1 will go away from you one day. The pureness of your heart and the truth in your loving someone is often the pathway to hurt them also. Cain slew Abel because he was jealous of Gods love and respect for Abel's offerings.He had no idea of the consequences of his actions.He only wanted Gods approval. So then is it safe to say that Abel created the Cain that slew him by his good works? A far toss for certain but it reached out to me this morning as I thought of my own life. Thinking about the loves I have known and lost. Lost because my heart and the ability to love so deeply more than one person also created a place to hurt them.
How does one explain something they themselves do not understand? How do i tell you that my love is true and real when I say I love you but that I may not love you exclusively? How can I tell someone that to love me and to want to be with me is so risky because My mind slips and gets mixed up on a moment to moment turn? As indecisive as me going in to buy a cake someone asked for, a cake that was to be strawberry but there was no strawberry. So now I stand in a frozen state, freaking, scared and half sick to my stomach because I am afraid I will pick another kind and it will be one I like. It will be a selfish act now that may hurt someones feelings. And so there I stand, like a freaking idiot, unable to do anything. Welcome my friends... to my world.
So does my ability to love so deeply, so many give cause to me "slaying" the heart of someone that cares for me, even loves me deeply? Does my Abel create a Cain to kill every love i might know, just to find favor within myself? If I didn't love so deeply, so openly, so complex, would I hurt others? Is it safer, less wrong and cruel to simply NOT love and be satisfied to just finish out my life alone and not hurt someone that's only crime was that they loved me?
Welcome again I say to this very mixed up, sometimes scary, sometimes so fill with gifts and love world of mine. A world I and so many others with this disorder live with each and every day. Wondering of it is better that I not associate with the world that gives to me so much happiness and so much fear and guilt, rather than hurt those that love me? Oh goodness, am i the only one that walks this path? Is it me alone or do others share this strange and yet somehow intriguing world I live in? I wonder how many Abel's my Cain will slay before I simply say "enough!!???"
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Did Abel create his Cain... more about being bipolar
Posted by Darrel at 7:53 AM
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2 comments:
You ask a question that cannot be answered, Darrel. I think that no man can be strictly responsible for the actions of another just as you cannot be responsible for the actions of another not matter what preceded the behaviour.
Thank you for reading this Wynn. It always means so much to me. I hope that your answer is more on target than the one my mind gives to my heart. Always, Darrel
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