Dancing down the avalanche

i've been avoiding my journal which is a good indication that it's something i really need to be doing.  since i'm getting the run around something awful with the hospital and my gp, i figured i'd be safer if i spent some time interacting, not isolating or getting lost in my own head. it has helped some. i don't feel as hopeless or helpless as i did last week, but i'm bouncing through moods like mad (mad-hahah). i guess this is what a mixed state for me looks like, or at least one incarnation of a mixed state.  i figured i need to know more, need to learn more about bipolar. i know a lot. i've been researching and reading since i was diagnosed, but there's always more, and always things i've forgotten and need to learn again.  i'm fighting off crying jags today. it's weird too because my mother called again today. i think my sister spilled the beans about my attempt at inpatient treatment because suddenly she and my Da are very solicitous of my mental health, when usually they don't want to mention it at all. stigma and dirty-secrets, i guess.  i'm trying to not panic about tomorrow and filing the medical withdrawal for the semester. i'm also trying to figure out a new schedule that'll keep me from descending into complete apathy and listlessness. i have plenty to be reading in prep for next semester and i've thought about making sure i write the papers that were due for this semester even if i won't be turning them in. i think that's the best idea so i will have to be at the library and still in "school mode" even as i'm trying to stabilise.  i bounce around the boards and read people's stories and experiences and i am awed by those who maintain stability for a year or more. it's not something i've managed yet and i wonder if it's just me or that i haven't had the kind of help i've needed.  i wrote a new friend today that everyday we dance on the shaky ground of avalanches and earthquakes. i read that metaphor in a very different context a year or so ago and it has stayed with me. i think it struck me because it's so visual and visceral, but it applies to us i think, even more than the character the author was writing about. what are these shifting moods and physical, vocational, situational uncertainties but rocky ground trembling with a force of nature that is violent, destructive, and uncontrollable? and yet we stand on that ground, or move with it, jumping over rocks and dodging boulders and being burt by the falling debris and constantly changing direction to avoid being swept away by the force of it; we keep moving. sometimes the dance is uncoordinated, or we misstep and get hurt, but with every breath we take we're still dancing, still surviving. something about that strikes me as wonderful and sublime.  part of me is tired and wants to just stop, be swept away by the boulders and avalanche forever. part of me wants to keep dancing. there must be joy in such creative survival. i like the idea that i am dancing and that it is in someway beautiful.