Seriously, WHY does the finish line keep moving??

Let me walk through something with you guys.

In 2012 lots of stuff was falling apart, so I went to therapy. Blah blah blah, Bipolar II. Blah blah blah, I can handle this. Yadda yadda I quit therapy. Almost 2 years later I end up back in therapy because things are again not going well.

Then today.... at the end of today's session, New Therapist (Meg2.0) tells me, "hey, I'd like to lift something off of you if you're ok with that." Well sure! You can do anything you want to!

"I want to lift that Bipolar II diagnosis off of you. I've been with you for a bunch of months now and I've heard a lot of things about your life now and your life in the past... and I'm sure a lot of things really do look like bipolar II, but I'm here to tell you right now- it's not that. You don't have that. You have different challenges, but not that. So I'm sorry to drop this on you at the end, and we will definitely talk about it more later. But there you go."

Thud. And also yay. And also also. Wow.

I'm not sure what even to think about this. I'm not sure I totally believe her yet. I have a lot to think about. But if it's true that I don't have that particular flavor of crazy, then a lot of things I think about myself are totally different. A lot of the things I've been afraid of don't exist anymore. A lot of things I thought were permanent, or inevitable, or impossible, are totally changed.

SO much to think about.

I've Probably Lost My Mind

Between Daycare, life, life, and church, I'm pretty busy. But I promised a few people I would run something this year for DetermiNation, and this week I finally picked it. It'll be my first medalled race since Ragnar two years ago. And it's my first DNation race for three years.

And then Bowie died. And THEN Rickman died. And I just had to move before I lost that momentum. This is a big disease. This stupid thing takes SO many people. And I know that it's technically lots of different diseases that are grouped together.

And I also know that the American Cancer Society is a behemoth organization with occasionally questionable spending habits. But I can't deny that they run the world's largest research, support, and advocacy groups for cancer. And when anyone (against MY advice) Google's their diagnosis, Cancer.org is the first hit. And I just keep hoping that ACS keeps putting out thorough, balanced, intelligent information for people to read. Because the internet is scary. And Cancer is scary. Combining those two can freak people out hard core.

So I'm running. And Stephan is running. We picked the Soldier Field 10-Mile because it had no fundraising minimum, and was our first DNation race together. And we're recruiting like mad for more people to run with us because so many people are hurting right now because of cancer and this one small (?) thing can help lighten that pain. Training and fundraising for a race feels good. It's how I'm fighting back against the scary, the sad, and the angry.