bipolar Christmas

I do have troubles with Christmas every year, but this years troubles seemed to come mostly on the 23rd. The rest of my troubles were just good old bipolar troubles. The trouble with bipolar is really that if you quit taking some of your medicine, it is nearly impossible to start again, because when you are depressed you don't have the energy or motivation or something, and when you are hypomanic you don't want to take it so you won't come back down. At least I am taking some so I'm not suicidal or psychotic. And I'm really working on getting back into my medicine routine.

Christmas was pretty nice when I wasn't really depressed. What I love most about Christmas, in addition to the decorations and general feeling, are the traditions. On Christmas Eve we followed our usual routine. We passed out mismatched song lyrics and sang for two hours. That's always fun because the verses are always different in different versions. Everyone is supposed to sing their lyrics, so usually by the end of the song everyone is singing different words. It's very fun. After that we went to look at Christmas lights, and I was rather depressed and nostalgic and then angry momentarily because when I tried to tell my mom something I haven't told her before (how very afraid I am of next year) she elbowed me very hard in the stomach and told me to shut up because her favorite song was playing on the cd player. But it was still fun.

I got a lot more than I was expecting to get for Christmas. I like receiving gifts of course, but I hate feeling selfish or greedy, so there are negatives and positives to receiving more than was expected. What I enjoyed the most was seeing my family open the gifts I got them, because I tried really hard this year to buy people things I believed they would like.

I got (I'm sure I'll forget a few minor items) a $15 itunes gift card, a $50 Starbucks gift card, an iron, and ironing board, a sewing machine, sewing scissors, pins, thread, a new 30GB video ipod (my old ipod broke), and a new laptop. All of that except the giftcard and the ipod were things I needed for school.

I was very excited about the ipod and the computer. My parents told me they were going to give me their old laptop, and they were going to try to fix my old ipod, so I really wasn't expecting either. I immediately started setting up itunes on the laptop and transferring all the awesome CD's Morgan gave me onto it. I also bought two TV episodes for my ipod (Galactica and Law and Order SVU). The resolution on the ipod is amazing. I feel really appreciative of my parents. Not because they give me stuff, although I really appreciate that, but because they really care. I know they make me very angry sometimes, but they really do love me unconditionally, and they really would give up anything for me (including the house and the piano, which they are talking about selling).

Today I went snowboarding with my cousin. It was pretty cool because I didn't have any problems carving, which I was concerned about since I didn't snowboard at all last year, I only skiied. I had some problems at the top of the mountain because the snow was choppy so I didn't dare carve, so my calf muscles got pretty sore and I ran over some rocks and scratched up my beautiful board.
I am not sure exactly what it is about boys (I'm probably being sexist, but it is a personally observed phenomenon) that makes them believe they can do things like go off jumps when they have only been snowboarding a few times just because they believe they are fantastic at snowboarding. But my cousin has fallen prey to this dellusion, and he went off a jump on the last run of the day and broke his arm. I felt bad for him, but at the same time I think he learned his lesson.

Tonight I went to coffee with someone. I won't say they're name because I'm going to divulge some of their personal information. Anyway, this person told me their sister attempted suicide last week. This person was very sarcastic, so I could tell it was really hurting this person (sorry, I don't want a pronoun to tell you the gender). We had a very good talk though, and I'm really glad we went to coffee (non-caffeinated beverage). Life kind of sucks sometimes. This person is very angry with his/her sister. I could definitely relate.

Then I got to debate Brittany. I had a splitting headache so my first speech was very slurred, but Amanda gave me drugs so it stopped hurting as badly and things got better from there. And Amanda gave me a coat that doesn't fit her from Maurices, and it's very cute.

Sorry, I'm giving a very mechanical description of these past few days but I kind of don't feel like making it any more interesting.

I plan on working on my senior project all day tomorrow, except I have an interview with the newspaper at 2 becuase I'm apparently a "person worth knowing" just because I got into MIT, even though I can name a lot of people as smart/smarter than me at our school that are worth knowing as well.