When all Your Support System Ever Does is Fail You...

...go out and get a new one. DUH! I'm not going to go into the gory details here on a blog that the whole world can read, but I've found over at least the last two years that I have the "perfect" support system in place. Everyone is compartmentalized into their own little role, working on their own little piece of my life and they all coordinate seamlessly with one another. After all, no one can do it all, but the left hand has to know what the right hand is doing. Except that well, I've found that even though I think I have a person whose actual paid job description matches up with every individual part I need support for, they're not actually doing what it is they're being paid to do nor do they ever really communicate with each other. Not only that, but some even actively put up barriers that lead me down the path towards failing. Not so perfect, is it?

This brings me to, 'it's not what you know, but who you know.' You don't need to know absolutely everything about everything as long as you know someone who knows what you need to know and can tell you what it is you don't know. Am I confusing you?

So the other day a very good friend of mine told me to talk to another friend of ours and I did for a few minutes this afternoon. She suggested I join On Our Own. I'm not really into the support group thing, but the peer to peer mentoring Olmstead related stuff I am into very much so, so I think I will in fact give them a try. [The Supreme Court sure got that case right.]

The thing is though I feel a little awkward about the whole thing. A bit odd; somewhat out of place. I've toyed with writing a post about wanting/not wanting to be a BP blogger. About feeling the need to enter that world, to identify more with this side of myself, but feeling awkward about it all. I guess this is that post. I feel like I'm not fully representing myself by not identifying as a BP blogger, but on the other hand I don't feel like I'm fully part of that world. I feel like I'm on the fringes, like I don't really belong.

I'm not completely crazy, just ever the slightest bit. I don't hear voices or want to have sex with every guy I meet. I've never hopped on a train and gone to NYC on a whim (although now that I mention it, that does sound appealing). I absolutely refuse to get drunk. I don't enjoy it at all. My highs and lows are nothing like Kay Jamison's or Marya Hornbacher's or even Norah Vincent's (it's that sex thing, totally not into the sex thing), which are much less severe then theirs. [all of their books are EXCELLENT btw] I've very rarely gotten to the point where I don't leave my room for days at a time, when I just want to curl up and die it's always the result of too much of the wrong kind of medication, and whether or not I'm paranoid is she said/she said. See, just ever so slightly crazy. I've just got a screw lose, not 1 or 2 completely missing.

I want to be a BP blogger, I want join On Our Own, I'm rather curious about entering that world, but I feel like a fraud. You know in amusement parks there's a minimum height requirement to ride rides? Well maybe there's a maximum GAF score to qualify as just crazy enough and I'm over it. That, and I'm afraid if I start to hang out frequently with people who are depressed they'll make me depressed. I don't need people to drag me down, I need them to help me. I know, totally ridiculous. OOO Baltimore City/County has a young adult group that I'm just barely still eligible for. I need to get over myself and just go. I need to suck it up and deal with the fact that I can't take a cab that far anymore and that paratransit's not as good, and go. It's for my own good. After all, there's no help button that gets you an instantaneously functioning support system.

[image description: a help button on a computer keyboard]