A Whirlwind of Emotion

Sometimes you think the whole world is bipolar. Not each individual person, but the world as a whole. Nature, Karma, God, whichever you prefer. How can someone you know and love, die, on a day when others you know and love are getting married, the happiest day of their lives? How can you celebrate the birthday of a dear friend, when another friend is being told words like hospice and decisions?? How can you celebrate the pregnancy of a friend's brother's wife, when the other brother is in the grips of a brain tumor that just won't quit? Why is life so unfair? Why is death so unfair?

How do you know which way is appropriate to act? Do you celebrate at the wedding? Dance, drink, laugh? How could you do such a thing? Someone is gone forever. Do you grieve and moan and cry and clutch at the people who are hurting the most? How could you act that way at a wedding?

How do you celebrate the birthday? How do you show joy that someone was born on this day and you love her and are grateful that she is in your life, and you want to buy her drinks and stand next to her and watch her enjoy this day. Is that callous? Someone is suffering. Someone is facing the end. Do you skip the birthday celebrations altogether and sit somewhere alone to cry and ponder the unfairness of life and death?

What's appropriate? Who cares? Life will go on no matter what you do. And then it will not. And those of us still here, will be confused, ache, rejoice, feel guilt, shame, glee, confusion again. Because you can't live every moment celebrating only the good, fun, feel good things. And you can't shut down and mourn and grieve every moment of every day. You have to match the world and give it right back to it. Bipolar-it-up.

You do both. A little bit of both. And some days you will be on the joyful side, and you'll notice how beautiful the sky is when the sun is just gone to bed, leaving the most unlikely of pairs, hot pink and deep sapphire blue, mashing together in the horizon. And you'll feel so grateful. And then you'll think of those you love that can't enjoy the show anymore and you'll feel angry and sad. But you will feel. And that's how you'll know you're doing the right thing.

You'll think of the one extreme, with the giddiness and the joy, and you'll think of the other extreme, with the dark clouds and the sadness. And you'll remember the gray, the in between meeting place for thoughts wildly disparate and it will calm you. And you'll chuckle. Because you know, in this bipolar world where it's wonderful and unfair and jubilant and desperate and gorgeous and hideous, that, that's all you can do. Find that gray.