this and that

i find it amazing how i tend to break things into sides. as i have been told all my life, i am very "black and white." i find this interesting considering my being defined as bipolar. is my tendency to break things into good and evil, happy and sad, beautiful and ugly something that follows these newly defined brain patterns, or is it my natural disposition? could i have instead simply been influenced by the fact that i was raised by someone who is also said to be "black and white." i find it interesting how our social labels and categories are always used as a way to explain and excuse are natural tendencies. i tend to feel that my pull towards duality has a little to do with everything. i have always been a person that is entranced by beauty, and i have always felt that what we see as beautiful or ugly are only truly complimented by seeing both sides. you can never know how bright it is until you have been in the dark. you never know how slow you are going until you have transitioned from the freeway to a small side street, or vice versa. there are always two sides and i feel that without both there is no way to truly see the beauty in the ugliness. now, i have been told that i am full of shit when it comes to this topic, but this is how i feel and this is what i will stick to.

in my life i have seen both sides. i constantly move from what i see as "the good girl" to the "troublemaker," the bad girl. i always felt strangled at one end and guilty at the other. things are always hot or cold, right or wrong, happy or sad, everything or nothing at all. These are things i need to reconcile. these are things that do need to find a happy median, and while i do love to see both sides and compare one to the other, it is not always healthy and appropriate for certain situations.

i was taking a class where we read sense and sensibility. at the end of the class we were supposed to write a paper and i remember having such a hard time because i couldn't stop thinking about what i saw as the two vastly different sides. there was the romantic world of beauty and art and religion and the enlightenment world of science and reason. i had such a hard time because i wanted both and i felt both but i couldn't find a way to bring them together. after completely panicking as to why i could not see the middle i had a conversation with my boyfriend josh. now, while most people think their partners are wonderful and perfect, josh is truly the most amazing person i have ever met. he talked me down off my cliff and explained that he can't see it in any other way. he can't separate the two because he feels that they are so perfectly connected. at first hearing this i kind of wanted to punch him; here i was trying to figure something out and he comes along and says that he already figured it out. but then i realized that that wasn't what he was saying at all. he demonstrated to me that he is just the opposite. he just works differently than i do. his world is always connected and he seems to have the opposite problem.

this is beautiful because i stopped being upset and angry at myself for not seeing it in a certain way and realized that that is how i am. i am a person that tends to see things as dualities. it is not my fault that i see it one way or his fault that he sees it the other, it is just how we are. so today i work on finding the gray area in important life struggles that need a bit more stability, struggles that don't do well when you totter from side to side. today i also allow myself the ability to be okay with comparisons. i allow myself the ability to see both sides and find the beauty in one and then the other. but even that is about balance. it is a balance of finding the right time to use my new skills and the right time to allow my natural tendency for "black and white" to come out.