I was reading something today and thought of your OP,
@puppy9.
It's Seneca's letter to Marcia, who had been grieving over her son's death for three years and was stuck in it, reallly embracing and almost in love with the grief, and refusing to move forward.
Seneca is very assertive and sometimes a bit harsh in the letter. He says it is because he is battling the grief that has taken over. No one can console her, and she refuses anything that would help her to move forward. Her love for her grief has taken over her love for her son as well as her life. She is unwilling to live and unable to die. He respects her very much, and says he wouldn't have spoken to her this way if the death had just happened. He says in defense of his approach,
Wounds heal easily when the blood is fresh upon them: they can then be cleared out and brought to the surface, and admit of being probed by the finger: when disease has turned them into malignant ulcers, their cure is more difficult. I cannot now infuence so strong a grief by polite and mild measures..." My tone is not Seneca's. I'm coming from a gentler place than that.
The following is the line that made me think of your post. I'd hate to see you unnecessarily get a malignant ulcer, so in response to your OP, I say, "Whoa there! Hold on!"
What madness this is, to punish one's self because one is unfortunate, and not to lessen, but to increase one's ills!
(He actually cussed in the sentence before that! He said, "Plague on it!" Or as we would say today, "Oh hell no! Fuck that shit!"
)
I hear you. You have bipolar. You feel behind. I have compassion for that, and I want you to know I acknowledge you, your past suffering, and your not invalid fears. At the same time, I don't think you can know what will come to pass, and worry is a way to try to feel in control of an uncertain future. But staying behind will not help you move forward if there's any hope at all. Things may be uncertain if you try, but if you stay where you are without trying, it will only strengthen any misfortunes you've experienced, and there is no uncertainty that by remaning in any situation they caused, it will only get worse.
I am not soothing you or making light of your misfortune: if fate can be overcome by tears, let us bring tears to bear upon it: let every day be passed in mourning, every night be spent in sorrow instead of sleep: let your breast be torn by your own hands, your very face attacked by them, and every kind of cruelty be practiced by your grief, if it will profit you. But if the dead cannot be brought back to life, however much we may beat our breasts, if destiny remains fixed and immoveable forever, not to be changed by any sorrow, however great, and death does not loose his hold of anything that he once has taken away, then let our futile grief be brought to an end. Let us, then, steer our own course, and no longer allow ourselves to be driven to leeward by the force of our misfortune. He is a sorry pilot who lets the waves wring his rudder from his grasp, who leaves the sails to fly loose, and abandons the ship to the storm: but he who boldly grasps the helm and clings to it until the sea closes over him, deserves praise even though he be shiprwrecked.
