Libra Gear Studio: A Chainmaille Journey

Crafting With Bi-Polar

April 14, 2009 at 10:16 pm (Who I Am) (bi-polar, chainmail, chainmaille, mental illness)

I started crafting for money back in 2002 as a way to earn cash for smokes and food. That was a crazy year. I had lost my job (one in a string of many) and was living on couches or with boyfriends. I did odd jobs and made hemp necklaces. As the year progressed and I became more ill things started to blow up. I move 5 times that year, couldn’t hold a job, and all of it was someone else’s fault. I had no idea that I was behaving differently, and acting weird. When I finally realized what was going on I had hit rock bottom. It was then that I found myself in my friend’s sister’s car. i had only met her a few times, and here she was taking me to the state mental hospital.

During my two week stay I got medicated and learned to make those stupid pony bead key chains. I took it a step further and made necklaces and bracelets. They allowed me to have a set of my own and under supervision I crafted. When I got out the first time I went back to hemp necklaces, and got pretty darn good at making them.

I relapsed later that fall and ended back in the hospital for the second and so far last time. After that it was a homeless shelter and then an independent living situation. And that is where I came back to chainmail. A skill I learned in the 90′s from my friend Lewis, who had long since moved out of my life. I taught myself several new weaves. I researched them at the library on my off time. I then turned to making chainmaille jewelry.

I have been making it ever since. As my bi-polar progresses and I seem to have good spells where I am creative and a jewelry making fool, whether it is chainmaille or other crafts, and then the bad times hit where I am both manic, depressed, and psychotic (non-violent, mostly a condition call hyper-vigilance, seeing stuff, hearing stuff, smelling stuff, and mild paranoia.) all in one go. I face this in cycles. During those times nothing gets done until the upswing happens again. It is an interesting illness to me. When I am feeling good I am feeling REALLY good, when bad, REALLY REALLY bad. When I am in either state I don’t really know I am there. It is not until I return to “normal” that I realize, “oh I was manic, or man It was bad.”

Lately I have been on a bad spell, but it would seem that I am coming out of it as the weather becomes warmer. Crafting is being done again. I hope that this will last a while, I would also like to be able to leave the house and do stuff again, I am taking baby steps though.

I go through times where I wonder if my stuff is good enough, will people like it, I am unsure of everything I do (most of the time). This spills over into daily life and I question the validity of what I feel or don’t feel in some cases.

Creating jewelry has always been my anchor since I started 7 years ago with simple hemp jewelry and wing nuts and washers. As I struggle to keep my head above the water on a daily basis, I know that if I can make something (even if it takes 3 days) then all is ok. It is how I gauge my day. I had a crafty day, or I had a not so crafty day, or I had a bad day. I hope that wherever I wind up in the future I will be able to craft.

More than you wanted to know I am sure, but I feel like rambling this evening. I will have to deal with this the rest of my life. With each med change it gets better, then breakthrough symptoms happen and it gets bad again. It is a journey I suppose, and meds, the people who love me, crafting, the Grateful Dead all see me through.

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