There are frequently scenes in old black and white horror or mystery films where directors use the technique of a looming silhouette coming towards a victim to show imminent death or annihilation. Often the victim is paralyzed against a wall, frozen in fear. We don't need to see the death because the technique suggests death.
If you have ever had major surgery, mainlined narcotics or watched someone mainline narcotics, you will remember just how fast it was for the drugs to render you unconscious or high as a kite. So it is with my chemical imbalance. I own this description because that is how it feels for me when the chemicals change in my body leaving me manic or deeply, like a drowning of sorts - depressed. And like drugs taken intravenously, I am at their mercy for the moment. I can't eat cake to thwart its path or be talked out of it; it is happening within my body at a level involuntary.
I have heard some refer to Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a metaphor for bi-polarity and while he may have been overly inspired by some real life incident during his life, I hardly believe it comes anything close to what most, if anyone, with bi-polarity experiences. Snarky people, when upset with someone, usually a roommate, describe behaviour that they may deem extreme, as the person being bi-polar. I have seen the film, Silver Linings, and while I love to watch Bradley Cooper breathe, the film is described as a romantic comedy which should leave a typically intelligent person with a clue that what they have just seen should not be used for diagnostic purposes. The closest I have ever seen my particular experience with bi-polarity portrayed on film is Claire Danes in the first or second season of the TV series, Homeland.
In one episode, long before she reaches mania, we see her tossing pills down the drain. We don't know why she is doing this and I don't recall that the series ever explains this behaviour. Then, as things move along, she becomes more and more enmeshed in her mania; a thing that happens slowly and steadily ultimately reaching a crescendo. When I first watched this series I knew nothing of the plot nor did I know of her fictional diagnosis. What I did find interesting however, is that the more manic she became the more I felt a need to go run around and do stuff. Then when I realized what was happening I had to stop watching because I knew where it was all headed. The final scene, before her hospitalization, has her walls plastered with photos and sticky notes and her desperately trying to convince her boss that all that mishegas had true plausibility and logic. But still she is carted off to the hospital. What the series never ever addresses is the link between bi-polarity and creativity and that her mind on fire does make plausible connections otherwise why in the world would the CIA keep her employed? She's right and chemically imbalanced.
In this day and age it never ceases to amaze me that chemical imbalances, and the like, seem to scare so many people. You are dismissed outright, perceived suddenly as not to be trusted, people even flinch when I reveal this about myself. All of this tells me that things that happen in the blood, the bones, the colon, the mouth, the eyes, anywhere but the brain are accepted as potentially having problems, but not the brain. A malady requiring chemo therapy leaving one sick and weak will gets loads of people doing shifts of care on your behalf, but no one will ever come sit by your side if your chemicals become imbalanced. It's kind of like a: tough lucky buddy, kind of thing. And yes, there have been times when I wanted someone in the house, just to be near, close at hand when my veil of sadness, my silhouette of darkness descends upon my body. That is what it feels like. I can feel the imbalance happening. It is like black water emanating from my brain that slowly seeps down slowly engulfing my neck, my breasts and torso all the way to my groin. It is a blanket of sorts but it is internal and I can not stop its descent or its saturation of my inner core. That is what it feels like when I descend into depression.
If you are not without a mood disorder your depression is like Doris Day: you have a few hours of worry about how to deal with Rock Hudson. Then you go off to the hair salon and feel bright and cheery assured that all things will soon be looking up. My depression makes it feel as though upturning the corners of my mouth is impossible. Lifting my feet clear of the floor needs to be thought about for a few hours. I cry over spilt milk and watching the news becomes a miniseries for why I should die. The only thing that gives me comfort during these times are endless episodes of Judge Judy. This is so for two very helpful, for me, reasons. The first being that she is precise: she presents no ambivalence or indecisiveness and the second being that she on most episodes delivers words of wisdom. The former is what I need when I am consumed with depression. I need the energy of someone who doesn't have time for meandering, who keeps things on track and tells (me) litigants what to do. The latter is simply comforting to me. Words of wisdom are always encouraging coming from those older than me. I don't even have to watch the episodes. I can lay in bed and listen.
My dear friend Diane Tose is majestic at caring for me when I am depressed. She's intuitive in this way. She gives gentle direction to me when I am low. She says: Go take a shower. Then we will eat some breakfast. Then I am going to take you to the park and we will look at flowers. And I follow her gentle commands. Never does she try to get me to explain a thing. Her commands are simple and not endless. Her directions are: A four steps and then you are done, kind of course.
It's chemical, not cerebral. To those that think a good yelling is in order to snap me out of things, or whom make any attempt at talk therapy, let me just say this: O God! Please just go away… I can't engage in the volume nor the thought process needed to think.
Mania on the other hand feels like I am empowered with the rights to a kingdom. And yes, it feels good. It feels stupendous and right. I begin to think clearer and faster, I become utterly intolerant of the mediocre and slow. In some ways I am hunting for more mania to support and sustain my own and when the criteria has not been met I move on fast. I seem to have a particular intolerance during these times for customer service people (people with stupid jobs that require customer interactions). I bust all sorts of gaskets when I have to deal with someone who can't think on their feet. I become infuriated, and nowadays I try to avoid these types when I am in mania. I avoid them because they already have to deal with people whom are intolerant and they don't need me, who derives energy from behaving like a shark in dark waters, hunting for blood.
My mania manifests itself in three ways: Sleeplessness, intolerance of stupidity, and the inability to listen. Those are the negative attributes. The positive ones are sleeplessness, intolerance of stupidity, and the impulse to create. I get flowing streams in complete chunks of things that I wish to create. I can see whole complete projects that I can write from start to finish. It is like an aerial view from above. I can see it all laid out and what needs to go where. I can anticipate before you have arrived at the same conclusion. The intolerance comes from you not being able to keep up. I become frustrated by the interference of those that seem determined to ruin my flow of creativity.
Much has been written and correlated between bi-polarity and creativity. Reams of paper have been used to look at art and mania. Those that create bodies of work that come in streams, seemingly out of nowhere, have often been ensconced in mania. I have often asked myself and others why I am like this?Was it something I did to myself? Why me when I worked so hard to learn and understand? I have received many answer from professionals, (It's environmental, genetic predisposition, etc.). I have also been told, and read literature to confirm this, is that on average, it takes, on average, 20 years before a correct diagnosis for bi-polarity is ever made. It was also thought at one time that children could not be bi-polar. I was a bi-polar child. I was sent to bed at 8 and remained awake many nights until dawn staring out the window. I had an absolute intolerance to certain clothing which caused me to scream in agony. I felt intolerant of my mother who seemed a ridiculous imbecile and whom frustrated me at every turn. I was brilliant, (one had to be tested and scored for entry into kindergarten), and sent to progressive private schools where thinking outside the box was encouraged and praised. And as one of my brothers once declared: It all left me with no one to relate to. My theory on my own disorder is that the stress I endured living my particular life (environmental), caused, over time, valves to disfunction. (We all live under stress and not everyone has a disorder but my inability to 'handle' it may be the genetic component. It's a fight or flight kind of chemical release and too many times spent fleeing or fighting inundates the body to chemical signals that it eventually confuses. I think too it is hereditary. Hereditary in the sense that others in my lineage have suffered from different kinds of mood disorders not necessarily bi-polarity. The metaphor I have for my own diagnosis is that the rubber band suddenly did not have the capacity to snap back. I wore something internal out. Like a joint, or a potholder burned too many times.
All of us know someone with a mental illness though that term does sound frightening because mental means the head to most people and if we imagine the person has something wrong with their head we just assume they should be steered clear of because they might be prone to murder. I am not prone to murder, but I am prone to seemingly unknown causes for sudden depression that appears to have no reasonable explanation. No one died, I wasn't fired, my child didn't die or disappear and for most people a situation devoid of an obvious reason just makes you nuts. I am neither nuts, though I can be nutty, I am not stupid, but I can be incoherent at times. I can appear to be elsewhere but I am always the scrutinizer. I have an internal compass that allows me to always know where I am and when I am in a place that requires my self care I will abruptly leave.
I love a man named Paul. I have loved him since the day I saw him on a bench at our work. I was in my twenties and he was 49. It was a few days before his 50th birthday. On his birthday he invited me to his two floored apartment in Chinatown. I baked a loaf of bread because I imagined it to be a thing that he might love me for. I had never baked bread but had always seen fresh bread as high and fluffy and wafting something wonderful. When my bread failed to rise I baked it longer until it was hard and something to befuddle and anger the best of birds. But I did not know and gave it to him only to be incredibly surprised when a knife for slicing just wasn't enough. We laughed and he thanked me for the thought. I spent the night with him and he led me to a tent he had pitched in his working atelier. As I approached the tent I thought to myself: How wonderful! When I woke in the morning I will never forget how I felt. I was in a cocoon: safe and warm. I stayed in there long after he had left for the morning, gathering breakfast. I think of that tent when I am captured by chemical tears. When I am blue and sad I call Paul just to hear his voice. When I am excited and brimming over I call Paul. He knows the sound of my voice and what state I am in without asking. A call to him places me securely back into the tent. I am loosing those that know me well and there is a part of me that is frightened by the loss of those that will soon be gone. They are witnesses to my life and all that it has experienced, every change, every growth and every mishap. And the thought of having no one to witness and memorize my existence feels and seems an impossibility to survive.
But still,
I hope.
If you have ever had major surgery, mainlined narcotics or watched someone mainline narcotics, you will remember just how fast it was for the drugs to render you unconscious or high as a kite. So it is with my chemical imbalance. I own this description because that is how it feels for me when the chemicals change in my body leaving me manic or deeply, like a drowning of sorts - depressed. And like drugs taken intravenously, I am at their mercy for the moment. I can't eat cake to thwart its path or be talked out of it; it is happening within my body at a level involuntary.
I have heard some refer to Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a metaphor for bi-polarity and while he may have been overly inspired by some real life incident during his life, I hardly believe it comes anything close to what most, if anyone, with bi-polarity experiences. Snarky people, when upset with someone, usually a roommate, describe behaviour that they may deem extreme, as the person being bi-polar. I have seen the film, Silver Linings, and while I love to watch Bradley Cooper breathe, the film is described as a romantic comedy which should leave a typically intelligent person with a clue that what they have just seen should not be used for diagnostic purposes. The closest I have ever seen my particular experience with bi-polarity portrayed on film is Claire Danes in the first or second season of the TV series, Homeland.
In one episode, long before she reaches mania, we see her tossing pills down the drain. We don't know why she is doing this and I don't recall that the series ever explains this behaviour. Then, as things move along, she becomes more and more enmeshed in her mania; a thing that happens slowly and steadily ultimately reaching a crescendo. When I first watched this series I knew nothing of the plot nor did I know of her fictional diagnosis. What I did find interesting however, is that the more manic she became the more I felt a need to go run around and do stuff. Then when I realized what was happening I had to stop watching because I knew where it was all headed. The final scene, before her hospitalization, has her walls plastered with photos and sticky notes and her desperately trying to convince her boss that all that mishegas had true plausibility and logic. But still she is carted off to the hospital. What the series never ever addresses is the link between bi-polarity and creativity and that her mind on fire does make plausible connections otherwise why in the world would the CIA keep her employed? She's right and chemically imbalanced.
In this day and age it never ceases to amaze me that chemical imbalances, and the like, seem to scare so many people. You are dismissed outright, perceived suddenly as not to be trusted, people even flinch when I reveal this about myself. All of this tells me that things that happen in the blood, the bones, the colon, the mouth, the eyes, anywhere but the brain are accepted as potentially having problems, but not the brain. A malady requiring chemo therapy leaving one sick and weak will gets loads of people doing shifts of care on your behalf, but no one will ever come sit by your side if your chemicals become imbalanced. It's kind of like a: tough lucky buddy, kind of thing. And yes, there have been times when I wanted someone in the house, just to be near, close at hand when my veil of sadness, my silhouette of darkness descends upon my body. That is what it feels like. I can feel the imbalance happening. It is like black water emanating from my brain that slowly seeps down slowly engulfing my neck, my breasts and torso all the way to my groin. It is a blanket of sorts but it is internal and I can not stop its descent or its saturation of my inner core. That is what it feels like when I descend into depression.
If you are not without a mood disorder your depression is like Doris Day: you have a few hours of worry about how to deal with Rock Hudson. Then you go off to the hair salon and feel bright and cheery assured that all things will soon be looking up. My depression makes it feel as though upturning the corners of my mouth is impossible. Lifting my feet clear of the floor needs to be thought about for a few hours. I cry over spilt milk and watching the news becomes a miniseries for why I should die. The only thing that gives me comfort during these times are endless episodes of Judge Judy. This is so for two very helpful, for me, reasons. The first being that she is precise: she presents no ambivalence or indecisiveness and the second being that she on most episodes delivers words of wisdom. The former is what I need when I am consumed with depression. I need the energy of someone who doesn't have time for meandering, who keeps things on track and tells (me) litigants what to do. The latter is simply comforting to me. Words of wisdom are always encouraging coming from those older than me. I don't even have to watch the episodes. I can lay in bed and listen.
My dear friend Diane Tose is majestic at caring for me when I am depressed. She's intuitive in this way. She gives gentle direction to me when I am low. She says: Go take a shower. Then we will eat some breakfast. Then I am going to take you to the park and we will look at flowers. And I follow her gentle commands. Never does she try to get me to explain a thing. Her commands are simple and not endless. Her directions are: A four steps and then you are done, kind of course.
It's chemical, not cerebral. To those that think a good yelling is in order to snap me out of things, or whom make any attempt at talk therapy, let me just say this: O God! Please just go away… I can't engage in the volume nor the thought process needed to think.
Mania on the other hand feels like I am empowered with the rights to a kingdom. And yes, it feels good. It feels stupendous and right. I begin to think clearer and faster, I become utterly intolerant of the mediocre and slow. In some ways I am hunting for more mania to support and sustain my own and when the criteria has not been met I move on fast. I seem to have a particular intolerance during these times for customer service people (people with stupid jobs that require customer interactions). I bust all sorts of gaskets when I have to deal with someone who can't think on their feet. I become infuriated, and nowadays I try to avoid these types when I am in mania. I avoid them because they already have to deal with people whom are intolerant and they don't need me, who derives energy from behaving like a shark in dark waters, hunting for blood.
My mania manifests itself in three ways: Sleeplessness, intolerance of stupidity, and the inability to listen. Those are the negative attributes. The positive ones are sleeplessness, intolerance of stupidity, and the impulse to create. I get flowing streams in complete chunks of things that I wish to create. I can see whole complete projects that I can write from start to finish. It is like an aerial view from above. I can see it all laid out and what needs to go where. I can anticipate before you have arrived at the same conclusion. The intolerance comes from you not being able to keep up. I become frustrated by the interference of those that seem determined to ruin my flow of creativity.
Much has been written and correlated between bi-polarity and creativity. Reams of paper have been used to look at art and mania. Those that create bodies of work that come in streams, seemingly out of nowhere, have often been ensconced in mania. I have often asked myself and others why I am like this?Was it something I did to myself? Why me when I worked so hard to learn and understand? I have received many answer from professionals, (It's environmental, genetic predisposition, etc.). I have also been told, and read literature to confirm this, is that on average, it takes, on average, 20 years before a correct diagnosis for bi-polarity is ever made. It was also thought at one time that children could not be bi-polar. I was a bi-polar child. I was sent to bed at 8 and remained awake many nights until dawn staring out the window. I had an absolute intolerance to certain clothing which caused me to scream in agony. I felt intolerant of my mother who seemed a ridiculous imbecile and whom frustrated me at every turn. I was brilliant, (one had to be tested and scored for entry into kindergarten), and sent to progressive private schools where thinking outside the box was encouraged and praised. And as one of my brothers once declared: It all left me with no one to relate to. My theory on my own disorder is that the stress I endured living my particular life (environmental), caused, over time, valves to disfunction. (We all live under stress and not everyone has a disorder but my inability to 'handle' it may be the genetic component. It's a fight or flight kind of chemical release and too many times spent fleeing or fighting inundates the body to chemical signals that it eventually confuses. I think too it is hereditary. Hereditary in the sense that others in my lineage have suffered from different kinds of mood disorders not necessarily bi-polarity. The metaphor I have for my own diagnosis is that the rubber band suddenly did not have the capacity to snap back. I wore something internal out. Like a joint, or a potholder burned too many times.
All of us know someone with a mental illness though that term does sound frightening because mental means the head to most people and if we imagine the person has something wrong with their head we just assume they should be steered clear of because they might be prone to murder. I am not prone to murder, but I am prone to seemingly unknown causes for sudden depression that appears to have no reasonable explanation. No one died, I wasn't fired, my child didn't die or disappear and for most people a situation devoid of an obvious reason just makes you nuts. I am neither nuts, though I can be nutty, I am not stupid, but I can be incoherent at times. I can appear to be elsewhere but I am always the scrutinizer. I have an internal compass that allows me to always know where I am and when I am in a place that requires my self care I will abruptly leave.
I love a man named Paul. I have loved him since the day I saw him on a bench at our work. I was in my twenties and he was 49. It was a few days before his 50th birthday. On his birthday he invited me to his two floored apartment in Chinatown. I baked a loaf of bread because I imagined it to be a thing that he might love me for. I had never baked bread but had always seen fresh bread as high and fluffy and wafting something wonderful. When my bread failed to rise I baked it longer until it was hard and something to befuddle and anger the best of birds. But I did not know and gave it to him only to be incredibly surprised when a knife for slicing just wasn't enough. We laughed and he thanked me for the thought. I spent the night with him and he led me to a tent he had pitched in his working atelier. As I approached the tent I thought to myself: How wonderful! When I woke in the morning I will never forget how I felt. I was in a cocoon: safe and warm. I stayed in there long after he had left for the morning, gathering breakfast. I think of that tent when I am captured by chemical tears. When I am blue and sad I call Paul just to hear his voice. When I am excited and brimming over I call Paul. He knows the sound of my voice and what state I am in without asking. A call to him places me securely back into the tent. I am loosing those that know me well and there is a part of me that is frightened by the loss of those that will soon be gone. They are witnesses to my life and all that it has experienced, every change, every growth and every mishap. And the thought of having no one to witness and memorize my existence feels and seems an impossibility to survive.
But still,
I hope.
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