I’ve never been “good” at having Bipolar Disorder. (I’m pretty sure that’s not even a thing.) For the record, I really loathe the term “bipolar.” I’m sure that’s likely because of the connotation, but still. Manic Depression was just fine and explained it well, so I don’t get why we needed to change it.
But, I digress.
If you’re new here, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder circa early 2005, when I stayed up all night after my Poker Home Game contemplating what I should “do” with my life other than waiting tables, staring at my college diploma dated May 2003, and smoking weed. Then I just kept on staying awake. For days.
You might say I was lost. Languishing.
You would have been right.
I mostly held it together over the years, but every time I got recognizably manic (2005, 2008, 2019) I ended up needing inpatient treatment for a week. Those stays went from terrifying to intriguing. I really meshed with the addicts more than the others there for “regular” mental health help. (I’m not sure what that’s saying.)
In 2019, I fell in love with my soulmate and, as tends to happen with big feelings and life changes, the mania tapped on my shoulder and stayed for awhile. I thought it would all be a dealbreaker for him, but no - he stood strong and stood right with me. I think it helped that he knew me as a teenager, so he understood the temperament I could get back to, and he understood my pain.
We bought a house together a month after COVID hit, and then got hitched a year after that.
And I thought because of his love, the mania would now find me untouchable. I continued my two-decade charade of being under-medicated, and of stuffing down my feelings - until the summer came. Three months after our wedding, there I was: living large on big love. So, I finished my manuscript, clocking around 25k words in the span of 3 weeks. I’d finished!
It was just a final-first-draft - but I went ahead and queried.
Now, my novel is not by any means novel - in that it’s heavily based in my reality with a main character who is essentially a fictionalized version of me.
(I didn’t get an offer for representation in 2021, but that is not the point of this post.)
Novel me and Real me are quite similar: we both get to this painfully manic place, and we don’t know how to find what we’re looking for. Unlike U2, we don’t even KNOW what we’re looking for. But by god to we try to figure it out.
In the summer of 2021, YES - I finished my book and an accomplishment was achieved. But, I felt forced to step away from my career. I strained my relationship with my parents, by talking about said book and having to hear their retellings of some Childhood Bad Stuff. I was fine reliving it on the page, dissociating and writing in third person. But an actual conversation?! Ugh. No thanks.
By the summer of 2022, I was still under-medicated but at least I was seeing a therapist regularly. I personally think she would have been better as a 4th grade teacher, but that’s neither here nor there.
I started to think about going back to work - but if the world was my giant oyster, and I needed a bigger fork. I could work for the ACLU! The Innocence Project! A 911 operator! (I listen to a lot of True Crime Pods.)
I wound up back there: hard bed, thin sheets, a Group Therapy buddy who’d shot off half his face, but lived to tell about it. To tell me about it.
But, I had my usual, steady accoutrements: notebooks, my favorite books, my highlighters, my pens.
And I found it. Manic me had been leaving Future Manic me breadcrumbs. For years.
The note to self was inside the cover of my copy of Sophie's World. I'd written, at some point,
Harry Frankfurt
~on bullshit~
(saw on Daily Show)
Poem from 8/29/21
10/17/22
Did I "find" this book next year?
So, I read ~on bullshit~ again... and I searched and searched for the 8/29/21 poem. Not in my desktop folders, not handwritten, nor in the Notes app on my phone. Even now, I had to ask myself, "where else could it be?" 2022 me figured it out. And so did Today Me.
I'd emailed it to myself. On 8/29/21.
And I realized, a little more each year - so much of my illness stems from religious trauma coupled with an existential crisis of conscience. This year, I'm closer to solving it, or coming to terms with it, or reconciling it. (And I've updated the inside cover of Sophie's World. It's easier to find if I just tell Next Year Me to look at my blog entry from 9/8/23.
Poem
My brain is buzzing like a saw
From all I saw
All I heard
All I believed.
I saw the city sidewalks, our streets
I saw stale Monday beer cans at my feet
I saw the boards
Boarding up our fears
And boarding up or stores
Wails of corporate, and smaller tears.
I heard the cries
the shots
the screams -
The lessons taught
I heard her name / say her name
I heard nothing will ever be the same
We should be ashamed.
I believed a god spoke to me
I thought he came to set us free
I believed the universe and its truth:
(to deny it now would be uncouth.)
My brain is buzzing like a saw
There's a line I had to draw
I no longer ascribe
to all I believed.
I can't conceive of it all,
thanks to all I heard
And all I saw.
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