Memories

The first time I remember feeling something, that I later recognized as a sign of bipolar disorder, was  walking down the hall in junior high feeling like I was in a bubble or a cloud.  I remember observing how odd it felt, to be there but not really be there.  I also remember running around our house until I couldn’t run anymore, on a very different day.  It just felt good, but I didn’t ever exercise into injury or exhaustion.  So it never occurred to me that anything was wrong.

I have been around full blown bipolar people.  A friend of my husband’s was well-known as an extreme exercise fanatic and surfer back in the eighties.  He would be seen sometimes running at night from golf course to golf course in Carmel and Pebble Beach, probably covering 20-30 miles at a time, and then would disappear for weeks.  He was also a famous philanderer, though his live-in girlfriend was one of the most loyal and attractive girls I’ve known, and he often spent money irrationally and used various dangerous drugs despite his otherwise healthy diet.  This Adonis-of-a-man killed himself by jumping off a bridge, thinking he would fly, after using what turned out to be a "bad batch" of cocaine.  It was shocking, but looking  back, his outcome was tragically common to many undiagnosed bipolar sufferers who self-medicate illegally and unwisely. 

Bipolar 2 people don’t experience extreme highs and lows.  We get tired, self-critical, discouraged, and unmotivated, but not often suicidal.  I would call it garden variety depression.  On the flip side, we over-plan, overdo, have trouble focusing, and overspend, but we do not usually gamble away the house or run credit cards to their limits or exercise dangerously.  We self-medicate, but with melatonin and caffeine, maybe marijuana and alcohol (I do not recommend the last two for obvious reasons), but not usually the harder stuff.  Psychotropics are largely ineffective, which is probably a good thing because the side effects are not usually worth the benefits and the good effects don’t seem to last.  That has been my experience.

Bipolar 2 sufferers tend to blend into the general population and are often unaware of the nature or even the name of their problem.  If the highs outweigh the lows, we are considered very upbeat and agreeable, if somewhat annoying, characters.  We don’t socialize much when we are down.  We hide out, read books, do just the bare minimum to get by until we are back to “normal.”  But what is normal, really?  Many artists, most of the best writers and creative people of all kinds, have some sort of mood disorder.   It goes hand in hand with inspiration, that indefinable quality that makes any artistic expression timeless and wonderful.  In song-writing, this quality has been referred to as "window-to-the-soul."  The “muse” does not often visit the even-tempered.  I am a song-writer, a singer, a  musician, a fledgling novel writer, a baker; I love to create something out of nothing and I feel dead when I can’t. 

My next post will deal with specific things that have helped me.  I don’t benefit in any way financially from any of the things I’ll mention, btw.  That’s not what this blog is about.

Manic Me

I’ll probably always post on this blog when I am in some sort of manic state.  That would be right now.  I’m trying not to over-plan, over-commit, or overdo.  I showed up to help a friend coach some high school kids a few days ago and I talked way too much.  Had to send an apology email and promise not to do that again.  But since I am “up,” there is no self-loathing.  That will come later.

Prioritizing is an important skill in a manic state.  Distractions are hard to resist, like a toddler with a succession of shiny balls hanging around him and a favorite toy across the room.  The toy gets neglected, and when that toy is one of my kids, it is not good.  When the toy/activity is music or baking or bike riding, who cares?  The distractions are usually household chores or cleaning that corner of the kitchen that no one even sees. . . .  I usually finish the main task, but the time frame is unusual and full of detours.

Most people think that manic me is the real me.  I used to think so, too, until a radio doctor described bipolar disorder one day and I realized that he was describing me.  Dr. Edell said that there are so many varieties of this condition, it was almost impossible to gather all the symptoms into one neat package.  There’s the mostly up, sometimes low hyperactive; the medium-to-low depressive and everything in between, including the full-blown bipolars who tend toward suicide at one end and crazy-spending/exercising on the manic side.  I suddenly realized that I was not lazy, not an occasionally horrible procrastinator, and not unaccountably anti-social most of the time.  It was such a relief.  And the beginning of my journey to find what was available that would help.

More about that later.