Recently, a friend of mine reminded me that I haven't blogged in quite a while. My reply should have been that I didn't have the mind to do so ... damn pharmaceutical geniuses. It's hard to make someone understand the intricacies of medication on the Bipolar mind. Fortunately my friend understood. Medications are meant to alter something so something else can be controlled, the end.
Though there is unpredictability in ingesting medication, the benefits far outweigh the risk when you examine the overall picture. In my natural state, my mind will whirl off of its axis. Such a cool illness Bipolar. Who else gets to hallucinate naturally, stay awake for days at a time, multi-task like crazy, experience God in religiousity, have such awareness of the Universe, enjoy a thousand brilliant thoughts at once, be inventive and creative, be full of themselves and be the life of the party, drink others under the table, experience almost devastating hypersexuality and have an overwhelming desire for illicit drugs?
That was my hypomania but it didn't take long before paranoia would set in with the sounds of people mumbling incessantly close by. There are shadowy figures in my midst and as I question myself, I say nothing to another. But life is changing and my gut tells me to drop out of social groups to stay concealed. I am agitated and sarcastic. Owning a sports car allows me to be reckless and dangerous. I test my fate. I have road rage and I pass at will. Don't cut in front of me in the grocery store, my patience has been consumed. I am obsessed and have compulsions. I am filled with a torturous unexplainable fear and the sounds of horror that are imbedded deep inside my mind worsen. This is my mania. I have somehow ingested absolute darkness and like oil in a glass, it coats my soul. Sitting in my car, I watch the garage door as it closes behind me. I somehow analyze the possibilities. My paranoia is now severe. Obsessive suicidal ideation takes over all of my senses. Another try at suicide and then another. Tell no one, it is the Silent Killer, get it done, I don't want to do it ... I am driven for an end. The other side of mania is depression and I subsist within from December to December. I dig deeper into the couch to survive. My psychiatrist mouths the word I cannot hear, "hospitalization." It is easy to cast off logic in illness. There was a time when suicidal failure was my greatest defeat, but suicide will take me no more.
A cool illness, Bipolar? This malady has been my nemesis, as well as, my partner for in illness I have experienced the extraordinary. I am not worse for the journey when I can look into the eyes of another and understand. I know now that wandering on a course without explanation will either weaken you or make you stronger. I refuse to be weak, I've lived the who I am.
Finally, being asymptomatic now means that LIFE IS LIKE A LINE. Neither too high or too low, I live on the line where stability is. Though a medication cocktail controls the switch that is unreachable, I am certain with any failure, I shall reboot.
Cynthia Sabotka is the author of "Life Is Like a Line: A Memoir of Moods, Medication, and Mania." Diagnosed at the age of 48, her intense memoir will propel you in the life Bipolar. Available: www.silverliningpublishing.com
