Editor's note: I drew some pictures for this, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out where to upload them too. Imgur wasn't working for some reason, and I'm not in the mood to troubleshoot. I'll transcribe them for you.
Editor's note the second: The soundtrack for writing this were 3 garage rock albums I'd been meaning to listen to. I'd recommend all of them: "96 Tears", "Black Monk Time", and "The Inner Mystique". Black Monk Time is famous, I guess, and it was in an iPhone commercial. This post is sponsored by Apple.
My mind's gotten a lot worse over the past little while. I hadn't realized how bad it was. I'll draw a timeline:
TIMELINE
a pretty little graph with some colored lines, accompanied by the following text:Throughout 2015-16: Periods of apathy and no energy. Fall behind in responsibilities, then panic and catch up on them. Fall out or flame out of friend groups. Come back sometimes, leave again.
October of last year: Start getting out of the house more for school purposes - encounter difficulties with speaking in front of strangers.
January-February: Mood swings start getting quicker.
March: Have panic attacks, but make them sneaky so I don't figure it out yet.
April-May: Love!
June-July: Love! Obsession! Emotion! Recognize things are going downhill, but cling! Cling! Cling!
August: Run away, then crawl back again. Stay isolated, except for this one guy...
September: Run again and things get more complicated
October: Love him sometimes, but just feel sick most of the time.
Then, late October - talk to a therapist about it. Apparently I have symptoms of being bipolar, or something like that. I already knew I was depressed. Apparently if you feel manic also sometimes, that's a bad sign. Now I have the trifecta:
TRIFECTA
a pretty little triangle with some text at the corners that went something like this: TRANS, drawn in big pink letters
BIPOLAR, drawn in red letters right-to-left going backwards, then upside-down, then forwards again
And I don't think I can trust what I think, and it's frightening. I'm scared that my actions aren't under my control - at least as much as I want them to be. I feel cloudy mentally, and the only times I feel clear is when I'm feeling sick and can't move because i'm overwhelmed with how immense and terrible everything feels. It takes an hour or two. I can tell when it stops when I start feeling stupid for how I'm acting.
But why post about it here?
Because I feel better when I complain. When I complain, I get attention. Sometimes it's people trying to care, which is a nice feeling. Other times it's people giving advice, which is helpful. A lot of the time, though, it's about getting a negative reaction. If I act inappropriately, I can get tough love advice or even people yelling at me, and when that happens I feel like I have a good reason to be upset, and I can finally cry, and get some emotional release, instead of just feeling empty or sick.
The interesting part is that this is probably the best my life has ever been, otherwise. Somehow everything outside my own head keeps working out in the long run: school's fine (gonna be finer soon), i'm the femest i've been, I've got all sorts of commodities and accoutrements to enjoy, I've got music to listen to and music to make, I've got food and a house and clothes and all that jazz, and a family that tolerates me, and people that would probably accept me back if i wanted to talk to them again, and plenty of other things that don't make me happy. I guess happiness isn't really related to having things. I think it must be related to not having things, because I'm absolutely certain everything would be worse if I didn't have the things that I do, so I'm grateful every day for how good things are, and angry every day at how terrible things are.
Every couple of weeks I have a revelation about myself. It's very cyclical, and by that I mean that it's a lot like a wheel that keeps running me over. I don't know how many times I can make substantive change into something that has to happen again and again, but I guess i'll see how it goes.
I broke the 1000 days mark 8 days ago. I was planning on writing a big long post about Hubski for it, but I forgot. I forget about a lot of things, which worries me. A lot of things worry me. Hubski's been really important to me for some reason. I've barely used it, and I wouldn't say I've made any important relationships on here like you're supposed to. (sorry galen - we don't talk enough, guy! we could have been better friends if i was better at counter-strike.) But again, important to me. It's a good example of the kind of pattern I was talking about earlier - continually refiguring things out and coming back to something, then bailing again.
I've been resisting the temptation to quit on here, too. It wouldn't make much of a difference, considering I only post when the mood strikes me once in a blue moon, but symbols are very important to me, and deactivating this account would be an important symbol. I deactivated an account that I talk to internet people with in September. It was important to me, and I think it was the right decision, but I worry about it. Maybe I'll go back eventually, but I want to be stronger then. I feel weak right now, which means it would probably be a bad decision. Anyway, I'm not going to leave here yet, except if I change my mind over the next little while. I guess I don't know.
I'm running out of steam. I don't think I had a point in the first place, so I guess I'll stop writing here.
Some experience with mania: There are odd little talents I have that I recognize, am unusually proud of. Certain manual labor skills that are easy to be unnoticed but can be appreciated if you can do yourself. I enjoy watching other people who are very comfortable using a hand tool. It’s a good example because, a screwdriver for example, requires no instruction. It’s use can be obvious in its design and anyone can use one with little difficulty. But there is a simple grace I notice when someone can effortlessly twist a tool like that. As you learn something, anything, it becomes effortless.I’m just kinda big on hand tools. The screwdriver is the most common tool a hand turns. There’s a very quick way to turn the handle. Twist it fast enough to be efficient while being unconsciously aware of not stripping the screw head. Slight push and pull and a light touch on the handle. People can learn to do that without realizing it just because a screwdriver is so simple. The tool I’m most proud of mastering is a knife. It was a process that involved multiple cuts for one thing. Not all knives but respect for tools is a common thing with craftsmen that maybe the meaning of is entirely lost on the wider public. I’m at least comfortable holding any knife, confident I won’t do anything stupid with it like cut myself or someone standing near me. The knife I’m talking about being comfortable with is a utility knife. A razor. Even a single edge straight razor. The little naked blade that probably costs a tenth of a penny to stamp out and some people might not even know what to do with if handed one. Cuts taught me why knives deserve respect. Painfully. So I have a near constant understanding of where the knife edge is, relative to my hand, my fingers, my work, other people. I can’t control other people like I can a knife so that’s a big one. I can’t gift tool respect. The ultimate goal and long winded intro here is to relate that kinda simple example of holding a tool to holding multiple thoughts at the same time. And quickly giving them shifting priority. They’re similar because they both involve conscious and unconscious thouts and awarenesses that can be hindrance or help at different times. My thoughts can be similar to having multiple things going on upstairs like using a tool is. Except unrelenting. And unfocused. Multiple shifting and vague goals that need to be prioritized on the fly and undue weight to one can be a distraction, wasted effort and at times has been a life or death mistake. Which is not exaggeration. This is stressful but I make it work pretty well pretty often. But it’s impossible to do forever without help and I’ve been overwhelmed doing it for one reason or another. But sometimes things just fall back to normal safely. So it’s really not that scary when taken as a whole. But during a crisis it’s scary to watch and scary to go through. The stigma of mental illness will probably never go away. Crazy people are unpredictable. There’s evolutionary advantage to lack of sympathy towards them. But we’re honestly mostly harmless. I’ve earned a healthy empathy for these people that I value and I’m grateful to know that I’m nowhere near the worst off. But I’ve been homeless. I’m an acute alcoholic. Crazy people are my people. Families give up on us as a death sentence for reasons of self preservation or lack of resources. Alcoholism and homelessness are common over in the loony bin. They kill people. I deal with shit as a fact of life that would keep an earth person awake at night. I don’t want sympathy. This isn’t a sob story. Even saying that bluntly might make it seem like it’s exactly that. Everyone in America is lucky just to live here and that fact has come into focus for me. I cry sometimes for no obvious reason. It’s kinda part of the disease: bipolar disorder type 1. I try to hide it. That can hard. Sometimes it’s because of sadness. Or sudden overwhelming happiness and gratitude or opportunities I’ve had that have saved my life and the lack of have killed people in the same position. I think I feel more deeply than most. That I can love more or in a special way. And I have heard that from at least one person with manic depressive illness which makes it maybe more true. It’s a blade with two edges that can be a tool or a weapon and it’s not always easy to tell which direction the blade is pointing.This started on paper and it’s become a lot different as I typed it out. The attachment is just the same thing in a text file.
Some of the things you wrote resonate, although for me it's a different underlying condition (ADHD + God knows what else). But I will say that journaling, whether here or elsewhere, has been really helpful for me. It's good for venting, it helps process what I'm thinking about, and it helps me not lose track of prior thoughts and discoveries. I've been known to blog here some, but most of it I do under a pseudonym on one of the usual blogging platforms. (Specifically WordPress, the only one with a mobile app that isn't garbage.) I use an online one simply because it means I can do it from anywhere, and don't have to worry about backups. It's also surprisingly difficult to find a journaling app for iOS...go figure.