For as long as I can recall, people have referred to me as  “crazy”.                                 

I always thought the reference meant that I was fun, offbeat, interesting, eclectic, A BLAST, the life of the party - a real motherfucking hoot. And I was. Am.

But I’m also bona fide crazy…I have Bipolar 1 Rapid Cycling, and it’s a real bitch.

I’ve been managing my bipolar symptoms with medication for about five years, but was unmedicated & OFF THE MEAT RACK for as long as I can remember before that. I was a menace, and absolutely TORTURED the people who love me.  Just want to share what these moods feel like from the perspective of the person swept up in the tides… (Please remember that this is what it’s like for an UNmedicated bipolar sufferer.) Medication has produced results for me where I am virtually symptom free now. I do still have severe insomnia & really high energy levels, increased creativity, zooma zoom zoom. Sounds good, right?
WRONG. Read on…

I wrote this several years ago as a final attempt to make my friends and family understand that I literally had no self-control…

I have no idea what’s happening to me. 

I feel for a while like nothing can ever go wrong.  I’m like an action hero;  SUPERMAN[ic] and nothing can stop me!  This is the plane on which I mainly exist, and nothing beats this feeling.  No drug on Earth can touch it.   My spirit is unrelenting,  I am quick on my feet and my mind is sharper than ever.  I am witty and brilliant and popular and loved;  and I am sure that I could rule the world if offered the job.   I’m on-point and fabulous, and can do no wrong…  I don’t have to struggle or give any added thought to  ANYTHING. 

Words just naturally come together perfectly and effortlessly;  everything I say is just this side of genius.  I’m everyone’s best friend and and conversation comes easily.  I naturally adjust to different situations, and fit in seamlessly wherever I go.   I am self-assured and assertive.   I am outspoken, and people come out of their shell when I’m around them.   I can take on 5 tasks at once, completing them faster and better than anyone could. I feel great! I haven’t slept in 3 days, but I’m not tired AT ALL.  I haven’t eaten, either, and my constant high energy makes it so that I don’t ever have to worry about my weight like other women.  I could live like this forever and NEVER be unhappy!

Then suddenly,  from out of nowhere and without warning, that mood becomes something else entirely.

It clicks up about 700 notches and almost takes on a life of its own.   Now, the thoughts are coming TOO fast!  I can’t keep them straight… I almost think I can feel them buzzing while they whip around in my head.  My ears pulse and my heart pounds.  I’m on sensory overload.  Every nerve in my body is awake.   I gotta move & get things done,  and I devise a plan to do it.   I’ll come up with a brilliant and complex course of action, but I am so overloaded by outside stimuli that I am thrown off my game… colors are extra vivid, light seems overwhelmingly bright, voices are louder - it’s TOO MUCH and I can’t think.  Where is that off-the-hip brilliance I had 10 minutes ago? WHAT THE FUCK, I CAN”T THINK!  A ringing phone could push me over the edge.   Actually having to stop what I’m doing to answer it DEFINITELY would…

People become a distraction to me.

If they speak or even move, they’re interfering with my thought process, and I can’t stand it.  I have no patience for people and no interest in making small talk.  Tick tock - time is wasting.  I try to tell them to go away, but I trip over my own words.  A few minutes ago, I could have stood on a soapbox and give an impromptu speech about any random thing, and it would have been stellar.  But now I have trouble even stringing a sentence together; the words are coming faster than I can form them….

The need to MOVE is overwhelming, and if there’s nowhere to go, I pace.

Back and forth.  Or I just stand and rock on the balls of my feet.  Back and forth.  Or shake my leg.  Up and down.  If I sit,  it’s only for a minute or two until I stand up again.  Up and down.  Back and forth…   I find myself moving in and out of every room in the house, and I know there’s an objective, but I’m confused about what it is.  If anybody tells me to “calm down” or “take a seat” or “relax - you’re a mile a minute”, I get  irritated, aggressive, and combative.  Frankie asks me a question, and I lose it! How DARE HE  interrupt me when IT’S CLEAR that I’m in the middle of something important?  I answer his question in a way that lets him know I don’t have time for him.  He tries to understand, and asks what’s going on.  Suddenly, he seems like the dumbest person in the world.  His tedious questions are unbearable and a waste of  my time.  He’s talking too slow, moving too slow. Why can’t he keep up?  Now I’m furious.  He’s interrupting my mission.  I already forgot 5 times what the mission ACTUALLY IS.  I feel like he’s doing all this on purpose,  as if he AIMS for me to fail.  How arrogant and selfish of him!!

In a flash, I become a predator…

My prey is his spirit,  I want to crush it so he’ll go away and leave me to my work.  So I do. Whatever it takes -  throwing things across the room, attacking his ego.  I say hurtful ugly things so he’ll just GO AWAY.  It’s his fault that I’m in such a cluttered state and so far off track.  I don’t sleep or eat.  I drop things, and that leads to throwing things… I CANNOT hold my tongue and pick fights with everyone.  If I get the urge to go out, there’s a  good chance I won’t be home later.  Sometimes I won’t be home for days, or even WEEKS.  And if I do come home, I’ll be so drunk someone will have to carry me.   I can’t stop any of it.  I’m edgy & tense, and on the verge of losing my grip on sanity at all times. I can’t focus on anything and I’m mean.  I’m convinced that my head is going to implode and then I’ll never get to unlock the secrets of what all these rambling thoughts really mean. I better get a pen and start writing them down…

And so it goes, until my brain comes to a screeching halt. All the rapid fire thinking and stimuli disappear like *that*.  And the depression hits like a ton of bricks.

When THIS happens, which thankfully is only about twice a year,  I do not function at all. Period.  Housework, cooking, bills - they all go untouched.  My only movement is shuffling from bed to couch, couch to bathroom, back to bed again.   I shuffle to the kitchen, look at the dishes that have piled up,  shuffle to the corner,  think about how much I want to die because of the dishes that have piled up.  Shuffle back to bed and cry about the fact that I can’t even do the dishes,  and now they are piled up.   Shuffle to the bathroom for tissue - I need it to get rid of the tears and snot that are all over my face because I’ve been thinking about how high the pile of dishes is.  Shuffle over to the mirror,  realize how DESPERATE and PATHETIC I look, collapse on the toilet seat and think about dying.  Shuffle back to bed and pray for permanent sleep.

Shuffle, cry, shuffle, cry, shuffle, collapse.

I don’t speak, I just stare at nothing and focus on everything negative that has ever happened in my life.  I wonder why people love me and then tell myself they probably dont.  I feel hopeless, useless & disinterested.  I cant concentrate on anything anyone says - I feel like I’m walking through maple syrup and my feet are made of lead.  Even though I haven’t moved at all, I’m exhausted.  It takes every bit of power I can muster up just to raise an arm, but it’s too heavy and I decide I don’t want to move anyway.  I think about how I was born useless - doomed to fail at everything.  I tell myself that death would be welcome.  Even being struck by lightning couldn’t hurt as much as the pain that I feel at THIS MOMENT - I don’t know what this anguish is over, or what the reason is for my despair, but it’s sitting on my chest and slowly suffocating me .  I shuffle, shuffle, shuffle to the sofa.  I succumb to weariness and decide I’m giving up.  I stop resisting the crushing weight of my eyelids and allow them to close.

I sleep for an amount of time that I don’t even recognize.  And when I finally wake up (has it been days? hours? minutes?) it’s as if nothing happened.

The clouds have cleared and all is right with the world.  YAY! Welcome back, hypomania! I can do anything!

And I launch into the cycle again….

This was copied from Kim Shannon’s Glaring Madness: http://glaringmadness.blogspot.com/search/label/unbalanced#ixzz0yFBygHWL

All I can say, dear friends, is that I owe everything I am today to everything I was NOT back then. And to my very best friend and roommate, Frankie, for having the strength of character and courage of conviction to stand with me through my journey to discover that my bizarre behavior had a NAME and it could be treated! (O Happy Day!) I am convinced that without him (and my other best friend & roommate, Sharon) I’d never have made it. I truly adore you guys.