Tag: bpd

Headphones

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Every day at work I listen to music through a pair of top-notch headphones, and the sound they deliver is crisp and deep.

If you wear these noisemakers, you hear music so clear that you’d swear the band is in the same room. You have a private concert, front row, but without the crowd, and it’s hard to not start jiving there at the desk.

But outside? Nobody notices. Which is weird and not-weird.

NOT WEIRD
Technically speaking, the sounds are real. The headphones create pressure waves in the air, which moves my ear drums and oscillates the little hammer, anvil and stirrup bones in my inner ear. This vibrates the perilymph in my cochlea, which stimulates nerves. And just like that, sound happens. It’s real. I can hear it.

BUT NOBODY ELSE CAN

WEIRD
My mental disorder is like that, except instead of music, I have emotions.  My neurons fire out of sync with reality and I get slammed with massive walls of feelings that no one else experiences.

Outside, without the headphones, they can’t hear the music. They just see me dancing to a foreign tune.

Free Shrugs

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Look, I’m fresh outta fucks to give. No, it’s not you or the thing we’re talking about. It’s just that – well, let me put it like this. I can’t see a future right now. Like,any future, good or bad. I can’t plan anything beyond the next five minutes. So I can’t really take in what you’re saying. Instead I’m just gonna shrug and hope I go back to normal real quick. That’s the plan.

Autoclave

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There’s a small space in the centre of my chest, just to the right of my heart. It is inconspicuous most of the time, but when feelings of confused anger and uncertainty get too much, it activates.

Suddenly my chest cavity gets blasted with super-heated doubt and self loathing. This high-pressure scalding is no less painful than the rage and disappointment that bubbled and schlorped around before,but it’s different. It is a change from before, and I welcome this difference.

At least for a while. Even autoclaves have safety valves.

Limerent

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What is this feeling, welling up inside of me?

I wonder how much we share, what we have in common, and if that’s enough to start a conversation.

I must know more about you—your wants, your likes, your interests.What you think of me, if you think of me.

My hands shake a bit as I think about that, echoing the slight tremor in my heart as you turn my way.

Is this it? Do I tell you how I feel? And will you do me the sublime honor of reciprocating this glowing, effervescent fixation I have for you?

Also, what’s your name?

This Is A Game Worth Losing

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I just lost The Game. And so did you. Oh you don’t know about The Game? To learn about The Game, click here.

Put simply, The Game is impossible to win.

I could view playing The Game as a negative scenario, a reflection of the inevitable futility of the human condition. I mean, in the grand scheme, everything we struggle for means nothing, and in 100 years our names will be as dust.

BUt when winning isn’t an option, the outcome doesn’t matter. And that makes s the games we play matter a hundred times more than the outcome.

So, which games are worth losing?

Today, I choose living. I will lose, eventually . But I’ll play because I enjoy it.

Obvious Fucking Statements

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Right, let’s cut the funny business, okay? I know you expect me to be all happy and laughy, or failing that maybe sarcastic and knowing, but I’m fresh out of fucks to give. All I’ve got is bile.

No it’s not depression. No it’s not hypomania. Not it’s not one of the hundred labels people use to cover something fucking uncomfortable.

It’s anger turned sideways—not aimed inwards, not aimed outwards, just spurting steaming syllables at things and events in an attempt to avoid lasting collateral damage.

Yes, I know you’re just trying to help. Try being less obvious.

Staring At The Wall

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This isn’t a case of feeling sad. This isn’t sadness at all. Not melancholia, nor despair—it’s an absence of feels.

I get why you’d think that. There’s no smiles or laughing. Interaction is at a minimum. From the outside, it looks like sadness, or perhaps regret. There’s a lot of sighing.

But it’s just blankness. Nothing registers. Not much you can do about it now. Just gotta get through it. Wait for the brain chemicals to come back, wait for things to start functioning again.

But how am I gonna do that? I can’t really talk to people. Not like this. Can’t read. TV is too hard. Even video games are pushing it.

Nope. There’s only one way forward.

I’m gonna sit very still and stare the hell out of some walls, ya’ll.

Ebullient

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Not to be confused with “effervescent"—that’s too bubbly. Today, you’re just really, energetic and—without being over the top—full of good vibes.

People look at you and say, "you look pretty happy”. And you say “thanks, I do feel good” and you both nod go about your day. There’s a spring in your step, you might whistle, or even occasionally click your heels, which is actually quite hard to do.

You feel so good that you choose to project your feeling onto the reader, because admitting you feel this good carries the understanding that you will soon not feel this good.

And that is a prospect you fear.

Normal

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I have one head, two eyes, two arms, two legs, two hands, two feet, ten fingers, ten toes. Nothing exceptional.

I wear glasses, but so do 65% of the adult population. Not an outlier.

I have tattoos, but so do at least 36% of adults. They’re nothing crazy either.

I read, go to the gym, watch TV, play video games, listen to music and like to cook. Show me what’s not normal there.

I brush my teeth and I even floss. Okay, the flossing is different, but it’s still normal. Recommended, even.

I have Bipolar II disorder. Cyclothymia. Manic-depression-lite.

I experience mood swings that range from almost euphoric excitement right through to the most crushing despair it is possible to survive.

I have lived my life by waking each day, never knowing how I will feel. Never knowing if today, this day, will see me full of energy and ideas, or stuck in an endless desert of apathetic despair, literally unable to move.

I still don’t feel like this is different. For years, I thought this was how everyone lived. I just thought they were better at managing it than me. And now that I have a diagnosis, now that I get the support and assistance I need to manage (not cure, never cure, there is no cure) my condition, I can live life well.

I am, by definition, not normal.

But I am still “normal”.

About

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In 2012, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder.

This blog is how I track and record my moods. I write down how I feel—a paragraph or a sentence or a page—and pick one word or phrase that summarises it all.

Why?

Professor Clive Holes once said: “You kind of own something if it’s called the way you want it called”. Sure, he was referring to Google Maps’ omission of a name for the Persian Gulf, but the same logic applies.

By naming these episodes, by giving them an identity, I put a claim on them.

They are under my control, not the other way round.