Tag: Cyclothymia

Self-Slaughter

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You don’t know me and I don’t know you. We may never meet. Or there’s a slight, slim chance—one in one hundred billion— that we’ve shared a class, a bus, a train, or even a glance on a street corner. Doesn’t matter.

You may have lots of pressing, urgent reasons to feel the way you do. Or a few really large ones. Or even huge volumes of large ones that feel like they’re crushing the life out of you. Doesn’t matter.

Because right here, right now, I am thinking of you.

Yes, as an abstract concept. Yes, as a projection of myself onto the idea of a person I don’t know and can never hope to understand as complexly as I’d like. And yes, in the hope that maybe you are capable of looking and listening to this point of view.

I am thinking of you kindly, without pity or reservation. And I am thinking this thing at you so hard:

Self-slaughter does not stop life from getting worse. It only ever stops life from having the chance to getting better.

Self-harm doesn’t improve life. Not for you, not for anyone. Everything in life is repairable, mutable, changeable. Everything can be overcome. Everything is manageable, given time. But self-slaughter removes that opportunity.

Doing harm to ones self feels like an escape, a way of exerting control. But self-destructive behaviour is not a way forward. It is, by definition, a step back.

It is a cage. And as I write this and think of you, dear reader, I hope you can see this for what it is – an opportunity to sit and think and take stock and just maybe consider things from this viewpoint.

Thank you for reading.

Infernal Combustion

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My dad used to say all cars ran on infernal combustion engines. A good pun, but there’s something there. The image of a solid core of black that roars and drips searing metal flame – an engine of hate captured and directed by fine engineering. A machine that puts dark energy to use.

That’s an image I cling to now. It’s not the worst feeling, the sensation of mindless animal rage tempered only by training, awareness and willpower. It’s good to feel. But it’s a feeling I fear nonetheless.

See, at this stage I could go either way:

  • The engine could still sputter out, bereft of the loathing of living that is its fuel before it does any real damage. When it stops, I can resume normality, possessing a mind clear free of the misanthropic fumes.
  • Or it could have fuel enough to bore a hole in my psyche into the vacuum of true depression, sucking emotion and motivation out into the darkness before it too is silenced.

I fear it because I have no control over it. Even with all the mindfulness exercises and CBT, I’m still barely in the driver’s seat. I’m just going through the motions and trying to keep things on track. Politeness isn’t always an option, but nobody’s getting hurt.

So maybe that’s enough.

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.

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.