The title kind of says it all. So I'll say it again - I feel my bipolar
'coming back,' and I can't be sure if it's good, bad, or some
combination of the two in whatever varying degrees. As some may know, I
started getting off of my bipolar meds (I've stayed on Wellbutrin, the
antidepressant/mild-stimulant-cousin for, obviously, depression, and
less obviously, potentially ADHD.) The Wellbutrin, being left unchecked
from the lack of mood stabilisers, could be causing me to gradually rise
and rise into a manic flight, but any kind of full-blown mania, or even
hypomania, is yet to be seen. Then again, a lot of people with
hypomania don't even realise when they go into a hypomanic state. But,
anyway, to get back on track, I actually feel bipolar again! Not some
mild, lame excuse for 'stable bipolar' (which 'stable' is really just a
relative term.)
For the first time in what seems like a long
time, I'm starting to feel emotions in their full ranges, and, to be
honest, I'm a bit overwhelmed. I haven't had any bouts of depression in
the... 15 or so days since I started getting off my meds, so I
wouldn't say that the outlook looks positive in that I probably won't
have bouts of depression, and I'll be more realistic, watching out in
case they come. I had depression while on meds, it was just milder
depression. I had mania when I was on meds, it was just hypomania.
What meds really did was help me sleep... at all, pretty much, keep my
moods and emotions in 'bearable' ranges, and keep me from being quite
clinically psychotic. It didn't... 'take the bipolar away,' which is a
pathetic pipe dream that no on with bipolar should shoot for. Rather,
the goal is to adapt with and learn to withstand or even utilise the
bipolar.
Sleep is seeming more and more irrelevant, every
sensation and emotions seems ten times as potent, I'm giddy for no
reason and smile uncontrollably at seemingly random times, my OCD seems
like it's more prevalent, even if it's a bit more in my head than in
practice, my anxieties are skyrocketing, but they were before I got of
meds, so that could be irrelevant to note... To most, those things would
all sound bad, but to me, some of them seem quite good, or at least
fairly benign or indifferent. Imagine the thrill of a rollercoaster...
Some people love that - it gets their blood pumping, their emotions
riled up, and their senses overloaded. Well, I suppose that a part of me
likes that rollercoaster thrill - a psychological rollercoaster - and
so I sometimes see these bad things as good in their own way. I'm also a
bit of an emotion junky, I suppose. If my emotions aren't strong,
pronounced, and involved in every situation and facet of my life,
well... I just don't think it's enough. I knew extreme emotions before I
got on meds and knew only milder, faded versions of those same
emotions, so I suppose it makes sense that I'd naturally prefer the
former. I felt like, when on meds, that if I felt bad, I couldn't even
feel bad correctly! It was like really poor, unconvincing acting where
someone goes, "Oh, drats, I feel so, so sad..." I couldn't even convince
myself! With actual emotion! It felt so weak and fake.
Well,
it's coming back to me. That raw emotion pouring out. I'm starting to
feel it more and more. Now, whether that's truly a good thing or a bad
thing, I can't really say. I suppose the answer to that question has
more to do with how I end up responding to it in the long run. I think
that it's inevitable that I'm a bit overwhelmed at first, and that
things seem to point a bit more to the bad than the good. Time will
tell, as someone recently told me. Whenever I get a cut or some kind of
injury, I always have this uncontrollable urge to take the duller pain
and aggravate it so that it's sharp and pronounced. If I have a cut on
my lip, I bite into it, or if I have an itchy scratch, I pour astringent
on it almost mercilessly, and if I have a bruise or similar injury, I
press on it. The constant, dull pain, no matter how agonizing in its own
right, is more unbearable than the sharper, stronger pain, which has
it's own... paradoxical sense of relief go along with it. It's like
scratching an itch with a carpenter's nail, even if it makes you bleed a
bit. I suppose I've always been a bit of a masochist, but I've just always liked those things... stronger.
There
was a part on the show, Being Human (North American version), where
they show Aidan in a flashback after having just been turned into a
vampire, and when he wakes up, every single sense is drastically sharper
and stronger. He could hear birds chirping like they were right next to
him, he could hear the wind and the grass, the sunlight was brighter,
everything his sense of touch was amplified, and so on. His maker then
went on to say, "Have you ever felt so alive?" which is ironic,
considering how vampires are clinically dead. That's what these floods
of feelings seem like - awakening to a new, stronger, darker and
brighter, world. Sure, I feel more alive, but I feel more... everything.
Scared, excited, euphoric, shocked... I'm hyper-aware of everything,
and yet my thoughts are still a jumbled mess and foggy. I was hoping I
would get the... same lucidity - if that's the correct word - as before
meds, but perhaps I have to wait a bit longer. Worst case scenario, the
meds altered my brain enough over the past five years that I'll never
return to that same capacity. I used to feel like a supercomputer was in
my brain, but working on so many things at the same time that it became
impossible to handle. But to get just one more day where I didn't
stumble with my thoughts, where I didn't stutter in conversation, where I
could think mentally labor intensive things without being forced to
give up before I hardly get started... To be able to think with that
clarity that I once had... I traded an enormous clutter of thoughts for
the inability to think. People call me 'smart' just because my interests
lie in the academic, but any nitwit with enough time to waste and will
to study could know all the things I know; it's nothing special, nor
useful.
I used to be genuinely smart, though. I used to
excel in classes of all varieties, I used to have a pretty good memory
(I could at least remember how I got to where I was more than half the
time without having to really think it through), I used to RETAIN
things, I could figure things out on my own! Now, I know something for a
brief moment, and then it flaps away, perhaps randomly appearing and
disappearing despite any and all effort on my part to hold onto it. I
often feel the need to vocalise or record what I learned in some way
just so that I don't feel like it was an utter waste having spent the
time getting it in my head in the first place. Now, this brain is a
useless piece of shit in a decaying, useless body. I essentially just
take up room in the world - that's my purpose. Sustaining this awful
excuse for a life is costly and wasteful. Now, if I could figure out
some way to become ethereal and not take up any space, or use any
resources, then it might be worth sticking around... Or, if I could just
get this mind back to where it used to be! Psychotic episodes? Bring
'em on, if I'm even capable, anymore. Panic attacks? I'll become an
agoraphobic and just have other people in my life do everything in the
outside world. Depression? I've always been to afraid to commit suicide
or hurt others physically, so not really a worst-case-scenario hazard
from that. Mania? What's wrong with mania? Sure, I might hardly ever
sleep, but at least I start to feel like wanting to clean! And the pain
lessens the more manic I am (pain means several things in this case.)
That's what life is... Living is being free and unlimited, however that
manifests itself. And living a miserable, awful thing, so might as well
get the most out of it while you can.
There are these commercials
for glasses where the picture is all out of focus and you can't see a
thing, and then a pair of lenses cover a chunk of the screen and
everything's perfectly clear through them. That's what it was like
before meds... Sure, I saw my share of things that I didn't want to see,
and some of it simply went to far, but at least I could see! Some
people wish they could gouge their eyes out, and I used to be one of
those people, but when you lose your sight, you'd be thankful to see
just about anything again... You know, my anxieties didn't really
manifest until after I got on meds. It's like my mind no longer had
anything to pay attention to, so it invented a bunch of things to force
its attention onto. Now, I consider my bipolar to be this modest little
kitten compared to the monstrosity that is my all-consuming anxiety. But
no one else can experience my anxiety, so obviously it would
appear to be irrelevant and something to be shrugged off. My bipolar,
now, that could cause me to hurt someone's feelings! Gasp! God FORBID I
hurt someone else's feelings... But when anxiety comes over me
and I feel like I'm being swallowed up alive, awaiting to be digested by
the acid in the belly of the beast? Well, no one else is really paying
attention, so no big deal, right? Who cares about that weirdo who's a
little too worried all the time! Who cares if he thinks he's going to
have a heart attack and DIE!
Maybe it'd just be
better to lay down and die, and just get the inevitable over with,
right? I try my best all the time with no results, or no good
ones, anyway, so I might as well just give up before I damage anything
else, right? *long pause* See? I nearly cried! I can feel things
again! Well, after a long, long pause, I'm now at a... sort of blank,
apathetic stage, so I'll end there.
No comments:
Post a Comment