Lemme tell you a little bit about bipolar. You swing up. If you can stay off the radar and ride it long enough, you can make it right up to god in heaven. Nothing a normal person will ever experience could hold a candle to mania. Talk about ecstasy, talk about cocaine, talk about falling in love or winning the lottery ... you're boring me. The human experience just doesn't have anything to offer someone who's been over the edge. God knows I've tried.
Then there's the downswing. The price every Icarus has to pay for being so close to the sun. You fall and you fall and you keep fucking falling. Even after you've slammed into the ground you're still falling. It just doesn't stop. I've heard people tell me they're depressed before. I sneered. I wished I could show them, even for a second, the places I've spent whole years at a time. You'd run screaming if you could only lift your head up off the floor. But you can't. You're paralysed with nothing to do but chase hell around in your head and pray for everything to end.
And then there's this place. Somewhere between heaven and hell. Purgatory? It's certainly what it feels like. The highs like tiny little grey lumps in an ocean of flat. Life with the volume turned down. There are days I'd almost choose depression over this pedestrian bullshit because, fuck it, at least you feel depression. I don't feel this. There's nothing to feel. It's empty, bland, monotonous drivel. A never ending procession of talk shows and shoddy imitation. When you've lived the life of a butterfly, going back to caterpillar is a punishment. Stripped of my shiny silken wings. Condemned to crawl around and chew shit forever.
And relentless, inside, the little voice. "You've suffered enough. Let go. Let it slide. Spread your wings and escape."
On days like these the little voice is deafening. Sooner or later I'm going to give in to the siren call. Leave my precious little pile of garbage to go up in smoke and fly into the sun again.
See you in hell.
Damn Pent.
Nicely put. It's a crap response to something so serious, I know.
Psychological disorders and mental illnesses are not things that are easy to really sympathize about. I mean, it goes on mostly in your own sphere of consciousness, so who can really feel what you feel? The same way I can't imagine how a blind person "sees".
At any rate, though I know I haven't felt how you felt, I have depression too. The simple kind, but still the kind you don't get rid of. Thank god I found a medicine that works. Too bad I can't afford it. And ADD. My wife has OCD and PTSD. I can't imagine what goes on in her head when she says "no, this bottle of water won't work, can you please get me another one?" and after ten minutes of agonizing cycle between bottles, she throws it at the bedside mirror and tells me to move the pack of water to another room so she doesn't have to see it anymore. She asks me to open the bottle for her to make it easier.
It's easy for me to think it's bullshit. I know it's not. I know inside she hears it calling out, saying if she doesn't, if she doesn't keep this up, she's going to die. She's already dying, and by ignoring it and not getting just one more bottle she's going to speed it up, and her heart will stop.
Like I said, I don't have it. I don't know what it's like, but she can try to tell me.
All I can say is that I at least know what it's like to be on the kitchen floor, nearly catatonic, not moving or living, by choice, because life hurts too much. The kids at school thought I'm ugly, and I'm not just imagining it, they told me all the time. I prayed for a day where people didn't talk to me, for a day they didn't call me a fag, shout out "ew!" when I got too close, even though I tried my best to be as average and invisible as possible. One day I choked on some potato chips in the school lunchroom and they just sat there laughing. So, I went home and decided not to eat, not to move, not to speak, just be empty.
By the time high school came around I was tall and relatively attractive, not entirely wimpy looking, more like an actual threat than a target I guess. I asked to be left alone and people listened. I've regretted it ever since, because, like you said, I'll take being depressed and drowning in drama than being completely empty and alone and emotionless. Now I ask for friendship and no one answers.
Not like you at all, I know, different disorders. This is only part of my experiences, but it's all I can do to respond to something like this. Not relate, not compare myself to you, but share in one way or another. Otherwise all I'd be doing is saying "Fuck man, I'm sorry..." and nothing else. I don't like just saying things that way, it's not that it's insincere, it just doesn't seem like enough.
If I sound like I'm rambling it's because I'm hungry and tired and I need to pee but didn't want to break my train of thought. It's the rant board anyway, so...yeah.
I always counted myself lucky compared to straight depressives. To get the kick in the teeth but never get the reward - that's just fucking shortchanged in my book. I've also spoken to people who don't like the hypomania :eek: How the fuck can you not like hypomania? It's the perfect state of bliss. Nirvana, euphoria - they're just pale imitations. Still it takes all sorts I guess. Problem for me is I got at least another 10 or 20 years on this godforsaken rock (knowing my luck even more) and it's a constant battle of wills not to give in to it. Sooner or later I think my resolve might break. Then a lot of people I care about are going to get hurt. Maybe not. Maybe I'm stronger than I think. Here's hoping I can keep myself in this state of boring, meaningless, empty, mundane shit. The alternative is unimaginable joy. That's the decision I'm faced with on a daily basis.
Every now and again it's a struggle to remind myself why I'm making it.
I sincerely hope you remain strong, you would be sorely missed otherwise.
I seem to be drawn to manic-depressives, and they to me. I am absolutely not bipolar, at all, in any way.
P3nt, I do hope you hang in there, because you are very loved.
I'll be fine. When stress comes to call the pipes get louder is all. Harder to resist. Funny how doing the right thing turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would. What seemed so straight forward a couple of weeks ago is tearing me apart inside now but hey, if it don't kill me it makes me stronger, right? I guess I win either way.
ETA: I'm just venting btw. :emo:
Apologies for any inconvenience.
No cause for alarm.
Normal service will resume as soon as I've kicked these dumb emotions into touch. 8)
Personally I'm borderline. It means I have a little of everything, as far as I can tell. The only part of it that responds to medication is the depression, but it's only borderline depression, so I prefer to go unmedicated and preserve my sleep schedule, sex drive, and creativity. Meanwhile the borderline sociopathy tends to bother me a lot more. When I find myself seriously considering the reasons I am not torturing people to death, well, it doesn't bother me then, that's the problem right? It bothers me the next day (or maybe week, depending on how bad it is) though when I see the actual preparations I've made. Borderline dissociative disorder is a fun one as well. I mean, I know those other people in my head aren't really there, and the times I've let them run the show for a little while I can still remember everything that happened, which doesn't happen to real dissociatives, but still...borderline mania is nice though. Not as nice as your full blown mania from the sound of it, but there are those days when I can just get it all done, when there's creativity just spilling out of my pores, when my cock is as hard as I could possibly hope for it to be, whenever I want it to be, when I don't really need to sleep, because there's so much fun stuff to be doing that keeps me awake. This is what meth is supposed to feel like, what the meth heads told me it felt like but when I tried it it just didn't do this.