Pendulum of Fate in motion,
Slicing through the union between time and space;
Now is too soon a memory of yesterday,
Was it ever mine?
Dust particles shimmer like glitter in the right light.
They blanket the lifeless, and bury the dull.
Here is an apple.
Here is a book.
Here is a chair.
Here is a girl.
Here is a boy.
This is what a dream looked like.
This is how an apple rots.
This is what a book looks like unread.
This is how empty a chair looks on its own.
This is what time does to a boy and a girl.
Life is precious, but is it?
Tired arms cease to cling to a body of air,
An idea that will never be.
Cutting the Shit About Bipolar Depression
I’m a big fan of lists when it comes to explaining something to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. So that’s why I’ve written a list of what Manic Depression “is” during the spring and summer. This season is a toss up for me; sometimes it is euphoric, other times it’s a three-month-long panic attack on steroids. Lately has not been so kind, and I feel like I’m running in circles with no catharsis. So let’s cut the shit. Let’s be frank about Bipolar Disorder.
Spring/Summer for a Manic Depressive means:
- Right now is insufferable but so was yesterday, and tomorrow isn’t looking very good either.
- Time is Hell. If one could shoot time, one (I) would shoot it with a 12-gauge. Time brings infinite anxiety.
- Pills Pills Pills. Pills in the morning, Pills in the evening. Pills everyday.
- Having an indescribable rage quelling inside my chest, and sometimes exerting all the strength within me not to throw things at the cashier in the gas station or get out of my car and tell the lady that cut in front of me in the drive thru what kind of person I think she is.
- Trying to control that rage as I walk through the house trying to find anything, something, to destroy, smash, shatter, and warning myself that busting holes in the wall or catching my boyfriends clothing on fire will only make my life worse in the end.
- Having nightmares (or at least that’s what most people call them; they’re the standard fare for me) every night that are filled with morbid, gruesome imagery that won’t leave a person’s psyche for years to come.
- Feeling EVERYTHING to maximum capacity, crying during a touching trailer, feeling sheer bliss while watching the sun rise.
- Having my foot on the gas for days on end, and my back tires have finally turned a rut into a massive pit.
- Feeling an emptiness that deepens each year, and begins to chip away at the very ground I’m standing on.
- Wondering whether or not I can even make it to 30, seeing as I’m nearly incapacitated at 22.
- Wondering whether or not I want to make it to 30, since the world seems to get a little gloomier each year.
- Craving drugs, any drugs, that might alleviate my unrelenting suffering, while simultaneously injecting that intoxicating mania that makes life oh-so-sweet.
- Feeling a strong sense of superiority, yet remembering that just a few months ago I was certain of my profound inadequacy.
- Watching myself go from ugly to beautiful to average and back to ugly all within a single year and cycle through again next year.
- Not having any friends since I am never the same person. Or, because I don’t know how to manage relationships. Or because I’m bipolar.
- Paying 20% of my already inadequate income to pay for the prescriptions that barely keep me afloat.
- Having each bill from the doctor land in collections, since I have no way of paying for any of it.
- Staying awake until 6 or 7 in the morning EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, because I can’t let the sun go down on another shitty day, and I just don’t feel like sleeping.
- Having a thousand ideas, yet feeling too discouraged to follow through with any of them.
- Feeling the sensation of spiders crawling on me all the time, or electric shocks at a constant buzz just beneath my skin.
- Yearning to let out all of this energy, but having nowhere to do so.
- Hearing words that weren’t said, and seeing moving shadows of inanimate objects.
- Getting so flustered that I hyperventilate into an incoherent stutter for several hours, or fail to recognize my own reflection in a mirror.
- Putting too much of a burden on the few people that stick around to care for my crazy ass.
- Rejecting most of those people from my life because I feel too weird when people care about me.
- Waiting for doomsday (winter) to roll around so a depressive episode can annihilate my already fatigued brain.
- Sensing the delusion of all of this pain, and wondering if it’s real or if it’s all in my head.
- Knowing that I probably will never be free from this suffering.
- Not knowing if Bipolar is even a “real” thing.
The list goes on, of course, and is quite different from episode to episode. I have read the DSM’s description of Bipolar Depression a million times over, and yet I still know so little but feel so much.
Cheers to suffering, Cheers to Manic Depression.
I recently discovered Daniel Johnston, and in case you haven’t heard of him before either, I thought I’d share this song. Daniel Johnston is a manic depressive, maybe that’s why I felt so taken aback when I first listened to his music.
This song in particular is most likely relatable to everyone on some level, since everyone probably deals with existential boredom at some point. Maybe that’s what it means to reach adulthood; realizing that life is often boring and youthfulness is ephemeral.
Manic depressives might find themselves exceptionally resonating with this song because it almost seems impossible to ever accept those aspects of life. Must I bored all the time? Can’t I be high all the time?
Boredom is homeostasis. Boredom is the fine line between frenetic chaos and catatonic chaos. To be bored is to be on the cusp of complacency. Maybe it’s only true for me (although I doubt it is), but boredom and complacency are insufferable. I find myself scheming for an exit strategy. Cocaine? Sex? Another runaway trip? Except, adulthood shows a person that there is truly no escape. I am rendered helpless in my suffering, and am too aware of the futility of my own escapism to try anything at all. Mania is intoxicating. It gives zest to my life. It brings me thrill. Euphoria. Bliss. Desire. Ecstasy. I want it always, but I know better than to try pinning the tail on the donkey, because the donkey has kicked me in the face more than once. At the end of manic happy trails therein lies a tomb of anxiety and psychosis. At the end of that, a catastrophic mess to clean up.
Daniel sings “Maybe if we were in the movies we wouldn’t be so bored” towards the end of the song, and I think that we all just want to live in a movie. Movies are evocative, otherwise we wouldn’t watch them. But we are not in the movies, and sometimes life is bland.
In another song called “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grievances,” Daniel sings, “Do yourself a favor and be your own savior.” He is a creative 52-year-old manic depressive that’s still alive, and let’s be honest; that’s an impressive feat considering 25-50% of manic depressives have or will attempt suicide. He is inspirational to me, as he has learned how to manage his own illness and wrote a plethora of music so people like me could relate to it and find solace.
Ten Commandments for Contemporary Living
I. Thou shalt perpetually reinvent thy life.
II. Thou shalt remember that meaning and purpose must be cultivated daily.
III. Thou shalt accept imperfection.
IV. Thou shalt embark on a lifelong discovery of the soul.
V. Thou shalt not be too crippled by the enigma of art to allow thyself to create.
VI. Thou shalt not become too serious to see that life is both tragedy and comedy.
VII. Thou shalt not feel too certain of thyself so as to overlook thy own inadequacies.
VIII. Thou shalt drink a glass of water whenever thou suffers from anxiety.
IX. Thou shalt not forget the importance of routine.
X. Thou shalt remember that love sustains thyself.
Just Another Day, Passed
I, wrought. Rotting. Rolled into year 22 last April, can you believe it? Madhat crazy 19 of those years, can’t recall the rest—everybody dies somehow. Sparkle-flash lights my eyes each time I blink, and they’d be prettylooking if it wasn’t an aneurysm. Expanding consciousness, maybe. I see the 4th of July, looking into the sparkler’s zip-zap burn, and I told this to Paul, my roommateboyfriend, but he’s a Brit, doesn’t celebrate Independence, doesn’t believe I see sparkles, either.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Something in me feels funny, I just don’t know what,” I say.
See, what I think, I’ve gotta misfired circuit, that’s what I’m seein’. Flickering lights goin’ in and out. Only problem is, electricians’ are too damn finicky. Any cattier, and I’d call ‘em all stingy sonsabitches, but I’m not that catty, and so they’re all bastards my ma and Father never afforded me.
“Doc’s on holiday,” I always say. I’d like to go be examined by a professional, Head to toetag, but well I just don’t have that kind of cash. For now, I and dr.web are tryin’ fix me up in the home garage- makeshiftdo.
GODAM my neck, hurts. Something’s really wrong with me this time. My Head’s all drooped over to the left, makin’ my sinister eye and ear too lazy to hear or see evil-good. If I turn my Head westward towards the sunset, I can’t hear a thing. Southern, Sudden Death. It’s not death like people say, it’s deaf. How long does it take to arrive at deafness?
Reminds me, Paul came bearing me a story today about a blind man he bumped into on Easter Day, said it was a synchronicity, since he’d been reading Cathedral. Just like him to think it’s a sign seated just beyond the gaze of a blind man, a sign that he was keen ‘nough to see.
The bathroom mirror of God’s eternal rest house shows I gotta bend in my neck, that pain, manifest it just above the shoulder, slithering down the spine bump-bump-bump, into Shakti’s agape, Godhelpme.
She’s pissed now, nobody likes a deceptive kiss, and in that mirror, I age. Dark hair, faded-out turns into frazzled frays around the frame of my startled doe-face, exacerbated palepale sparkle eyes, an’d here I start to panic. Rigormortis, ‘bout 12 more hours ‘til I’m back to a pumpkin, and I can see it now. My p’tite bust popped, emptied out funbags now flat on my torso, is that normal?
“Nononono.”
I am ill, elderly reflection of me standing there, youth is just a memory now. Was it the two, maybe 3, hours in bathtub holy water, dried my young out like a prune? Prune juice is awful, my bodyimage gone hideous. Is this goodnight? I feel cold; cold inside, cold out. Prune juice’ll do that to you.
”Hey Paul, turn off the air, will ya? I’m in an icebox!” I say that to him, even though the words are hard, my voices fragile, myself is weak.
“Yeah,” he says, and not a word more. He doesn’t like being around the dead, who can blame him. That man’s got Mary holding roses round his neck and finger, charmsafe from whirlpool of rain-wrapped tornado; why risk hail-halting Ava Maria now? Devil get behind me Paul says, and we all listen. Even my sinister ear can hear that.
Wowbegone but the woe still lingers, lurking in a black hood, Grimm coming in to takeover for Fairy Godmom.
“Noo!” I cry out, childlike, clinging to mom’s hip on the last day as much as the first. But listens shenot, unemotioned by the changing hands. Made a wish ungranted at 11:11, now the last man sings in midnight’s quartet. Memento mori, clock reads.
Paul, saintlike man, walks into the bathroom looking for my howling, steps right on my toes, as I’m lying on the floor, preparing.
“I didn’t see you there, are you okay?”
“caleemanakietelpronenisk,” I say, and I can’t say anything else. Nodnot, I winkwince at him, and whatdoyaknow, the kid’s keen. Sign, he sees.
“puulsss,” I mutterhiss out with the exhale. Hesychasm, orthodox gibberish written in the books. Is this the part where my I kneel while my tongue confesses? Paul, heartofgold, hears not a heart turning to stone, forgets to read me my habeas corpus; does God value Miranda’s rights? Well, he likes all her hairs, so he must lover as much as Uranus.
My body can’t feel the sensation of the rug on which I’m laying, flatbacked against the floor. Pushing my eyes down since I can’t raise the dead, I see my toes are already fading. Coldfeeling, bloodless-colored like a corpse, man I swear I’ve never seen ‘em that way before. I worry, a lot I worry, if not about the lifelack of my feet, then the hypothermic hue of my lips, but this time I think it’s really happening.
I’ll mourn the sunrise, say goodnight to my family for me, it’s Sun’s day morn and I am no more.
Somebody Sad
She was Goldilocks; possibly, she was Mic Jagger from the Rolling Stones. Her porridge always seemed to be too hot or too cold, and, no matter how hard she tried, satisfaction evaded her.
Oh, I must be Eeyore, she thought.
Only on some days, she realized.
In this particular moment, she must have been Eeyore, or Goldilocks, or even Mic Jagger. She, sad girl, was sitting Indian-style on midwestern grass in the dead of night. The resident geese were tucked away for the evening, and so she was all emptied out by an emptied out pond. Despite having accomplished a hard day’s work, with all her studies and writings, she felt so sad. No, not that painstaking sadness, thank Woolf, but the kind of sadness that leaves a person in a freeze frame while the world buzzes on by. Except, over time, the buzzing becomes this blur, and no single face is really recognizable anymore.
Where did all the people go, she asked the night.
The night said nothing, and so she assumed they were still out there, even though she was not.
It was all just really upsetting to her; toiling away, day-in and day-out, and for what? She couldn’t see the point of it all, and the world would not let her be James Joyce, anyhow.
Metarealist Parables 