“I never know who I’m going to get with you – the manic or the depressed one.”
The words stung when I heard them.
And it’s not because I didn’t already know.
They were words from my then boyfriend as we sat on his porch, during one of our final fights. I, hugging my knees to my chest. He, with his pipe. Both gazing forward, calmly, at the sun setting through the blooming trees of an early spring. It’s good we’re planting the root stocks late, I thought. It’s sure to get cold again. Blessing in disguise we can’t plant yet. My mind was wandering to escape; because I already knew… it was about to turn into an argument. It always did. But, this time, he gave me pause with “I never know who I’m going to get.” It’s not because I wasn’t aware it was true. I was. But to hear someone – so close – echo the same thing I’d said out loud about myself to my closest people in the past… hit differently. It hurt because I’d known for years I needed help. I just never bothered because I didn’t want to take a daily medication. To be fair, I didn’t have to because I’m mostly only ever single – occasionally dating people who are avoidant attachment types. (AKA people who never want to get close enough to see the “real” you, so you can hide your depressive episodes well.)
So, it was easy.
For a while at least.
(Gotta love when your friends catch you in a candid emo moment…)
I was miserable, but at least the lens of the world around me was perpetually getting “my good side”. I was living a lie. But it was a lie I was used to. All lies, catch up to you, though. I should have known. I’d always told myself no one was coming for me. No one would want to get that close. Not to me. But the nonexistent person, one day, found me. Against all odds. And when he did, I had nowhere to run. Now, on a porch at sunset, faced with a man that I loved (tortured with unresolved trauma and blindspots to work on himself – so, no, this won’t be a “how we got back together” story – sorry), I was hearing it out loud. My mindset at the time was the nanny boo boo thing of, “Well you’re not fixing your stuff, so I won’t fix mine”. (Real evolved of me, I know…) But fast forward from his porch to my apartment, four weeks later and fifteen minutes north of that conversation… and I was mid depressive episode. I was alone. I was out of my body. Sobs were coming in waves. I had stowed all my distractions. No social media. No TV. Just sat on my terrace, trying to connect with the beautiful day we were having – and failing. Mid 70’s. Sunny. Birdsong. Blue skies. Soft breeze. And I could feel none of it. Nothing. I’d just had a beautiful weekend. And now this. My brain betraying me with a beautiful weekend, followed by faceless, nameless cognitive hauntings. I closed my eyes, pained by the fact that I was being deprived of the joy everyone else could derive from this day. I began to meditate. Focusing on the breath.
And then, as I observed the interworkings of my brain – it hit me.
I was sitting here, miserable, and not knowing why. And the second I took some space, it was like I was watching my brain play the “matching game”. It moved toward him and my part in our failed relationship. Then it moved toward work and how I wasn’t moving forward in my career. Then it moved toward jiu-jitsu and how I’ve been struggling post injury to train as much as I should. NONE of these things were “it”. None of them were the feeling. The feeling preceded these thoughts. I was just trying to find anything around me to be the cause. They weren’t. The feeling was just there. For no good reason. But when it comes, it goes on like a chemical filter. Once it’s on, all the good gets filtered out, and I can just see who’s doing me dirty, what’s going wrong, what to panic about next, what to dread. It’s not that none of the concerns are wrong in and of themselves. It’s just that with bipolar, you can either see things too optimistically (like I often do with mania) or too negatively (like I was doing right now in this depressive episode). And that’s what’s not reality. The inflated concentration of either is what makes you see things not as they are.
There’s a balance to be struck.
I realized, in this space, that every low I had had been lying to me.
Each depressive filter spurred a reason to reach for some new issue – something to explain said feeling. I’m feeling anxious because you said something hurtful several months ago. I’m upset because a patient came late to their appointment (even though I was fine with it yesterday). I’m upset at traffic. All along, I was subconsciously ascribing a random reason to the deficit that dwelled within. (Also, when you’re activated already, everything’s an excuse to blow up.) I was living my whole life through this filter of suspicion, doom, and general negativity. When that’s where you live, anything of concern that you bring up to friends, colleagues, and partners loses its importance – because you’re always bringing it up. Always the Karen. Always on that energy level. It’s horrible. And the mania is the same – just in a different detrimental direction, where you spend too much money or say the wrong things or train for five hours and injure yourself. And you don’t have control of the switch. You don’t ever know who you’re gonna get. And neither does the man sitting next to you, pulling a long drag of cherry cavendish off a Gandalf pipe. Long pauses between words. Treading carefully – because you both have big bombs at the end of those long fuses. Right before a blowout fight that will make for the rock bottom and push you need.
From his porch, to my terrace meditation, I realized it. I needed help. I had been avoiding taking medication to solve this ongoing internal crisis due to a torrid past with bills. I had been afraid. But, now, I was more afraid to ever hear those words again – not just from the next man to walk into my life – but my own mind. I couldn’t bear it. Not another minute without taking some sort of action. Without at least proving to myself I was making a move. Suddenly, I felt something different in that willingness. Hope. Daylight making its way through the prison bars of my internal incarceration. My eyes opened. My skin responded to the soft breeze. My vagus nerve activated momentarily.
“It’s time.”
Now it wasn’t his voice. It was mine.
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Continue my journey and how I found my perfect intervention for bipolar here.