Category: photos

I was fine. Then I was great. When things broke into a spectacular million pieces, no one was more surprised than I.

Riding Bipolar’s emotional roller-coaster is tricky. Sometimes when you see yourself at the top, you’re really nearing the bottom and in for the mother of all spills. Only you don’t know it. And because it’s so much fun to be around a highly energetic, charismatic and bubbly person, people close to you might not have any clue. At least until you turn that corner from charming and energetic to scary and frenetic, immediately followed by obsessive, negative, frustrated and unkind. Ultimately, you hit the wall and enter loathing, depression and hopelessness where death seems like not only the solution but the inevitable.

I’m trying to figure out what happened. Beyond a major chemical imbalance where my medications stopped working, there were more things broken than I understood. Understand.

Standing outside myself, poking the situation with a stick to see the size, color and consistency of it, I’m afraid. But much less afraid now. Months have passed. I’ve gained a little perspective and I’m much more interested in figuring out what I was doing/thinking that contributed to hitting the wall than hiding what I still can, scrambling for some strands of dignity. Trying to save face and appear as ‘normal’ as possible. Fuck normal. Normal is whatever is happening at any given moment to any certain person in any specific situation. Impossible to quantify and regulate. Let it go.

I’ve been online a long time. I’ve shared much and been as honest as I can, where honest for me in the past has meant fully transparent. Divulging everything, almost vomiting truth all over the place. As I consider how I want to approach things now, I wonder how healthy that is for me, to lay everything out like that all the time. I think I might need some balance. Bipolar and balance are not often found in the same place. It’s either not talk at all or talk about every, single thing happening, no matter how deep or intimate. No thought to if I’ll wish in the future I could somehow reach out and grab that wisp back.

I’m so great at making unhealthy and ridiculous declarations like I’m not going to do that ever again! From now I’m always going to do it this way! I will only accept that if you present it this way! I will only give to you if I can do it this way! First of the year resolutions have in the past felt like declarations to me. I think I’ve confused them. Resolutions. Declarations.

Instead, let me just say that this new year finds me puzzled, intrigued, interested and motivated to work on how I share myself.