My moods are currently unstable. And I can’t really get help for them. I have to wait for my psychiatrist to come back before having a real discussion. I’m in a bind for the next two weeks and left wondering where the hell my life will go this time. And I’m frustrated as hell as well as worried.
I have a very severe form of type 1 bipolar disorder. By very severe, I mean I should have died at least twice and I’m surprised over and over again that I haven’t had more attempts in just three years. Most of UpMeDownMe is what it is like to survive in the world I currently have and is in many ways toned down from what I live with on a year to year basis. This is the crash course in what I go through every year and try to avoid every day.
Currently, I went from being pretty normal, weird, but normal, to being rapidly destabilized.
This means that I swing from manic states into depressive states within days rather than months or years. Up. Down. Day after day. Sometimes within days.
This is not the same thing as being emotional. Many people make the confusion between moods and emotions. Emotions are things like sadness and happiness. Moods are states of mind that drive emotions, behaviors, thoughts, even how the physical world is interpreted. And my perception of the world is severely distorted.
I have a manic state right now where I’m intensely irritable. I call it the “fuck all” mood. I focus, I write, I think, but I hate on everyone and it takes nothing at all to set me off on a tirade. There are also the “yippee” states where I feel amazing like I’m on one of the best drugs manufactured and everything is perfect and I’m doing wonderfully at showering, cooking, cleaning, getting my life together – even though I’m not doing a good job at anything. And finally, the “whee!” states, where I lay face first on a skateboard and roll down a hill into an intersection at 4am. These all drive emotions, but these are moods, they define entire systems of communication with the outside world whether it’s word choice or actions.
I also have depressive states. Mainly anxiety based, but they can turn psychotic. The short hand for this is imagine that you have a memory labeled as eidetic like mine, where you remember things like you wouldn’t believe. Now imagine reliving every last humiliating event in your life, every time you could take back, and relive them. But not as they happened realtime, but compressed into dream like time frames. It’s been so intense that I’ve vomited. I’ve had one psychotic depression so far. I woke up from the overdose. How I was not in a coma we don’t know. And it was scarier because I was under supervision by a friend.
I can survive a mania, but the depression, I can’t.
But then there are middle moods. Being bounced around up and down doesn’t mean that there’s a normal in between. There are middle moods instead. I’m so scattered that I dissociate in these moods. I operate, I seem okay, not really there, but that’s because it feels like my body is detached and the world detached from that. Everything seems unreal.
Music slams them together.
Big bassy music, pounding at high volumes through headphones or good PA speakers, not weak earbuds but really throbbing and growling and shaking my skull, that makes me feel a way that really isn’t communicable. It’s synesthesia. I feel electrical prickling and tingling throughout my body and yet it is somehow different from that as well. I’ve orgasmed it’s so intense.
This is all debilitating. It sounds nice to feel high on something better than any other drug out there, or be the typical bitchy writer that tells the mailman to fuck off when the bell is rung, or have the depths of experience that come from depression, or what it’s like to come from music. But right now, my life is on the line. Because there’s one more mood.
Mixed states.
This is what will actually kill me. It’s a mixture of mania and depression, like that actually helps. I’ve attempted like this. I’ve clawed skin off my chest because it feels like something is going to rupture from me. I stay away from second story ledges because all I can think about when looking at them is flying over them and dying. Not that I want to die, I just need to do it, like someone pushing me.
Obamacare has kept me alive so far. I wouldn’t have had insurance if it wasn’t for Obama and the democrats and I would be dead. It’s not a might be, not a could have, I would have died. This illness kills 1 in 3, higher if it’s type 1. And having more than one attempt increases the odds even higher. With impulsive ideation, it’s pretty much a sure thing if meds aren’t straightened out immediately.
I wouldn’t be in this position if I could have kept my previous psychiatrist. If I could get the drugs right now that I need and have the report that I need during these stages where I’m just starting to teeter on the brink. But because of insurance I lost her. I would be safe right now, but I’m not. We need a single payer system in America like the rest of the civilized world so people like me will never have to worry about yet another thing in their life.
jameswilliaml 