My Story
I watched the events of September 11th, 2001 unfold from the floor of a commons area in a psychiatric ward. I had just checked in that afternoon. My razors and cell phone were carefully removed from the bag that had been packed for me. My vitals were taken by a middle aged black man who was the nurse on duty. He joked with me. “What are you in for?”
I stared back blankly.
“Let me guess,”, he said. “You’re manic-depressive. I can always tell by the eyes.”
I blinked. “Are you done?”
He let me go.
This time in my life is not something that I generally talk about and if someone dares to ask about it, their questioning will usually be met with a short smirk and a change of subject.
Being bipolar is not something that one usually advertises. The only time I’ve encounted people around here using the word bipolar, it has been in a negative, name-calling sort of context. “She is so fucking bipolar!”
Never have I heard this word used in association with someone that they love. I don’t really tell people this fact about me for the same reason that I hate the question, “So, what do you do for a living?” The whole of my being is not defined by my choice of profession. Nor is it defined by this condition. Once people know this about you, there is an unmistakably negative connotation.
It’s like encountering a perfectly wonderful person but then finding out somewhere down the line that their last name is Colonoscopy. You just never look at them the same way again.
My stay at the ward was 10 days. I saw what was happening on the television, but I can’t honestly say that I cared. Neither did I really care whether I lived or died.
The “friends” in my life up until that point had been “church people”. All of whom , save one, abandoned me after I was admitted. I never heard from any of them again. I, you see, was being punished by God. I hadn’t prayed hard enough and my sins were unforgivable. The only person who called EVERY phone time was Mary, even after her father threatened her for doing so. And she is still my best friend to this day.
I have been medicated, unmedicated, over medicated, under medicated and self-medicated. I have been angry, sad, neurotic, lonely, euphoic, numb and disturbingly calm.
My three best friends make a point of telling me that I am their stabilty, an idea that seems absurd to me. How could I, with the things that go on inside my head, possibly be, as Deshay calls me, a totem pole for anyone? How can I possibly be a touchstone when I constantly feel as if I will drift away at any moment?
My friends say I’m elusive and extremely hard to get to know. I agree. It’s self-preservation. If I constantly spewed forth what was going on in my mind, you would not see me as you see me now, you would see a wild-eyed crazy person.
No matter how well you know someone, you can never know what it’s like to live within their mind.
I recognize other manic-depressives with amazing clarity and maintain that if you put me in a room with a thousand strangers, I would be able to point out, within minutes the ones who were bipolar.
And we would meet again, after midnight, in our dreams, and swing from the monkey bars laughing and telling each other stories and drawing in the dirt.
My touchstone is contained within these people.
I came across the icarus project about 3 years ago. (www.theicarusproject.net) Icarus is an unbelievable community of people who believe that they are blessed, indeed, with a dangerous gift, named, of course, for the boy who flew too close to the sun. Whenever I feel that I’m not going to make it, I always end up there, reading stories and looking at artwork by people who are amazingly similar to myself.
A few months ago The Icarus Project had an open call for an art show. The show was to be works of art created entirely by bipolar artists. I sent in a drawing that I did for Brad of three beer bottles that was contrived from a 3am conversation about the human condition. They accepted my piece and off it went to New York. The show was amazing and I wish that I had been there. It was written up in the New York Daily News, here: icarus article.
Thanks so much to the guys at Icarus. You are all beautiful.
I hope that everyone has a chance to go and check out the Icarus website, after all, who can resist a site that has it’s own section on superpowers and dreams?
Until then,
Mad love to all.
