(More non-game stuff. Expect a game replay/review by the end of the weekend. But this is going to be a somewhat more general blog in many ways.)
On any given day, I take between eight and twelve pills, spread out over four or more "feedings" from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. I see individual therapists three times a week--all different days--and have group therapy once a week, usually on yet another day. This leaves me with one weekday off, plus the weekend.
I'm not complaining, bragging, or looking for sympathy, any more than I would be if I were to describe the clothes I wear, my hairstyle, or how often I brush my teeth. It's become part of life, and is to a large degree what gives it its rhythm. I'd miss not having it all, in some ways. Besides, I think we all know plenty of people who take more pills than I do, and many such people are even younger. It's just a statement of fact.
Bipolar has tried to ruin my life over various periods from age fifteen or so on, but it only got diagnosed about two years ago. Under its baleful influence I flunked my way through six semesters of college, lost friendships I valued, spent money I didn't have, attempted suicide twice and harmed myself in other ways dozens of times. I also made a lot of friends, got a lot of nice things with the money I spent, and at times had a terrifying quicksilver intellect that has been partially dulled under the weight of all the medication. My most unstable period at Texas was also the period I was most popular with women. None of them wanted to date me, obviously--they weren't insane, just me--but I was a fascinating figure to follow along behind. Nobody at the time knew this explicitly, but it seems to be the best explanation for the phenomena.
Keeping bipolar from wrecking my life any further has become a major life goal, and is what animates most (but not all) of the therapy and pharmacology I consume every week. I miss some of being bipolar. You can grade mania and depression on a scale of 1-10; if you could bottle Mania 2 and sell it you'd be a millionaire; it's better than any drug. You're incredibly smart, funny, you don't need to sleep, you can eat and not gain weight, it's amazing. The problem is you can't stay there; you either rocket up (and that's when you start shouting at people for no reason) or plummet down--and in my particular brand of bipolar, the downs are way, way down.
I mentioned earlier that in order to write about war, you had to have an idea what lay at its foundations. If you're bipolar, part of dealing with the disease (condition, etc) is deciding whether you prefer saying "I'm bipolar," "I have bipolar disorder," or "I have received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder." The differences between the three are fairly subtle, but I think they're graspable. I usually say that I'm bipolar, sometimes that I have bipolar. It's been part of me for so long, and we've fought each other for so long, that it seems to be a part of who I am whether I want it to be or not.
I'm pretty "out;" not everybody is. I have a shirt with (Li2CO3) on the front--Lithium Carbonate, one of my medications, the traditional one for bipolar. I have a few other lithium-related items--for a long time water with a high lithium content was considered healthy, so it was bottled and sold like the Aquafina of 1890 or even turned into beer. I have relevant bottles from both. Sometimes I call myself crazy; in Britain some bipolar folk are trying to reclaim "mad" for themselves--calling themselves madmen and madwomen. I can respect that. I try to have a sense of humor about it, under the theory that it's far too important to take seriously all the time. There aren't that many "out" bipolar folks in academia, I'm discovering, even among grad students. I know they exist, though; I'm a designated mentor for grad students coming to terms with bipolar. I know of one other bipolar academic in History; oddly enough, he's a Civil War historian as well (Mark Grimsley, of many excellent books). He and I met once, and discussed how we've been coping. We mostly discussed how there should be far more bipolar academics out there than we know about--something like 2-3% of the population is bipolar, after all. But, for whatever reason, we're holding the banner and nobody's marching behind us. I seem to be the second-most prominent bipolar historian.
[MAN I get a lot of hits for that one paragraph there, all from Columbus. Welcome, OSU folk! Sorry, that's about all I know about Dr. Grimsley, and I don't think any of it's secret knowledge.]
What's frustrating is not knowing whether the pills are doing any damn good, or if they're just giving me side effects. After all, my life with bipolar has consisted of long stretches of relative calm, then a long or short period of chaos, then back to quiet. And the quiet can last a week, or years...between major events, the last gap was seven years. So for the past two, the pills are either the only thing that's kept me out of the hospital, or doing nothing my body wasn't doing already. What's even more frustrating is this: When I was treated for simple depression and anxiety, the thought was that after a sufficient course of meds and talk therapy, I'll be cured, and won't need the therapy anymore. That's not an option now; I'll be taking medication and seeing therapists until I die. I will never be "better."
I'm fortunate to have a lot of support--excellent insurance (total out-of-pocket for all my therapy each week: $5), good friends, parents who, I gotta say, came late to understanding what was wrong but eventually came around. I only lost two friends in the last manic-depressive episode.
I also have a blog, to which I can post maudlin things like this. Why am I writing all this? I guess part of it is the narcissistic element of blogging. I blog because what I think and do is interesting to others, dammit, and you shall read it. And this is important to me now, even if it's in the background; four times a day I'm reminded that this isn't going away. I guess I also wrote this to get it out of my head, and to imagine putting into words comprehensible to other people what this all means. I talk about the disease's epiphenomena with my therapists, and I talk about other people's experiences when I speak with other bipolar folk, but I don't get into the foundational aspects that often. Partly that's OK. I'm not scared by it anymore, and I'm not even tired of it; like I said, it's part of the rhythm of life now. But it's good to put it out there.
I don't think bipolar's going to appear many times here. It's in the background, and I've learned to live around it. But if you're interested in the life of this blog's author, this is always around the corner. Hopefully from now on it'll stay there.
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