Читать книгу Feeling Bipolar - Jack Larson - Страница 4

2.) Inception

Fresh out of graduate school, I was working for Canon in New York. Living at home with family, I was incurring bothersome sleep patterns in which I’d alternate between racing thoughts, exhaustion and anxiety. I'd stare at the walls for hours on end. I'd sit up and mutter to myself. My experience with the universe was shifting. Rather than reacting to extraneous activity impacting my life, I was creeping deeper into my brain. My personality was always emotional and a bit manic, but now I was depressed, detached and less in sync at times. My catalogue of emotions was widening. My mother, a nurse, figured I had a sleep disorder and I should talk to a psychologist. Maybe the doctor could suggest cherry Nyquil and we could call it a day. So I traveled down Route 17 to Paramus, NJ and sat down with this doctor. He asked me a battery of questions. It took him about fifteen minutes to say, “Jack, you are showing symptoms of manic depression. You need to visit a psychiatrist.”

I will never forget that drive home from the psychologist's office. You would think that I would be overwhelmed with grief, but I was awakened. I had been questioning my fleeting grasp of society and inability to string rational days together. Normalcy had escaped me. However, this doctor branded my behavior! He opened a door of understanding that, on an initial level, tabled my predicament. I make more sense to myself! I was naïve to celebrate what has come to be a lifetime encumbrance.

Prior to greeting my mother, I had mixed feelings. I was elated to tell her about my disorder because I could get help and talk out my problems. Yet, I was upset for her. She would be broken hearted that her baby was diagnosed as mentally ill. I pulled into our steep driveway and entered our home through the kitchen door. Mom was there washing dishes and, as if it was a routine visit, asked me “How did it go?” I gave her the news. She had her “game face” on, not showing a lot of emotion. She was, however, shocked by how happy I was to have a label for my ailment. Moreover, she was in disbelief that such a thing could be true. Ninety minutes ago when I kissed her good bye, I was her normal kid. She didn’t sleep that night. She was devastated.

I never had the illusion that my illness would go away. However, I thought I could manage my emotions into a box. I could corral its onsets, punch it in the mouth with my intellect and spit it out with a cocky grin. I think most mentally healthy people expect that from us. We should learn after a few rounds on how it pops up and that we should be able to squash it. But it does not work that way. Imagine a loss of a loved one and how you felt. Could you talk yourself into joy to overcome that moment? How about the ecstasy at the birth of your baby? Good or bad, when the tsunami comes, we have no control.

The psychiatrist confirmed that I was Bi-Polar 1.

I was cavalier about the diagnosis. How ignorant! Even though the news resonated in that it aligned my symptoms to a designation, I did not figure the brutal emotions that would befall me. I don’t think the bipolar havoc had completely reached me yet. I was content knowing there was an umbrella for my occasional lunacy and angst. Unaware of the ramifications before me, I thought a prescription would ground me.

My parents saved me. They encouraged me to be a member of society, to pursue my dreams, enjoy meaningful relationships and embrace love. They could have enabled me, incapacitating my zest and talent. Instead, they held my hand firmly, saying, “We are in this together!!!” This profound bond has played a role in my creating this book. They unconditionally accept my illness. I am extremely fortunate. I’m passing my love on to you!

I tell my family that our condition is worse than you can imagine, but less painful that you think. It is a macrocosm of why loved our ones fail to understand our inner trauma. Our pain, pleasure and transitions vary in strength. We are a contradiction. How can we get them inside our skin? Descriptions influence loved ones’ perceptions. If I understate a specific stage, we are imprinting a curt, one word moniker on something that begs for a flourish of narration. When we get frustrated by their dumbfounded reaction, we must remind ourselves that they learned it from us. Rather than cultivating sympathy, we have contributed to misguided perceptions and bewilderment. Then we blame them for not understanding us. The wheels keep spinning. My solution is to be aware of my mood and express it via art.

Aware of my Mood

At age 33 and a decade of disorder contention, my cycles of depression were exacerbated by environmental depression. Fired from yet another job in my career as a radio air personality and unsuccessful in obtaining another one, I was living with my parents in frigid Saratoga Springs, NY. I was terrified by the universe. I did not fit into society. I was worthless. My mom insisted that I see a psychologist. I could not find one in that small town, so I enlisted a social worker, a special one as it turned out. He did not have an advanced college degree and he could not write prescriptions, but he was compassionate. He gave me the greatest advice regarding mental illness. “Be aware of your mood in each moment. In so doing, you will go with it, feel it for what it is and find comfort in that, as opposed to fighting it.” Prior these words of wisdom, I was blindly at the moods’ mercy. This gem of advice wasn’t a cure, but it gave me a compass.

Think of it this way. My cousin and I are in a wild snowball fight. He nails me in the face with an icy hard one. Aware of my mood allows me to see it coming and accept the reality of it. I can’t avoid the strike but living with it makes it less stressful. If I see it coming, I probably give my cousin a high five for his accuracy and proceed to bombard him in retaliation. However, lack of awareness blindsides us. I’m enraged and react by throwing punches at him. Simply being aware of where I am allows me to better cope. It will not set me free. I’m still going to feel the snowball’s blow. But some angst will be alleviated. It’s better than the mood running roughshod over me.

My social worker gave me the coping mechanism, “be aware of my moods”. Searching for relief, I integrated his advice with my practice of Buddhist mindfulness which means awareness of our thoughts, feelings, body and environment in this very moment. Mindfulness involves paying attention to feelings without judging them. When practicing mindfulness, one’s thoughts tune to the present rather than the past or future.

With bipolar disorder, our confused state of mind glues us to a mood we did not conjure from the environment, but a chemical induced one that is beyond us. As rationality flees, the herculean challenge is to sustain awareness. We have a choice to accept the warped reality that’s upon us, or resisting an irrational force that will lower the boom regardless of our jabs.

My five year old niece lives in the moment. Upon my visit, she picks up her toy guitar and says, Uncle Jack, I’m going to sing a song for you. I’m thinking she learned a tune in kindergarten. She’d recite it for me and strum accordingly. When I ask her what song she sang, she says, “I don’t name my songs. Every one of them is different. I sing as I go.” She proceeds to perform a song about how ugly I am, coupled with hearty laughter. Imagine if each of us could flow in the moment like that. She’s not preoccupied with others’ compositions. She’s not dwelling in the past or neurotic about the future. Instead, she’s mindful; freestyling her mood with a smile. I dig that!

The 3 P’s

Awareness of our moods gives us a better grasp of our self, ugly or not. Blunt reality. It arms us with a more sophisticated vocabulary to articulate who we are, giving us a better chance of being understood. Unfortunately, I learned that talking it out was just step one. Our getting to know one another still needed work.

When conveying my feelings, interpretations varied. So, after a decade of “talking it out”, I started to write, paint and rhyme my moods in the moment as a supplement to my speech. The results were great! When experiencing painting, prose and poetry in concert, our loved ones catch a triangulated glimpse into “feeling bipolar”. They connected deeper because of my heartfelt message within my crude artistry. With every expression, they inched closer to “getting me”.

It’s a challenging exercise. Disconnected sympathy for bipolar disorder is normal. The following pages are interspersed with emotions that I experienced in the moment – grandiose, excruciating and in between. I never could have articulated these things without 3 P coherence.

I’m not a professional artist. Nor do you need be. My hands shake from Lithium, making straight brush strokes nearly impossible. Typing is a challenge. I’ve never taken a course in painting or poetry. I avoided resourcing bipolar therapy books to achieve authenticity. My art is raw.

My family and friends can’t walk in my shoes, but in these pages, they’ll try them on. What follows, between each chapter of prose, are poems and paintings, depicting moods in the moment. Perhaps you’ll be inspired.

No one sees the monkeys on my back. I carry them everywhere. They attack.

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So many of them… Different emotions to shoulder… I’m going bananas, a burden the size of a boulder.

Every day’s a different version, my jungle subversion. The apes overthrow me, not your typical excursion.

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Screaming at the mandrills, the tamarins make me irate. Jumping with the chimps, I get angry at these primates!

I have no composure when the spider monkey’s bobbing! They whip their tails. My cranium can’t stop nodding!

Imagine if you had work or a loved one to attend to. But in every moment a monkey’s harassing you.

I wonder what it’s like to be without baggage… Vanilla. Free from hairy back packs… monkeys, apes, guerillas.

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Love them at Barnum and Bailey, but not in my circus! Clenching tight, I have no clue which one will surface.

I wake up every day wishing to engage. People with ideas, no matter what their age...

But when they open their mouth, I tune out. Blah blah blah, it’s the same old rout. What a drought!!!

Let’s discuss possibilities, question the authorities. Revel in the outliers, anomalies and minorities.

Not just repeat what we’ve heard!!! Assemble a thought, dynamically confer.

Challenge each other with fresh expressions. Glean from experiences and transgressions.

Proceed with humility in our quest for sensibility. Don’t brag or boast. Chalk it up to serendipity.

Where are you my fellow bipolar spirits? Can we meet soon? No more “grin and bear its”!

Myopia… homogeny… group think… conformity… There’s a place for that, but not in our vocabulary.

Brain doctor, mind rocker, I know you try… But you’ve got to ease up. I want to fly.

You give me fourteen pills and prescribe it nightly. I swallow them obediently, it’s on. I’m a zombie.

Doctors say the meds are working, this toxic contraband. So why’s my wife complaining that I’m a different man?

Stammering, twitching, convulsing and shaking… The side effects I cope with, a better man in the making.

I take uppers for my downs and downers for my ups. Anti-psychotics tame my urges, yet with others, I erupt.

Supposedly under control, I’ve lost touch with my soul.

At home and work, people tell me I’m crazy. Your PHD on the wall doesn’t amaze me.

I have no desire to spend my moments curtailed. With or without this cocktail, I’m derailed.