For the last couple of weeks I have been seriously out of whack. To try to describe my current experience I began with bobbleheads dolls, a useful analogy for my current experience. All of us respond to whack on the head, but some of us more easily respond to a blow, are thrown out of equilibrium more severely, and it takes us longer to back into balance. But then, in trying to find a video which illustrates this, I ran into a huge pocket of bobblehead culture and veered almost totally off-topic.
It sucks when you are under major stress and the powers that be have a video conference and decide to mess with your head. One of them turns to the other and giggles, “Let’s niggle her a bit by adding a sideways, nerve wracking stressor on top of the pile.” And another power nods emphatically in agreement, “She can take it! Let’s sit back and watch! Where’s the popcorn!”
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay
Odysseus had to navigate between the two destructive forces — a ferocious six-headed sea monster and a downward spiraling maelstrom. If you read the Odyssey and work through the analogy there are similarities to navigating between mania and depression. [This is a reissued version of my first post. A reader referred me to a George Harrison song, which I felt was a useful addition and so added it to the end.]
Bipolar disorder strongly affects the brain’s neurochemistry and, our best guess at this point, can create brain damage, probably dependent on how many or the extremity of the episodes that we’ve have. My brain has been burned by too much hypomania. I used to be impressively smart. Now I’m down to about 80% of what I started out with, probably just “smart.” And it can’t be undone, or at least entirely undone. I was hypomanic for years at a time. It felt marvelous at the time. But, hypomanic as I was, even so I would have listened to the following information, especially the graphic pictures.
I made this for a different post and didn’t use it, but I like it so I’m gonna hang it up here anyway.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
I bought a hummingbird feeder recently. It warms my heart to give these little guys with the manic wings some sugar water and the chance to take a load off. I have fluttered my wings a million miles a minute, but to ill effect. So I chose a feeder where they can sit quietly, dipping their beaks into the syrup and resting for a while where they feel unthreatened. This reminds of the blurred speed in my manic episodes and the fact that the fastest way to induce a manic episode (in someone wired that way) is to seriously threaten them.
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