screen

i am watching Stephen Fry's documentary on bipolar at the moment.
it is wonderful, but actually quite confronting. the symptoms with me onset around... 22, 23? before that, i had pretty much, simple, uni-polar depression. i'd have less depressed times, times of elevated mood, but never anything vaguely manic. but, the older i've gotten the more pronounced it has become. not so much so that i run off rails, or have delusions of grandeur - the psychosis tends to be flickering around the edges of my mind rather than all consuming. but it's there.

seeing it being talked about so openly, by so many people, in such a compassionate way, is enlightening. i recommend it to anyone who is, or who has a loved one with bipolar.

my blogs are the best evidence of my disordered thinking. if you follow them through from 2006 or so, you can see the mood moving up and down, here and back again, in a rough, curious cycle. sometimes stress pushes it forward - either the depressive or the manic. but it's clear. when i was first diagnosed by a psychiatrist after a few days of feeling so suicidal i could not move then jittery and excitable the next week, during a time of extreme stress, i told my best friend. he said 'oh god, now you say it, it is SO obvious.' and it is. anyone who has known me for large periods of time can see it - anyone who has been very close to me, or lived with me, knows exactly how it looks and how it gives and takes from me.

and i can manage it largely, and i know when i cannot. i can watch the line, and if i cross it, draw back. as one of the men say, basically (paraphrased) 'it's all worth it, when you have walked with angels'... and mania is more vivid and beautiful and rich and delicious than any drug i've taken.

it floods you and you suck it in, deeper and deeper, like every colour is swimming out of you. but there is not the detachment that comes with acid. it's so real, it is so inside of you, pouring out and in. it is more alert and organised than amphetamines. it is more loving and tactile than ecstasy and it is so much more wild than alcohol. it is more embracing and softer than mushrooms, it is harder than cocaine rush. it is like nothing else i have felt or been through or been to, and i would not wish away those moments, where the sky parts and the world is so real. so breathtakingly, exquisitely real, that you cannot force enough into you.

i lapse back though, into the normality. the depression is a lot easier to manage with mindfulness based therapy - it slows it from descending out of reach. i guess the pills might take the edge of it, but honestly, i don't think they do a thing anymore. they sure as hell don't stop the depression coming, thief in the night, taking everything it can fit in a big black sack.

i can rest it back, and calm it down now. i try not to let it take me completely, against my better desire, because i know if it does, there is no return. i'd like to have it take me, the ocean out to sea, out to sea we go.... the moods can hit sharp and fast, or last for a week or so. it's not really clear what it is, or what happens with me. i sure as hell don't get it.

but i just need to read, and write, and paint, and work and eat, and breathe my way through it and i keep walking