Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Sure,” I say, feeling magnanimous.

“Do you always talk this fast?”

“Yes.”

He nods. “Okay,” he says. “Go on.”

“What was I saying?”

“Feeling crazy, but not crazy crazy.”

“Right,” I say. “So I guess that’s it. Do you mind if I look around?”

“Not at all,” he says, so I get up and go over to his bookcase and read all the titles and look at the framed photos and laugh at the little framed cartoon—a man is lying on a couch, yammering on, and the doctor’s writing TOTALLY NUTS!!! on his little pad—and I go over to the window and hop up on the sill and swing my feet a little, then hop back down and come back and sit in my chair.

“All better?” he asks. I laugh. “Has anyone ever mentioned the word mania to you?”

“Nope,” I say, folding my hands across my middle.

“They haven’t,” he says. “I find that a little odd.”

“I mean, I’ve heard the word, obviously,” I say. “I’ve just never heard it applied to me. Is that what you’re saying?”

“It was, yes. Out of curiosity, what does mania mean?”

“Mania—well, going around like a maniac, I guess.” Now that I think about it, that doesn’t sound so far off.

“Sort of,” he says. “Anyway, you’re right, you don’t seem depressed right now. You seem like you’ve got lots of energy.”

“I do indeed,” I say. “Indeed I do.”

“An unusual amount of energy,” he replies.

I shrug. “Pretty typical for me,” I say. “I like to keep busy.”

“What do you do to keep yourself busy?”

“Oh, working, mostly. Or seeing friends. Cleaning, laundry, things like that. I like to have a clean house. Very clean. Unusually clean. Spotless, in fact. I’m an extremely good housekeeper. Most of the time.”

“Except?”

“When I’m not. I go through stages. Sometimes I don’t clean the house for months. But usually,” I say, not wanting to give the impression that I’m a lazy slob, “it’s pretty clean.”

“What else happens when you go through those stages?”

I furrow my brow. “I don’t know. Nothing. It happens in the afternoon, usually. I just want to crawl into bed and hide from the entire world and stop thinking. My brain empties out. It’s kind of an effort to breathe. It’s like time slows down. It feels like I’m flattened. I don’t want to do anything. I can’t concentrate. I feel like a failure. I sort of hate myself.” I shrug. “It goes away. Then I get energetic again.” I fiddle with my ears, not wanting to tell him about the rages. I feel like I’ve said too much already and come off as crazy. Can’t have that.

“Is there a pattern to the swings?”

“Swings?”

“What did you say? Stages. Do you have any idea when the stages come and go? I mean, you know when they happen during the day, right? Do you see any pattern over, say, a few months?”

“No. Sometimes they happen, sometimes not. I’m just kind of moody. Which,” I say, “is kind of the issue. I’m really insanely moody right now. I mean, I’m out-of-my-head moody. I can’t stand it. I’m going nuts. As I said.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’m having these rages,” I finally confess, embarrassed. “I kind of go into these insane rages and wind up smashing all kinds of shit and throwing things and hollering and crying.”

“Any particular reason?”

“No. That’s the thing. It just happens. It comes out of nowhere. Well, it happens at night, usually. At night I’m crazy, in the morning I’m flat. So at night I have these rages and destroy all this shit and am horrible and awful, and then in the morning I wake up and look at it and kind of want to die. I mean, not die die,” I say. “I never want to really die.” I lean forward, wanting to set the record straight. “But I’m not depressed, for God’s sake. You said so yourself. They’ve always said I was, but that doesn’t make any sense. I’m usually pretty happy,” I say, sitting back in my chair, waving my hand, suddenly aware that that sounds a little ridiculous at this point. “I mean, seriously. It’s not like I lie around all day. How could I get up every morning and work, and do all this stuff, if I was depressed?” I laugh in disbelief.

He nods amiably. “Ever wish you were dead?”

I consider it. “I wish I wasn’t crazy.”

“Ever attempted suicide?”

“Not exactly.”

He raises his eyebrows, then skips on. “Let me ask you a couple of questions.”

The questions are endless, and with each one, I feel a little crazier. But I also start to feel like he might know what’s going on. Which means there might be something he could do.

“You say you had an eating disorder? How long ago?”

“Started when I was nine. I finally started getting a handle on it a couple of years ago, when I was about twenty.”

“What about cutting, any history of cutting?”

“A little bit. Ages ago.” I’m torn between wanting his help and not wanting to seem crazy. The cutting was crazy. I don’t care to elaborate.

“What about drinking? Drugs?”

“Drinking? I suppose so, yes. But not too much. Nothing that would cause concern.” I’m thinking, Drinking? All the time. Until I can’t see. Until the crazies go away. I drink myself sane. I’m not about to tell him that. That’s the last thing I want him to know. I’ll tell him anything he wants to hear except about the drinking. It’s my last hope to keep myself from going totally over the edge. “No drugs,” I say.

“Do you have a habit of being impulsive? Things like shopping, making snap decisions? Taking sudden trips?” The more he asks, the less I can answer. Snap decisions? Always. Shopping? Until I’ve nearly gone broke. Trips? I just took a trip. Lit off at night, drove six hundred miles to see an old friend, on a whim.

“What about sex?” I slept with the friend, too, without thinking about it, then felt like shit. “Not to pry, but would you say you sleep with a lot of people? More than you mean to? Sometimes it feels like you don’t want to but can’t stop?” For as long as I can remember. I can’t begin to count the beds, the nights when it felt easier just to close my eyes than to get myself home.

“Do your thoughts race?”

I sit up. “That’s it,” I say. “That’s what I mean when I say crazy: I can’t get the thoughts to stop. It’s torture. It’s hell.”

“Do you ever feel like you’re not in your body, like you’re numb?”

“Yes.”