Madness: A Bipolar Life

“When?”

“Sometimes during the rages. Sometimes when I get really happy. It comes and goes.”

“Does it bother you?”

“I don’t know. It’s just weird. It feels like I might just go flying off.”

“Does anything make the feeling go away?”

“I pinch myself.”

“Does it work?”

“Not really.”

“Do you ever cut yourself?”

“Not anymore.”

“When you did, did it help?”

“Yes,” I say flatly.

“Good for you for not doing it anymore.”

“I slipped once. Nearly killed myself. I’m not interested in doing it again.”

“Slipped?”

“Slipped.”

He lets it slide.

“How far apart are the mood swings?” He keeps saying that! What’s he talking about? “Every few months, weeks, days?”

“I wouldn’t know about mood swings,” I say. “It’s nothing that specific. It’s just, I don’t know—” Now that I think about it, it’s obviously fucking mood swings. “More like I just go flying around, up and down. Sometimes days. Hours. Minutes. So fast I can’t keep track. I’ll be going along in a perfectly good mood and suddenly I’m pitching shit all over the house. I’ll be lying in bed feeling like I’m dead when suddenly I’m up and running around. It’s maddening. I’d give anything to be just normal for an entire day. Just a day. That’s all I’m asking.”

“What about sleep, do you sleep? Can’t fall asleep or can’t stay asleep? Wake up early even when you don’t want to?”

“I would sell my soul for one good night of sleep. I lie awake for hours, then prowl the house all night. By morning everything feels surreal.”

“Nightmares?”

“When I sleep.”

“What about work, what kind of work do you do? Do you find it hard to work? Easy? Can you stop working? Or do you just keep going?”

“I’m a writer. I write and write. I would write until I was dead, the way some dogs will keep eating and eating until they die. I can’t stop. And then, suddenly, I have nothing to say. It goes away. The words are gone.”

He’s studying my face.

“Do you ever feel hopeless?”

The word yawns open in my chest. “Not really,” I say, looking out the window.

“But sometimes?”

“Sometimes.”

“When?”

I still don’t look at him. “When I stop to think about it.”

“About this?”

“About any of it. About being crazy.” I chew my thumbnail and look at him. “It’s getting worse,” I say. “It’s getting harder not to think about it.”

“Does anything help?”

I snort. “A drink?” He doesn’t laugh. “Not really,” I say. “No.”

Nothing. Nothing makes it go away.

He finally scribbles something on his notepad and clicks his pen. He looks at me.

“You don’t have depression, that’s for sure.”

“No shit.” What a relief.

“You have bipolar disorder.”

I sit there. “Is that the same as manic depression?”

“The very same.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s crazy. I mean, manic depression: that’s crazy.”

He shrugs. “Depends on how you look at it. I wouldn’t say it’s crazy. I’d say it’s an illness.”

“Bipolar disorder,” I repeat. “Do you take Prozac for that?”

“Not a chance,” he says. “You’re right that the Prozac makes you feel crazy. I’m going to prescribe a mood stabilizer. It should help.”

My chest floods with a mixture of horror and relief. The relief comes first: something in me sits up and says, It’s true. He’s right, he has to be right. This is it. All the years I’ve felt tossed and spit up by the forces of chaos, all that time I’ve felt as if I am spinning away from the real world, the known world, off in my own aimless orbit—all of it, over. Suddenly the solar system snaps into place, and at the center is this sun; I have a word. Bipolar. Now it will be better. Now it has a name, and if it has a name, it’s a real thing, not merely my imagination gone wild. If it has a name, if it isn’t merely an utter failure on my part, if it’s a disease, bipolar disorder, then it has an answer. Then it has a cure. At least it has something that should help.