The stories I could tell

I am in a very strange state. A very calm, even, medicated state. I believe this is the equilibrium of psychoactive drugs. I can feel myself being held back from things, things which may be mania, things which may be hallucination, things which may be passion; it’s the trade-off I am forced to make.

As I explained it to someone recently, part of being medicated means not automatically fixing my attention on things as voices, rather than just ambient sounds. As the words left my lips I was frightened by two things; firstly the subject matter, secondly the calm with which I described it. Have I become so detached, even from my own illness? Our conversation for the evening stemmed from a line of questioning from her regarding my sense of self; an interesting conversation to be sure, and one several hours’ long. Just how separated from myself am I? Who is this new persona, this new psyche and ego, who speaks with my lips, touches with my hands, earns my money and spends it?

Recently when I purchased two arm-chairs for the studio, my brother make a joke that upon returning from Japan, I’d done my travelling, and now I was nesting. Today I purchased two small bolster-like cushions for the chairs, to go with the two medium square ones, and the two large ones which generally live on the floor. Am I nesting? Nesting with whom – on my own? Sometimes I find myself at the end of a day wondering why I have done certain things, wondering what facet of my character has drawn me to such objects, inspired such actions.

And in this medicated equilibrium, I’m finding out that there’s more to life as a bipolar-schizophrenic than just balance. Everything is still there, but the drugs tend to keep it all just out of reach. Within this kind of medicated bubble, I move about the life that fits in with other people’s understanding of normality; I work, I engage in social activities when I’m not too ill for them, I speak, I eat. Most of them forget, forget that I’m ill, and that’s probably a good thing. For so long as there aren’t any symptoms, they don’t think of me as bipolar. One good thing is that it allows them to treat me as they normally would, perhaps one of the cornerstones of maintaining that balance; being treated as a normal person. Nevertheless, I constantly have this thing to deal with, daily, hourly, minute by minute. Sometimes I feel it strongly, sometimes even I forget, but never for too long; it simply doesn’t go away like that.

Speaking of nesting, as I progress through life at the moment, I find myself writing creatively less, and what I do write becomes more and more abstract. Worlds within worlds and voices within voices, I write about the construct of my psyche, I take creative abstracts and expressions of what happens there, abstracts of my thoughts personified and made incarnate in human representations. Once upon a time I would have counted myself as a great conversationalist, and once in a while I get to talk in great quantity, but I have begun to speak less, have less to say.

Cue the emo strings; but seriously, on some level I think we all want connection. All our lives we strive to have that connection with someone who seems to understand us exclusively, in ways that others cannot. Getting back to that idea of nesting that I don’t seem to be able to hang-on to, yes, perhaps I’m settling down; not in the sense of doing less in life, but more in the way of seeking intimacy. I believe there are times in our lives where we all find joy in shouting from rooftops, in running and jumping and playing with our friends, in loud cheers and much enthusiasm. I also believe that for some of us, we grow into a time where things become more intimate, when we don’t wish to socialise with large numbers of people any longer, we crave more quality of intimacy with fewer people.

The emo strings relate to the subject of lovers.

Aside from the usual hormonal urges, I still feel deeply that I want to share myself with a lover, but of-course it comes with this huge weight of bipolar-schizophrenia. How does one bring this up in conversation? When do you open this up to someone? Whether or not I like it, it’s a part of me, forever, and even that in itself is still daunting to me. ‘Hey you have nice eyes, and by the way I suffer from schizophrenia’. Or worse, establishing a fantastic friendship with someone and then dropping the bomb ‘These? Um, these are my meds, I’m bipolar.’ ‘Oh… oh really? Um… wow. Hey that’s cool.’ Right. There are still countless stigmas around mental-illnesses, partially because so many of the symptoms are genuinely worth being afraid of. The symptoms of mental-illness can be extreme, and they are absolutely without question outside of the parameters of normal human life. How then can I expect someone to take all of this on, as well as their own struggles and challenges in life?

Humans are humans, we all have sexual urges, we have desires for relationships, we deal with our own challenges in career, family, social interaction, but I have this other thing too, as well as all of that. Where does that leave me? What boundaries does it place on any relationship I may have? There are some appropriate fears to be addressed, as I’ve written in my romanticised pieces in my other diaries ‘What kind of father can a bipolar-schizophrenic be?’ My romanticised companion says something along the line of ‘You can only try.’ of-course she says this because she is idealistically brave and supportive, but what about real children? Real people for which I will be responsible? Real miracles of thought and discovery that I will want to support with everything in my being? Will I be able to support them? I know parents let down their children once in a while, that’s only natural, all people make mistakes, but what if my children become frightened of me? I can hardly bear the thought, and it brings tears to my eyes.

Nesting, speaking less, perhaps I’m subconsciously preparing for life on my own. I can’t give this to anyone, it isn’t fair on them, I couldn’t expect someone to deal with this, deal with something they can never see.

I’m sorry to end on a sobering note, I know I usually am able to find joy in life, but this issue has been troubling me of late. I’m beginning to think that this really is the isolation of a person who suffers mental-illness.