"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Squirm
slew Function: verb Etymology: origin unknown 1 : to turn (as a telescope or a ship's spar) about a fixed point that is usually the axis 2 : to cause to skid : VEER [slew a car around a turn] 3 : what my mood has been doing the past couple of days
The worst thing, to me, about having bipolar disorder is that I am at the mercy of my brain chemicals. Well, at least my moods are. Regular people have moods that are reactions to events and situations. I am not afforded that luxury many times.
It's called cycling. A lot of people with bipolar disorder have three states in their cycles. Depressive, manic, and "baseline" which is what we'll call something resembling normal. These cycles run for months and sometimes years, but in an unfortunate few like myself moods can cycle in weeks, days, even hours and minutes.
Fun, it's not.
Particularly since I am also in the unfortunate group that has the occasional fourth state, usually referred to as a "mixed" state. This mood state has facets of both depressive and manic at the same time. On the one hand you have the lethargy of depression. On the other you have the frantic anxiety of mania. All in all it is sheer, pure frustration.
Some people enjoy the manic phase. Some even embrace the depressive phase in a dark way. But nobody, nobody likes the mixed.
It goes without saying that I wouldn't even be talking about this if I wasn't in the middle of one. It's been boiling inside of me off and on for a couple of days now, refusing to move on, wanting control. But I won't let it.
Letting a mixed mood state take control can be very, very dangerous. Frustration breeds anger, and a person on a mixed state has a very short fuse. Set them off and they say and do things that everyone later regrets.
So I've kept really calm, trying to not spill the applecart. In the meantime, I feel like...well...
There was a movie in the 50's, a Vincent Price horror film called "The Tingler." The plot line was based on the fictional idea that if you were frightened, an organism in your back would reach up inside of you and grab your spine from inside. So imagine that feeling. But with electric eels. And motor oil.
Yeah, it's just like that.
This is getting on my nerves, now that I have them. --Q., Star Trek, the Next Generation, "Deja Q"
