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Being Crazy

The hypomanic mind isn’t like a single life happening all at once, it’s like every life happening all at once in a tiny, tinny, echoing room. Hypomania is like having ball-bearings bouncing around inside my skull faster and harder and fast and hard and faster and harder. Hitting each other, making divots on the inside of my skull, becoming interior decorators. Fragmented, distracted thoughts. Sentence fragments. Problem grammar.  No capital letters. No punctuation.
When most of us were young we learned that life isn’t fair. Yes, that boy got a bigger slice of cake than you. Yes, that girl gets better grades than you even though she doesn’t study. Yes, that’s boy’s imaginary friend’s clothes are nicer than yours. Life isn’t fair. But when I was diagnosed with bipolar at 20, my definition of “unfair” had to be reviewed.
We all take part in the game of denial. Humans need denial to exist. We can’t think about our inevitable death, the fact that we are aging, or that our marriage may end in divorce and expect to care about jobs, mortgage payments and the obvious importance of Jimmy Choos. We know unpleasant possibilities and inevitabilities are true, but on a daily basis we deny them. We need to. Denial produces a workable life. What gets under my skin though, is the fact people expect me to deny my bipolar disorder, my experiences with it, and its effects – mostly just to make them feel better.
Once you’re on a magical medication cocktail, see doctors regularly, have done years of talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), tried shock therapy (ECT), exercise, have social contacts, a support network, a support group, eat well, tried light therapy, dark therapy, and a series of awful tasting herbs and you find yourself still unwell; the question must be asked: If I’m doing everything right, why am I still sick?
When I was a kid, show and tell created the most memorable moments in school. Not the tell part. The tell was boring. We heard about Betty going to a “real, real fun zoo” and Bobby getting a new bike; this information made us shift in our seats, roll our eyes, and make funny faces at whoever was talking. But the showing, now that was great. We got to touch a slimy frog, hear Cathy scream as a budgie landed in her hair and be frightened as a snake’s tongue lashed out in front of us. Showing was where the action was. But with mental illness, it’s never the show that people want, only the tell. People are frightened by, and run from, the show.
Last night, I watched Crazy for Love a very bad movie wherein a man, Max, is put into a mental hospital for attempting suicide for the tenth time. When he’s there, he glimpses a very ill, schizophrenic, Grace, whereupon he instantaneously falls in love with her. She too is determined to kill herself. His life’s mission then is to “make her better”. To “make her happy”. Having found his new mission in life, he no longer wants to kill himself. Well, pin a rose on his nose.
I am crazy. I tell this to people in my personal life. It’s not a secret. I figure there’s no point in trying to cover it up; it’ll come out eventually. The approximately 20 scars on my forearms rather give away that something is wrong. But people really don’t like the word “crazy”. In fact, most often, what people say to me is, “no, you’re not!”. Well, actually, I am. I'm bipolar and I’m crazy.