My moods change at a drop of a dime. Often I cycle multiple times during a day. I know that sounds crazy, but hey, aren’t I? I always cycle at least once a week. But I don’t often hit the extreme highs and lows. I think that my quickly changing moods actually help me. I have felt totally impotent and thought that the world would be better off without my worthless presence. But I have never put the pills in my hand; I have never looked down that blued-steel barrel; I never put that dull blade to my vein, I have never stood on that edge and thought it was time to pay the piper. Yes, I have morbidly fantasized the “what ifs,” but never have I truly hit rock-bottom, where I actually contemplated doing the deed. I think that is because of an internal self-preservation system inherent in the Ultra Rapid Cycling part of the disorder. You never get to stay long at the extreme poles, because it turns you back in the other direction before you have too long to experience those powerful emotions long enough to elicit those ultimate acts of destruction. Make sense? So it can be a blessing yet a curse. It can be a blessing or a curse at the depressive pole. A blessing to get much need fresh air and join society’s happy sheep. A curse when you are deeply in your blue period and you are rolling out a montage of dark, lonely, and demented works of morbid passion. It can be both a blessing and a curse at the manic end also. A powerfully sweet blessing when it lets you diminish those inescapable thoughts to a slow and manageable level. But it can be a curse when it takes your talents and ambitions that were in hyper mode, and thus you lose a part of yourself that you exceedingly want to preserve. And most of the time I don’t finish the project before it’s gone. Am I just rambling incoherently here or does this seem like a valid hypothesis?
Don’t get me wrong, I do hit the far ends of the spectrum sometimes. On occasion I am so manic that I think I could conquer anything I wanted. “Top of the world!” I have lofty hopes and dreams, and anything that I put my mind to is attainable. Often I find a creative outlet at these times. I write or draw or paint or just sit and let the universe unfold in my mind. I also sometimes hate my life and accurately realize that I am an underachieving piece of shit, with a to-do list longer than quantum mathematics will allow. I have endless wants, needs, goals, ambitions, ideas, plans, and contrivances galore, with the talent to achieve most with little effort, yet I procrastinate with reckless abandon. I am an achiever of shit. I have a million and one half done or un-started projects to prove it. When my extreme mania is gone so goes my ambition. I often become depressed and sleep to escape the world and my self-defeating thoughts. Once I spent 3 months in bed except to go to work. Any free time was dead time.
I often daydream no matter where I am. People say that I’m zoning and that it is kind of creepy. When people bother me while I am in this mode I often zone out why they are talking to me, right in mid-conversation. I cannot help myself. Sometimes they finish what they are saying and then sit and watch me for a min. I come to and they look at me like I’m an arrogant bastard that thinks that I’m better than they are. That their thoughts and concerns mean shit in my grand scheme of things. It also happens on occasion when I know that I can get in deep shit if I zone. Let me reiterate; I cannot help myself. Sometimes in the morning meeting with the Plant Manager and Department Heads, where I’m one of the two main people to give reasons and accounts of previous shift issues, a zone off because I am hypo. I am supposed to be listening to the comments, questions, and concerns of the Table, ready to supply answers on a whim. My mind rambles on, thoughts swarming and plaguing my resolve. Suddenly through the drone voices a sound pierces my thoughts; I hear my name. Get this, I am standing up in a meeting and not even there. What do you think, they say or what happened with this issue or that problem? The whole room has been looking at me since I was first addressed. I pop back into my body and have to admit that I zoned off and could they repeat the question. My bosses look at me with disdain because it appeared that I didn’t even care. It often gets chalked-up to me being up all night long. A select few know the true reason and due to the stigma of my illness, likely think that I can go postal at any moment. The actual getting caught doesn’t happen often, but my zoning does.
The insatiable thoughts demanding my attention is a big problem. It is something that I have a hard time with. Occasionally I will drive home from work and as I pull in the drive, realize that I don’t even remember anything after getting in the car. Or on a drive down the highway I will come to and find that I have driven 10 miles or so and it seems like in the blink of an eye. Shit just the other day my wife broke me free from my reverie and told be to stop obsessing about you guys’ blogs. This can’t be safe. I have read about something similar to it in my psych book – it is called using your unconscious mind, not subconscious mind. We use it when we multi-task. Our minds are so used to performing the task that you don’t even have to focus on it, your mind just effortlessly does it for you. Like getting engrossed in a cell phone conversation while driving in russ-hour traffic. It is possible due to the unconscious mind. But they warn that it is dangerous, as cell induced car accidents tell the tale. I digress, but you get the point. My mind doesn’t stop. I am always thinking.
Kind of a chicken/egg – egg/chicken thought. I wonder if my moods are shaped by my reality or is my reality shaped by my moods. That sounded a little more complicated than I meant it to. What I’m trying to say is: do my reactions correspond to my current mood or do situations actually cause the swings in my mood? You see? I swear that a stressful situation can change my mood. I can be down and in the dumps, trudging through my depressive thoughts during the day, and have something stressful happen and instantly I turn manic, where I can’t stop running that scenario over and over in my head. My mind becomes a total jumble and anxiety enthralls my senses. I will not be able to focus on any thing until I go to sleep. And I will not be able to fall asleep without medication. I have to do that anyways. I will actually zone out and my unconscious mind will continue to drive my body in this world, thus driving, working, etc., while I continue to over-analyze the event.
Sometimes in the course of the same day if an employee comes to me with a mundane question that I find unworthy of my time, I will respond differently. One time I will get very irritated, cynically snapping at them with condescending comments about their inability to figure out simple problems. A few hrs later I will be very understanding and run them through the problem in a concerned and polite demeanor with absolutely no irritation even though I find the need for my help totally unwarranted. A few of my workers that I am close to, say they walk on eggshells around me at times; that they can tell that I’m in a bad mood by the way my eyes look. They say that one minute I’m happy and adding to conversations and jovial camaraderie and then an hr later I am a totally different person. Duality. Does anyone else experience this? Could it just be different moods in the same mood? Sometimes I feel like two people. Maybe I should get a small fake triangular beard and wear it went I feel agitated. That would be the shit I tell you. My own little doppelganger.
I’m done rambling. Later Donkass out.
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