The Impossible.

I'm amazed at how crippling (sometimes literally) mental illness can be. A trigger could be anything or nothing apparent at all. Who can win against that?

Some of these blows happen daily at any time, and some are less frequent but can be extreme. The scope of what's possible, what I can do or communicate or find, narrows.

Here is what often is or seems impossible.

• Showering. This often feels like a massive task involving too much of my body and too many steps. I'm in a better place with that now--music has helped. I have to reach out of the shower to find the right song, whatever that may be. And I may wash my hair twice because I'm not paying attention to what I have to do.
• Eating. I don't feel hunger pains often. When I do, I'm usually already sluggish and dizzy. Preparing food is hard, but the worst part is trying to find something that seems edible. I skip meals. Then, on rare occasions, I feel completely famished and much more motivated to eat.
• Putting on makeup. I love makeup, and I love playing with it. But some days, I can barely put on my foundation. If I have even a little glitter around my eyes, you can know that I am trying. But eyeshadow and eyeliner are the real tests. On a good day, you'll see lipstick, blush, and all-over sparkle. 
• Moving. When my symptoms are high, I sometimes experience what I call the Tin Man. I'm suddenly unable to move. I can usually move my eyes, but I can't speak or get out of an uncomfortable position. Josh will sometimes rearrange my neck or my legs for me. The Tin Man seems to leave on its own eventually. Josh thought the name meant one of us is heartless, but it's about not having enough oil, and I haven't discovered much about the oil I need.
• Gathering enough affection. Josh and I are pretty affectionate. Oliver is pretty dedicated to his own space. Bruce gives good hugs. Sometimes, I feel so hungry for love in any of the languages.
• Being with several or more people, even if I love them and they love me. I need an escape hatch. With breaks, I usually do okay. Most family is aware of that.
• Cleaning. I often don't notice what needs to happen, or the awareness almost paralyzes me. I try to do a little each day--some laundry, the dishes, picking up toys, tidying up some of my clutter. Josh takes over a lot of the work. I am trying, and I hope to improve.
• Feeling fully comfortable in my body again. I have little hope for weight loss; I'm just trying not to gain more.
• Life without meds. This is probably just true--I will take varying medications for the rest of my life. I may deal with changing meds and side effects every couple of months.
• Doing anything but sleep. My body and mind cry out for rest or escape.
• Reading. The resistance can get strong. I believe I can't do it, and I know I won't retain much anyway. But of course, reading is one of the greatest tethers tying me to Earth.
• Writing product. Luckily, I've been able to keep up writing practice most days for a long time. But I don't know if or when I'll write a product (story, poem, essay) let alone submit it.
• Living without dread. My brain seems always able to find something to latch onto. The absence of work is a massive help, and I believe I'm so much better now that I'm not working. Still, my brain wants to overload and send me fleeing or fighting nothing.
• Understanding my illness and myself. I've read books and articles and studies. I need to learn to ask questions of my therapist. How do I sort my feelings, thoughts, and actions? Do answers exist that I simply haven't come across yet? I know I need to learn more.

The Cage That Soars; The Cage That Sinks.

An image of a black cube of a cage came to mind as I was thinking of ways to describe bipolar disorder. I'll mix my metaphors at bit.

Mania is a cage that soars. The wind blows between the bars. The sunlight is blinding. The air is thin. But the prisoner can touch the clouds.

The person cannot escape what comes hours or months later: the drop. All the organs rise and fight for release. The beautiful landscape is coming too quickly.

And eventually, the cage is in the water. Maybe one fights at first, kicking and biting to escape. Or maybe one is just so tired from the flight. The slow descent shows iridescent and indifferent fish, like other people who are neurotypical and just don't know. The light fades. The bubble stop rushing. This is depression. There is no escape unless someone or something lifts the cage.

Medication can cushion and revive. The truth I'm learning is that medication puts me right on the dock, where I can peer at the sky or the ocean, where I can get sunburned or splashed. It's a parachute; it's CPR.

But I'm still in the cage.

A Bipolar Body.

My bipolar body is mine, and my experience won’t match that of others. But bipolar disorder is a physical experience as well as a mental and emotional one, and the medications dissolving in that body leave their own calling cards. One of my greatest frustrations with BSD is my inability to distinguish symptoms of the disease from side effects of the medication.

I’ve almost always been pretty thin. My Irish Dance legs were too muscular for me to really be slender. A few years ago, I got to the point of accepting that I would never really be thin below the waist. But lithium and probably Abilify (along with a pretty serious case of self-medicating with Dr. Pepper, I’m guessing) have, in the last two years or so, bestowed 40 pounds upon me. It’s shocking. It’s a shock every day. I apologize to Josh; I don’t look like the creative writing major wearing size 3 LEI jeans. He always finds something kind to say. So far, diet changes and exercise don’t seem to be helping.

I blame another problem on Abilify because—well, the timing seems right, and my psychiatrist thought it was likely. But it could be something else. A mania doorbell ring perhaps. My whole body nearly screams with burning tension. It feels lie fire ants in my bone marrow. I can’t reach them. I stretch compulsively, constantly, trying to escape it. But another medication, benztropine, almost completely took all that away. Thank God. Something that really works! But I’m not crazy about having to stack medications to cure side effects.

When mania is coming on, manifesting itself quickly, I feel burning and shuddering in my arms and legs. The light changes, becomes more fluorescent. Things look different—did they change the wallpaper? I move more—more tapping, more gestures, more looking around. My eyes seem to bounce. I sit forward, ready. Thoughts come stacked 3, 4, 5 deep. When I try to address them, they unravel and speed away. I want to talk. I need to talk. I trip over words. I use the wrong words. I lose ideas, unsure if they were brilliance or crap. I don’t have to sleep as much.

The beginning of mania, or hypomania, can be so empowering. But mania intensifies. Visions engulf me, usually terrible tragedies that my brain thinks it must work though in simulation. How would I get my family out of a burning car? The images don’t stop until I’ve figured out what to do. My brain seems to be shredding itself. Something compulsive like shopping can numb me a little, for a while. Only sleep seems to help me in the moment. I think my brain uses my sleep to heal, layer by layer of frozen or torched consciousness.

I used to experience something like temporary partial paralysis. I call it the Tin Man. I lose the ability to move, even to turn my head, rearrange my limbs, ask for help. People close to me have noticed. Luckily, this hasn’t happen for a long time.

Even in important situations like a meeting about my son, sometimes, my body and a lot of my mind just check out. It’s like the frustration of a computer restarting because of updates you know nothing about. My mind is stressed, so the body takes over and turns the volume way down.

I’m clumsy. I trip. I walk into walls and corners. I get dizzy. I have trouble with physical multi-tasking like walking and talking at once. A few months ago, I fell hard outside Dean and Deluca.

When I was on a high dose of lithium, I threw up almost every night. Even now that I’ve been on a lower dose for about 2 years, I still randomly throw up about once a month. Why does the body want to get rid of the medicine? The disease is smart, smarter than I am sometimes.

Depression makes me feel sluggish in every way. The part of myself that wants to go live, to do what I love, is in a dungeon, and I can barely hear her. Tin Man happens sometimes. I feel that I’m worthless, that I don’t belong, that I’m all wrong for my family and everything else. Thoughts float by, some about self-harm, splicing images between ordinary thoughts. Sometimes, I get scared. My face is vacant. Josh calls it the thousand-mile stare. The depressed bipolar body could sleep for days. It’s trying so hard to get better. But it’s like lying on my back in a swamp. Even if I get up and get out, I’ll still have to remember who I am and find my way back home.

I take 6 different medications to be stable. They don’t save me from everything, and they sometimes make me exhausted or make me throw up, but I know I have to stay committed to them.  I have to do all I can for the body and the brain.