Si Te Vas

I've been phenomenally lucky over the past five (or, really, fifteen) years in that while I've struggled with my ups and downs, diagnoses and treatments and lack thereof, I've managed to hold things together professionally. In fact, I've excelled, or at least my achievement has remained in the upper echelons of what could be expected. Recently, I embarked upon a hugely new, highly risky endeavor, and there is a non-trivial chance that I will fail.

Part of the reason I'm so terrified of failure is that I'm not used to it. Another, and I think deeper, reason is that I'm afraid that if I fail, it will be because of my illness, because of an intractable truth of my biology or psychology. If I fail, it could mean that my illness is starting to take over my life. If I fail, it could mean that the illness has caused me to fail. If the illness causes me to fail once, it could cause me to fail over and over again. Maybe my illness is like a tsunami underwater, appearing tranquil until one day the waves reach a mile high and wreak chaos on the life I've fought so hard for.

I understand that I could fail at something because I don't try hard enough. I could fail because of a random event, or I could fail because I just don't have the capacity to achieve a certain goal. I recognize that, rationally, that failure could be a one time, non catastrophic event, but every time I start to slip, get a bad grade on an exam or have a suboptimal workout or a bad first date, I feel that tidal wave growing (again), rising inside of me and threatening to destroy everything that I've worked so hard for.

It's like there is a whole brood of adorable puppies inside of me, but one of them is rabid. I don't know which one, and every time I hear a dog bark I wonder if its the rabid one, and if he's escaped, and if he's going to attack me or someone I love. When I take the dogs for a walk I agonize over the length of the lease and maintain exhausting concentration, because the risk of failure is enormously high when you think that one failure could lead to a lifetime of failures, the end of the war, a crushing defeat.

So far, the obvious solution has been to keep all the dogs locked up all the time. That's neither a sustainable or humane (to me) option, but I haven't found a better one (a retractable leash? a safe dog pen to take risks in?) yet.

Signing Up

Writing is an exothermic exercise. It releases energy, and if you're lucky, real heat. Depression is an endothermic state. I feel myself sucking energy from those around me, from the environment, from the secret stores of energy that I keep guarded from the world for times like these. It's hard to write, to release energy, when everything in you is drawing inward. I've read some haunting descriptions of depression, but none of them capture the empty, raw, dull pain of watching yourself sabotage your own life, prospects, and friends. None of them capture the energy fluctuations, the tantalizing moments when you get up and walk across the room with purpose only to get to the other side and realize that you have no idea why you're there. It's hard to write about depression because it's endothermic.

If I can't write, I run. This week, running hasn't helped. I'm depressed when I started running,  I'm depressed as I run through the pain, and I'm depressed when I come home. However, I did find something that I can do: I've been signing up for races. A 10K and a half marathon, to be specific. Signing up for these races forces me to imagine myself as beautiful, vibrant, and smiling, crossing a finish line with a little bib on my front. It forces me to imagine weeks of training, some of which will be better than this one. It forces me to accept the fact that I will here, regardless of my mood and my medications and my loves and my losses, on this date in May and that date in October. And that knowlege, the knowledge that I'm not going to simply disappear, to be engulfed in this darkness, is worth a thousand entrance fees.

Jet Lag

I settled into an antiseptic, oddly smelling airplane seat in Portland at 10:20 am and landed in Mumbai at 12:20am the next next morning. Having spent most of the 25 transit hours sleeping, aided by the generous gin and tonics, I was dazed and confused as I navigated immigration and baggage claim. Date of my arrival? 12^th of December, or was it the 13^th now? Date of departure? Three weeks from now, or was it two? Destinations within India – I couldn’t seem to remember the itinerary. I knew I had something exciting, something life changing ahead of me, I just couldn’t quite remember what.

True Colors

I have lost so many things because of this illness. I lost a job I could have loved, I lost a man I thought I could have loved forever, I lost part of my health, I lost some of my dreams, and I lost my innocence. I gained things, as well, but the last two years of my life will be remembered as years of loss and growth. I hate that those two often go together.

Our Faults

I believe that we can be loved for, not in spite of, some of our deepest faults. One's flaws, the fundamental difficulties in one's personality that one grapples with all of his or her life, can actually be embraced by their loved ones (or maybe its just the struggle that is embraced). I love people for their tempers, their stubbornness, their loudness, their insistence, the pain they have endured.

When you're bipolar, your personality (or something) comes with a distinct set of faults. I am obsessive, angry, paranoid, high energy, hyper excited, furious, and delusional a few days about every month. For a few days each month I am sad, angry, have no noticeable sense of self worth, am clingy, and am sure that no one likes me. I can't blame this all on my illness. There are no doubt bipolar people more pleasant than I. But the consistent inconsistency, the cycles, are part of my disease, and they are confusing, scary, and difficult to those around me.

I live in constant fear of the people I love walking away. I live in constant fear that one day, that which was too much for me for several years will become too much for them. I live in constant fear that they will start to believe, as I sometimes do, that they can find someone to love who has all my good qualities and not this cyclic demon. And, I live in constant fear that these fears stem not from my illness, but from something core and dirty in my personality from which I can never escape. Not that that matters, as my illness in in fact something core and dirty that I cannot escape from.

I do not believe that people can love me for my illness, and that makes it exceedingly difficult to believe that anyone can love me at all. I believe that if someone is to love me, he will need to love me so much that he can somehow overlook this accident of biology, circumstance, and temperament. He will need to love me so much that I can express and share my volatile moods, my struggles with medication, my ambiguity about my past, present, and future. He will need to love me in spite of, and in spite of what: An elephant, a tiger, a poison.

Makes dating tough.

Disclosure

Recently, a colleague of mine decided to disclose her mental illness. Unlike me, she did so in an explosive and public fashion. I applaud the idea of disclosure in almost every context, and I understand intimately what a difficult decision and process it can be. However, her disclosure offends and deeply saddens me.

Which Like Two Spirits

In the past year, I've discovered two things that I think are passions in my life.