Bipolar: part 1

Seven months ago I experienced the thralls of passion.

I was lost in unraveling the mystery of the universe.

My heart was in it for the curiosity, the magic of it all, the ease at which I seemed to connect the unconnectable. I was also terrified. I feared for my life. At one point, while driving, my body started vibrating, all over and I was terrified that if I stopped being Now, I'd die.

In order to stay "Now" I felt I had to masturbate while repeating the word "Now, Now, Now, Now..."

Silly thoughts in a silly game I concocted with five simultaneous plots. Each a metaphor for each other, describing the same concepts overlaying reality, answering and describing a question that's a metaphor, too.

Because how could I describe the game I'm playing in my head? Where the characters are people at work, people at the gas station, going about their daily lives, unaware of what their dialogue is correlating to in the entirely separate reality I have going inside my head. It's all fragments now. I remember four horsemen of the apocalypse. They were men I worked with. That was their "other face." Their other "spirits," their other lives. That they were living in tangent with their lives in "reality." If Buck is fixing a machine, then one of the four horsemen was fixing something in another plane of existence. I'm not sure what his work was for. There was a ladder, that seemed like it lead to a another "level" or another plane of existence. The literal higher you were in elevation, the thinner the air seemed to be, the stronger the connection with the other side. I thought of the bosses office, a climb up the stairs. But there was something that felt stronger about this ladder, about these machines in general. I felt connected to the machines. I could feel each ones individual pulse and how they were connected with each other. I don't feel that now. I don't feel a lot of things I did before. At this point I've been taking 5mg of Abilify every morning for 7 months.

I can see how for my loved ones, and for the quality of my life, this is better. And there's a part of me that longs for the belief in magic that I held in the times of my delusions. I felt connected with the universe. I laughed at its jokes and wailed with the weight of the worlds' sorrows felt in my gut and my heart. It felt like our Provider was lonely. Alone with bearing the burden of the worlds' grief, and alone in appreciating the beauty of the world around us. There's one quote from a person that I'll probably never speak to again that I'll never forget. At the time I believed he was Jesus.

"The world isn't in black and white, it's not in shades of grey either. It's in color."

He said a lot of things that I'll appreciate whether they came from him or Jesus, they were insightful and very helpful for dealing with a literal crazy person. Except maybe for going to the bar. I don't know if he knew at the time that I thought that every person in that bar could read my thoughts. That they laughed at my mental image I'd wrongly conjured up of an instrument. And when I said I needed to leave and he replied, "Yes you do," with a chuckle, it made me believe he was amused by my inability to keep it together and he was 100% aware of my mental battles.

I slept with him. In a hotel, while I was married, while I thought he was either Jesus or a demon. It was weird. Funny story, years before, before I was pregnant with my first born, I had a mental image that her father was a demon and there was more than one of him and that may or may not have been part of her conception.

That house. With Thomas. That's a story entirely to itself.

I was 19 when I met Thomas. He was 25. The first time I saw him, he was standing at a server computer, back to me, hat backwards with long hair coming out. And when he shifted slightly, it was in slow motion, I saw just a glimpse of his forearm, his cheek, his chin, his nose, and a peak of his mouth. It took my breath away.

We started working together, it wasn't very long before we starting seeing each other. I was enamored. He was beautiful, inside and out. He had a sadness about him, everyone at work called him Eyeore...but I thought that loving him the way I thought he deserved to be loved would help his sadness. It didn't. Nothing was ever enough. Most nights he drank and cried about how awful he was, while never saying why he thought that. Whoever was around comforted him, me, his friends, his mother, his best friend in Texas. Years later, while going through his phone I found a Reddit page he'd recently visited titled "Youngest Legal Looking Girls on the Internet." I won't go into detail, but it made my stomach churn. So, I suspect the self loathing may have had something to do with that, while everyone was comforting him telling him how good of a guy he was. My ass.

And yet, Thomas, who was addicted to heroin, who chose violence in our fights, who made me believe in the beyond and the spooky and showed me fear I never knew. And also wonder. Now, 8 years later. The time that's passed is hard to believe. We're splitting the cost of a Christmas gift for our daughter. Working together, states apart, as parents to our little girl.

Thomas, to me at one point was a monster, but I want you to keep in mind, that he struggled with mental health issues of his own. He has a very dark side. And also a very good one. Knowing him and seeing him grow and change has inspired one of my core fundamental beliefs, "With the capacity to do bad within a person, is an equal and opposite capacity to do good."

It's whether a person chooses which potential or somewhere in between.

When I was with Thomas, I truly, to my core, believed in Demons. I believed there was one in our house. Along with ghosts.

This one time, my mother was over. We were in the laundry room which was enclosed off of the back patio. We were sitting on the washer and the dryer, sharing a bowl of weed between the two of us. I don't think she'd eaten anything that day, who knows when the last time she drunk water was. She got up, took a few steps onto the patio, and stumbled into some folding chairs that were adjacent to her. I was prepared to catch her, but she kept going forward, faster now, then boom, down, head bounces off of the brick step to the backdoor.

There's no blood, but her eyes are closed. She's breathing. She's on her stomach. Next thing you know she's on her back, "Mom?" I call out helplessly. I can feel my eyes were literally wide with fear.

She sits up. But her eyes are still closed.

Her hair is jostled, a mess. She seems relaxed, not tense. Then in a deep voice, she starts grunting in a rhythmic chant. It was terrifying.

I obviously thought she was possessed. Then, with her eyes still shut, still grunting, she lifts her arms and starts coming for me. "Mom?!" I call out terrified and helplessly. She's deaf to my voice.

I don't remember what stops her, but she stops. And is limp again. And slowly lays back down on the ground. I vaguely remember praying, out loud, but that couldn't have been what stopped her, could it?

After that, I get her inside. She regains consciousness on the couch, though her eyes remain closed most of the time and she speaks in whispers. I'm 20 years old at the time, I called my grandma, who lived in another state.

She told me to try to get her to eat something. So I cut up a banana. She wouldn't open her eyes to the plate. She acted annoyed and dismissive at my request for her to eat. Still not opening her eyes, I was worried she had a concussion or internal bleeding. My demon fears had faded, but not completely left. She seemed completely exhausted, worn out. Suddenly, she went to the bathroom to throw up. She stripped half naked, not giving two dangs that Thomas might be home any minute, laid on the floor between the bathroom and the hallway.

I placed the plate of bananas by her head. She ate some.

This was not the last person I requested to eat out of worry for their health. The next was Thomas. He was skin and bones. He tried to sleep with a woman, who told him to put his shirt back on because of how bony his chest was. I could feel his hurt when he told me this. I sympathized. He was in the thralls of a heroin addiction. Not eating. I tried to get him to go to Whataburger with me. And we did go. He drove his truck, brought his guitar. He really seemed to be in a good mood. We went through the drive thru, parked in the parking lot. He couldn't eat his food. Not even a fry. I don't remember what sparked it, but one moment he was singing me the song he wrote for me and the next second he was smashing his guitar against his truck.

And then we drove home.

I tried to spoon feed him applesauce. He was barely able to keep his eyes open, then as soon as the spoon reached his mouth, he back handed it away with a roar. He flung the spoon and the applesauce container onto the ground. Then he grabbed me from behind with his arm around my neck, one of his favorite moves. I'd gotten used to being able to breathe constricted, however tonight was different. He was hanging on by a thread. His inhibitions were down, luckily this also affected his strength, because he gave it all he got. For a moment I genuinely couldn't breathe, but he tired quickly. He let go almost with a whimper. I slowly made my way to the door, the last sight I saw of him was his head gazing downward in despair. Then I was out the door. I made it to the middle of the driveway before he made it after me. Thomas grabbed me and I screamed. I screamed the entire way as he drug me back inside, his strength restored from earlier and apparently increased by what I was assuming was adrenaline.

Once we were back inside, he drug me over to the futon. He made me lay down. He laid down next to me and as soon as he did, his body immediately softened.

He was scared, now he felt safe. Acting purely on impulse. Seeking any kind of comfort.

I stroked his hair.

I stroked his hair and comforted him until he fell asleep.

Then I got up and left.

Before I left, I took one look back at him. He looked so small and frail and at peace. I wanted him to keep sleeping. Keep sleeping until this wore off, until he woke up on the right side of the bed, ready to kick whatever the fuck in the ass.

One day we did try to kick it.

He laid in bed, shaking and shivering, moaning and wailing, burning up. He wanted to throw up but had nothing in his stomach. He threw up crackers. Eventually he made the decision to get some pills from a man.

He didn't get clean until he went to prison.

In the court room, he walked away handcuffed, looked at me and winked. It was chilling and I'll never forget it.

I took a deal for 4 years in prison vs going to trial for 11 to 55 years.

I was wanting to move to Illinois and I didn't have the emotional or mental capacity for court, as well as, he'd already been to prison before. He said his two years experience was enough to effect him. I crossed my fingers and prayed that in the four years he'd be gone, he'd use the time to get clean and work on himself. Vs 11 to 55 years there being no hope of rehabilitation or him having any relationship with our daughter.

And he did. He got clean and he worked on himself. I'm very proud of the man he is today.

As for why he went to prison in the first place. He was at the end of his self destruction rope. I had started sleeping with someone else, casually. Sue me, it was a coping mechanism. And the only source of joy I had in my life outside of my daughter. However, living back at home with my mother, is a whole story by itself.

Thomas found out about Conrad. Thomas got insanely angry and stalked us after work. We were on the road in Conrad's jeep he was driving, Thomas was in his truck. He told me he'd find me. And he did. He was behind us. He slammed into our car three times. On the third, we flipped. The top caved in. Conrad was completely fine, I broke my wrist.

I grieved. I was 22 years old. I grieved the loss of our family. I grieved the pain of the things Lucy, my daughter, and I had been through. My family doesn't understand how I can forgive Thomas for everything he's done and trust him in any capacity. And truthfully, I can say things about drugs and mental illness making a person behave differently than their hearts beliefs, and that'd be true. But really I don't know how or why. I just see him. I see him for his struggles and I see him trying and I believe there is a good man there. As well as, I'm used to forgiving loved ones for breaking my heart.

Not two weeks after the crash, my mother came to me and annoyedly proclaimed "You need to stop crying. I'm sick of hearing it." I was in my room, trying to be quiet, not wailing. But dang dude. Let me grieve please, I'm sorry for impacting you. She told me she couldn't stand to see me sad and my sadness was making her sad and I could never understand how she was feeling, a mother feeling for her daughter's pain was clearly worse though, trust her. My wrist was broken, I asked her if I rocked Lucy to sleep, would she take her and physically lay her down. She scoffed and told me that I needed to figure out how to get it done myself, for the same reason she handed me Lucy in the middle of my shower, because I needed to figure out how to be a single mom. She's a lovely woman. Who's done lovely things. Who I also understand acts like a child when she's experiencing large amounts of stress and takes it out on her loved ones, which she has been for most of my life with her. She's calmed down now, though sometimes still a cunt.

When I was in my delusional experience, my crash, the first time it happened. The ordeal that lead to my bipolar diagnosis at 25 years old. (Two years ago)

There were mystical storylines. And universal truths I was uncovering.

One of them being about my relationship with my mother.

It's all fuzzy now, but I needed to forgive her.

At one point, I got in the shower, and it was like I was giving birth. To what? I don't know. I did know. I don't remember. I needed my mother. And my mother is my mother, and my daughter and my great grandmother while my grandmother is me and my great great grandmother or something like that. We are all one, our lineage, the women in our family. We're individuals, but we share the same blood, the same substance. We're connected. Our energy, our lifeforces are connected. And my daughter is part of that line. We're a family of sensitive women as my great grandmother would say.

She's experienced multiple encounters with ghosts or vivid dream visions and so have most of the women in my family.

This one time, I think this is more the BPD interacting with the bipolar, but I was convinced that I had a vision of Thomas getting a blowjob in his truck after work by a woman with a nose ring. I was so confident in this vision that I confronted him about it and didn't believe him when he denied it.

I was only frustrated that I had no proof, because I was convinced it was real.

There's so many bat shit crazy things I believed. Sometimes, I do, myself stop and thank the medicine for the things it's taken away.

My time in the mental hospitals feels like visiting the backrooms, nostalgic, devoid of something, trapped. I've written many a poem about my times there.

The first time I was 17. I don't know if I needed to go in or not. I know my mother presented it as a punishment. As we were walking up to the doors, she said "You can still save yourself. Agree to listen to me and stop being so difficult and we can turn back." I told her no. She warned me that they'd take my shoelaces. I scoffed at her. If she wanted to commit me to a mental hospital, albeit. I'm not folding.

And when she came to visit, I sat on a table and loudly proclaimed and "this is my home now," to everyone's horror.

I almost got in a fight with another girl in there who ended up in a straightjacket with a shot, instead.

I learned the song 5 o'clock in the morning.

I did morning exercises, I made my bed, I was denied orange juice and caffeine, but by some miracle, given nicotine gum.

Nicotine gum is the thing when you're in a mental hospital. You can get a piece every hour and the first 3-5minutes is the best, plus it gives you something to look forward to in 55minutes.

This last visit, in May, I sat on the floor, next to a door that had a crack that had a breeze. It was my favorite place to be. Phil sat next to me.

Later on when I got out, I helped Phil connect with his cousin. Then I never heard from him again.

There was a woman in there that I was terrified of, but also admired. She said everything she was thinking. Most of it unkind. Most of it insightful. Most of it religious. She warmed up to me after a few talks and hurtful things shouted at me.

Mostly, I appreciate the visits from my loved ones while I was in there. They were a godsend. Thank you Gage, and to my father and my stepmother. And I appreciated music time, whether the guy with the guitar came in, or the other guy played requests on his laptop. That was the best time in there. Everyone had wildly different music tastes. I showed Anita "My God Has a Telephone" and that's when she started interacting differently with me. Secretly, I believed she was actually speaking with God. And to have her favor, made me feel like I had God's favor.