Busy Bee

I usually can't remember when I've written poetry. Sometimes I don't even remember writing my poems at all. This one in particular, I remember clear as day.

It was a month or so after I earned my degree - in behavioral neuroscience no less. Talk about irony. I remember I felt...lost. Although lost isn't quite the appropriate word. I felt suspended over the busiest streets of Manhattan; bound by an intangible paralysis that, if broken, threatened me to drown in the pedestrian undertow. It felt like the coyote of Looney Tunes who ran off a cliff, except this time I believed I would be okay as long as I didn't stop. As long as I didn't look down.

I had been schooled all my life. There, I learned to thrive. I learned to dream. Yet my dreams changed ever closer to that exit date, and plans went by the way-side. I didn't have a plan, or a good one at least, that would uphold a scholar's homeostasis. Something to enrich my mind. Something with goals and deadlines enforced by a power greater than myself (because after 4 years of undergrad and I am still a procrastinator). It was then, the first three months after graduation I experienced my worst bout of manic-depression. I didn't know that's what it was at the time.

I thought it was weeks of horrible depression decorated with a few good days in between. I mean, really good days. I exercised first thing in the morning. I watched my favorite shows. I walked to the library and immersed myself in other familiar places. I felt inspired! I could write! Actually write! No longer these words hid from me. No longer did they slump with languid indifference. I felt these phrases flow through me. The words danced on the tip of my tongue. They were so excited, so eager for existence I could hardly keep up!

Originally titled "Busy Bee" I've since changed it to Bupropion, an antidepressant used to treat manic-depression (bipolar disorder). I was diagnosed in the late fall 2018 an have been taking medication ever since. I still have some manic episodes though not as intense as the one above. I still have some depressive episodes, but they aren't debilitating. This poem is a reflection of one of my manic episodes before being diagnosed.

(I don't write this with the intention to entice a debate over the use or necessity of medication for mental illness.)

Busy bee

Busy Bee

Buzzing in your hive

Won’t you greet the sun

or smell the flowers?

When winter comes

they’ll surely die.

Busy body

Busy body

leaping like a toad

task to task

and pad to pad

Pray, stop! You’ll overload.

Busy body

chatters teeth

wringing hands

and tapping feet.

Busy body

won’t you sleep?

Your cells are tired

from the rate you keep.