Hunger

I think I’ve always been hungry. Or perhaps I’ve never been full. I’ve never had some deep seeded desire to watch my life unfold like the road atlas shoved in the glovebox. I just want to live. My hunger stems from a longing to have stability. To know I will be going to bed in the same place I woke up the morning prior. My hunger stems in knowing that I don’t have to remember which food pantries are open on which days. Because despite what I think, I’m not an adult and shouldn’t be allowed to make adult decisions.

Stability is something I’ve always hungered for. My head is fucked up. My bipolar brain dances along the edge of what is really happening, and what I perceive to be happening. The dragon that I used to chase, was amazing self-medication. The one I chase now is keeping my brain on a moderately normal train of thought. Normalcy and stability are the only thing that keeps me from jumping. Off a bridge. In front of a car. Over the edge.

“Good morning!”

What the fuck do they mean good morning?! What are they thinking? I’m pretty sure they hate me.

It just means good morning.

I’ve never hungered for companionship, but I hate the idea of being alone. Make friends with other people suffering with your condition. That’s what my shrink says. I don’t view it as a condition. More like a death sentence. But misery loves company. They don’t see it the way I do. As a silent battle I win every day because I make the conscious choice to keep breathing. In. Out. They are all just standing in line for disability. I’m not disabled. Fucked up. Not disabled.

“It would be helpful if you joined a support group. Meet other people and see how they are living with this disorder.”

I’m sad enough on my own, I don’t need twenty-five other sad people, making it worse.

I hunger for normalcy. To know that I can get up, take my kids to school, and maybe clean my house. Half the time just the idea of crawling out of bed is too much. Other days the idea of crawling into bed is too much. Fighting to find the balance is too much work, I want to find that balance in the middle, but most days my life consists of two questions.

Do I need to go to school today? How much PTO do I still have at work?

I hunger to run out of emotions. I know it’s not a tangible, quantitive thing that you can legitimately run out of. But the idea of being a robot sounds nice. Cold. Mechanical. A Vulcan, having zero empathy and only focusing on what’s logical.

I hunger to feel like a normal person. To not feel the need to cry over my life, and others. To not feel so excited for other people. I throw so much of myself into how other people feel. I hunger to feel selfish. To care more about how I am feeling, as opposed to how everyone else is feeling. I want to own those feelings.

“Why are you crying?”

Because even though everything is stable, it is just a matter of time before it falls apart and I am tired. I am physically and emotionally tired because I can’t stop making up imaginary scenarios in my head.

“I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”

I want to not feel exhausted, and I hunger for sleep. When I’m high, I don’t sleep. When I’m low, there is no crawling out of bed. Nothing is worth it. When sleep starts to evade me, I grow hungrier. I can watch my children, my husband, sleep. They always look so peaceful. And I look like the crackhead in the house around the corner. Every noise is someone trying to break into the house and kill me. It’s constantly looking out the window, because when the house is quiet, and my head is loud, I hear everything. Every car, every cat, every neighbor. Real or imaginary.

“When is the last time you slept?”

Three days ago,but look I’m fine. I even did my face today.

I hunger to not see the monsters. My shrink says that it is called psychosis. Auditory, tactile, and visual hallucinations. I call them meth monsters. Mostly because when they started hanging around, I was drug screened at least four times. What I was describing to the doctor, is what a meth head describes to people after being on a week-long binder.

The monsters aren’t really monsters. Just shadow figures. Someone I know. People I don’t. They hold the basic shape of a person. The feeling you get when you catch a glimpse out of the corner of your eye, and what was there, isn’t. I think that happens to most people, especially when they are tired. Mine isn’t out of the corner of my eye. They are walking around as plain as day. Just like you and me. I used to think they were ghosts. Shadow phantoms living their lives, as if they were never gone. I know better now. It’s just my tired brain creating people that were never there.

Or maybe they are ghosts.

“Maybe you should try closing your eyes. Count to ten.”

It sounds good in theory. But I don’t understand why everyone’s solution to a problem is counting. I hate math.

The sounds remind me of white noise. Most of the time. Whispers that only I can hear. Eaves dropping on a conversation I was never meant to take part in. I hunger for the silence. Grounding yourself is the best medicine. Something tangible, that you can physically hold on to, that you know is real, and isn’t going away. Or validation.

“Hey, did you hear that?”

“No. You are hearing things again. It's okay.”

Everyone has had the crawly bug feeling. Where you can feel tiny little legs dancing across your skin, but nothing is ever there. It happens from time to time. Phantom spiders marching on parade. You know something is on you, and you need to take a shower as soon as possible to wash the feeling away. I feel them constantly. Typically, when I am stressed out the feelings get worse. Tiny legs moving across my spine. Scurrying up my arm. Burrowing into my scalp. An unsettling feeling that medication, or showers, can’t shake away.

“Quit hitting yourself.”

Easy for you to say. You aren’t infested with imaginary spiders.

I hate when people say that the weather is Bipolar. Mostly it’s in jest. I can take a joke. But when you spent half of your life, in a psych ward, in and out of therapy, taking medication covered in self-inflicted scars, the joke becomes less funny. This has been my life for the last twelve years. Hungering for a sense of security that most people take for granted.

It’s hard to understand a condition that you can’t see. But people every day are doing it. Hungry. Walking around with imaginary demons digging their filthy little claws into their brains. So, I will continue to grapple with myself. If getting out of bed in the morning is the only thing I can accomplish that day. It makes me a little less hungry.

“I’m proud of you. You are making great strides. You are fighting the fight and that’s all that anyone can ask of you. Managing will get easier, and your coping skills have started to improve. Don’t skip your medication, and you will be just fine.”

Thank you for your kind words, but I’m not fighting a fight. I’m just hungry.