Month: May 2010
Two Journal Entries
Posted on May 2, 2010 in Depression Journals & Notebooks Loneliness
Once in your life someone came to you when you had this ache like a brass cauliflower that weighs you down now. When she spoke to you, the heavy flowerets parted and — in its place — bliss was injected.
Fool that you are, you wait around whenever the mace strikes you and crave that feeling of release that company brings one more time.
Loneliness Catechism
Why didn’t you come over to me?
You looked like you wanted to be alone.
It’s when I have that look that I most want company.
Please Shoot Down This Blimp
Posted on May 1, 2010 in DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Depression Encounters
I’m reaching that point where my earlier fears about where I was being taken have manifested themselves for real: a blimp of a depression rides in the middle of my head and I can’t pop it. Mitchell from New York said that he took me for an extrovert: like so many, he doesn’t understand that the issue is not dislike of people, but being quickly tired by them. And I have come to a place — of exhaustion, fear, and disappointment — where I both crave and vomit the company of others. Some extrovert I am who has run to a quiet corner of the DBSA National Conference to let his feelings bleed into an LCD screen.
I think myself an odd duck — stuck in a place that perplexes even those who are allegedly most like me. I’ve wondered if I am truly bipolar, then am told that it is “not meet” as Shakespeare might have put it to label myself with the illness: I am required to see that I am a person living with bipolar disorder. In this place, I doubt I am even a person, certainly not like the ones who are all around me. I feel freakish, bizarre, a disturbing if interesting specimen of humanity who bores and perplexes. Then there is that other question: why, if I can remember the details about the things that I did while in episode, why can’t I remember the feelings that impelled me to be one way or another? I walk around feeling an imposter who takes Tegretal, feeling doubt that I belong among the so-called sane, and that amidst all these others I am a tile in the floor stepped on and ignored.
Last night I ate dinner alone and tonight I shall undoubtably do the same when there is no forcing together of the peoples by schedules and included-in-the-price servings at tables in the outdoor pavilion. A man comes to open his laptop on the other side of this table and I want to squeal Please go away. If I didn’t want to hear Glenn Close’s sister at 4 pm, I would end my day in my room. Someone please shoot down this blimp. It weighs me down.
