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Without Hope in the Head
Posted on August 28, 2003 in Book of Days Depression Hope and Joy
Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.
Today’s topic: Write about a dangerous ride.
Mental illness may be the most dangerous ride I have ever taken in my life. Sickness in the brain leads to neglect in depressives like me, silly risks in my manic friends. I have lost the enamel off every single one of my teeth and the inner roots of about half. I have eaten myself into Type 2 diabetes, all the while careening towards more dangerous disorders. All because I could not raise Hope within my head.
Some say this is all due to choices that I have made. The one choice that mattered, I think, is the one that led me to see a psychiatrist and start taking medications. All the good choices were possible after my carpenter gothic mind got strength from the meds to put down the floor. Then I could slow my indigo destructiveness to less than a canter and roll towards better living, mixing metaphors merrily as I went.
A friend who is manic depressive told me of a woman who lived in severe nerve pain. She set herself to the task of determining which pain was the worse. She decided that the dishonor belonged to the pain of mental illness, perhaps because of all the stings delivered to our nervous system it is the only one that of itself breeds hopelessness.
I do not know if she is right and I seize no crowns. Right now, I feel good, elevated, near estatic because I had a good evening reading poetry among friends. But I have seen the darkness visible and I have felt half my teeth screaming out in white pink fire. Both have caused me to bolt from the house and to walk in the night, to break the law by taking my air in parks that closed at sunset. It has been on my own feet that my brain has taken the most dangerous rides of its life. Sitting, standing, or pushing the accelerator of a car, I’ve been at risk of giving up.
Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.
Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: My mother once told me….
