Restricted to the House

Posted on November 16, 2005 in Mania Routine Uncertainty

Two days in the house. Doctor’s orders. Psychiatrist to be specific. My head feeling like it has a steel wool aureole around it. Rubbing and stretching. Out of the office and into my truck. Thankful that the complex owners kicked out the old management and replaced them with ones who rooted out all the Gilchrist signs. One less antisocial personality sufferer out of my consciousness.

No incidents at all on the way home because I am scared and I am watching. Watching my speed. Watching the lights. Watching the other cars. Obsessively because my life might depend on it. I know a fellow who jumped the FasTrak lane along the 91, crossed four free lanes, and rammed into the back of a stationary tow truck. The kind with a platform, that lifts the cars onto its back. He didn’t wake for a month and a half. No memory of what happened.

I want to live. I want to get home, take a xanax, and sit in a darkened room talking to friends. Which is what I do. Yes, I make it. I sit in the room. No television. No InterNet. The sweet whispersong of the overhead fan and the constant exhalation of the air filter. I read a bit out of a book that Leah gave me, a volume about “everyday genius”. I think she overrates me. Read a few case histories: all these people are like me — bipolar — and the author doesn’t have a clue. “Misunderstood genius” is how she characterizes them. I steer clear of the word “genius”. It’s all but written in the list of symptoms: grandiosity is the technical term for that, isn’t it?

I hear bipolars and schizoaffectives going on about how brilliant they are now and then. They trip up, show by their words that they aren’t so knowledgeable yet they persist in acting as if they do know everything. It is shameful to be ignorant. But the greater shame is to be mentally ill because too many people believe you to be stupid. So the grandiosity is understandable. Nevertheless, I try to remember all the times I lied about knowing things that I didn’t. And, worse, the jerks who attacked me when I was in episodes, jerks who really didn’t know much but loved to see me get confused.

Most bipolars I know are smart. Just a few think they have to live up to the know-it-all image because if they make a single mistake, they are mocked for it. Others, like me, Uncle-Tom it a bit when we are around the Others. I love my gift, but I know it should be shepherded carefully. But this is all getting off the point.

And you can take a pencil and, if you know the latitude and longitude, you can put that point right atop our condominium. Depending on the resolution of the map or the aerial photo, you can black over the roof above the room where I am typing. I am coming down now because I listened to my psychiatrist who was worried that my shaking and my confusion was leading to flight, that the steel wool aureole around my head would start to rub through my scalp.

The unafflicted want this thing I feel sometimes to be real. They want blood and iron aliens that hatch my brains like a chicken would hatch a brain. What sickoes, I think. Sickoes who believe that being in mania is fun. I like to be high on life, but not flying like a pterosaur enroute to its extinction.