Black Hot Lava Bomb Narcissism

Posted on March 3, 2006 in Attitudes Depression Disappointment Reflections

“Portrait of the Lava Bomb as a Young Rock”

The clouds passed by as soon as they filled the street with tubloads of rain. I tried to get some extra sleep, but I was too restless to enjoy the pattering and splattering of the captive oceans set free. Waking came like a steel bar, running from the top of my collarbone through my feet. It wasn’t pleasant.

I don’t have the life that many other bipolars seem to have. I’m not squandering huge fortunes, I have no more teeth to destroy by grinding them incessantly, I’ve stopped picking my skin, I have no business to run into the ground, I don’t cut, I am happily married, I have no heretofore unknown children coming to my door, I take my meds faithfully, and I am mostly liked. In other words, I am boring.

After the storm and well into the evening I thought about how life seems to have missed me. For all the good that I seem to have amassed, I’ve gotten nowhere. Should I have ranted and raved more than I did? Thrown wild parties? Gone to more even if it meant that I was crashing them? Did I screw up by missing out on doing on the Bipolar-Things-That-Other-People-Do? Did I not get laid enough, go trekking enough, live on the street enough, dance with grizzlies enough? Is my rightful place in the stomach of a bear, to be squeezed out in the end mixed with pieces of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend?

Remember those self-help books which talked about the poor schmo who was stuck being a mere account executive in his company and then — voila! — found himself to become president of the company? They used to make me wretch. Publishers still find hacks to write them, I suppose. I don’t read them because I have given up all hope of ever being employed. I’ve never been past the administrative assistant level and I am tired of hearing about how that just might make me more decent than someone above me. It’s a repetition of the abrasive sleep, of the rainy afternoon that doesn’t fulfill its promise of rest.

Oh, I can count my strengths. But I’d like a little money, a little opportunity, a little more in the way of creative endeavor than the daily wail about the government or the neighbor who peeks through her blinds when I walk down the street to get in my truck. I have too many secrets, it seems, and that’s where most of the good stuff lies. You can’t talk about most of what I know. And you can’t write a good blog without a whine, it seems. But when I whine — it’s the old adage. You can always complain, but it doesn’t do any good.

I have twenty to forty more years of this.

Lynn’s going to worry when she reads this. She’s going to remember the day when I sent bizarre cell phone messages to her and then went to sit on a log in Whiting Ranch Wilderness to carve on my wrist using the chewed off ends of my glasses. More happened than that, but for the rest of our lives, she’s going to obsess about the text messages and I am going to have to watch what I write.

Plop plop plop. The sound of a dripping roof.

Since night fell and the heater started up as I clicked the thermostat up a notch, the rain-air has come to a boil. Out I went with Lynn to the local soup and salad bar, had an argument over directions, ate, went to a sporting goods store to pick up a part for my Camelbak, and came home. Home where I read blogs for three quarters of an hour, then gave in to overwhelming, black-hot-lava-bomb narcissism. I sighed and told myself that I was just a boring bipolar. On finishing this, I just think I am selfish.