The Two Presents

Posted on January 23, 2009 in Bipolar Disorder Stigma

I’m always battling between two presents when I write about my illness. First there is the present of having the disease, the what happens when I am in an episode. In this present I hallucinate, have delusions, and feel paranoid. But this present isn’t the present like the one in which I am writing this. Call this Present Two where, I have to reveal, my life isn’t so interesting because the meds are working like they have been for the last two years. I’m doing fine.

To explain my disability to others, it helps to jump into the First Present from time to time so that I can dramatize what the mind struggling with bipolar is like. It’s a literary device that I employ. Though it talks of aberrations of thought, it in itself is not psychotic ((I’ve actually been told that my psychotic writings are some of my best, but I am not about to return to the state of mind which produced them.)) . It’s difficult for me to speak of things like the ectoplasmic coyotes that used to hop into my path in the past tense because I have been trained to be forever on watch and to be forever an educator. The disease is always there and people are always ignorant stupid

In the Second or True Present, the only coyote I saw was real. My wife saw it, too, crossing the road at night. The medications I use make the First Present an artifice, a thing used to demonstrate a point. I don’t think this is always apparent to my readers. Sometimes I run into the Panic, characterized by the need on the part of others to hedge their bets as if an episode were going to happen in the next thirty seconds or so.

So while I get cheered by my fellow sufferers and the enlightened, I often get shunned by these others. He hallucinates. He has delusions. He is paranoid. I say “Guilty” to all of these — when I am in that other Present, when I do not take my meds, get my sleep, and avoid alcohol and other drugs. Three years ago I resolved to avoid the hospital. I made a point to be honest with my psychiatrist and to do the routine. It’s paid off because of my awareness of the two presents — the one where bipolar disorder wreaks its worst on me and the other where I master it. My mindfulness of the first preserves the second ((One constant worry: do I allow myself to indulge in exercises for the sake of my creativity? It is argued that these won’t precipitate me into mania or depression, but I’m not so sure. I’m holding back, a common problem for bipolars I am told by therapists. More than one has suggested that I am doing fine, that I don’t need to worry if I don’t see the symptoms. It’s the First Present that scares me, however: well or not, you see, I am always seeing the symptoms even when there are none.)) .