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.