I promise I will return to writing the hospital series once I feel up to it. But today’s blog will focus on the head trip that bipolar episodes bring on.
August of this year was great. I knew who I was. I was confident, happy, and I had people around me. So much of my life I’ve been alone.
September of this year put my emotions to the test. I grew even further, but was full of conflicting confidence and disappointment.
Somewhere around the end of September the mania started. The person who I thought I was was still there, but he was magnified 1000%. Who knows who triggered it? Another one of my medications, school, all the mental energy I was putting into auditions that only ever said no? And the “no”s confused me because all the feedback was good, excellent, even. So maybe a big ball of conflicting emotions was one part of it.
Then, somewhere around the middle of October, I crashed into depression. That’s usually what happens to me when I have a manic episode. It’s followed by a depression. Sometimes not so severe but this one was very severe. On the 22nd I was hospitalized. I got out yesterday.
And I find myself wondering who the hell I am?
Was that content, confident, exuberant, even, guy that I was last August really me?
Is it possible for me to have exuberance without having mania?
Will I have to give up natural excitement and exuberance in order to keep from getting sick?
I liked manic Jay before it got too far and I started with the delusions of grandeur. But that’s not who I am… that’s what the disease makes me.
Depressed Jay is not me. I have too much love for things to be reduced to that.
So is post-hospital Jay really me? I don’t feel depressed, but I don’t feel happy. Everything is just kind of ehh. I can find pleasure in things if I try hard enough.
My doctor would say that the levels of medication in my blood are just starting to get to a therapeutic level, and that I should wait, hold on, whatever.
So say the medication starts working. THEN who will I be?
No Longer in a Box 