Drama

Bipolar Memoirs

Drama



It makes me laugh when someone accuses me of "drama." Because what is bipolar disorder but drama? I live and breathe drama.

Today is Wednesday. Starting last Friday, I went on a manic tear about a home project I suddenly and out of nowhere realized we had to do and do immediately. It started with paint. I got very excited and very obsessed with what colors to use. But I couldn't decide. I kept adding more and more features to the project as we went, abandoning one thing for another with no rhyme nor reason, redoing what had been done because I changed my mind TWICE about all the paint I had just bought, and had to go get more. Then I insisted in the middle of painting that we drop everything and race over to buy a dresser I saw on Craigslist because now the project had expanded to replacing all furniture. When we got it home it didn't look right. I was anguished about ever finding enough new furniture that matched and fit in the room, wringing my hands, berating myself, wracking my brain for exactly the RIGHT furniture and where to get it. Within a day of going full blast in all directions, I could not make a single decision, like what clothes to put on. So I stayed in pajamas. I couldn't stop talking, or clenching my muscles in intense frustration and rising anger at myself and my family, who weren't being "supportive" enough -- while doing all the work I assigned them to make my dreams come true. (Apparently I am quite persuasive when in a hypomanic state. A few years before, I had talked them into "fostering" 25 dogs for a rescue organization -- and ate least two of them didn't really like dogs.) I couldn't stop telling myself out loud how stupid and disorganized I was, how awful and crazy it was for me to make everyone drop their weekend to work on this ersatz undertaking, getting more and more agitated. I literally beat myself up, punching, pulling, banging my body.

Exactly a day later, calm descended. It didn't seem urgent anymore to complete the whole project right this minute. I made an agreement with myself to pause and regroup, make a plan step by step, logically. I even crossed off one or two of the steps that day. I made sure to stop berating my family for not keeping to my arbitrary schedule. I felt sane again.

That reprieve came yesterday, 4 days after the manic race to nowhere began. Today, one day after that soft landing, I woke up as tired as I have ever been since I had pneumonia years ago. It hurt to lift my eyelids. I was exhausted, and I wanted to lay down and never get up. I got out of bed but I crashed into the walls when I walked because I was sore all over and still half-asleep -- all day long. I had crashed. I wished for death in a foggy, distant way. It was comforting to think of dying, like a blanket drawn around me, a pleasant possibility of relief. And I was pretty sure I just couldn't and wouldn't live much longer anyway, not at that crazy, hypomanic pace. It was too punishing being me.

Do other "normal" people go from zero to 150 in one day, begin to stall and sputter after two more days, bring it down to cruising speed finally, but then hit the wall and spin to a bruising stop, finally just laying there, knocked unconscious? Over a home improvement project?

"Drama." Tell me about it.