Read My Mind

Bipolar Memoirs

Read My Mind

It must be a feature of my bipolar mind, but I am very bothered, saddened and distressed when my mood shifts to painful or sad or explosive or despairing or even suicidal, and no one notices! What the hell? Not even the dog?! How could they not notice these volcanic emotions, the churning anxiety, the knot in the top of my stomach, the tears verging on falling, the blood that’s about to drip out of my mouth from biting my tongue so hard in order to avoid screaming, my worthlessness, my guilt, my sudden realization of my utter futurelessness?

It’s all beating like heavy metal in my head, like a forge plunging up and down, and it won’t stop. I can’t turn down the volume, and I can’t think: Well, this will pass. It’s owning my mind!. And it has not-passed before, there’s precedent there, and it’s getting really unbearable, so... Why the fuck doesn’t my husband take one look at me or hear one word from me, and KNOW? Why isn’t he scared to death like me? Why doesn’t he take emergency measures? (like…..what?). Shouldn’t he immediately hug me? Shouldn’t he call the police because I’m dangerous? Shouldn’t he fly to the computer and google “wife crazy what to do?”

Why isn’t this visible? Why is a broken leg so different from a broken mind? Why don’t these two “poles” in my broken mind poke out starkly and cringe-inducingly like a broken bone pokes out of a thigh? And why, God, haven’t the people I love, and who love me so much it’s just inexplicable -- why haven’t they learned the warning signs? Why don’t they notice I am quiet? (Because me being quiet is very very noticeable.) Why don’t they grab me when I come home from Target with one shirt in five different colors, $50 in dog treats, a piece of furniture and my 30th pair of shoes -- and say “Lookit! See what’s happening here? Sit down where I can see you, and we’ll call your doctor.”

Why can’t they read me?

I can’t help but be angry they can’t. I don’t want to be, because what can you expect of a fellow human being, even your husband? A Vulcan mind-meld? But I am angry anyway, and also scared. I don’t know what I’ll do or how far I’ll go this time -- and I really don’t want to find out. But by the time they notice, I could be beyond cooperating with the Treatment Regimen as Prescribed. And that’s somewhere none of us want to go.

And why can’t I just tell them: “Um, hey? I’m fucking losing it over here? You know that way I lose it when I cry for a few hours, then yell at you for a few hours, then fall deeply into Internet research on attachment theory (or Civil War photography, or canine cognition, or... )? Yeah, that way. I’m losing it that way.”

Well, I can’t tell them because ……..

It might be brief, and go away on its own.

It’s my fault.

I don’t have the energy to talk.

I can’t possibly take one more pill. (Or three less and two more. Or any new combination really.)

I don’t want to be a burden.

I believe nothing on earth can help me anyway.

Maybe there’s nothing WRONG. Maybe I’m just really really knowledgeable about canine cognition right now.

I am deeply embarrassed.

I am even ashamed.

I think they should just KNOW. If they really love me.