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Excerpt #109 from confiscated notebook, passage of interest, typed out for clarity:
I am in Europe now, and have not been able to receive my medication shipment here because the fucking Nazi border patrol won’t let it into the country. And why? They think I’m going to sell it.
I have not had my medication for over two weeks. This is a death sentence equivalent. During this time, my primary concerns have been the physical effects of withdrawal—the dizziness, the nausea, loss of equilibrium, and complete misery both mentally and physically. I have already stopped taking the Amnesia Drug because I have to perform and I can’t perform when I can’t get off the floor because I have amnesia as to how one might do such a thing.
I used to have a photographic memory . . . but not after Ativan (the Amnesia Drug—it was my doctor who termed it thus). Having been off of it for about three weeks now, I am no longer quite so incoherent, and I can remember my own name again, but I am certainly not the way I used to be—I’m not anywhere close.
I have always wished for the ability to forget—to let harsh memories soften over time, something that seems so easy for so many. But let that be a lesson to me! Be careful what you wish for when there’s a doctor nearby who just might be able to grant that wish—it never works out quite the way you think it will.
When they said, “This will make you forget some of the bad things that have happened to you,” I thought, “Bring it on, motherfuckers.”
But it didn’t happen like that. I still remember every pain I’ve ever experienced. I just feel stupider now.
The thing that I miss in particular is not just remembering every event, but remembering every thought that took place during the event . . . not only the act but the thought behind it. A few weeks ago, I remembered the color of the sky on the day I went to the hospital when I was two years old and was diagnosed with leukemia, and now I can’t remember what I did sixty seconds ago. I find emails I have sent, and, not only do I not remember writing them, I don’t remember why I wrote them, and I am somewhat embarrassed by their language, which is generally too florid, too forward, and I can’t take them back.
Now, with my prescriptions still being held up at border patrol, all of the drugs are out of my system just enough to once again see what lies beyond the medication, though I know very well that the path leads back into hell. I stand peering over the gate, and everything looks . . . different. I am seized by fear and panic, fear of nothing and of everything, of leaving the room to step into the unlit hallway outside, to open a door, to look out a window, for every door threatens to reveal something awful lurking behind it, and every uncurtained window pane exists to display the ghostly visages that will surely appear, faces just waiting for me to pass by so that they can press themselves against the glass, screaming both in terror and to terrorize.
I know it.
But am I not the one who isn’t afraid of things that go bump in the night? Who invites spirits up for tea? And now that my brain is all wrong, I see faces in every window, strangling hands around every dark corner, specters of evil things behind my back at every moment.
I am reminded of the many, many nights before I was ever medicated . . . nights that I scarcely ever think of, they seem so impossibly long ago, like part of someone else’s life, and not mine. I remember watching television with my first boyfriend ever (I’ve only had three, thank heavens), and, seemingly out of nowhere, and with no detectable provocation, beginning to cry without being able to stop. I could not be consoled, because I wasn’t sad. I was scared. Terrified. Panicked. And I could not think of a single reason why.
Now, I hide in the corner of my borrowed room, trying desperately to capture each thought, at least in shorthand, or symbols, or some kind of code so that I can come back to them and finish them all later, while the new thoughts pour in, and I wonder why on Earth do I feel that any, let alone all, of these thoughts are worth capturing in any form, and all off a sudden (and I write words like “off” instead of “of” simply because it feels so good to write the letter “f” so I just keep doing it) the door seems much too thin and I am hiding under a blanket and if this is a manic state, then why isn’t it any fun, because it used to be, or maybe it didn’t and I just said it was after the fact because I thought that’s what people wanted to hear, that at least I wasn’t suicidally miserable all the time, that for a month out of every year I really was fun without faking it, that I really, really was and so you shouldn’t be afraid to love me because I won’t always be like this, and my body is starting to shake and I have that awful feeling of jumping out of my skin chest tingling throat choking on my own nervousness and my body feels wrong and my brain is buzzing and I feel sick and the key the key the key I go to check the time but my cell phone is dead or did it just become overwhelmed and annoyed by all of the crazy energy that is pouring out of me and simply decide to check out and I wish I could check out as easily as my phone can and then I realize that there are no cell phones and that this technology won’t exist for another hundred years and I see now that the reason I live in the Victorian era on paper is that then as now when you’re a girl with depression manic or otherwise you’re on your own and all of the attempts at mental health care are nothing but a shabby façade and I’m filled with so many truths right now and it hurts hurts hurts and I want more lies and I’m peeling the tissue paper I’m scribbling upon into three transparently thin sheets for more space in which to write words that don’t matter and my hand hurts from my death grip on the pen, and I’m not breathing and my body is tense, and my head is tight, and I’m still not breathing, and I am writing fast and messy and I know that the moment stockill I put down this pen and stop writing I have to make a choice, and . . . a personal message from a dog is sacred and I would be damned if I ignored it . . . perhaps if I ignored it, I would stop receiving messages from dogs altogether, and that would be awful . . . I can’t risk it . . . I need to find out where the phrase “lo and behold” comes from . . . thoughts rushing in, pen grasped in pain, not breathing, calm down, the thoughts won’t go away . . . I’m back, I’m trying to write as slowly and as neatly as I can possibly manage . . . the thoughts are rushing in and I feel as though I have a balloon filled with 4th of July sparklers that is ready to explode inside my chest . . . I want to be a firework, to live my life blindingly bright and sparkling, and then to go out quickly . . . to burn for a short time, but very brightly . . . pen grasping, stop, deep breath, put the pen down...put it down...put it down...
Excerpt #120 from confiscated notebook, passage of interest, typed out for clarity:
Lithium.
People want to talk about these subjects quietly, which only makes me talk about them louder, if only because I’m embarrassed for them that they are embarrassed.
If I’m in the ER and the doctor asks what drugs I’m on and I say “Lithium,” his voice lowers immediately and his gestures become more covert. This projects me into a place of weakness that I didn’t ask to be put into.
I’m not to be pitied—I’m not embarrassed, neither of the conditions I have nor of the medications I’m taking to treat them, and, for heaven’s sake, I’m not contagious.
Mine is one of the few diseases that people don’t need to worry about catching.
Excerpt #133 from confiscated notebook, passage of interest, typed out for clarity:
Nothing in my life has ever made me want to commit suicide more than people’s reaction to my trying to commit suicide.
If I were to murder someone, I would not endure nearly this degree of revilement. Perhaps this is because most anyone has been angry enough to imagine killing somebody. Or, at least, they might say, “Well, what did he/she do to you?” But, with attempted suicide, there is no such desire to understand, no such sympathy—only anger and contempt. And disgust. Always disgust.
It must be innate. Genetic. Like the chicks who scatter when the shadow of a hawk passes overhead, though they’ve never seen one before,
and could not yet have been taught to be afraid. Or how we react when we encounter snakes and spiders, even though we often have little to no reason to actually fear them. Nobody has to teach us this reaction—it’s just there, and it has been for as long as we can remember. We are all creeped out by the same things. Perhaps that innate revulsion toward suicide is how we know not to do it—how we know to be rather than not to be.
Yes, perhaps it’s just not safe to accept suicide. And yet, we are all told that we must accept death. But we don’t.
And yet . . . and yet . . . a leech tastes blood and then it dies. A bee stings only once. Perhaps some of us are simply more willing than others to admit that we, too, are born harboring within us that which can also annihilate us. I am not behaving aberrantly—self-destruction is completely natural. No one dies of old age.
Excerpt #140 from confiscated notebook, passage of interest, typed out for clarity:
"I saw his good side today," we say, or “Her ugly side came out.” We speak as though we have only two sides to choose from, but we are all made up of more sides then we can count, and certainly more than we are generally allowed to recognize, let alone show, if only because even our closest acquaintances, or especially our closest acquaintances, have a terribly difficult time with seeing us wear different dresses.
Yes, there are an infinite number of sides to all of us, this I know. But, in a bipolar person, there are two in particular that are in constant conflict with one another. You don’t swim. You stand either on the shore or in the sea; it is always a question of life or death, life or death, life or death, constantly constantly constantly.
I sometimes imagine myself as that beating organ, kept alive inside a glass jar fitted with the usual electrodes, determined and strong, yet born without the necessary human shell, and innately and permanently sad for the lack of it. How long can I be kept alive, the drugs alone sustaining me and my incessant beating? One year? Two years? More? Or, even worse, forever?
And what of the “me” that exists outside of my imagination? Can that which never lives ever die? Or is that simply one more thing that I am incapable of?
I wish that my walls were brick so that I could not see the life outside of me, that which I am not allowed to partake of. I am tired of my glass walls, and even more tired of questions.
Excerpt #147 from confiscated notebook, passage of interest, typed out for clarity:
I have heard it said that we are not the solitary characters we seem, but, rather, we are a million machines inside of one larger machine, with a sort of grouping device that tells us that we are only one person, one individual, one personality, and for nothing more than to allay the inconvenience one might experience if one saw, and publicly displayed, what one really was. The implication is, of course, that this is all an illusion—we are not what we insist we are.
What, then, if one of these myriad machines, these infinite facets of us, decides to die? Is there only one form of suicide, or is it possible that various other unseen yet equally important parts of us can die, whilst our bodies, our other parts, live on?
I myself have not been successful in my attempts upon my own life, but I would swear that there are bits and pieces of me dying every day.
I am full of suicides, of rotting corpses, of brittle skeletons, infecting the living parts of me.
I am dead, though I do not die.
Excerpt #152 from confiscated notebook, passage of interest, typed out for clarity:
When I am manic, I am so far ahead of the herd that I can’t see them behind me. When I am depressed, I am too sick to keep up with the herd at all.
Why can’t I just run with them?
Amongst a large number of bipolar people questioned for a statistical study, the majority declared that, if given the option to be completely rid of the disease, they would choose to remain as they are.
You observe these people, and they are so miserable that it is unimaginable that they would not prefer to be free. But the truth is that manic depression is a disease that infects so many aspects of your life, entangles itself in so much of your character, that, if you have it, it is extremely difficult to imagine what you would be like if you did not have it.
We are so wrapped up in the disease that the fear of the life unknown is often greater than the fear of a continually miserable existence. Hamlet said as much in his infamous soliloquy . . . and yet people think that Ophelia was the crazy one.
While I do not deny having it, I am not fond of the idea of manic depression, because it often appears to me to be used as an excuse for bad behavior. I am interested in reasons, not in excuses, not for me, not for anybody else. In my own life, I give myself absolutely no leeway to be an ass or offend anybody, regardless of what I may be experiencing at any given time. If I so much as snap at someone because I am nauseatingly depressed or detoxing from some pill or other, I flog myself for it later. I may despise the disease, and hate the way that the media and the public in general promote the idea that any Hollywood celebrity who chronically embarrasses themselves in public must be bipolar, my distaste for manic depression doesn’t make the disease any less real.
There is another thing that troubles me, and this is the way in which it is often said that a particularly unattractive part of a person we are acquainted with is in fact not part of that person at all, but merely a result of their illness, which may be entirely true, and yet, by ascribing the offending behavior to the illness and not to the sufferer, we learn a great deal about the illness, but nothing whatever about the person. Entire years of people’s lives, vast sections of people’s characters are wiped away with one diagnosis, and the only thing we don’t know is who that person would have been had they not existed under the influence of their disease. Would they have been better people? Worse? The same? You may think I am only speaking of those whose manic behavior becomes somehow dangerous, or whose depressive character destroys their marriage, but I am not; I’m talking about me, and every other person who is not quite sure who they are once you take away the disease. It’s all very well to say, “Oh, don’t worry, that’s not you, that’s your illness.” But what, then, am I left with? What is me, and how can I be sure?
Excerpt #159 from confiscated notebook, passage of interest, typed out for clarity:
Sometimes I don’t eat for days simply because I want a proper excuse to feel as empty inside as I do.
Untreated, or unsuccessfully treated, depression is medically considered to be a terminal illness. It was a doctor who told me this. Depression is the invisible Plague. Like carbon monoxide, you can’t see it, hear it, or smell it, but, if it gets you, you may just never wake up.
What’s worse, Depression is a rather rude house guest; Depression rarely calls ahead to see if it’s a good time, and Depression never arrives alone. Depression brings its friends—Despair, Self-Injury, and Suicide—wherever it goes, and it doesn’t check in advance to insure that extra beds are made up and waiting, for they will take YOUR bed and leave you lying on the floor you haven’t had the will to scrub in months.
Depression doesn’t have its valet bring over an extra supply of tea and biscuits in anticipation of its arrival. No, Depression and its friends will barge right into your quiet, cozy home, spill your tea, smash your best teacups, devour all of your favorite biscuits, and then vomit them up again because Depression has no appetite.
You might think that, without any appetite, Depression and its friends would become weak, shrivel up, and die; you could then pass them out of your body much as you would an early-term miscarriage—something hardly noticed. You may experience some heavy cramping of the abdomen, or perhaps, in this case, the mind or the heart, but then you would see the blood flowing, the blood that serves to pass that which is to be expelled. You see the blood flowing to within an inch of your life, and you think, "Yes, oh god, yes! That which I do not want within me is being washed out, cleansed away, and soon I will belong to myself again!”
But there is always somethi
ng you are not supposed to see—something that gets in the way and dirties things up just a little. Actually, you are supposed to see it, but you’re not really supposed to SEE it. I’m talking, of course, about the remains. Blood and membrane. Tissue. Me. And not me. These are the remnants of Depression and its bedfellows, and the thing is that you have to check yourself, your underthings, your bed sheets, just to make sure they’ve gone.
But that’s just it: You have to see them on the way out, and that’s just too much for some people. Some people take so long saying goodbye to Depression and its friends that they get used to having them around. They have begun to enjoy cooking for their guests, secretly looking forward to the spontaneous (or not so spontaneous) get-togethers, and have completely lost the desire to sleep in their own beds, the floor having been quite as comfortable as they feel they deserve, which isn’t very much, as it turns out.
So, then, when you feel the blood pouring out of you, and you begin to see the things you were told to look for, you become frightened at being alone. You haven’t had a moment’s peace in months, but now you’re afraid to be alone. Ridiculous, isn’t it? If you don’t spend a Sunday night curled up in a ball and crying on the bathroom floor, what on Earth will you do with it?
It’s simply too daunting.