Rapid Cycling, and not on a bike

I seem to be having what might be instant cycles. Laughing then weeping. Laughing at YouTube of people getting hit with soccer balls, then crying at the pain and violence. Something about all the ones I lost coming together in my mind at once. Even my '74 BMW motorcycle which I know rationally, is an inanimate object and hence does not feel betrayed by my lousy mechanical work.

Top bipolar blogs

Why do they give awards for these? Best ten blogs as per some site that sells advertising. I sound down on advertising as I don't have any because no one looks at my blog. Waa Waa Waa.

I have just as many suicide attempts, sessions of ect, well probably not as many as some, and go through as much Hell as anyone. Oh, and I use fewer commas.

Check out my blog. Oh, wait a sec, this is my blog.

Into the shower for appointment with new client. Aha, how do YOU spell "income?"

Facebook attention span

I noticed that another blog I visit has shortened their posts. This is an "About.com" site and run by two women, at least one of which seems to have been a journalist in another life. Her longer posts sound like little 300 word stories, perfect for page 3 of the "B" section of some mid-sized town daily. The lifestyle section day—the one with healthy lifestyle recipes.

I think Facebook is one more example of how we pay less and less attention. We only bother to assimilate chunks of information in about 36 words. At least I do. Maybe everybody else is out there reading like crazy, following all the instructions and doing things right.

Another tip, "hate" is a strong word. So are "every, none, nobody, never, always." Think before making proclamations with these words in them. It builds up in your psyche and flavors all your thinking with a kind of desperation and finality that shuts out the ability to change.

Too much sleep

Slept in again. Why can't I get motivated to get up and fight off this depression? God, I hate myself right now. Can't even type. Must be some therapy in here somewhere. I so want a catharsis. Wake up happy, eager. That's the main thing, eager for something. When I was a kid, just being outdoors was a goal. Now, I need a reason. Something dear, like bike riding to some destination, an errand or a "ride" as in a Mtn. bike ride, completing something.

So I take my meds. Wish they brought some kind of instant up, like an aspirin for a headache. That feeling of knowing it will be ok soon and I can go about feeling relieved. This is what really gets me (further) down.

Noticed my sleeve was wet, probably from rinsing dishes. But I subconsciously said, "Where did all this water come from?" which was the question that alerted us to the fact that our first daughter was on the way. Now that memory brings tears. Of joy? Some cosmic sadness that the kids are gone, grown, not really needing us anymore?

Then comes suicide. Meds taken, third espresso. Training dogs, washing dishes. This is all helping somewhat. Then I think of how mundane it all is and is this what I want on my headstone? "He was a good housekeeper" or "He always keep the lawn nice" Shit.

Still this aching of having let myself down. Sleeping too late. Can't let the past go, not even for a minute. Can't move on, carry all this stuff with me. It just piles up. It all seems equal, that class I flunked, Sleeping in, letting the office yard go to seed, everything has the same weight and it is on me.

Christ I wish I could simply file it all away as "Gone forever" and move on. Get a life.

Then it's all so embarrassing. Weakness showing. Didn't cut it. Let everyone down, or worse, nobody was depending on me anyway. Maybe that's it. The loneliness.

The peaches are ripe.

Wednesday morning

My morning consisted of sniveling and feeling sorry for myself. That is lifting a bit now and I feel more motivated. Got the sign project moving forward and came up with some real design. A little welded metal icon thing that roughly represents the profile of 172 N. Center Street welded to corrugated steel. I think the corrugated thing is so over, but everybody else thinks it is still cool and necessary even though it has nothing to do with the project. Then a brief venture into Ciudad Rodrigo, from a blog I happened onto.

Then back to the Ephron article. She makes me moan. She is so confident, has a Park Avenue apartment, rented her house upstate or somewhere to someone for $200,000. It takes me four years to make that much gross. I don't pay much in taxes and the rest goes to living expenses that can be written off.

I picked up stacks of paper around the room. A list of places to go and things to do in Chicago on the trip we didn't take. Too expensive right now. Need to trim down the credit card bills. Can't keep bailing us out with Finegan Thompson. Although I have a lot of work right now. I keep looking at this portrait of Son House on a CD cover. By the way, the CD was invented in 1979, the year FT was started.

This is becoming a disjointed rant. Must be going manic, or probably mixed state. What I wanted to say, after reading an article about Nora Ephron in New Yorker is that you think you are going to come out on the other side of bipolar and you're just not. It will go on forever. You might sit on the porch and watch the moon rise, but you'll never be secure in the knowledge that you are going to wake up in the same mood you took to bed.

All these pieces of paper, lists and phone numbers of people forgotten will live where they are for a while. Then they will become out-of-date and discarded along with the ideas they started with. Maybe I/we should take heart from the fact that these notes are about ideas that were stillborn. They weren't meant to be and didn't pan out. It's ok.

I have a lousy recording of La Boheme but it's ok. I can always Google reviews and find a better one and for about $17-28 have it to play. A play about a bunch of reprobates and a woman who gets sick and dies.

Now I am the reprobate, or so it seems. I sit around lamenting my misfortune when really, I lead an ideal life. I am "at work" all the time, thinking off and on about the projects I am working on. Then during work hours I commit them to paper, then to reality. I have the accumulated wisdom to think of all the obstacles and how to either overcome them or share them with the client to see how much they can participate, financially, in solving them.

When not at work, I get to hike in beautiful places with faithful, loyal companions who do not butt in to my dialog or talk over me. We're all so rude. Poor listeners.

I get a whiff of something that smells like loose change when you hold it up to your nose. Olfactory hallucination. I can't spell anymore.

It knows I have two blogs

One is about my bipolar disorder, which I often misspell.

I awoke with a hangover, a far cry from the morning before, awaking at six, after a night of minimal drinking. Energized with caffeine but teary sad. No suicide though. The comforting, or maybe just obvious thing is that I am still alive, meaning that I haven't yet succeeded in the deed.

Today I came up with the metaphor of a man lost at sea, consistently following a compass heading, hoping I will sight land soon, but knowing that until then, I am on the verge of foundering.

Liz, (spouse) is at a funeral for an acquaintance's son, who was struck by a car quite accidentally. Then she is committed to helping a friend for the afternoon. This was a surprise so I am left alone to fend for myself. I am alone all week so this is quite a letdown.

I should call a friend or acquaintance and hike or something. Instead I am wasting away the day brooding. Plan and backup plan.

I started some self-analysis by listing mental states, such as dread, regret, etc. then identifying them as past, present, future. This has expanded to things such as hangover (present but to be avoided in the future). It is somewhat therapeutic as I can read it later and remind myself of the fleeting reality of the past and future.

Hope this helps.

less sleep

Before the wave of suicide imagery began this morning, I got up to let the dogs out to pee. We're trying to train them and this is step one in setting them up. How long I can do this I don't know.

My psychopharmacologist told me I am sleeping too much (what a surprise)—more than 12 hours a day. I don't even sleep really, just lay there, turning over again and again, avoiding the day. The suicide thing just gets worse while I burn up the hours.

When I did get up early, after three days I had a catharthis—mania set in—to a minor degree. I would rather have mania now than this depression.

I fueled the mania with espresso and roared along until about 2pm. Then things settled down. Needless to say, I got off the sleep program pretty quickly. I thought if I felt great, I could get away with "sleeping in." The pillow was warm and the lounging was deliciously decedent.

So here I am, ten to seven, espresso number three, hoping the caffeine doesn't push me into the awful, driven depression I go through when I am depressed and power the coffee.

Bipolar disorder and me

I have suffered with bipolar disorder for as long as I can remember—age five or so. The distinguishing characteristic is suicide ideation. It has always been a normal part of my life's to-do list. An out when things became too intense, too boring or simply complete. I grew up embracing the lyrics from a song by 'The Who'—"Hope I die before I get old." Now I am 59, old by the Who's standard and that line has been burned into my psyche like a familiar blues tune.

I committed to this as self-therapy. A cheap(er) way to vent, share and stretch the value of the cognitive therapy for which I pay dearly. Some entries will describe and expound upon current moods, some will be recollections—some banal, some painful experiences.

I hope some of this will help others, encouraging them to open up and learn they are not alone in the often desperate need to explain the unexplainable.

Regards,
John Thompson