Control Option Command

It was not my intention to turn this blog into some mock re-enactment of the bipolar curve, but…

shit…

It’s on me again.

Winston Churchill, another distinguished bipolar, allegedly referred to his darker side as “The Black Dog”. Without passing any judgement on canines of any color, I find his depiction apt, if not the one I’d choose myself.

I think I’ll have to refer to my depression, in anthropomorphic terms, as a shapeshifting demon or some similar lycanthrope. He has too many facets to be captured in any one archetypical depiction of beast or man, so he shall be a demon.

My demon comes in many forms.

My demon takes the form of a dire wolf or some other ghastly predator and with his roar freezes my blood in my veins. Without warning I’ll get scared of nothing, Paranoid even towards loved ones and I only want to hide under my bed or in my closet. For the most part I can handle this pretty well, but I was once committed to the psychiatric ward when in the grip of this aspect of my demon.

He takes the form of a smog surrounding me. A poison cloud that somehow attaches enormous weights to my every muscle, so that every action I have to perform costs me one thousand times the effort of what it would cost me were I sane. This noxious smoke drains all rest out of me, so that even if I sleep 18¹ hours I still feel exhausted. But at the same time, this vitriolic gas will tickle and pinch and poke and deny me any rest, so that I may go for weeks without sleep.

My constant companion, my ghostly apparition, may take the form of a whirlwind. A whirlwind of thoughts and ideas. A bombardment if you’d like. A blitz. He won’t let me think coherently. It’s like trying to compose a letter while someone is screaming –screaming– the encyclopedia word for word in your ear. The only thing I can do is to listen to podcasts and audiobooks since the continous narrative seems to block out the storm. I have, for months at a time, spent not a single waking minute without a talking person on my ear.

But the worst form of my demon.
The real fucking killer.

Is that he takes the form of me.
I guess technically he takes the form of my ID² but this is the one that gets to me. Imagine every time someone said something mean to you that actually hurt you. Now imagine that what they said was “You are fucking terrible and I wish you were dead.”. Now imagine they were your parents or spouse or siblings or whomever it is you count on the most to love you matter how terrible and shitty and ugly you feel.
Even worse; imagine that you’ve been convinced that you are only a burden to anyone who loves you, and they will be a lot happier when you are dead.
When. You. Are. Dead.
What are you waiting for?

It’s fucking terrible. You can learn to recognize these feelings and ignore them, intellectually. But you still feel them. Every… I don’t know what you measure feelings in, but every iota, then.

I try to put a positive spin on most of my posts about this fucking chemical imbalance in my brain, but I’m just not feeling very positive today.

Don’t worry though. I’m cool. Live to fight another day and all that.

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So what’s my point with this post?
I don’t have one. I feel like shit and I want to spread the misery.

Good night.