Letter I
To my dear Bipolar and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
You both are so interwoven, I can’t untangle the end of one and the beginning of the other. I am still new to understanding all your workings, though I never will fully understand the extent of our bond. Despite the fact that you have always existed with me, only now have doctors verified your existence.
Maybe I always knew you existed. That would explain why I didn’t fight the hospital doctors when they diagnosed me — well, I did fight them but not about my diagnoses— nor am I ashamed of my illness. I am not “brave” for writing about you, Bipolar and OCD, and it does not make me “authentic” for living through your chokehold and not caring if people know about you. It makes me human. You exist inside select haunted humans, and being human is being vulnerable. You are a nuisance and a nightmare and repetitive and boring, not romantic or sexy or artistic or creepily fascinating.
Yes, neither of you surprised me terribly; in hindsight, I guess I saw you coming. Off and on before my hospitalization, I had wondered if you, Bipolar, was something I had. No, I am not you. I am not bipolar, in just the same way that my friend’s mom did not die from being cancer. I have you, but it’s a grip of which I cannot let go, no matter how hard I wish to rid myself of you.
Many times I still question if you are real, if I am imagining your existence. All my life I have been viewed as sticking to the outskirts; I’m the one at which introvert jokes get directed, which I don’t mind anymore. Aside from things like interesting and one who likes letting loose sometimes, people have told me I’m even-keel (sure), cool-tempered (for the most part), passive (unfortunately), antisocial (what?), emotionless (ha!), and almost eerily quiet at times (yeah, I can see that). So how could I have bipolar? Only people who are unbearably emotional and sporadic have bipolar, right? They are the crazy exe every guy complains about in a boasting manner, the mom who acts one way on Monday morning and the opposite way on Friday night. However, through all my doubts, you are lurking. You fed my irritability until I’ve gotten so angry and annoyed with people and myself that I spent days as a recluse. You’re the reason I’ve gone and spent money I didn’t have on drinks and food and movie tickets and clothes and almost even furniture, if I hadn’t been stopped. (But then again, I love shopping, so it could just be a lack of self-control). You were a contributing factor when I decided to get in the car of a charming, egocentric stranger and spent the night around town. You granted me with two ambulance rides within three months. You were there during dark times that I would not wish on anyone. You have led me to destroy myself, through my excessive and internal delusions of grandeur and my morbid obsessions. Sometimes I feel as though I’m completely helpless against you. That contrarily is not the case.
Bipolar is a major blow to your confidence and self-esteem. — my therapist
You, Bipolar, are exhausting. One moment, I’m riding the ecstatic wave of mania, and the next thing I know, I’m no longer elevated but lying in bed and pleading everything to just stop for one second. Sometimes during the in-between, apathetic phases, I unpleasantly find myself missing depression, like an abusive exe that I’ve been around for so long that I don’t know any different. Like a heavy, murky blanket that I hate being under because it's suffocating and my perspective is clouded. But when I come out from under it, everything is too bright and too loud and the amount of air is terrifying, yet exhilarating.
Throughout it all, I relentlessly wonder who the real Noah is. Was the manic episode imagined? Was I just kidding myself and being delusional? The depressed version of me must be the real me, the true form of how I always will be. Even so, I should not feel this way. I acknowledge that I’m privileged, and I do not have a traumatic childhood. But, as some patients in the psych ward so kindly reminded me to hammer myself with, why am I even depressed?
Everyone feels depressed from time to time, but not everyone has it chronically. When it’s an illness, it’s considered an imbalance in brain chemicals. Telling someone with bipolar depression to think about when they were manic and they’ll be in an upswing in no time is like telling someone who is having a Lymes Disease flareup to remember when they felt healthy and the symptoms will go away. It’s like telling a gay man to think heterosexual thoughts and he’ll magically be attracted to women. Excluding the latter, a combination of treatment, perseverance, and many other things need to be employed.
Depression does not discriminate. —my therapist
When the ride inevitably goes up, my thoughts begin to tell me that I have defeated depression forever. I will never feel the black, inky smear ever again. I will live the rest of my life in this productive, more energized, albeit irritable and whirling, state. The deep depression that precedes this mania augments the high. However, it’s a frustrating mood to be in, for absolutely everything is fascinating yet trivial, and my mind exponentially accelerates throughout the manic episode. I know I can do anything, and the future is there for my taking. Mine and no one else’s.
The extent of your reach, Bipolar, is not just the high and low episodes; there is also the anxiety. It’s the kind that builds to such an unbearable extent that I dig my fingers into my skull, wishing that my brain could just shut down for one moment in time. It’s the anxiety that causes my thoughts to run from task to task, obsession to obsession, and I attempt to do everything at once but accomplish nothing. It’s the cause for all the countless, barely half-finished projects that I’ve left strewn in my wake. It’s when I sometimes wander aimlessly from room to room, because I cannot bring myself to sit still and I need to express my anxiety or else I’ll burst and be reduced to barely functioning. It’s when my brain is so far dissociated from the present that my vision is fogged, and the cashier sounds like she’s speaking from across an ocean. I cannot focus my thoughts enough to reply to her greeting, so I simply smile at her because I’m physically on earth, though mentally I am galaxies away.
obsession, n. an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind. one often feels fear along with these thoughts, and most of these thoughts are intrusive, unwanted, and disturbing.
compulsion, n. 1. the action or state of forcing or being forced to do something; constraint. 2. an irresistible urge to behave in a certain way, especially against one’s conscious wishes. when pertaining to OCD, they develop as a means for someone to try to relieve themselves from their obsessive thoughts, and often interfere with one’s life.
It’s not just Bipolar, but also you, Obsessive-Compulsive, about which I’m still learning. For example, just because someone enjoys tidiness, order, and cleanliness does not mean that they have you. Also, you have two parts — hence your name. Maybe that’s why you work so well with Bipolar, because there are at least two prominent sides to each of you. You compliment one another's anxious tendencies so well.
When doctors first asked me what some of my obsessions and compulsions are, I had no idea what they were referring to. Now I know that my childhood fear of our house catching on fire is an example of one of my obsessions. It did not stop at just being a typical fear in the back of a young mind. No, I was driven to stare at our second-level smoke detector minute after minute, because I could not look away. If I were to avert my gaze at the wrong time, a fire might inevitably engulf our house that night. Another compulsion to address the fear was to pray a ritualistic prayer each night. I had to be lying in bed and could not say the words “fire,” “smoke detector,” or “house” in it. If I messed up the exact wording and timing of the prayer that I had concocted, I would have to endlessly repeat it until I had recited it perfectly. Otherwise, I knew our house would be consumed in a raging inferno shortly thereafter. I devised numerous evacuation plans for every possible house fire scenario, mapping out which possessions I would try to save and what escape routes to take.
I do still have obsessions and compulsions, but I cannot pin them down as easily as those I have abandoned in the past. I have lived with the current ones for so long, I guess I have grown accustomed to them and they subconsciously are part of my daily routine. I do know, however, that when decision-making, I often do so compulsively, obsessively, and impulsively. In fact, I’ve read that many people who have you, Bipolar and OCD, are indecisive. I am an irrefutable example of that. When decisions come my way, I endlessly mull them over until I become too overwhelmed, and then randomly and impulsively choose a path.
I despise you two, but I cannot imagine my mind without you. Who would I be without you? What is it like to be without you? How different would I be? As hard as it is to not dwell on these questions, it accomplishes nothing to linger on them. They are all “what-ifs,” and “what-ifs” are a blackhole that only contains that which is fictional.
Although I’m ending this letter here, it does not mean in any way that what this contains is and has been the extent of our relationship. It’s only the beginning!
Until the next letter…
- A tiger rider xoxo
