When my brain’s not broken . . .

… life is pretty good. OK, I know from the perspective of whatever the mental health equivalent of having a positive body image is, I should not consider my brain broken, but the reality when the darkness descends is that my thinking is altered for the worse. If the steering in my car suddenly degrades, it’s a pretty sure bet something is broken, and anyway it’s just a convenient way to talk about it — don’t judge me.

In reality, I think the only people who get all judgy about me describing my brain as broken are people who haven’t experienced a serious mental health issue. To them, it’s not like a broken leg — you just need some sunshine and positive self-talk to get yourself turned around. But for those of you who have struggled with the darkness o that’s risen to the level of a clinical diagnosis — you know what I’m talking about. It’s like I was driving down the freeway and suddenly (or sometimes not so suddenly), the steering goes out on my car and I’m off in the ditch.

I wish I could tell it was going to happen — heck sometimes I just wish I would recognize it is happening. Ignorance (or more likely denial) is a dangerous condition to have when you’ve lost your steering. Last week was one of those times for me. Looking back it’s so clear — I can see the triggering events on Wednesday and the descent of the cloud. Thursday I managed to function pretty well, but by the afternoon was so deep that I was embarrassing myself by noticeably struggling to stay awake in business meetings. Who does that?

Despite my relief to return home Thursday night, it just kept getting darker. You know how when you get to that place of hopelessness and helplessness you start to look at everything through that lens and all of a sudden your home and family become a source of insecurity and pain instead of comfort? Yeah — did that on Thursday night and Friday.

The weekend should have been a time to regroup, get some alone time, extra sleep … all those little bits of healing and recovery that seem to help my brain repair itself. But no — it was off on a road trip where the primary objective for my wife was to maximize time spent with her family, with what was clearly (according to the dark filter I was looking through) an agenda of deceit and manipulation to get me to go along with what she wanted.

I must be pretty shitty to live with. When I’m feeling normal or hypomanic I think I may actually be a pretty pleasant guy to be around, but woe to those who have to put up with me when I’m in the tank. You know how some people are mad drunks? Sometimes I’m a mad depressed person.

Sometimes, I won’t let myself just collapse into inaction. My left brain will absolutely not let go of things that simply must get done (or so I think) and in order to muster the energy to keep putting one foot in front of the other, I just flat get mad. The messy countertop that’s no big deal any other day becomes the never-ending and overwhelming condition of life and I could just collapse in my chair and try to breathe, but if there’s something, anything, my left brain can’t let go of doing, I become incensed over the mess and use the anger I feel toward the poor child, spouse or dog that made the mess as fuel to keep me moving so I can get done whatever I’m thinking is so damn essential.

I did get some downtime on Sunday — and I spent some time doing things that just had to be done — then I woke up on Monday morning and it was like the storm had blown through and I felt really good and today was good too. Now what remains is to sit down with my family tonight and do whatever repair work is needed after being mad dad over the weekend. Ugh!