The theoretical outline of the book I’m thinking of writing looks like this:
I. Intro and Foreword
II. About Bipolar Disorder
III. Mania and Hypomania
a. Racing Thoughts/Words Piling up like Boxcars
b. Higher than Normal Drive/Project Obsessions
c. Hypersexuality/Sex, Fidelity, and The Other
d. Increased Spirituality/Transcendental Experiences on a Daily Basis
e. Plummet into Depression/The Words Crash Down
IV. Depression
a. Pessimism and Hopelessness/Living Cursed
b. Lack of Enjoyment/The Grey World
c. Feeling Empty/The Emptiness In My Center
d. Coming Out of Depression/Breathing Without Pain
V. About Medication
a. The Toll on my Body
b. The Day I Couldn’t Stop Walking
VI. The Rest of My Story – How I Manage
It’s scary contemplating writing a book about how I experience bipolar through the lens of my creativity. It’s easy to talk about what’s going through our heads when it’s within the realm of normal, but sometimes I live in a different world than you probably do. As I have Bipolar 2 — half the mania, all the depression! — my mania is mild and perhaps even functional, but my depression can be hard to fight. Most of the time my medication works; I have an excellent psychiatrist who keeps an eye on things. But sometimes it fails — I get my dosage wrong, I hit a very stressful time, the seasons change — and I am left to navigate through a slightly skewed landscape. When I am hypomanic, the colors are brighter, the lines sharper, and I imagine the trees glow with knowledge. When I’m depressed, I walk through the aftermath of a forest fire, in the snow.
I hope you don’t see me differently — no, I hope you do see me differently, as someone who is neurodiverse, whose brain is wired a little differently than yours. I hope you don’t see me as a curiosity, as a victim, or as an undesirable. My world takes fantastic turns in the the old sense of the word — tinged with grace and otherworldiness; tinged with horror. That’s all.
Words Like Me 