parents saved me. They encouraged me to be a member of society, to pursue my dreams, enjoy meaningful relationships and embrace love. They could have enabled me, incapacitating my zest and talent. Instead, they held my hand firmly, saying, “We are in this together!!!” This profound bond has played a role in my creating this book. They unconditionally accept my illness. I am extremely fortunate. I’m passing my love on to you!
I tell my family that our condition is worse than you can imagine, but less painful that you think. It is a macrocosm of why loved our ones fail to understand our inner trauma. Our pain, pleasure and transitions vary in strength. We are a contradiction. How can we get them inside our skin? Descriptions influence loved ones’ perceptions. If I understate a specific stage, we are imprinting a curt, one word moniker on something that begs for a flourish of narration. When we get frustrated by their dumbfounded reaction, we must remind ourselves that they learned it from us. Rather than cultivating sympathy, we have contributed to misguided perceptions and bewilderment. Then we blame them for not understanding us. The wheels keep spinning. My solution is to be aware of my mood and express it via art.
Aware of my Mood
At age 33 and a decade of disorder contention, my cycles of depression were exacerbated by environmental depression. Fired from yet another job in my career as a radio air personality and unsuccessful in obtaining another one, I was living with my parents in frigid Saratoga Springs, NY. I was terrified by the universe. I did not fit into society. I was worthless. My mom insisted that I see a psychologist. I could not find one in that small town, so I enlisted a social worker, a special one as it turned out. He did not have an advanced college degree and he could not write prescriptions, but he was compassionate. He gave me the greatest advice regarding mental illness. “Be aware of your mood in each moment. In so doing, you will go with it, feel it for what it is and find comfort in that, as opposed to fighting it.” Prior these words of wisdom, I was blindly at the moods’ mercy. This gem of advice wasn’t a cure, but it gave me a compass.
Think of it this way. My cousin and I are in a wild snowball fight. He nails me in the face with an icy hard one. Aware of my mood allows me to see it coming and accept the reality of it. I can’t avoid the strike but living with it makes it less stressful. If I see it coming, I probably give my cousin a high five for his accuracy and proceed to bombard him in retaliation. However, lack of awareness blindsides us. I’m enraged and react by throwing punches at him. Simply being aware of where I am allows me to better cope. It will not set me free. I’m still going to feel the snowball’s blow. But some angst will be alleviated. It’s better than the mood running roughshod over me.
My social worker gave me the coping mechanism, “be aware of my moods”. Searching for relief, I integrated his advice with my practice of Buddhist mindfulness which means awareness of our thoughts, feelings, body and environment in this very moment. Mindfulness involves paying attention to feelings without judging them. When practicing mindfulness, one’s thoughts tune to the present rather than the past or future.
With bipolar disorder, our confused state of mind glues us to a mood we did not conjure from the environment, but a chemical induced one that is beyond us. As rationality flees, the herculean challenge is to sustain awareness. We have a choice to accept the warped reality that’s upon us, or resisting an irrational force that will lower the boom regardless of our jabs.
My five year old niece lives in the moment. Upon my visit, she picks up her toy guitar and says, Uncle Jack, I’m going to sing a song for you. I’m thinking she learned a tune in kindergarten. She’d recite it for me and strum accordingly. When I ask her what song she sang, she says, “I don’t name my songs. Every one of them is different. I sing as I go.” She proceeds to perform a song about how ugly I am, coupled with hearty laughter. Imagine if each of us could flow in the moment like that. She’s not preoccupied with others’ compositions. She’s not dwelling in the past or neurotic about the future. Instead, she’s mindful; freestyling her mood with a smile. I dig that!
The 3 P’s
Awareness of our moods gives us a better grasp of our self, ugly or not. Blunt reality. It arms us with a more sophisticated vocabulary to articulate who we are, giving us a better chance of being understood. Unfortunately, I learned that talking it out was just step one. Our getting to know one another still needed work.
When conveying my feelings, interpretations varied. So, after a decade of “talking it out”, I started to write, paint and rhyme my moods in the moment as a supplement to my speech. The results were great! When experiencing painting, prose and poetry in concert, our loved ones catch a triangulated glimpse into “feeling bipolar”. They connected deeper because of my heartfelt message within my crude artistry. With every expression, they inched closer to “getting me”.
It’s a challenging exercise. Disconnected sympathy for bipolar disorder is normal. The following pages are interspersed with emotions that I experienced in the moment – grandiose, excruciating and in between. I never could have articulated these things without 3 P coherence.
I’m not a professional artist. Nor do you need be. My hands shake from Lithium, making straight brush strokes nearly impossible. Typing is a challenge. I’ve never taken a course in painting or poetry. I avoided resourcing bipolar therapy books to achieve authenticity. My art is raw.
My family and friends can’t walk in my shoes, but in these pages, they’ll try them on. What follows, between each chapter of prose, are poems and paintings, depicting moods in the moment. Perhaps you’ll be inspired.
No one sees the monkeys on my back. I carry them everywhere. They attack.
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So many of them… Different emotions to shoulder… I’m going bananas, a burden the size of a boulder.
Every day’s a different version, my jungle subversion. The apes overthrow me, not your typical excursion.
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Screaming at the mandrills, the tamarins make me irate. Jumping with the chimps, I get angry at these primates!
I have no composure when the spider monkey’s bobbing! They whip their tails. My cranium can’t stop nodding!
Imagine if you had work or a loved one to attend to. But in every moment a monkey’s harassing you.
I wonder what it’s like to be without baggage… Vanilla. Free from hairy back packs… monkeys, apes, guerillas.
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Love them at Barnum and Bailey, but not in my circus! Clenching tight, I have no clue which one will surface.
I wake up every day wishing to engage. People with ideas, no matter what their age...
But when they open their mouth, I tune out. Blah blah blah, it’s the same old rout. What a drought!!!
Let’s discuss possibilities, question the authorities. Revel in the outliers, anomalies and minorities.
Not just repeat what we’ve heard!!! Assemble a thought, dynamically confer.
Challenge each other with fresh expressions. Glean from experiences and transgressions.
Proceed