You go to the fucking party. It's everything it was supposed to be and everything you didn't need. Oh there was that little moment when you thought, " hey, what about this mood stabilizer that's supposed to help me stop abusing alcohol?" But you hadn't had a drink in months. Besides, it was a party. You pop open a beer. It tastes like shit. "The drug does work." But so does the alcohol. You drink three, no, four more and can barely drive home a few hours later. You of course, hate yourself at that point for a multitude of reasons and wish you were dead. You proceed to stuff your face with food and pass out on you bed. A shit-faced, albeit, wan version of Han Solo.
You wake up hours later to the buzz of your phone. You've missed calls. You're hungover. But it's not a normal hangover. You don't, can't move. Where the hell is your phone? Geez you wish you'd thrown up last night. You feel the terrible movements of digestion. Hear the buzzing again. Sleep more.
Hours later you get up. It's afternoon. You get your damn phone. Listen to the messages. Stop. You missed work, great. Nothing makes any sense. You call home. Talk to parents. Tell mom you have to quit your job before you're fired. Tell her you have to focus on school. Tell her that things are hard right now with the mood disorder. You don't tell her about the eating disorder. She thinks that's been cured. She says telling your work about your mental health is out of the question. It would mar your record. You're livid. Want to punch her. Over the phone. For being prejudiced. Talk to dad. More sensible advice. It's settled. To celebrate you decide to fast that night and stay up and enjoy the extra hour of sleep you'd get by staying awake.
The next morning you're not even hungry. You make coffee. Put off going to the place you will be resigning from until the late afternoon. Because your mood has flatlined, you avoid trying to start anything beyond taking a shower. When time begins to press you, you leave, but not without feeling melancholic for one reason or another. You get to the market you cashier at. The team leader is there. You've thought of several ways to do this. One hinges on you making a big deal about the company discriminating against you if you don't get your way, the other well, there was no other. It was all looking at the bad. So you go in and tell him how you've been diagnosed with bipolar, how you've been trying to adjust to meds, how school's been suffering, and work's been suffering, how you've missed work the past couple times, etc. You said you really wanted to work with the company, but really needed to get your life together and wanted to resign. The guy gave this look of sympathy and just nodded and said that he'd "absolutely rehire" you in the future and started filling out the resignation paperwork. He even backdates the thing for you. You leave feeling something unfamiliar: closure.
It's Monday and you've slept for three hours, though not entirely by choice. What is your choice is the run, though it's really a compulsion to run in chilling weather when you're a starving bulimic. You reflect on the terrible night you had. There were many suicidal thoughts. The specificity of these thoughts frightens and excites you. You hate how sick you're thinking has become. You try to concentrate on something else, like that sonnet you have to write about fishing and self-injury, whoops. That morning before class you take a cocktail of supplements and your happy pills, plus one new one to help you stop cutting, all on an empty stomach. In the lab you discover your close up vision has become curiously impaired, as has your hearing for a couple hours. No matter.
Nothing matters to you now. You feel light. Paranoid. Everything has a taste and temperature. There is a tingling in your toes. By six you can only think about how much you hate life but you have to read this article on obscure genetics disorders and schizophrenia. You're in the library with a pile of five articles. Haven't eaten all day. This pleases you. You drink more coffee. Pore over each article. Hate it. Hate it. Love it. Love it. You're in limbo. It's nine. You realize you can go home now. Decide to get binge food on the way. And the cycle continues.
Now you know you're in a state when you start to soliloquy for 20 minutes at a time in the shower. You know because you think it's quite brilliant. You think it must be stunning and laugh. Whoa. Stop. That's not normal. Well neither was the purging, or the cutting that morning, or any of this. There's part of you that really wants to hope that you can do something outside of this illness, but all you can see is yourself in association to it. Does it define you that much?
-Mt
You go to the fucking party. It's everything it was supposed to be and everything you didn't need. Oh there was that little moment when you thought, " hey, what about this mood stabilizer that's supposed to help me stop abusing alcohol?" But you hadn't had a drink in months. Besides, it was a party. You pop open a beer. It tastes like shit. "The drug does work." But so does the alcohol. You drink three, no, four more and can barely drive home a few hours later. You of course, hate yourself at that point for a multitude of reasons and wish you were dead. You proceed to stuff your face with food and pass out on you bed. A shit-faced, albeit, wan version of Han Solo.
You wake up hours later to the buzz of your phone. You've missed calls. You're hungover. But it's not a normal hangover. You don't, can't move. Where the hell is your phone? Geez you wish you'd thrown up last night. You feel the terrible movements of digestion. Hear the buzzing again. Sleep more.
Hours later you get up. It's afternoon. You get your damn phone. Listen to the messages. Stop. You missed work, great. Nothing makes any sense. You call home. Talk to parents. Tell mom you have to quit your job before you're fired. Tell her you have to focus on school. Tell her that things are hard right now with the mood disorder. You don't tell her about the eating disorder. She thinks that's been cured. She says telling your work about your mental health is out of the question. It would mar your record. You're livid. Want to punch her. Over the phone. For being prejudiced. Talk to dad. More sensible advice. It's settled. To celebrate you decide to fast that night and stay up and enjoy the extra hour of sleep you'd get by staying awake.
The next morning you're not even hungry. You make coffee. Put off going to the place you will be resigning from until the late afternoon. Because your mood has flatlined, you avoid trying to start anything beyond taking a shower. When time begins to press you, you leave, but not without feeling melancholic for one reason or another. You get to the market you cashier at. The team leader is there. You've thought of several ways to do this. One hinges on you making a big deal about the company discriminating against you if you don't get your way, the other well, there was no other. It was all looking at the bad. So you go in and tell him how you've been diagnosed with bipolar, how you've been trying to adjust to meds, how school's been suffering, and work's been suffering, how you've missed work the past couple times, etc. You said you really wanted to work with the company, but really needed to get your life together and wanted to resign. The guy gave this look of sympathy and just nodded and said that he'd "absolutely rehire" you in the future and started filling out the resignation paperwork. He even backdates the thing for you. You leave feeling something unfamiliar: closure.
It's Monday and you've slept for three hours, though not entirely by choice. What is your choice is the run, though it's really a compulsion to run in chilling weather when you're a starving bulimic. You reflect on the terrible night you had. There were many suicidal thoughts. The specificity of these thoughts frightens and excites you. You hate how sick you're thinking has become. You try to concentrate on something else, like that sonnet you have to write about fishing and self-injury, whoops. That morning before class you take a cocktail of supplements and your happy pills, plus one new one to help you stop cutting, all on an empty stomach. In the lab you discover your close up vision has become curiously impaired, as has your hearing for a couple hours. No matter.
Nothing matters to you now. You feel light. Paranoid. Everything has a taste and temperature. There is a tingling in your toes. By six you can only think about how much you hate life but you have to read this article on obscure genetics disorders and schizophrenia. You're in the library with a pile of five articles. Haven't eaten all day. This pleases you. You drink more coffee. Pore over each article. Hate it. Hate it. Love it. Love it. You're in limbo. It's nine. You realize you can go home now. Decide to get binge food on the way. And the cycle continues.
Now you know you're in a state when you start to soliloquy for 20 minutes at a time in the shower. You know because you think it's quite brilliant. You think it must be stunning and laugh. Whoa. Stop. That's not normal. Well neither was the purging, or the cutting that morning, or any of this. There's part of you that really wants to hope that you can do something outside of this illness, but all you can see is yourself in association to it. Does it define you that much?
-Mt