It was many years ago that I started my Blog. Back when blogging was "cool" and there were a few hundred options. I guess I must have picked a good one, Blogger, because it was picked up by Google and kept alive while so many competive services have vanished along with their content.
My mission for the past few days has been to find a new blog that is more like a journal. I wanetd to find something new. Something separate. So as not to do what I have done in the past, which is to combine my technical exploits and my manic depressive episodes into one large senseless blob of text. After spending an hour or so trying to find a new service, I have decided to just make a new blog on this existing account. Because at the end of the day, I guess I don't give a shit if people that I know read this. I shouldn't really feel awkward about expressing these bizarre episodes. But I am getting ahead of myself.
A few weeks ago I was starting to feel fat. Wait - it didn't start there.
A few weeks ago, I was feeling very insecure about myself. My wife seemed disinterested in me, and I began to doubt everything about our relationship. Is she even attracted to me? I was never really 'her type'. And sometimes I can't help but wonder if I was friend-zoned, but I am just so nice to her that she keeps me around (for the security, and to have my friendship). Anyone who knows me - or us - would probably find this amusing. But these are the little insecurities that break into my head constantly like an uninvited and unexpected guest. And sometimes ... a few days later when I think I am going to break, I realize that I am having an episode. But it doesn't matter. It can't be stopped.
One such episode lead me to hide money in the back of my wallet. My plan was to use this money for the good of my self improvement. To make myself look more appealing, I guess. I started researching diet drugs. Not good stuff, but the kind of shit I could but at Wal-Mart without any notice of money disappearing to such a thing. I had to keep this a secret. After reading a lot of polarizing reviews, I decided that I would buy some green tea extract pills. I could get an entire bottle for around ten bucks and they would last a full week. My thought process was that if I was thinner, I could gain muscle tone a little easier. And look more like the sort of person that my wife would be interested in.
Day one: I took the suggested amount of two pills in place of breakfast. By the time lunch rolled around, I was abosolutely starving. But the energy was a real rush. After a couple of days of sneaking these pills into my routine the weight started falling off at about a pound a day. Meanwhile, I entered the "manic" phase of my manic depressive episodes. The feeling was sensational.
I found that caffiene pills excellerate whatever your mood happens to be at the moment. At the height of the manic side of my manic/depression, it was great. I took some for breakfast one morning, and then decided to skip lunch and have a couple more as a second meal. Shortly after dinner I began sipping whiskey. The rush of the caffiene coursing through my veins clashed with the deadening inhibitions from the alcohol and after about two hours of this happening in my body - I felt like Superman. I could type faster than ever before, and without typos. I could run, jump, cook, and clean faster. Suffice to say, I could probably fuck better too. And so I took a stab at arrousing my wife, who was just not feeling it. By this point, the subtlty was probably taking a back seat to my caffiene rage - and she was probably looking at me with concern. And I started to turn on myself ... and all those insecurities came creeping in.
The problem with a manic episode is that you cannot observe yourself behaving this way.
I once read a book by the Dalai Llama. In it, he expresses the importance of treating your mind like a muscle. It may seem like things are 'just happening' there in your brain, but it's important to remember that your brain can be controlled like every other part of your body. It's dificult, but possible to be conscious of your thoughts (where they come from, how you react to things, etc). In a manic episode, these controls go right out the window.
Suddenly I went from a caffiene fueled party mood to some of the absolute worst depression that I have ever experienced. My wife and I were watching some awful movie that I had downloaded. When I felt my 'mood' starting to slip, I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water and didn't bother to pause the movie. Neither one of us wanted to prolong the credits.
It was raining that night, and the cool damp air was sneaking in through every open window. I stepped onto our deck in my underware and leaned against the house to watch and listen as the raindrops fell into the dense woodsy area behind my neighbors house. And then I slumped down there in the rain, realizing that I was alone and it was okay to let go. And I wept, quietly and peacefully in the rain.
After 20 minutes or so, I was collecting myself and preparing to go back into the house when I saw the light come on inside of the back of my house. I looked inside to see my daughter raiding the snack cabinet. She looked out the back door to where I was standing on the deck and I gave her a little wave. She then locked the door, flipped off the switch, and headed inside. I guess she didn't see me there in the dark. Oops.
40 minutes or so later, the rain picked up and I found myself fumbling to operate the electronic lock in the dead dark of night. It was a hopeless effort. And so I sort of leaned back and let the rain roar past me, shooting off my feet and dampening my underware from the ground up. I so wanted to step out into the rain and let it wash over me. But how would I explain this to my wife when she found me? I don't want her to know I'm crazy. Soon after than, the movie we had 'sort of been' watching had come to an end and she was coming out to smoke a cigarette when she found me there.
I explained that I had stepped out to watch the rain and was locked out. But I sense that she sensed that I was experiencing some unpleasant thoughts.
The following morning, I made a conscious decision to stop taking the green tea pills. I blamed the episode on the pills. But I know now that the 'crash' that I experienced was just accellerated by the pills. Not caused by them.
Over the next few days, I couldn't kick the wrestlessness. I found myself laying in bed at night with a fire burning inside me. I would put on a movie. Wait for my wife to fall asleep, and then stare at the walls. Some nights I would sneak out of bed and walk around the house for an hour or more staring out the windows. The feelings of rejection are intolerable. There are those moments that I am able to recognize the familiarity of what I am feeling. I tell myself "you're in that place again - this is in your head - and it will pass like it always does". But I can't imagine ever feeling better.
I recall one night that I was laying in bed staring at the Netflix screen. I didn't really want to watch anything. I considered slipping on my shoes and going for a walk, but it was very late. And I knew if my wife woke up and caught me slipping out the back door she would probably want to have a conversation about it. I went looking for something that I could put on that would feel 'right'. Something short, and repetitive, and meaningless. And then I found a "sample clip". It was a loop that spanned several hours and the first 10 minutes or so was just a running fountain. That was what I needed. So I watched that sample clip up to the point that it switched to some guy running around trees, and then I would restart it to watch the fountain again. And I did that for about two hours. And then I grabbed a pillow, and I hugged it, and I pretended it was my wife. And while she slept I laid weeping quietly into that poor pillow.
Every morning I awoke, and stared at myself in the mirror, and wondered if this was the end of it. And every night I would come home and sip whiskey and force myself to be in bed by 10:00PM. Because I knew that if I was still awake at midnight, it would be that much more dificult to get to sleep. And then the day came where I caught myself being energetic at work. I had engulfed myself in a project. I was now two hours into this long thoughtless process that would probably take days to complete. And even while I recognized this as a manic episode, I knew that the period of depression was finally over.
It seems that as I get older, these swings of mania and depression get closer together. Like a clock pendulum that is starting to tick faster each day. Or a sine wave where sometimes the tides and valleys almost touch one another with no space for normalty inbetween.
And that's all I have to say about that today.
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