I’m now back in New Jersey. My fiery mania, inevitably, burns out and I collapse into a debilitating depression. What goes up, must come down. The other pole of Bipolar Disorder. For me, depression is very challenging to write about in an engaging way. Every time I’m depressed, my mind becomes so dull that, even when I’m not depressed and try to reflect back upon the depressions, I thought associate and emotionally resonate with that dull mind. Basically, it feels really bad to think about having been depressed, so it’s hard to write about it. The most creative way I’ve been able to describe what depression feels like when it immediately follows mania is to say, “It’s as though I’m a lion who has been reduced to a worm but is tortured by the memory of what it was like to be that lion.” That is some painful shit: Being acutely aware of how dynamic my personality was, and now I’m just a rumor of a husk of my former self. It’s an awful feeling.
Every depression for me is the same, more or less. The specifics of the regrets I ruminate on differ, but the general pattern holds. A clinical depression always follows an extreme manic episode. As the mania dissipates, I’ll proceed to have an epiphany, in the most tragic sense possible, where I suddenly realize that everything I believed so deeply and passionately was nothing more than psychotic, megalomaniacal bullshit. I’ll become aware that I’ve burned a lot of my life to the ground, that I’ve broken valuable relationships, and that I’ve really set myself back, yet again. Essentially, I’ll regain my marbles and realize that I went crazy. This is when the depression takes over.
My first clinical depression lasts from December of 2000 through April of 2001. It’s brutal. I’m consumed with shame, regret, embarrassment, self-hate and tears; there are so many tears. I can’t get out of bed. It’s a herculean task to shower, get dressed or brush my teeth. I completely isolate myself from other people. I desperately try to make sense out of the insanity I’ve just been through, while at the same time I am in complete denial about my Bipolar diagnosis. I smoke cigarettes and drink orange juice. For some reason this gives me a modicum of peace. I try to journal, but I am devoid of the will. I sleep as much as I possibly can. My brain has been revved up to overdrive while manic. It’s run a marathon that it didn’t prepare for and didn’t even know it was running. Now it has slowed down to a crawl. It’s been damaged. It’s in repair mode. It’s exhausted. So is my spirit.
Even though I’m out of the manic phase, I’m still a bit delusional. I listen to Jakob Dylan’s band, the Wallflowers, on repeat; specifically, the album ‘Breach.’ I think the songs are relaying a special message to me. This, similar to the U2 situation, is quite embarrassing, after the fact. It’s not even a BOB DYLAN album that I’m obsessed with. It’s an album by his significantly less prolific son, JAKOB DYLAN. Lol. Why are my manic tastes in music so mediocre?!
(However, Jakob Dylan does have a cool voice, and ‘Breach’ is a hidden gem of an album. I said it!)
My depression gets so bad that I develop ideations of suicide. This is very serious. Suicidal ideation is when somebody is comforted by the fact that suicide is an option for them to escape all of the pain. There’s active and passive suicidal ideation. Active is more associated with actual planning and attempts at suicide. Passive is more associated with merely being comforted by it as a possible out. I’m grateful to share that I’ve only experienced passive suicidal ideation, and I’ve never made an attempt.
Something very important to understand is that an actual symptom of depression can be people’s own brains trying to trick them into killing themselves. If people can be aware of that fact and realize that their suicidal feelings are a symptom, and they don’t have to act on symptoms, maybe that understanding can create just enough narrative distance or personal insight to keep people from taking their own lives. One can hope.
It’s now mid-January 2001. I decide to go back to Ann Arbor, unenrolled, for the Winter semester, even though I am still in the throws of depression. I believe that perhaps a change of scenery will create a change in mood. I am wrong. My misery lags on. I continue to cry a lot. I isolate myself from any remaining friends. I sleep. I sleep. I sleep. At one point, I actually get a job in the morning, so I have a reason to get out of bed. I become a cashier at a magazine stand, but I can’t cultivate the life force to show up on time. I lose the job. I see the homeless folks I befriended while manic. I now avoid them at all costs. I also avoid trying to make amends with any friends that I wronged. I remain insular and lost and broken. Depression is a beast. I live in its belly for five months.
Because this week’s entry has been pretty damn heavy, the audio clip at the top is a particularly silly stand up bit entitled, ‘Subway Track Garbage Picker Upper.’ Enjoy!
Love,
JFOD
My First Manic Episode (Part Five)