Languor Forgetfulness

  In a world where it feels like it is you against everyone, where do you turn for solace? I have had a hard time believing that I truly have Bipolar disorder, and yet again today, the thought crept up. I am not saying I am in denial, I know there is something going on within. I am just not certain the diagnosis given to me years ago is accurate. Every time I think about it, I quickly try to put myself in check seeing as Bipolar disorder is a decent medical condition opposed to the numerous others that I could have received. I am not a doctor and all the symptoms or things I deal with are characteristics of a variety of different conditions, so uniformly I could not diagnose myself. At the beginning of my diagnosis, it was easier for me to push out my discrepancies due to the fact I had no real knowledge of mental illness and I could subjectively distinguish my highs and lows and relate them to the condition. Although, the triggers in relation to the changing cycles are now harder, if not invisible for me to pinpoint. I have not seen an extreme high in a long time and I have been off meds for quite some time. I go from one extreme low to another in a matter of weeks and sometimes days. I have always had issues with the timeframe given to the disorder for mood and cycle changes. Because I can sporadically change moods back and forth throughout a day’s time, which does not fit into any of the symptoms relating to Bipolar. I can be extremely jovial for some time, automatically switch without notice, purpose, or desire to being enraged or extremely depressed, then as quickly as I changed the first time I can go into a state of indifference so on and so forth. The symptoms I was once able to use as signals for transitioning through the cycles are distorted; I can no longer use them to my advantage so to speak. A big signal for me when I am at the doorstep to becoming manic is this extreme and persistent urge my mind sends telling me that I need to cut my hair when I look in the mirror. We are not talking the “Oh I need a new haircut” thought, this is total hair mutilation. This is not something I understand what so ever, I have always loved my hair, but it gets to the point that I can no longer look in mirrors. Doing simple daily activities like brushing my teeth, drying off after a shower, and washing my face becomes a struggle. One look in that mirror when I feel the transition approaching and my hair is toast. The urge is so great that one look and my mind is so fixated on the desire to complete the compulsion that it becomes a total body meltdown. When I try to fight it off my body goes through the same reactions it would before I were to harm myself in a depressive state. My body feels like it is full of all this dark adrenaline and energy that cannot escape through physical movement, that it can only release and subdue through the comportment my mind is persuading me to execute. Fighting off the desires only leads to a pit of doom where I have slapped myself, punched my legs, biting, screaming, excessive leg bouncing for long lengths of time and other random and odd behavior trying to release the energy that will ultimately return. The downfall, in a depressive state the completed desire ends in a calming effect, while the hair cutting is the exact opposite. Once I make the first cut, the compulsion only grows stronger and so then it becomes a fight in itself to be able to stop myself. I remember the worst episode I have had was a year and a half ago, where I could not get myself under control. I was in the bathroom chopping away, sobbing, throwing up, and trying my hardest just to walk away. I did not make it out of the bathroom until almost two hours later, and my hair was less than half an inch long by the time I was done. A few weeks ago I had these urges return, which I haven’t had to deal with since the before mentioned, I allowed myself to bite off all my nails instead in hopes that my mind would shut the fuck up and leave me the hell alone… I decided biting my fingernails off would be less dramatic, easier to get away with, it would save my hair, and besides nail re-growth is much more conspicuous than hair growth… so I wouldn’t be without fingernails for long. Well it did not work out the way I intended, the exigency swiftly returned and three days ago, I found my self at the mercy of my neuroticism. Thankfully, in the end, I only cut off about four inches and my hair had gotten long enough that it was not as drastic an alteration as it frequently is. What I typically epitomize ensuing all of this has yet to bare its face and frankly I am flummoxed. Customarily I ought to be gripping the safety bars of the psychosomatic rollercoaster about to take off with manic apprehensions. Yet I am stagnant in the midst of this ongoing melancholic disarray that I cannot seem to shake off and sleep is copiously needed, but not out of mere insomnia. Although rest is a foe through the ghastly darkness of night it has come to be a anodyne safe haven friend in the lightness of day, which is the only time that my mind is at some kind of consolation. When darkness falls, the real monsters of my mind come out to toy and play with my senses and in solitude, they manifest. My body is unremittingly fighting off sleep for one reason or another and these days the battles are short lived.



Before we can enter the transcendent consciousness of heavenly tranquility, we must pass through the fires of hell and experience a dark night of the soul, as our universal self fights against our individuated and physical self, as pure knowledge struggles against animalistic will, and as freedom struggles against nature.
-Arthur Schopenhauer

Chasity