"He's in one of his blue funks again."

Bipolar disorder is a flat circle.

Let me start by saying, thank you for reading this blog. Thanks to you who financially support this blog. And especially thank you to all of you that write me emails and messages saying such kind and encouraging things. You guys are really keeping me going right now. Sincerely.

Calligraphy is a nightmare for lefthanders. Smudge, smudge, smuuudddgggge.

I hope that saying that you guys are keeping me going does not sound too maudlin. I may be exaggerating slightly for the sake of drama, as is my custom. I have a lot of things keeping me going. I have Jennifer, of course.

If you’re looking for a weird Norwegian time travel cop show, try Beforeigners.

And the cats.

Daniel has something important to show you.

My friends and family (that I miss terribly).

I’m going to hug all of y’all one day. Prepare thyselves.

I also have spite that my enemies yet breathe Arrakeen air to keep me going.

His name is a killing word. Lucky!

What is one-hundred-percent certain and is no exaggeration in the slightest is that you all are emphatically keeping this newsletter going. There is no way in hell that if I didn’t have anyone reading and supporting this blog, I would have folded it up long ago. I am not one of those people that ‘writes for myself’. At the launch of this blog, I was able to get a gravity assist from captainwakward.com and I instantly had several hundred readers. That number has gone down significantly over the past several months, but a lot of y’all have stuck around, and a few more straggle in every month, and that makes me very proud. It is mind-boggling to me that I am still writing this blog after more than ten months. I have never had a solo creative project that lasted for more than a month or so. I have been a part of other people’s ventures that have lasted for much longer, but I am also the first person to abandon any project as well.

You see, I’m a quitter.

Me too!!

I cannot describe the primal high that quitting something gives me. It has to be up there with what the rush of heroin is supposed to feel like. If you could synthesize the feeling that I get, you would have a drug that would be ironically difficult to quit. But imagine the rush when you finally kicked that drug! Ecstatic don’t* begin to describe it.

This guy gets it.

Only once in my life has this will to quit been truly beneficial, and that was when I quit smoking on October 27, 2013. The rest of my life has seen me impulsively rage quitting jobs, relationships, plays, movies, friendships, fitness regimens, churches, classes video games, etc. Why I have such a strong drive to walk away from things is a mystery that I will spend the rest of my life trying to solve. Ironically, I never tire of searching for these clues. The biggest insight I have into why I am so apt to quit things is that quitting short circuits the anxiety that I feel about whatever endeavor I am engaged in. The act of quitting is not a drug in of itself—it is the act of removing anxiety (even temporarily) that is so intoxicating. There is also the moment right after quitting something like a job where the world shines so brightly and you see so clearly new paths to take. This euphoria is so fleeting, but so heady. The regret and guilt of impulsively quitting things are horrible, but they eventually fade away. At least, I am hoping that they do someday. I’ll let you know when I stop regretting dropping out of college.

I also enjoy beginning new things, but muting the dopamine hit of starting a new project is the foreknowledge that anxiety, depression, compulsion/obsession, and impulsivity stalk any endeavor that I start. In the back of my mind is always my own voice saying, “Don’t worry, Germy. One day we’ll get to quit this, and everything will be great!”

I never intended to make this a blog about mental illness, and I certainly never meant to make it one about my own mental illness. I just wanted to have a simple blog where I tried to do and learn some new things. Maybe one that is occasionally funny. I never thought that I would be telling family, friends, and many more complete strangers all about my mental health, in sometimes excruciating detail. Original intentions or not, this has very much become a mental health newsletter. I am sorry for those of you who are mostly interested in the projects and challenges—I am still plugging away at them, and when I have something interesting or exciting to tell you about them, I will. I have definitely been drawing every day and playing guitar on most days, writing occasionally. But right now I’m sharing a little about what it means to live with a chronic mental illness, especially bipolar disorder.

“Inside you, there are two Lauren Grahams.”

I am in a down cycle right now. Not a downward spiral. Just a dip down. What my mom would call one of my “blue funks”. Which still sucks.

It looks like I’ll get a nice triple-dipper. Just like our next recessions!

You see, I had a nice period of stability for the last few months. Even as much of the country started to deteriorate mentally, I was on an upward swing. And like every upward swing, since I was first diagnosed right after I dropped out of college for the second time**, I thought that this bout with “happiness” would become my new normal. I would never have another depressive mood. I finally had a meds combo that would keep me tethered to the ground so that I didn’t rocket off into mania or go skidding through mania and depression into a mixed state. I was going to be normal. Like everyone else. Not constantly in a state of flux, being pulled around by my emotions. Well, I’m down again, but the memory of being up is still so fresh in my mind. And it’s torturing me. Knowing that I will always be like this really beats me down some days. Days like today. Knowing that I will never escape the wheel of bipolar disorder. The flat circle of depression, mania, and normality, depression, normality, mania, depression, normality, and so forth until the heat death of the universe. A friend of mine who also has bipolar disorder sent me this meme the other day, and it made me laugh out loud:

Meds vs. Mania, the eternal struggle.

That meme shows plainly what is a dirty secret in the bipolar community. There are forums and faqs on how to induce mania, because of the desperation that a long period of depression can lead one to seek any way out of it. Also, mania, or more specifically hypomania feels AWESOME. Awesome in the way that cocaine or really pure speed is supposed to feel like. Many people with bipolar disorder take those very drugs, chasing that elusive hypomanic high. Mania feels even more intense, but one also has to deal with all of the irritability and impulsivity that make mania so dangerous. I cannot imagine purposely inducing mania, but I can see how people take that risk chasing after hypomania. As I said, it feels awesome, and so many of us with bipolar disorder spend so much time in the pleasureless Kingdom of Anhedonia, it is no wonder that we seek to self-medicate so often.

This is actually a pretty darn good representation of the differences between the two.

I often have dreams where some scientist has created a pill that makes me ‘normal’ forever, and I always wake up before I can feel what normal feels like. I am a lucid dreamer, thus I cannot ever enjoy anything in my dreams. My conscious mind always has to interfere and tell me: “Hey, you’re just dreaming, you will probably never know what it is to feel normal. Wake up, it’s 3:23, time to stare at the ceiling fan for three hours alone with your racing thoughts.”

At least I have not seen Killer BOB in the ceiling fan. Yet.

I have been struggling with my ADLs (activities of daily living), keeping the house in order, and making sure that Jennifer and I are fed***. Delivery food and clutter rule in House Peepas Nichols right now. I feel ashamed about this. Jennifer makes the vast majority of our income, and I feel that the least I can do is to keep the house from being feral and to feed us with some regularity.

This!

But I barely have the energy to do anything. This blog post has taken me forever to write, for instance. And I am always seconds away from quitting. But I swore to myself that I would post something on this blog every Friday, even if it was just a one-sentence post of:

“Hey y’all, I don’t have it this week—see you soon.”

I know that I must frustrate people with my constant fits and starts, but all I can say is that I am far more frustrated than you can ever imagine. Please know, I am working on it every day. I don’t want my life to be ruled by mental illness. And I refused to give up on that. That is one thing that I will not quit.

*Yes, Grammarly I know that doesn’t is the correct usage. I’m bein’ colloquial and informal on purpose.

**I wonder how these two things are connected.

***I do make sure that the kitties are fed when it’s my turn.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Drop me a line: jeremydnichols@toolatesmart.org

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