Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Monsters Inside Me

They say I'm really crazy. I am simply Bi-Polar. I assure you that it is anything but simple. It is an illness just like any other, yet most people see it differently or they just don't acknowledge Bi-Polar as an illness at all but as a weakness, a cop-out, or even a seriously lame excuse for poor coping skills, poor decision making, and insanely bad behavior.

I was 12 years old when I realized that something just wasn't quite right. I was 15 when my brain seemed to just explode, landing me my very first 3 month stay in a psychiatric ward. Although I felt a sense of relief, I had entered into a world way more chaotic than Bi-Polar could ever be ( more stories for the near future). It was the first time I have ever spent my birthday away from home. Since then, this has truly been an uphill battle.



Bi Polar is so complex, so cunning and so baffling. It has often brought me to my knees, praying, begging, crying, and screaming for death. It has made me cry out in desperation for a way out, for relief of intense emotional pain, and extreme physical and mental exhaustion. 

One day, it just clicked like the sound of a cocked revolver. Bi Polar made sense of such an erratic, crazy, broken down, roller coaster ridden kind of life. My life. Tsunami's monstrous waves, Jekyll and Hyde, Werewolves, Demonic possession, Earthquakes, and Terrorist attacks have all been happening inside of my brain all of these years. Untreated, I am a Nuclear bomb waiting, just waiting to destroy everything and everyone I love, everything that has ever mattered. tick tick tick tick.

So what does Bi Polar feel like? This is difficult to describe to you if you don't live with this. For me, Bi Polar is like  10 sided dice that are constantly being rolled. The sides of the dice all have various moods or states of life on them. Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Humanity, Heaven, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattvas, Enlightenment.  My die seem to render me to a state of Hell, Animality, and Anger way too often, with Humanity peppered in, somewhere. Sometimes two dice are being rolled simultaneously. This can be a recipe for disaster, or a bad day just waiting to happen. I wish Heaven would stop by more often. I am constantly swinging from mood to mood, hell to heaven, dark to light. The path to enlightenment is a tough one indeed.

Recurrently, there is a deep dark and desolate type of suffering that can be maddening, making me constantly question my own sanity and the reality in which I live. It is a hapless and hopeless kind of darkness followed by an intense craving to see the light, to start over, for another chance to make things right, to have a clean slate. It's a sudden and impulsive craving to frantically search for trap doors, to escape the excruciating, horrific madness that haunts me. At this very moment, death is attractive, enticing, and so delicious.




In that moment I am in emotional, mental, and physical ruins. I fail to see the effects of such dark causes and my obsessions with death. All I can see and feel is my own anguish. I have learned to brace myself during these lurid and gloomy moments, to find the 'Eye of the storm', to find my center. 

If I hold on just long enough, the darkness becomes less intense and recedes. I feel a sense of solace and comfort for a short period of time, like God himself has cracked opened the skies of Heaven just to come down and kiss me on the forehead. For me relief can last for the next 5 minutes, five days, or five weeks, and then I feel let down, betrayed, and brokenhearted. I have crashed. Next I am back on the emotional  roller coaster for the thousandth time, no matter what God may have whispered to me just moments before. This stupid fucking curse is always stalking me, waiting for me, sitting next to me, doing push ups, growing stronger, plotting and scheming it's next move.

Bi-polar has convinced me that Hell is not some fiery pit of suffering ones soul may be doomed to for eternity in the afterlife. I have experienced Hell right here on earth, having wars inside of my brain for the last 20 years. It is totally trying to kill me, there is no doubt about that, and it will if I let it. Somehow, I just have to keep fighting it.


So often I just want to stop fighting it, quit, and cease to exist. Sometimes I feel like my sword weighs more than the earth, like I am trapped beneath a pile decaying angels that have fallen from grace, with their broken wings, and their broken hearts. I lie there for a while and then I just crawl from beneath the corpses, lift my sword, and then I fight some more, screaming and praying for it all to just end.



I feel almost like a werewolf, only I don't 'wolf out' once a month during a full moon. In my world, the moon can be full at any given, sparatic, and seriously inconvenient moment in time. No matter how much I try to be prepared, the 'wolf' has seemed to develop some serious skills in 'guerrilla tactics'. I am so screwed.

Now and then I feel like I am possessed by demons while a priest is performing an exorcism, spraying me with holy water. I feel like two different people, in a constant battle of duality, fighting earnestly to the death. The winner gets to keep my soul. 

On many occasions I am a Gladiator getting slaughtered in the arena, or a Boxer getting my teeth knocked out in the last round. And sometimes I am just a total loser, so ashamed, feeling like a freak of nature, so broken, and so lost.

I have lost count how many times my ass has been kicked up down left right and sideways. I feel like, this is the most cruel of all pranks and jokes. I keep waiting for the camera crew to just jump out any minute saying "You just got Punked", but it never fucking happens.

In more ways than one I feel like I am cursed (just like George from Being Human BBC). Or perhaps this is a result of bad causes I have made in previous lifetimes (yes, I very much believe that I have been here many lifetimes before this one). Either way, pretending Bi-polar simply does not exist has proven to become a dangerous decision, resulting in several suicide attempts and multiple hospitalizations, which totally sucks! I have just begun to pick up the pieces from all the nuclear wreckage.
 
There is a really cool side to all of this. When I am not 'wolfing out' or being possessed my the part of myself that I love (and everyone else seems to love and enjoy) comes out to play for a little while. I can't stop writing, painting, creating, laughing, smiling, dancing, fucking, going, and going and going. I have become the fucking life of the party. My levels of creativity go through the roof. Life becomes so happy,joyous, and free. It is almost as if Death has forgotten all about me. I start to feel really good. But for how long? And why is this feeling so fleeting? I beg this alter ego to stay a while longer (it never does), to warm my heart of stone, to ease my worried and exhausted mind, to love me. It never does. I put my seat belt on and brace myself.

Next I am abruptly pushed onto yet another emotional roller coaster. I can't help but feel tricked, used, abused. Unexpectedly I feel like I just did a couple lines of coke, drank a whole entire case of Red Bull, or had way too much coffee with shots of bitter espresso. Only I didn't do coke, nor did I drink caffeine. Everything around me has become way too fast, lightning speed. I am nervous, and anxious. I am uncomfortable and seriously want to peel off and crawl out of skin which no longer feels like my own.

I imagine myself jumping from the roof of a seriously tall skyscraper. I crash and have a mental meltdown.  I shatter into tiny pieces like broken blood stained glass. This heavy murk rolls in like giant, puffy, charcoal grey, cumulus nimbus storm clouds. Death arrives with a vengeance.

Death knocks on my cranium walls, lifting it's sword and shield, demanding a rematch  in the arena. Inside I am screaming. No one hears me. All I can do is smile while I make yet another tiring attempt to dance with death, and then beat it's ass. Sometimes I am almost convinced that I will never be cheerful again. Almost.

 

2 comments:

  1. I do know this pain. You are not alone.

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  2. Araena!!!!!!! You are amazing! You inspire me. Keep doing what you do.
    Love and Peace,
    Heather (your cousin). :)

    ReplyDelete