October and November were terrible months, some days impossibly grey not just because of the gloomy weather outside but because it seemed I fell into a vortex of bad—but also exciting—things. It all started quite inconspicuously—with a few glitches that had to do with the publication of my new novel—but somehow by mid-November it was a fully blown s*itshow and I crumbled repeatedly under various pressures.
I don’t want to be all cryptic about it so I’ll just tell you. I had a bit of a hypomanic episode (I have BDII). Of course there’s no such thing as a bit of hypomania—hypomania is an all-consuming mental rollercoaster where you ride around in a special sort of Leviathan, without those restrain bars intended to keep you secured as you’re hanging upside down and hurl through your own brain at ridiculous speeds. Metaphors aside, what this looks like in practice is having too much energy, stupid thoughts and brilliant ideas clamouring and climbing all in (to) one pile, believing yourself to be in an exceptionally good mood (think: euphoria) and experiencing some truly impressive bouts productivity.
When it gets like this, writing an entire new novel in under a month seems like a total possibility—then writing the said novel in two weeks—and waking up in the middle of the night to read Wikipedia entries about obscure celebrities (Kajagoogoo) is a legit excuse to lose sleep, eating lunch at 5 p.m. or not eating at all is totally reasonable as well, developing new and complicated situations (okay, fighting) with people is a version of legitimate socializing, feeling horny and attracted to anybody with a penis (just thinking the word “him” or “he” can be enough to soak those panties), deciding to start 45 new projects (the reviving of this substack here, included) despite missing 98 deadlines—with 987 more on the horizon—is the proper work ethic, binge-watching all of the seasons of “90-Day fiancee,” planning at least 205 trips, taking a course on cryptocurrency and almost falling a victim to a crypto scam, starting new social media accounts (and forgetting all the passwords), and, most importantly, somewhere along that timeline, getting a purebred chihuahua—flown over all the way from the Laurentians—is a pretty solid description of a long episode. And that’s only a portion of what can happen, what actually did happen in October and November.
The crash is, of course, brutal. This time around, the lows happened simultaneously with the highs, half a day spent running around in my hamster wheel and the other half lying half-paralyzed and feeling absolutely overwhelmed by it all. The hardest thing, however, is not not being able to handle all that activity and the crash—the hardest thing is being able to advocate for myself. For someone like me, who’s been in mental-health system for most of my life, there’s a certain degree of mental wariness, a Groundhog Day feeling of having to yet again sit in some pleasant room with some pleasant stranger, going over all the history—and the older you get, the more history—and not really believing in the whole thing because I’ve been there so many times before. I know what’s wrong with me. I also know how to arrest some of that, I know about good coping skills, medication, meditation, supports, everything else. Actually, the worst thing is having to advocate for yourself when you’re in the midst of it—the last thing I want to do is try to find a therapist when I can barely get out of the house or when the world is singing and there are double rainbows all around me. And as I recently said in a recent interview I did, I thought I was cured since I haven’t had an episode in so long. My psychiatrist passed away earlier this year and during a follow-up with his replacement, it was decided that I was perhaps in remission and that seemed to check out since I was feeling good. So I think what people get wrong about any mental-health issue—those who have it and those who are around it— is that it’s not chronic, but most importantly that it’s some kind of a moral failing or a weakness and that you can just snap out of it. Actually, the worst is when you (the person with it) starts to believe that hype or feels pressured to snap out of it because people around are frustrated or impatient. Actually, the worst thing is when you think that your intelligence is enough to protect you, that you can’t possibly be crazy (my word, I like it) if you’re smart, you should be able to reason yourself out of being unreasonable, no? But that’s like saying that knowing everything about cancer can cure you of it. And, yes, I am comparing some mental illness to cancer although I know there are idiots out there who believe you can think yourself out of cancer too.
The good thing is there is treatment, there are supports but we really, really need to talk about it more and be kinder about it. It’s all just dumb luck if you think about it, funny genes and all that.
Is there any better definition of shame that this? "Actually, the worst thing is when you think that your intelligence is enough to protect you, that you can’t possibly be crazy (my word, I like it) if you’re smart, you should be able to reason yourself out of being unreasonable, no? "