- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
Once upon a time there was a princess who set at her desk most of the day and wept. She tried to hide her face from others because weeping at her desk was not in her job description. There were times she wept because something sad had happened, but sometimes she wept because the dragon she was riding dove for the ground.
Some days, some nights this fiercely beautiful, wildly untamable creature arches her neck, spreads her shimmering wings , as they soar to the high upper reaches where the stars are always bright and the moon always full. The dragon's flames light up the sky, the princess shrieks her joy. Poised precariously on her dragon's back, she dances until she falls, still laughing as the moon and stars spin past her.
Sometimes the dragon catches her.
Sometimes she keeps falling.
And sometimes they soar too high and the dragon twists, plunging down into deep water, into caverns where there is no light, until the princess begins to believe that light is an illusion and all there is, all there ever will be is darkness.
The princess, though, is the only one who can see the dragon. To everyone else she is gyrating frantically through the skies, shooting up, diving for the ground, and all of her own volition.
This is, of course, metaphor and an oddly mixed one at that, unless the princess's office is somewhere between Middle Earth and Hogwarts. Obviously, too, (or at least I think it is) the princess is me.
I'm bipolar.
When I was crying at work--I cry, only princesses get to weep--I was in the midst of the break that finally sent me to the psychiatrist who named the dragon. I had been treated for depression for years because who sees the therapist when you're flying high in a mania? However, this final break was triggered by a medication that works great on depression--not so much on bipolarity.
Crying at work. Certain that not only did no one like me, but sure that they were talking behind my back and telling everyone how damned incompetent I was. (They probably were but I wasn't being singled out--it was just the way things are sometimes.)
The 3:AM awakenings were especially fun. I would wake up crying. The dogs that slept with me would looked baffled and one even--how maudlin--would actually try to lick away my tears. (Shit--he probably just needed more salt in his diet.) All my sins and failures, especially as a mother, would come and sit on my chest, going over a detailed laundry list of my crimes against everyone. There was no washing away these sins, either. I knew I was unlovable and that the people who said, who thought, they loved me were either deluded or loved me out of pity.
Did I always cry? No. Anger and hysterical rage are also a part of mania. I could go from trembling lips and barely held back tears after being told I misspelled a word, to shaking with anger. in a breath
Being carried by the dragon was no joy ride for me, but being anywhere near me was certainly no pleasure either. I wasn't always angry, I wasn't always tearful. I could still laugh--my family tends to have a pretty dark sense of humor--but I wasn't just fragile, I was brittle and ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
People (wisely) avoid being around you if they can and when they are--they tiptoe.
Or they try to help you. Usually they're rational and reassuring. People don't really hate you. Your kids--or "we" when it was one of the kids talking--have turned out fine, so you didn't ruin them.
Cheer up. Snap out of it. Let's go do something fun.
I tried my own drugs of choice: buying stuff and things for other people, trying to help my friends and family with their lives (I think it's actually called interfering), refusing to open any mail that looked remotely like a bill--because if you don't open them you don't have to pay them--spending the time I wasn't working curled in my recliner with a book and the computer on my lap and the TV on. Nothing could hold my attention for very long. Oh, and by the way, if you're ever shopping in this aisle, the uh "admiration" of men can be quite an excellent drug too. And you might be surprised at what can seem like a good idea at the time.
Humans tell stories and want to frame life and make order, or at least some kind of sense
