Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
To the person you were before it all started,
Bipolar: of or relating to opposite extremes
Up and Down. In and Out. Love and Hate. Life and Death.
Bipolar Disorder: an illness characterized by extreme shifts in mood ranging from depressive lows to manic highs
How hopeless are you allowed to feel until it turns into a risk for suicide? Or how happy are you allowed to be before it becomes a manic episode?
Your mind can’t decide how to think. Your heart can’t decide what to feel. Your soul can’t decide who you are. The heart says to the mind, “You do not belong here.” The mind says to the soul, “I don’t need you!” The souls says to the heart,”Where do I go?” Many parts waiting to form into one body. Each suspicious of the other. Everything disjointed.
You don’t get to just laugh or fall in love or contemplate life and death. Normal people don’t have to think twice about it. You’re not normal. You tried to play the part of normal and missed the signs, which sent you to the emergency room and then the inpatient unit. So when you start to feel things, especially the kinds of things that defy the laws of reason, what do you do? Run through the checklist. Because you’d rather not be lying in a hospital bed waiting for the doctor to run through the checklist for you:
- Did you take your meds? All of them? Go and check.
- What time did you sleep? Until when? Are you sure? Repeat Question 1.
- You like metaphors but is your figurative world becoming too invasive?
- Did you used to think those things about him, her, them, Mom and Dad, Jeff and Josh?
The restrictions on diet, sleep, and medication you can handle, but to rein in your sense of humor and pleasure and sorrow? Will the day come when your humanity can naturally express itself? To be spontaneous and wild, outrageous and free. Are those things forbidden now that you’ve been branded with “bipolar”? Will it always come down to the choice between sanity and freedom? It all ends in chaos anyway.
Sincerely, Esther
