Mania.

I have to write about it. Document it. Do it now, now now now now.

Do you see how quickly it creeps up on you? I don't have that equalizing phase. I am typing faster than I can think, and mind you, I am thinking pretty fast. This is where typing 95 words per minute comes in handy. It is 3:15 am. I have been up since 9am this morning. Most human beings would be exhausted. Not me. I am up listening to Sly and the Family Stone's "It's a Family Affair". Why? I have no clue. I had a craving to listen to THAT song and that song only, even though I haven't heard it since like, 1979? So, what else was there to do but to jump online and download it. And while I did that, I heated up soup, poured a drink, peed, climbed a few walls, listened to the strange buzz in my head, paced the floor and watched the spots in front of my eyes against the white walls.

I have spent this entire day laughing my ass off. Hysterically. I even made fun of being bipolar today. The same thing that was responsible for the despair I experienced a mere four days ago is now a subject worthy of ridicule. Something strikes me funny? It's my BPD. Something makes me say something gross and inappropriate? It's my BPD. I did 1200 questions in one day for my Boards? It's my BPD. I have five packages of index cards filled with notes. I wrote ALL of these today. ALL of them. 50 in a pack. Do the math.

I pray to God for a bout of mania on my test day.

If I were to judge, based on today and four days ago if the Lamictal is helping, my assessment would be the same. No. It isn't. And, I am suffering with both ends of my affliction even more now. I am acutely aware of what is going on, and more than substantially aware that my medication isn't making a dent. Actually, for the past few manic/depressive episodes, the symptoms have been worse than usual.

I am now listening to Korn and thinking how nice it would be if I still cut myself.

This song, Twisted Transistor, would be my song of choice. It just screams "take a razor to your thighs and slice". Of course, to reach my full manic potential, I would have to be crazily fucking someone while bleeding all over them. There would have to be fire play, bondage and infliction of pain. I would love to write that I USED to love that shit. Can't put it in past tense.

If I could do it again, I would. And, on the nights I can convince my husband to batter me the way I like it, it's still done with too much love for it to be effective for me. Even when he smacks the shit out of my ass (and ONLY because I INSIST) it is still too loving and sometimes, while suffering with mania, it is unsatisfying. Not to say that I am not satisfied with my sex life. I am. More than any wife could ever hope to be.

What I am saying is that when the mania makes it a threesome instead of a twosome, I ache for the old days when I would allow myself to throw caution to the wind.

I love my husband and my marriage too much. Instead, I bury it. I surpress it and that only serves to heighten the mania, because I cannot act out. I won't allow myself to, even if it means telling my husband EXACTLY what is going on within me and begging him to hold my car keys for ransom.

My eyes are open so wide right now, literally and figuratively. I feel like I can't blink. My head is pulsing. I can hear the gentle "whooshing" noises of my brain when I turn my head and focus on something else. It's like a slideshow. The pictures are whipping by, the music is throbbing, pulsing and I am completely engaged. I never feel so fucking awake and alive as I do when I am in this state of mind.

Which leads me to this...

Why would anyone want this feeling to go away? This is euphoria. This is erratic. This is erotic. It's hysterical, not in a funny way, but in an insane way. I laugh uncontrollably all day long like this. I find things funny that I normally don't. My kids adore me in manic mode. Mom is FUN this way! She wants to jump around, play, act silly, do crazy things, pay for stuff we can't afford, etc. Depressive Mom just wants to lay in bed, cry, complain of not feeling well, cry some more, ignores her responsibilities, doesn't shower and removes herself from social situations.

The good news? The mania ALWAYS lasts longer than the depression does.

The bad news? When the depression DOES arrive, it leaves me so devastated, so overwhelmed and so hopeless that I sometimes think I won't ever see the manic light of day ever again. I feel strangled. I can't hear. I can't think. I wish for the people and things that I love so much to just go away. I want to curl up and die. Worse still? I don't idealize about suicide. Suicide would be too easy. I prefer to suffer. I feel like I deserve the pain. I want it. I need it. Crave it.

So, when I look at it in black and white, I have come to one conclusion.

Either way I exist, I am in search of pain in some form or another.

I control it, or it controls me. Regardless, it is a yearning for pain. A hunger to feel myself bleed, whether physically or emotionally.

Either way I look at it, I'm fucked. I don't control either one of them. Not the pain of depression that consumes me. Not the delightful pain of wanting to be hurt with the mania that absorbs me. I am dead weight in shark infested waters. I just float with the tide. I get bitten by the shark and when I am not getting bitten and feeling that adrenaline, I am floundering in the salty water, suffering from the sting.

There was something so innocent, so sweet about not knowing I was ill. It was pure then. I was just a victim of genetics, environment, circumstance. I could break down and people would say, poor thing, what can we do for you? Do you need to talk? Do you want a hug? But, now? Now that there is a label on it? Poor thing. Tsk. Give her a pill and put her to bed.

Just make her go away.

And while I am easily put away in another room, sucking on some Klonopin, the demons get in bed with me. Before you know it, it's four days later. It's all a bad dream. I don't know how much I cried. I only know that I woke up in the same clothes I went to bed in with puffy eyes and a runny nose. I look in the mirror.

"Dear God, girl," I will say aloud, "what the fuck happened to you?"

I will then shower, do my hair, apply make up, throw on some hot jeans, some really kickin' shoes, a sexy top and strut around my house like some coked up Dominatrix. I am looking for something to do, somewhere to go. I am in full out panic mode because shit, there has to be a sale somewhere. There has to be some crazy movie to see. I have to go out dancing. Yes, I know it is noon on Tuesday. So the fuck what? Do you not understand I have spent the past four days in bed? I am free now. That CP left. She's gone. Flushed down the toilet and good riddance to that piece of shit. Nope. I'm here now, so get the hell dressed and come appease my every whim, says the Goddess who hath risen from the ash.

I exhaust myself thinking about my own mania...and yet, I still can't sleep.

"Want an Ambien, babe," he will ask innocently though he already knows my answer.

"Baby aspirin, Honey," I reply.

He knows that Ambien will affect me as much as a Tylenol would affect an elephant with a migraine. It ain't happening. It's times like that I wish I had some sort of addiction issue. I wish I was a heavy drinker, a pot smoker, a heroin addict.

I can't get addicted to any of those things. I am too easily bored to ever be addicted to anything for any length of time. Anything, but sexual contact. More on that in a moment.

In the back of my mind, I suppose I always knew there was something different about me. I was a very reclusive child. Then, I would have sudden bursts of being heavily social. I was a promiscuous teen and then, a few weeks later, I would adapt a very chaste and demure lifestyle. The guys I was fucking at the time were all confused. Sure, I let you do that LAST week, but I am different now.

Until I was on my back in front of them again.

I adored the promiscuity. It made me feel powerful. I wasn't being used because I was picking and choosing who I would fuck and how. I would tell the guys to get the hell out of my bed when "I" was done. I didn't give a flying rats ass if they got off or not. Not my issue. You have a hand. There's the toilet. Knock yourself out, lock the door when you leave.

I was a very, very cold young woman.

Then, there would be the group of guys I knew would stay the night, that I could cuddle with, pretend to be in love with. I could nestle alongside of them and make believe we were so happy together. I would feel content, for the night. The morning would come. Sometimes, I'd even get up before (whoever he was) him and make a big breakfast. On rare occassions, I'd make a lunch for them. Here you go, sweetheart. Don't forget to pick up Little Billy on the way home from work. I will have a lovely dinner all prepared for you when you get home from your long hard day, Darling. We can watch Loveboat or reruns of Giligans Island after the kids go to bed. Oh isn't life just divine. Kiss kiss!

There were no kids at that time. I never watched the Loveboat and I have yet to ever cook a dinner for ANY man. I was 18 years old and probably slept with more men than most women do in a lifetime.

But, in my mind, I made a nice, perfect, sweet little life for 12 hours.

Poor fuck would call me later on, expecting the fluffy little bunny of a girlfriend (read: booty call) that he left earlier in the day, only to be greeted with...are you fucking crazy? I'm going out with my friends, Loser. Buh Bye!

Jekyll and Hyde had nothing on me.

This behavior started at 11 years old, developed into a pattern by 14 and by 16, it was my life.

A long time ago, back in those days (and yes, that was twenty plus years ago), I became a slave to cocaine. Not the drug itself, but the euphoria that I felt. I used to get this crazy feeling. I wanted to run in circles. I wanted to jump out of my moving vehicle. I wanted to stand on really tall buildings and wonder what it would be like to freefall off of one.

Then, I went into rehab. I failed. Miserably. I was 20 years old and already sufficiently bored with life.

Three months later, I discovered I was pregnant. I was working days and nights just to keep up with my lifestyle. I slowed down. I cleaned up. I was sober. I was not going to put an innocent life through my incessant cravings for drugs. At least, not until after she was born. In essence and in retrospect, my daughter saved my life.

Despite being clean, I still felt the same damn way. Moody, irritable, crazy, eratic, out of control. I was still feeling crazy, like when I was on the coke. Then, I was still feeling shitty and chalking it up to withdrawals. When six months went by and I knew it was no longer withdrawals, I chalked it up to pregnancy hormones wreaking havoc on my body. When I delivered my (very healthy and beautiful) baby girl, I blamed my continued unpredictable behavior on postpartum depression. When three years passed by, I blamed it on anything else I could conjure up in my head to make it all make sense.

I wasn't addicted to the cocaine. I wasn't going through withdrawals. My pregnancy was just fine. I never suffered with postpartum depression. And all the other excuses I had, they simply didn't pan out in the long run. I wasn't believing my own lies any longer.

It was my bipolar disorder the entire time.

And it is now 4:15 am. I have written most of the first two decades of my life.

I am still wide awake and could put at least another twenty years down in writing.

Tomorrow, I will look at this post and say, whoa! What the fuck?

I will laugh, more than likely a little too hard, a little too long. And then, I will go see my psychiatrist, Dr. C., still wide awake at 2pm and tell him how great I feel.

And my life of living a lie will start all over again.