I’m one of the most shy and introverted people you’ll ever come across. I’m the gal who gets there 15 minutes early so I can scope out the place and try to find the most strategically unobtrusive spot in the room but one that can maximize my vantage point. You’d think that would always be in the back, but the middle can be just as advantageous. Just not the very front, never the front, you don’t want to risk calling attention to yourself. I still drive to any new meeting place the night before so I know where to park and which door to go into. That fear that I’ll make a spectacle of myself is a very real and very acute terror.
In any new situation that involves being shuffled among new people I’m terrified but I’ve mastered the thin lipped flash grin then the quick look away. I secretly hope it looks friendly and yet says, “I’d like to talk, but I’m so busy I have to go.” While inside I’m screaming, “Please don’t talk to me, I don’t know what to say to you without looking like a dork.”
Amid my need to not be noticed I run through puddles of anxiety and sometimes get mired down in the depression there. It sucks the life and lilt out of my heart and mind and it’s always difficult to recover from. Depression can easily lead to the darker dark places where suicidal thoughts lurk. These are the places that I avoid with every fiber of my being. Those are the times when I have looked at myself in the mirror and told the girl there that she can do it. Just one loud bang and all the madness, all the chaos will just stop. One day she agreed with me. But, that’s another story…
My default state? Quiet, shy, blissfully blending into the furniture and watching the world go by. Most of the time. But, there’s another side to me that’s a Hyde to my elusive Dr. Jekyll and she shows her face on occasion when least expected. A Hyde filled through and through with manic excess.
As an undiagnosed bipolar I absolutely reveled in the manic highs before I knew anything about mania. I felt like I was on top of the world. I was the most energetic, the most creative, the most confident and beautiful person in the room. (This me always sits in front.) Tell me who the hell wouldn’t love feeling like a superstar??
While manic in my single days my friend and I waltzed into a quiet bar and began dancing alone in the middle of the floor. After a few minutes people started joining us. Before we left the entire place was abuzz with life and energy and the dance floor was full. I took this as a confirmation that I was amazing, the best, unstoppable. All thoughts of being inadequate were banished.
Later in life I was a teaching assistant for adult classes and when I was manic I was funny and engaging. I told great stories. I let students borrow my infectious energy and confidence so that they enjoyed class (at least I think they did) and learned well. I was so proud (of them and myself) and it drove my confidence even higher.
Excessive spending and gambling are textbook signs of mania. I spent my way into debt with 13 credit cards. I spent lots of money on cards to be the life of the party buying gifts for those around me and generally getting what I couldn’t afford.
I’d never taken any kind of drugs, but during my early 20s I tried different ways of “expanding my mind”. At that time while manic I paid no attention to the “Just Say No” mentality that had been driven into me from childhood. I blindly trusted others who told me just to “try it”.
Mania isn’t all “life of the party” and confidence boosters though. When I was manic I was often hypersexual and desperately wanted intimate contact…at all costs. I sometime got angry, very angry (see Bipolar Anger).I took risks with my life and health that I’d never consider when in my “natural” state. Never even having been on an interstate in my life I drove a state away to have an affair with basically a stranger. I paid no attention to phone calls from my work after calling in sick during that time. I was married, soon to be divorced. The marriage had lasted two years.
After my first divorce I went through another manic haze in which I married my second husband (my sister’s ex boyfriend). We were totally wrong for one another but I knew it was the right thing to do at the time. During our first separation I made another trip a state away and didn’t tell my new job where I was going. A second divorce followed a little over a year later. That marriage also lasted only two years.
For some time things started to quiet down after that (coming down from the high) and I met my current husband who is as level headed as I was a kaleidoscope of emotions. He’s loving, forgiving and just all around amazing. I joked with him that my “shelf life” in marriage was about two years, so if he made it past that point he was golden. We’ve been together for nearly 20 years now. That didn’t stop me from having an emotional affair 15 years into the marriage with a complete stranger pre-diagnosis. My husband’s grace and that of the Almighty God are the only things that saved my marriage.
My story is a textbook tale of Bipolar Disorder and the reason why I take my medications religiously and guard myself against the extremes(see Bipolar Medications). It’s why I pay attention to the typical warning signs that I might be becoming hypomanic or manic. This is what my bipolar looks like.