bi-polar

As far as the scam goes, I am happy for the scam artists to continue to take advantage of the naïve, for just as long as they are able. I decided quite a long time ago that I was not going to get involved, not make a crusade out of it, not attempt to right the wrongs.

I have a “condition.” It is as much a part of me as my skin color. Furthermore, it is not any more likely to change than my skin color, no matter what I or anyone else do (thirty years ago I remember how my dear friend Lonnie used to pee in the bath to make her skin lighter. Um, it did not work …). This condition is just one of the enormous gifts which my Lord has given to me; no human being has the power to take it away and it is arrogance to pretend that they can.

The condition consists of an intense emotionality which may, at times, not be connected with anything in the present environment, anything in my personal life, or anything in the past, any traumatic experience or bad thing that my parents or teachers or priests did to me, and while there are occasions when empathy with events beyond my traditional senses may be the root, there are times when there is, simply, no cause.
Like the throw of the dice, sometimes you get snake-eyes. Or, in currently-popular jargon, its just “drama”, or theatre, or make-believe entertainment.

At any given time, I may be subject to intense grief and sadness. Sobs, tears pour out of my eyes. At any given time, I may be subject to intense anger. In almost every circumstance, this means taking myself out of action and not trying to do anything or relate with any person, because most other people don’t care to be on the receiving end of it. At any given time, I may be subject to intense feelings of elation, fun and spontaneity. I am known as someone who can do anything, at any time, a master of the unexpected.

There are certain other gifts from God which seem to be more or less connected with this one. I was blessed with extreme intelligence; in other words, I am very, very good at taking intelligence tests. I am smarter than you are, and no amount of jealousy, envy, or power plays on your part will change that. I fully understand that this is not something that I did, it is something that God gave me. I would be happy to share and give it away in any way that I can. Sadly, most people around me view it as a call to compete, to show me up. This results in a lot of other people experiencing a lot of bad accidents.

The situation is exacerbated by my “creativity” and willingness to experiment. I like to believe that I have made more different mistakes than anyone on earth. Of course, I remember every one and all of the more egregious ones I avoid repeating. However, I have found that it is just fruitless to attempt to warn anyone else, this only seems to encourage this “competitive spirit” that I mention above and egg them on towards their destruction. Have you ever read the Odyssey from the point of view of the Sirens? What a sad, lonely existence they must have had!

Just a few words about the scam, from my point of view. Other individuals have gifts similar to mine. In this culture we have built up complex structures and procedures for labeling this condition as an illness, a medical condition. We have special doctors, counselors, hospitals, clinics, medicines, and so forth. The pretense here is that this “condition” can be “cured”. I go back to skin color.

No doubt some of the doctors understand the lie very well. My first shrink moved away to Palm Beach, evidently understanding that rich people make better shills. My last shrink was having fun (and getting paid!) with a patient who was so brain-dead that he could lift his arm into the air and the “patient” would hold it there for hours on end. There is of course necessary collusion from the parents, whose primary interest is to make the individuals less irritating, at any cost. I remember a particular president of NAMI … she was the most hateful, obnoxious human being that I have ever run across in my life. If I had been her son I would have had to kill myself too. That was simply the most egregious example I know of people vilifying their own offspring in order to clear their own names and deny their responsibility.

I saw recently where Seraquel is being given to soldiers returning from Afghanistan. Evidently, the government lying to them about freedom and democracy, sacrifice and honor, while asking them to invade a foreign country and kill innocent women and children, has a permanent impact on their point-of-view of the world. It tends to make them less amenable to cooperation and friendship when they return home. I cannot understand why.

After I had washed out all the other drugs, mostly, from my system, I still had a few 25 mg pills left, and a few times I took them to help me get to sleep. One 25mg pill would guarantee that I was asleep in 20 minutes, regardless of where I was or what I was doing (driving? Waiting for the train? Arguing with my wife?). Moreover, I would stay asleep, dreamless and unsatisfied, for 12 hours or more. Finally, when I awoke I would be groggy and thick-heade for another several hours.

The doctors had had me on 300 mg/day. They wanted me to go up to 400. I would take 200 at night, 100 in the morning. There actually were several times when I awoke, got ready for work, took my pills, went to the train platform, and fell asleep standing on the platform just as the train pulled in (God loves me very, very much. He sent someone to catch me each time.)

At sixty, with a whole lot of assistance from God and despite the strong, steady mistral from my culture, I fully understand these waves of emotion. I have enough sense, when the situation allows it, to take myself out of communion with other people, since some of them they try to damage me for. I can’t always do that. I do find that there is no other human being who will remain as partner to me and share intimate space with me. As a relationship develops, everyone sooner or later decides that they can fix me, so they end up shipwrecked on those rocks.

So it goes. That’s just how it is.