An Experiment

I saw a TV commercial the other day. It was the one where the daughter has these terrible migraines and her mom doesn't know what it actually feels like other than it hurts. So the medicine company ( I can't remember what brand, but that's not the point), gives her mom a set of goggles that causes the poor woman terrible dizziness and double eyesight so she could "feel" how her daughter felt. At the end of the commercial the mother and daughter cry and hug and thank whatever company for helping them. Now this whole roundabout paragraph was to simply say after the commercial I had this idea for trying to explain how my bipolar works by letting someone go "through" the feelings.


Let's start with the downside, the depression, the crash, living death, whatever you want to call it. It's starts simple enough, but you will need at least one other person to assist. Begin by laying in your bed. Now while you're laying there, have the second person begin tying 5 to 10 lb. weights on your feet, and hands. Lastly tie (gently!) a 5 pound weight on your chest. Now try to sit up, it's hard huh? Not impossible but just sooo difficult you don't even want to do it. Once you reach standing, flip on the light, again the arms struggle to lift. Now you have one of two options with the light-1. Turn on the light, it does nothing, maybe flicker but it's not bright. Or 2. Turn on the light-and make sure you have about 10 to 15 lamps all wired to that light that switch on as well. The brightness is overwhelming! And you lift your hand to turn it off or cover your eyes, but remember that weight? Now it's a ten pounder. And your feet are 15 pounders. Ready to seize the day yet? Jump in the shower? Run down the stairs? How about work? At this point, your "buddy" will begin asking you questions, faster and faster. No pause for your reply, no waiting at all. And the suddenly, he or she slips into another language! Now their asking questions that you can't possibly understand. And when you try to reply, your buddy can't understand a word you say. Your mouth must move 20 times slower than normal and by  the time you say one thing you can't remember what you want to say next. It's easy for many people to say depression is just a mental thing, but once you put physical attachments to it, it's amazing how people feel differently. Yes depression is mental but it's also physical too.

Alright, now that we are done with the ugly side let's go to the "fun" side, mania! Because manic people are fun! They are happy all the time and just loooove life! Again begin in bed, now this exercise will still take two people but it will take some imagination on your part. You're laying in bed, bam! your eyes open! Imagine the best day of your life, or something you have always wanted to do. For me it would be waking up to find I'm going to Harry Potter world, like for real not the entertainment place. Keep that feeling in your head, that awesome right before I do the best thing ever feeling. Now your buddy start a radio with YOUR song on it (we all have the one song, don't try to deny it!). And now when you get out of bed there are no weights, you feel oddly light. You dance downstairs because it's gonna be an awesome day. All your best friends are meeting up and going to your awesome place! Now, buddy this next part is for you, while the testee's jam is playing use another radio and start playing another favorite song, keep them both playing at even levels and the same songs over and over. Back to you, testee, you're eating a great, awesome, amazing, everyone of your favorite foods breakfast!! Coffee to boot! You notice that the music is kinda annoying cause you can't seem to hear either one for  the other. Oh well, who cares! Now before you go you do have some chores to run but no big deal. Go to the car, bring both radios, turn on your car and have that radio playing as well. Now start talking to your buddy, you will yell over the radios, they will reply in normal conversational tones. It's now starting to get more and more annoying that damn music, but still awesome day with the buddies!! At this point, buddy, you begin to talk slower and slower, like how we all do when someone doesn't understand us. Ok, testee, this is quite aggravating and now maybe your fun day isn't shaping up like it should and God! someone turn off the damn radios! But they don't turn off, actually they seem to slowly get louder and louder...Once you meet up with your buddies, you can barely hear them over all the damn noise but you try to stay in the conversation. After awhile you would give anything for the radios, TV, movie or whatever else can make noise to just be shut off forever! And since you can't hear your friends, you slowly start to think that maybe, just maybe they are using this time to talk about you. I mean how would you know? You're in the same room and you can't understand a thing they are saying. Your awesome great spectacular day is now crap and you just want to go home. End the scenarios.

That is just a taste of the inside of the bipolar mind. Some people are more on the depressive side, others fall into mania more easily. But one almost always feeds into the other. Once the depression lifts you are so happy you want to run, shout, scream to the world that you did it and you beat depression once again. Same goes with mania, everything is amazing, brand new, never done before! Until your mind gets too scrambled by so much overstimulation and then bam! the crash, the living death.

Sorry if this got too deep...I'll leave you with this, because of medication, and lots of work, and an awesome support system, I normally live my life on the balance. I may waver up and down slightly from time to time but I haven't had the bar at a straight up or down in quite some time. It takes work to balance but most days, I do.