A reader, bless her beautiful heart, recently asked if I had “ever thought of a book.” This comment, while breathtakingly sweet and a balm to my self-scathing soul, betrays a fairly fundamental lack of understanding of what it means to me to have bipolar disorder.
Have I ever thought about writing a book? Being bipolar means I have to expend a significant amount of mental energy on not thinking about writing a book, not thinking about a book deal that will make me rich, not thinking about getting published and getting famous, not thinking about my appearance on The Daily Show (the quips we’d trade, the bloggers with less privilege I’d promote, the laughs I’d get, the thoughts I’d provoke, the flats I’d wear to not loom too tall over him), not thinking about getting invited to the White House to discuss the immensely important issues my book would address with depth and nuance (Josh Lyman would be there, of course), not thinking about the revolution that will finally overthrow the kyriarchy for good sparked in no small part by said immensely important and deeply nuanced book. Because if I think of doing a book, I cannot help but thinking of all those things in turn: there are no half measures in this mentally ill mind o’mine.
Reality of course can never live up to such fantasies, and dreaming them both takes away from time I could, and would rather, spend actually writing, and paralyzes me, because the flip side of such grandiosity — only ever a hair’s breadth away — is being convinced I am and only ever will be a waste of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and space. (A friend asked me the other day why, if I didn’t think my writing was any good, were people coming to the site in such numbers. My reply was “To point and laugh?” Yes, I might be a wee bit crazy.)
The only way I’ve found to avoid this type of thinking (what Anne Lamott cleverly and concisely calls “mind fucking”) is to not think. If I allowed myself to think about how big my blog could get, what I’d do if it became really popular, the articles I’d be asked to write for Bitch and Salon and Mothering and The New Yorker… I would never actually be able to blog at all. So I don’t. I think about this post, the post I have planned for tomorrow, the way I’ll respond to the comments I’ve actually gotten. Better still, I just write, and don’t think about it in a meta way at all.
So have I ever thought about a book? Um, yes. But I try not to.
As a fellow bipolar blogger, let me just say: YES.
No pressure, I just want to let you know that I appreciate the work that you do.
Affectionate chuckle.
Hey, wait a second: I'm supposed to be the member of the family who does *not* have bipolar disease. However, all the same fantasies come to my mind, and can paralyze me as well. Maybe it's not bipolar disease, just being human….
–Mom
Kelsey: Thanks, and welcome!
Renee: Thank you. That really means a lot to me. (And thanks for the link love in your latest Drop it!)
Mom: I don't doubt that: I really believe most mental illnesses are just ("just"!) exaggerations of "normal" human traits. Bipolar disorder, OCD, depression, anxiety: all can be thought of as spectra, with a "normal" end, a sort of quirky middle, and a pathological/problematical end. So it doesn't really surprise me that a person without mental illness (such as yourself) has similar feelings; I would, however, maintain that our experiences of the intensity of those thoughts/fantasies/paralyses would be vastly different.
At the moment, my mood/grandiosity are at a low (for me) level somewhere in the "quirky" range, probably a bit more than a neurotypical person experiences, but nowhere near as profound or problematical as I've felt when I was in a much more unstable phase of my mental illness. But it's definitely there, and the risk for going from quirky to pathological is there, in a way that most others (without bipolar disorder or another cause) simply don't have, and that means I have to take precautions that others don't, at least not to the same degree.
I'd wish you well with the fame and the fortune and watch you on the Daily Show.
But this would be sad: "I would never actually be able to blog at all."
oh yes yes yes. *sigh* My ex (who's actually my best and dearest friend still) is bipolar and I'm very familiar with living "in that world" I myself am borderline which has alot of the same "funness" So I SOOO get this entry!!!
Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes.
Have you ever been told to "turn your mind off"? This entry says so much with so few words!