103 Things About Me

These are 103 things about me... raw, unfiltered, and unfrittered... I've seen this on other sites and I thought it would be a cool idea... I'm going to attempt to keep it mostly positive but I also don't want to make it too sanitized. Here goes:
1. I eat sugar directly from the box
2. I love conspiracy theories... especially The JFK Assassination.... I've spend over 1500 hours studying it and I could name one of the shooters on the Grassy Knoll
3. I am fascinated with ancient cultures including the Egyptians and the Mayans
4. I am very handy with computers often setting up and trouble shooting friend's systems
5. I once got a perfect score on an I.Q. test
6. I can't cook

7. I hate coffee and beer
8. I hate religion because too many people have been killed for their God
9. I once drove through a red light on a busy Saturday at 40 mph on my bike because I had no brakes
10. I seek revenge against those who have hurt me
11. I love the rain
12. I make naked snow angels after the first snowfall
13. I recently purchased Nerf guns and have Nerf wars in my house
14. I frequently push limits to see what I can get away with
15. I own every episode of Seinfeld on VHS - it took me 2 1/2 years to tape them
16. I once spent New Years Eve with Avril Lavigne - we spent 45 minutes sitting on curb, one-on-one, talking about life

I Feel Like I'm a Ferrari In First Gear

The world moves way too slow for me. Common sense aside, I think through processes and situations three times faster than anyone around me. I can have one conversation while listening to another and writing about something totally different. Why the hell would I want to medicate that out of me?

The average person talks at 100 to 150 words a minute with occasional bursts of 250. The average brain can process up to 750 words a minute. But they can’t process two conversations at once. Somehow my brain has learned to compartmentalize each of these segments so I can absorb more than the people around me; and I understand each piece independently without getting it all jumbled together. I am not unique in this regard. Other bipolar people have told me they have this same ability.  

Healthy Highs

Bipolar has been likened to a roller coaster ride with thrilling highs and teeth grinding lows. Although it's exciting, a roller coaster starts in one place and, since it's on rails, ends up in the exact same place. What it does between start and finish is the fun of the roller coaster. Bipolar works the same way: what goes up must come down and what goes down must come up.

Every high has an equal and opposite low. And the good news is each low has an equal and opposite high. The higher the high, the lower the low will be. I used to run marathons as I found it was a great way to burn of all of the excess mental and physical energy. A marathon last for 26.2 miles and somewhere around the 20 mile mark, most runners hit the wall. The wall is when you run out of both mental and physical energy and you push forward on sheer will. I found the best way to deal with the wall is just to know it's there and keep on running. And that's how I approach bipolar. The only way to deal with the highs and lows is just to know that they're there.

Either on or Off

Being bipolar, I realize I'm either on or off. There are those times when I have to go through the motions and pretend I'm on when I'm really at a low. Work tends to be the place where that happens most often.


There are a few things I've found that prevent the manias and actually send me out of control. One is overwhelming responsibility. I used to be able to handle this, I no longer can. My brain would race for hours or days. I would work late into the night and arrive back early in the morning. Although I am bipolar and I have more mental and physical energy than most, we all have a breaking point where the batteries are run down and the quick witted responses come at a slower pace.

There was a 2 1/2 year stretch where I worked a night job so I could go to school during the day. I typically worked from 7pm to 4am and I slept from 4:45am until 6:30 am when I had to wake up for school. Getting off at 4am was a hassle as it was the same time the bars let out. During a typical five day work week, I'd get pulled over four times. I've been pulled over in the parking lot at work and the cop asks "where are you coming from?" "Um," (pointing) "right there."

I'm All Engine, No Transmission

There is so much good to be said about people with bipolar (bipolarites) but having common sense is not one of them. Many bipolar people have said that they felt like everyone else had a rule book on how to act and what to say and do. I've never really known what to say or do. Although, at least the way I see it, I am very well adjusted, I still don't know what's appropriate and I say the most awkward things at precisely the wrong time.

Despite having no common sense, I don't also feel so limited. There are times when I feel anointed, chosen. I see things that other couldn't possibly see. I was once interviewing for a sales job where I would be selling to CEOs, CFOs, and CTOs; basically, I would reach out to these highly placed executives cold, and get commitments from them translating to sales in the $50,000-$30,000,000 range. I knew I could do the job as I was the Sales Director for one of their competitors.

Curse or a Gift?

Bipolar can either be a curse or a gift, depending on how you view it. When I'm in a manic state, I've never met anyone who can keep up with me mentally or physically. Adults tell me to "relax" and children call me "crazy" to which I respond "thank you very much." Over time, I've learned to channel the mania so it comes off as 'creativity' or 'youthful enthusiasm.'

I've stopped trying to explain myself to strangers or passing acquaintances. I just act the way I act and they either go with it or they don't. I found that when I act like me and don't tone myself down, people either like me or they don't; there are no lukewarm feelings and no one feels 'okay' about me. It's more black and white.

Lizzie Simon - Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D

I can't say enough about my Lizzie. I don't know Lizzie personally. I have never met her. I have never met anyone who knows her but with that Six Degrees of Separation thing, who knows.


Anywho, I credit my dear sweet Lizzie with helping me to realize who I am and understanding more about myself than I could have ever discovered on my own. Before Lizzie, it was them and it was us. We needed to keep those mentally ill people away from us because they  might snap and come to the morning meeting with a shotgun. What that stigma did was make 'sick' kids not want to get help and parents ignore that their child was sick.

In parents defense, so little was known about bipolar back then. And bipolar masked itself in the symptoms of ADD, ADHD, anger, drinking, drugs, excessive sex, and being unruly and irritable and out of control. Many doctors treat the symptoms and not the real illness itself. And those who do understand with they're dealing with, try to medicate it away as if it's something to be cut out and thrown away rather than embraced and cultivated.

The Roller Coaster Ride

Bipolar has always been known as manic depressive disorder which an oxymoron of sorts. The yin and yang of mental illness and mental illness itself is a stigma. Most people, including those with bipolar, see the 'illness' as a crutch; it something that slows you down and an issue that needs to be dealt with.

I see they way you normies look at us. You feel as though we need to be segregated. That we'll somehow snap or maybe you'll catch our curse.


I see bipolar as a tremendous gift and not as if it's a pebble in my shoe that can't be removed. I wish other people could see the world the way I do. Music gives me a high that I've never seen other people experience. I watch their faces and they almost seem like they're holding back.

My bipolar road trip

Bipolar snuck up on me and I was, quite honestly, the last one to see it. People with bipolar have something of a cluelessness to them. As Lizzie Simon put it "I remember I felt uncomfortable, as if my jeans were too tight and my shoes were too big, but in my head.

It was friends who revealed it to me. There was a Time magazine on the kitchen table with the cover article "Young and Bipolar." "We think you're bipolar" they began. I read the article before I left them and stopped at the bookstore on the way home. Lizzie Simon's book Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D" was headlined in the Times article and I felt I needed to read it right then.


Lizzie's book was in stock and it had its own table as Lizzie had done a book signing the week before. I don't believe in coincidence so I had the book and read it from cover to cover before dawn. As I closed the book, I officially became bipolar.


Most people wait for a diagnosis but when things seem to fit so perfectly, a doctor's thumbs-up seems quite unnecessary. Mental illness has some of the stigma lifted but it's hard to tell someone you're bipolar without them grabbing their kids and running in the opposite direction.

Here's to the Crazy Ones

Charlie Sheen was asked during an interview is he was bipolar. His response was “the earth is bipolar.” Although I love Charlie, he is most likely bipolar and bipolar people are seen as those crazy people we need to keep away from us. I researched the disorder when I found out the great Ernest Hemmingway was so afflicted. He bought us some of the most amazing literature of the last one-hundred years, and a gunshot wound to the head. His granddaughters Mariel and Margaux also inherited the ‘curse’ and Margaux, a model, swallowed pills as her last meal.

Hunter Thompson, the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,followed in Ernest’s footsteps by writing amazing works with an equally insane lifestyle. He, like Hemmingway, blew his own brains out at age sixty-three when he felt his life had run its course. Van Gogh, one also dealing with the highs and lows, shot himself and died from his wounds. I call it Self Natural Selection; Darwin would have been proud.