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.
When I first learned to drive, I remember dreading the experience. Bipolar people, in general, don’t deal with transition well. It was something I had nightmares about and I had more excuses as why I couldn’t and shouldn’t drive. When I was finally forced behind the wheel, I was hooked. It was a big old Ford station wagon with a 351 Cleveland engine with almost 300 horsepower. My dad took me to the local elementary school where there was a ¼ mile oval paved track. I nervously adjusted the seat, stabbed the gas, and there was no turning back.
Every chance I got I was at the school, which was right up the street, practicing my driving. I’d frequently get the car to 60 miles an hour on the straightaway and almost lock up the brakes as I approached the turn. Before I had my license, I had been pulled over at 145mph while racing a Porsche on the highway with our other car, a Pontiac with a 400 and 4-barrel.
I always thought of myself as an adrenaline junkie and I never really understood why. When I found out I was bipolar, it all made sense. I was always looking for that next high. I knew my personality was highly addictive so I, for the most part, avoided drugs and alcohol. And when I can’t get enough of a high, I tend to try to take it in all at once.
As I am typing this on my laptop, I am watching, via extended screen, sitcoms on my tabletop computer (I’m essentially working off of one laptop via two screens with a 5.1 speaker system hooked in). I am also burning movies to make them digital files and uploading music to a Google cloud so I can stream music rather than have it take up space on my phone; as the movies get digitized, I am transferring them to an external hard drive. I now have every episode of Seinfeld and Friends in file folders along with much of the Simpsons and Frasier in addition to 150 movies and counting. I only burn one movie a night now as it tends to lock up my computer (even though my laptop is about as balls out as it gets) while I’m working. As advanced as computers and devices are, they tend to never be enough for me. Hard drives are too small, processors are too slow; although I have the most advanced phone on the planet, I burned it out the first week I owned it.
Rather than get lost or overwhelmed by these processes, I feel energized as I am in manic state and I have an expanded mental capacity. Actually, if I don’t have this many processes going on at once, I feel like I’m driving a Ferrari in first gear; I need my legs stretched quite often. While in a low or a dip or a, dare I say it, depression, I couldn't do one of these processes without having to thoughtfully think it through thoroughly (quite a tongue twister).
My friends tend to lockup when they have too much on them at once. Not only do they not have the resources to deal with too many things, they don’t have the ability to deal with me when I’m manic. I’ve learned to tone it down at times and since usually I’m clueless, they have to tell me quite literally “Take it down a notch. You’re a lot to take sometimes.” Which is why when I get together with them, I often spend time with the kids as they have the energy for me. Kids tend to gravitate to me, even kids I don’t know. At my friend’s parties, I meet people usually after I’ve been playing with their kids. Then they thank me for tiring their kids out for them.
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