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.






While in the car, I crank the tunes and play drums on the steering wheel while screaming at the top of my lungs. Billy Joel is a perennial and octagonal favorite as he has a bouillabaisse of the elements. In a typical BJ song (relax perverts, I meant Billy Joel and not what you were thinking), there's the drums, piano, saxophone, and of course, Billy's voice. I find myself playing air sax with my fingers, drums on the steering wheel, and piano on the dashboard. Other motorists watch and stare and I see in their expressions; they wish they could could feel what I feel. Life's highs are so much sweeter.


Maybe it's the reason I like to drive so much. It's also the reason that many of my friends are twenty years my junior as people my age are so damned boring. They've lost their kiddishness. They let their lives live them and they look through the windshield from the back seat. They don't leave it all out on the field.


The good, the bad, the ugly, I let it all out. People many times gather around and complete strangers become instant friends. During a typical afternoon at the mall, I'll make fifteen friends and leave them laughing and smiling in my wake. It's as if I've awakened them from the trance they were in and when I leave, they fall right back into their zombie existence.


Driving is another thing that normal people, or normies as I call them, don't get the same enjoyment as the typical bipolar person does. Lizzie Simon's book, Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D, talks about how bipolar people are insane drivers. Driving, driving fast to be more accurate, is about getting a high. Like The Quickening in those Highlander movies, it gives you a rush that totally energizes me. I feel renewed.


And it all made sense to me. Bipolar people are about getting to the next high. There are good and bad ways to achieve this. The good are music, and writing, and singing, and dancing, and sex, and achievement, and video games, and reading, and driving, and sports, and being around other people and feeding off of their energy. The bad are sex, drugs, alcohol, and obsessiveness, and manipulative people, and overwhelming responsibility, and rigid structure, and driving too fast, and taking chances and putting yourself in dangerous situations, and not sleeping.


Being bipolar has been my biggest gift and my greatest curse. It is the eating of one's own tail to sustain life. Yet I feel blessed or guided and somehow different than everyone else. I'm the one bright red object in a black and white movie. It's not as if I am me, I'm enhanced. And maybe we do need to be separate. I don't want to catch what they've got and live a zombie existence.


I can't see just going through the motions of life and somehow, somewhere getting to that one place where I get to relax enjoy it. The fun is in the journey. I put everything into everything: all of my energy, all of my heart, all of my soul. I frequently crash on the couch, lying exhausted on the field of life's battle, victorious.