is something I am well acquainted with.
I grew up on it.
It was my parents’ first line of defense.
Even when I was innocent, they had a way of making me feel at fault.
At fault for what?
Having sex when I wasn’t, my total incapacitation with math, the hostages in Iran?
It made no difference.
I was, for whatever the cause, to blame.
What matters is that I was too weak in my spirit and confused in my mind to argue.
So I went along.
They didn’t understand me.
Nobody understood me.
Nobody at that time really knew anything about bipolar disorder, or, as it was called then, manic-depressive disorder.
I knew I was different, but was made to believe, as everyone else did, that I was a rebellious teenager with a bad temperament.
I slammed doors.
I cried.
I drank.
I cut myself.
I was the epitome of a sufferer of Manic-Depressive disorder.
I had no control and yet was expected to exhibit control.
That is messed up in the purest sense.
I owe one doc my life. He recognized my plight and got me help.
He is one of my heroes.
Thanks, Jerry.
That was a long time ago.
In present day …
I believe Bi-Polar, one of the now-accepted terms, is a bastardization that allows people who have ups and downs now and then, to name themselves so they can be cool.
It let everyone into the nut club.
A place that was, when it wasn’t cool to be ‘bipolar”, only for those thought to be crazy, different, outcasts, criminals, nuts.
Now, however, you aren’t cool if you aren’t either bipolar or gay.
If I were gay, I would take exception to that, but I’m not gay.
I’m just crazy.
I hear rational people who exhibit no signs of affective psychosis , another PC name, proudly proclaim themselves as such.
Bipolar, that is.
Who are these people? These wanna-be’s who haven’t a clue.
They pretend to be psychotic and then turn it off as if it’s water.
I inwardly laugh just before I curse them with the single exercise of spending a week in my head.
A day would be sufficient, but a week would make them catatonic or institutionalized.
A win, either way.
There is nothing glamorous or popular about suffering from manic-depression and if one thinks so, then they are pretending to so they can either …
fake being in high gear for the sake of getting attention …
have an excuse to be sexually promiscuous; if I may say, if it is real, the sex is unimaginable – (y’all know what I’m talking about) …
or find no fault with jumping out of the high windows on buildings because they know they can fly.
The alternative side of that msnic high is crouching in the bathroom with a razor blade, or cutting or purging or a million other coping mechanisms.
They forget that side while they are being manically cool.
Glamorous? NO.
To those who know what is real,
hang in there and fight.
To those who pretend to know what it’s like just to be manic-depressive, just shush.
A Photographer's Heart 