Begin At The Beginning

The first time I flipped my shit I was maybe nine or ten years old. My parents had decided that we needed to get out of the South Bronx for a few days and the family went on a trip to Williamsburg, VA. It was a good trip though I remember feeling like a beast next to the two daughters in the other family we were vacationing with. The girls ran track, had pretty skin and hair that always looked good. How do you compete with that? I mean, it wasn't a competition but...it sort of was.

It was on the drive back home that I lost it. I don't remember what the situation was that led up to it. All I can remember is sitting in the back seat of the car and feeling like I wanted to rip my skin off. If my dad had stopped the car I would have jumped out and ran until I couldn't run anymore. My dad didn't stop the car, though, so I got up on my knees and started to scream. I wasn't screaming because I was in pain or angry or scared. I was screaming because I didn't know what else to do.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don't know what happened after that. I just remember the screaming. My first bout of mania. For some reason that memory always makes me feel ashamed of myself...

I'm not really sure how to end this post. So...the end.

The Precipice: This Is Where I Make My Home

Precipice [pres-uh-pis]

noun
1. a precarious situation

2. a situation of great peril

I thought about how to introduce myself. How do I tell you who I am? And then I remembered this morning.

This morning when I woke up I had a conversation with myself. Some people have coffee in the mornings, some people hit snooze button and burrow under the blankets for another few minutes, some people smile at their lovers or get up and walk their dogs. Most human beings on this planet have a morning routine; something that lets them know everything in their world is as it should be.

I'm no different, so this morning I did what I always do and I had a conversation with myself. Things like what I was going to wear and whether or not I had time to make breakfast. I almost never have time to make breakfast. I stretched, I yawned, I thought about hotcakes from the McDonald's across the street, and then...

Shit, I can't do this. Can I do this?

An uninvited guest, that thought is part of my routine. It lets me know that everything in my world is...not as it should be but definitely as it was yesterday. It's my life-or-death question. The moment when I make a decision about whether this will be the day I die.

There are so many strange things about being Bipolar but my fear of death is the strangest. Almost everyone is afraid of death but death, to me, is not a terminal illness, a tragic accident, a violent murder.

For me, death is losing sight of who I am. It's going crazy; giving in. So, every day when I wake up my brain asks me if I'm tired of fighting. Yesterday the answer was maybe. Today the answer was no. I ignored the anger I felt at having to take pills every day and I took the pills anyway. I ignored the scissors on the nightstand and, in the shower, I ignored the razor blades too. This is the precipice where I make my home and in this place even the smallest victories matter.

It's almost 12:30pm now and the answer to this morning's question is still no. When I wondered how I would sum myself up in a few paragraphs that's what came to me, that's what I thought was most important; the fact that I always find a way to say no.