Giving Up

Today, this morning, sunday 10:25 pst, vancouver, bc, nanaimo street and east hastings, corner cafe. I wrote this, this morning. I wrote it last night and a week ago. And now it is what it is.

I have been writing a lot about retreating or suicide or the grimmer aspects of reality. I haven't seen much love and sweetness to write about. Maybe we write most passionately about the wrongs we see. Pain is more authentic than love. Writing about pain releases that pain to the universe. Catharsis.

giving up terry mcdermott

i realized this morning i’m starting to give up.

no, i am giving up, it’s a relief

i’m ok with this reality.

it’s not a surprise.

the dry summer of depression has become

a rain forest thick with lost voices,

all humming autumn’s call for surrender.

while i think about death, brain plasticity and neural disfigurement

i feel too comfortable in these surroundings.

i know that i’m in trouble,

as light dims, danger shines.

i sit down to write the unprintable.

let all the ugliest thoughts and desires

out of their cages;

release wild frothing accusations

about myself.

my anger is worn out.

used up by the constant

geological pressure of depression,

its loving fingers graciously waiting

to close my dying eyes

i text my sister 

to falsely update her with a thumbs-up emoji.

i get a dull happy face response.

to avoid intimacy we don’t use words

she pretends this enough and knows it’s not

she doesn’t know i’m putting her on trial

i have 12 pissed off voices in my head

ready to condemn her. 

this makes no difference to her

i used to want justice from the world,

retribution for criminal acts of depression.

now i want quiet

to allow this to end.

i call my therapist

to leave a message,

i won’t be coming 

to our next appointment.

Invasion of depression

Lately, I've had the feeling that, in the end, I'm just the battleground for depression and mania to fight it out. Somehow I've become a peace keeper between opponents who don't believe the other exists. Out of that thought, comes this, which may or may not make sense:

invasion

i am: 
a home invasion
with blow torches to burn me out
with an unseeable weight to crush me
until i’m curled into submission


i am:
siege warfare
prepared to wait endlessly
for my defences to wither
until i surrender to monotone depression


i am:
the only true enemy
i have
and i know my weaknesses

To be bipolar or why i am reduced to a disease

I've been reading a lot lately about how to use the term bipolar. The argument has essentially 2 sides, though there are nuances.

Are you bipolar or do you live with bipolar or  have bipolar disorder. 2 fairly definitive choices.

So what's this all about.

First."I am bipolar". Some folks think this is simply the truth and also grammatically correct. (I'm not sure how grammar got in there). I think some people believe that it's a large and perhaps wasted effort to change society's labels.

They accept this mostly with the proviso that is the least of the things we should worry about. I'm willing to go along with this argument. I'm much more concerned with how society treats rather than what it calls me.

Second. Don't call me bipolar. I have bipolar disorder, which I live with and cope with.  I am not a disease. It is incredibly reductive and dismissive.

This argument is compelling. If you refer to me as bipolar it immediately overrides the many other things I am. I am much more than that.

To me, living with bipolar disorder is much more accurate. People have predispositions about mental illness, calling me bipolar is an immediate if unthinking judgement. It's a dismissive term with cold connotations. I'd prefer being called crazy - it sounds more fun.

Words have power. I think that calling someone bipolar is too easy. It's reflects a lazy sort of thought process, the kind that uses stereotypes as reality. That's unfortunate because, in my experiences, bipolar is generally not used in kind or understanding way.

I obviously don't like being called bipolar. I use to launch into some rant about how you don't call someone cancer, they have cancer. Which didn't help my argument.

Mostly, I think it reflects a terrible deficit of understanding or worse, it reflects, an unwillingness to understand.

But I don't know how much I care these days. I don't like being called bipolar but if others don't have a problem this. That's fine. But we should give it some thought.

The final useless lap...

I think my brain is running its last lap. A final useless lap. I thought as the summer ends, something will change. Nothing has changed.

But now I think this might be the last lap. The stopwatch is running out of time

Time is a trickster. It’s never constant. Time moves differently in my head as it does in my feet. And this summer, time was extraordinarily fast and achingly slow.

The world was too slow or too fast. I walked that precipice that bipolar disorder demands —a small ledge between fall or fly.

Once I did believe that all these rising and fallings, the grandiose plans and the psychotic breaks were somehow temporary. With time treatment things will balance. Believing this might be the most grandiose and unrealistic thought of all.

Now time presses its gravity on my neck. I’m asking, have I run out time? Are there changes that are worth making or striving for?

Ultimately, what change is possible now?

There was a time I believed change was possible, that a better me was a few months away. Three decades later, I see I’m a fool. The victim of the long con. I was holding on to pyrite hope. Shiny and worthless. 

I was recklessly hopeful — trusting doctors, therapists, medications, crystals, spirit animals, visions of soul healers. But now running laps is ridiculous, running from something only to run back to that point. And claiming this as victory.

This lap feels endless. Maybe I’m just tired.

no language

depression has no language
it robs all words of meaning
creates a vacuum
spelled in five letters

a    l    o    n    e

I Survived Suicide - World Suicide Prevention Day

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. Today, we going to read all sorts of facts and figures and hear many people proclaim the importance of suicide awareness.

But today we should share stories. Stories of survival and why suicide became the best most reasonable choice.

So here's mine.

I had gone through another manic period followed by the inevitable crash into depression. The depression was crushing. I stayed in one corner of my bed for months it seemed. By rights, I should have been in hospital.

I became obsessed with the idea that if I could just be gone, all this would end, i would be relieved and undoubtedly everyone around me would be very relieved.

It was believing that I was just burdening people that was the deciding factor. Everyone would be better off. No one would have to worry about me. All I had to do was swallow a bunch of pills.

And I had a bunch of pills. A wide colourful variety of geometric shapes. I have no idea what combination of medications I took that night. I don't know how many. I know it was a cocktail of death that I could hold in my fist.

I sat on the edge of my bed, thinking. Do I have the courage to do this? Turns out, you don't need courage. You just need to say fuck it and swallow and swallow and swallow. Then...I guess you just wait.

After this I don't remember very much for maybe a week. I don't remember if I was hospitalized. I have flashes of wandering and banging on doors and windows opening. When I came back to life, I was still where I was and nothing had changed.

But I failed. Sometimes I'm happy about that. Sometimes I'm truly ambivalent. I'm not sure how anyone else feels about this.

Why I Don't Hope

One thing, as I go through the world of bipolarity, I've tried to avoid is hope.

Hope. I don't like it. I don't want it. And I actively avoid it.

It seems ridiculous not to hope. How do you go through life without hope?

It's a matter of perspective. Most people look at hope as a positive. Sometime, somewhere things will get better. That's good.

I look at hope with skepticism bordering on paranoia. To me, hope is not hope. It's a danger sign.

This summer, I decided I was ready to go back to school. Counselling. My doctor and I worked it out and all seemed positive.

Throughout the summer, I became increasingly aware that I was feeling the mania building. I started feeling powerful and that I already knew everything there is to know and of course this is what I'm meant to do. And of course, I'm going to save people from living the same life I have. I don't even need these classes to know what to do.

Not too much to hope for.

It's way too much to hope for. It's not realistic and it's a fantasy.

The irony is that I felt what was happening, I knew at points. I wrote that I was thinking in super grandiose terms. I also knew it wouldn't last.

But it felt so great. That feeling that everything is small and I'm expansive, creative, visionary, and a healer. I am the conquerer. I'm on top.

It's so intoxicating that even though I was well aware, this mania lasted months in varying degrees. And I pushed it to last, to be honest.

I wanted the mania to be the new me. I thought this time I could avoid the cliff.

I let myself hope. Fell off the cliff and I crashed hard. I'm still crashing.

Hope is killed and it feels like hope is killing me.