The Story of a Life Unhinged

Power tools. This is an aspect of my life I have kept hidden. I’m no longer allowed to engage in any activity involving an M18 Cordless Sawzall. It’s intoxicating, really, a reciprocating saw that can destroy a bathroom in a matter of hours. I know because I did it – sink halved, pipes decapitated, and, my favorite part, diminishing the soul of a cast iron tub to pieces small enough for the garbage man to haul out of the front door. It was a $50,000 repair to rebuild that bathroom with no Sawzall in sight.

An 18V 10” cordless chain saw large enough to Christmas tree edit a wild Eastern White Pine next to my bucolic river. The vibration and instant slice are exhilarating, resulting in a pleasant, festive silhouette. That was before I took on my garden shed and felt the chain saw power of four-by-four roof supports diced to 18” lengths, rejuvenating the firewood stack.

The diamond-tipped extended bit extension power drill makes excellent holes straight through my 4” thick stud interior living room walls, leaving neat blemishes on finished sheet rock. I’m on good terms with my contractor.

What starts as an energized sprint of what seems perfectly reasonable do-it-myself home power tool destruction ends in a nap under the bedroom covers – my favorite gray silk duvet for the other end of the chaotic spectrum. Sleep, depression, the blues.

I’m bipolar 1, the medical establishment diagnosis, and without a boatload of meds to keep me still, I engage in extreme behaviors.

Heart disease? Diabetes? Arthritis? A new hip? These are generally socially acceptable topics to discuss. Me? I’ve got a re-wired brain that can’t wait to jump out of itself. Part of me feels compassion for this alter-ego, and part of me sometimes feels shame about the kinds of experiences I have had that may sound silly but come from a place of psychic pain.

The obsessions, the weeks depressed in bed watching Hallmark, K-Drama, and one Australian sheep farm soap opera, McCloud’s Daughters: my brain swings to emerge from depression to the rush of mania and imagines other realities. The shivery anticipation of a naked run in the Columbia River Gorge and smoking endless packs of unfiltered Camel Reds while believing I am entirely glamorous.

In mania, I internet shop and purchase two dozen old suitcases; eBay is my friend, for no apparent reason other than they are pretty. (I imagine Goodwill thanks me.) Eventually, I am at home, rising in a stupor to raise thirteen miniature goats with 26 hens in my suburban backyard.

I can reflect on a lot of life, perhaps most of it; who knows? And see the rise and fall of the illness that has defined my secret life.

Negotiating a sense of purpose every day and moving forward, backward, and forward again. I accept that being bipolar makes me experience a broad emotional spectrum, top to bottom, and those meds to stay in what appears to be the middle have positives and disadvantages. Now life often feels completely midland flat, without enthusiasm or ebullience.

My bipolar life is supervised: careful calibration of behaviors fast and quick contrasted with the wide deep that is depression, sometimes lived as a disappeared life off social media, the phone, internet, and e-mail.

Although less stigmatized, talking about mental health, other than to a therapist or, in my case, therapist(s), remains a discomfort or maybe an embarrassment. I’ve done all I could to regulate my actions to acceptable behaviors.

I live with Lithium, my “main” med, as a miracle and a heartbreak, a tough drug to metabolize; even though I stay level, brightness has dulled, and emotions or their expression have become flat. From an enthusiastic embrace of the minute miracle, a blade of grass glowing, the squawk of a hen, the sheen of sunlight on a slick convertible, all prior gifts of presence had become absent. Nothing glowed; very little moved my heart.

But, good news, after twenty-five years, the glimmer is slowly returning as I practice focusing deeply on the present. The river beside my home burbles and flickers, and the peach-colored light at sunset entrances; while I am still, a white-capped lake fills my heart, and the newborn in a pram makes me smile.

Whingeing is so tiresome, but I don’t avoid the facts either; I negotiate my alternate life one tick at a time – is my mood up or down? Am I functioning within “normal” limits? Am I dipping into the extreme? Recalibrate, recalibrate. Find that place that settles even for a second. Mmm. That feels good. Thank you.