I am blessed to have a friend with bipolar. She called me a couple of days ago after reading about how much I liked my mania. She likes her mania, too. Our manic espisodes are filled with paint brushes, staple guns, potting soil, photo albums, shovels, sewing machines, swatches of fabric, endless furniture arrranging and countless trips to Home Depot.

She wanted to remind me of the Bipolar Law of Emotion: For every emotion, there is an equal and opposite emotional commotion. Why do I forget this when I am manic? It’s like the “consequence lobe” of my brain shuts down. Same thing used to happen when I drank. The memory of my last hangover was gone. That horrible, sick feeling of waking up and not being able to remember when or how or with whom I got into bed. How do you forget stuff like that?

So I was very grateful that my friend called. She warned me about romanticizing my mania. She talked about her manic to-do project list. Start something, then start something else, the start another something else and on and on. You end up with half-painted walls and a sewing machine gathering dust on the kitchen table. Then you crash and you find yourself staring at a half-painted wall.

We talked and talked and I realized that I should think of my bipolar as a continuum of emotions, feelings and behaviors instead of compartmentalizing it. I like to think I have manic or depressive “episodes” – like my illness is some kind of TV show. “On tonight’s episode we’ll see how Christine is coming along with that herringbone-patterned brick driveway she is laying!” or “Tonight’s episode is cancelled because Christine has no intention of getting out of bed.”

No, my bipolar is like an Etch-a-Sketch. Twist the nob this way and the line goes up, the other way it goes down or right or left but there is ALWAYS a line. It never breaks. The highs and lows are connected. I need to brand that into my brain. I am working on it.

In the meantime, I had dinner with my friend last night. She finished painting the wall. It looks really, really good.

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    Last reviewed: 25 Jul 2009