Sometimes I wake up feeling so euphoric it’s a pleasure to bounce out of bed and other days I have a brick in my stomach so heavy I can barely crawl inside the coffee pot. This is better than how I used to feel, pre-therapy, which was like a sleep-deprived Gordon Ramsay on anabolic steroids, with a bunch of incompetent staff and a filthy kitchen just before the TV cameras arrive.

Color me cyclothymic. My euphoric state makes me do dumb things like paying a hefty annual fee to join a gym (again) and my depressed state means I go only three times before quitting and willing the rest of the year away. When I’m happy I start all sorts of new projects; volunteering to work with the homeless, organising major functions and redecorating the house, and when I’m depressed I think, what was I thinking? I’ve promised people I’ll do it, but now it’s a bit like trying to run a marathon dragging a broken leg behind me. Feeling normal, for me, is an abstract notion, and something I pass through only ever briefly on my wild pendulum swing flitting between heaven and hell.

Normal is a very useful elastic concept for someone in the arts business. Cyclothymia (I thought the cyclo bit meant cyclone rather than cycling) or going from happy to megabitch in five seconds, has a euphoric/creative component called hypomania and this, as well as sometimes the depressive irritable part, is marvelous news for a writer, actor, dancer, singer or painter. If you can grab the beast ferociously by the neck, harnessing, taming and propelling it through the thick, glutinous mud of changeling emotions and transforming it into words on a page, color on a canvas, music and lyrics in the air or graceful movements on a stage, then you have personal power. But not so marvelous if you cycle the moods and have to appear regular, even, consistent, reliable and stable, which as a part-time medical receptionist is something I have to aspire to. So color me inconsistent with a palette range that makes a glorious rainbow look like a grey sky.

This hypomania is behind my drive for academic and literary success. It’s what pushes me towards the agony and the ecstasy of structuring that perfect sentence, essay, book or blog. It rips me out of bed at 5am on a Sunday morning so I get peace and quiet for several hours. It forces me live next to my depression rather than in it and cuts me so deep that I bleed those essential words onto the white, virginal blank page of a word document. Think Sylvia Plath, Heath Ledger, Jim Carrey and even Michael Jackson. Artists suffer for their art.

Sometimes I’m both euphoric and depressed at the same time, a cluster of mixed emotions which, like CEO’s of a multinational corporation, fight each other for the top position. Those are the days I’m happy being irritable and have fantasies of smacking people rather than shooting them in the kneecap. I don’t get really, REALLY borderline angry anymore because that is something I have worked on very hard with my gentle, loving, consistent, artistic therapist who believes wholeheartedly, don’t get mad, get mindful. Believe me, that’s no mean feat with three teenagers, an old incontinent dog and two flighty, neurotic cats who regularly shed black hair on my brand new cream furniture. Color me crusty and cranky and perhaps slightly certifiable.

I’d be lying if I said I wanted to be normal. There’s something about being emotionally challenged that feels good and right for me. With euphoria on one shoulder and depression on the other (although my therapist would prefer grace and dignity) it looks like a balanced life. Color me crazy, but it’s better than living in a world of black and white.

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (July 2, 2009)

greythinking (July 6, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 1 Jul 2009