It Isn’t (just) a Mood Swing (for fuck's sake)

You know what—wait.

It isn’t a “mood swing.”

It isn’t just “ups and downs,”

The Sads or “Let’s move to Bali.”

It’s missing time and Swiss cheese memory.

My vision changes.

My taste buds can’t handle root beer.

Pain feels different.

It’s talking talking talking despite bullshit word retrieval.

It’s go go go, do do do, yeah yeah yeah,

let's be anywhere but here,

and oh hey I should kill myself!

It’s doorframe bumps,

weighed-down eyes,

nothing’s worth doing,

and oh hey, I should kill myself.

It’s knowing I am not myself.

It’s an altered state of being.

So no, I’m not going to call it a mood swing.

I’m going to call it an episode

or maybe an event because,

while those words may not be terribly descriptive,

at least they don’t minimize it.

Comments

Rapid Cycling

To earn a rapid cycling badge, a person has to have four or more episodes in a year. Good times! I can’t begin to imagine what that’s like with full-blown mania. Hypomania and depression are enough, thanks! Before I got an accurate diagnosis and serviceable meds, I rarely went two weeks before starting a new episode. Up, down, up, down, up, down. It took years of work to figure out my baseline, i.e., what it feels like to just be me. I still have 4–10 days every few weeks when I’m very up, very down, or first one and then the other. I know some of my triggers: stress, lack of sleep, too much alcohol or caffeine. But some episodes come out of the blue. Rapid cycling means you never know. It means you can be in the middle of an exceptionally bad day before you realize, “Oh, this is depressive irritability” or whatever. And then you’re supposed to have the presence of mind to apply the tools that help you minimize any damage. Which is to say, it gets the jump on you, and because...

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Brain Helpers, Part 2b

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