Of Two Minds

I stumbled on this documentary about bipolar disorder last night on Amazon Prime, and it is so well done that I didn't even pick up my phone as I watched it. Which says A LOT.

The film follows the lives of four people living with bipolar disorder for over a year and veers off once in a while to profile a handful of others, which I think leaves viewers with a robust understanding of the commonalities bipolar people all deal with but really underscores the fact that no two people's experiences are the same. Some people (like me) have hallucinations, some cut themselves, some find manic episodes to be thrilling, some (like me) find them scary and exhausting, some experience functional depression, some (like me) fall into depression so deep that it's past the point of functioning and therefore safely past the point of being capable of self-harm, some attempt and eventually succeed at suicide, some hate taking meds and even refuse to fill their prescriptions, and some (like me) can never forget how awful it is to be off our meds and therefore take them religiously.

The people profiled are straight, gay and bisexual. Some are religious and some are atheists. Some have money and some are struggling so much that they can't afford their meds and rent and seriously consider leaving the United States for a country that can offer them healthcare. They live in cities all over North America. The documentary really does a deep dive into the environments and experiences that shape the way people manage their mental health—though my only criticism is that there are only three people of color, all of whom are just one-off side interviews, which I think really misses an opportunity to paint a more robust picture of experiences and contexts and cultures and personal decisions.

It's edited deftly to be thorough and intimately informational but not overwhelming. I was left feeling emotionally connected to everyone—to the point that I rooted for all of them but ended up angry at one person and genuinely disliking another.

If you or someone you love is living (or struggling) with bipolar disorder, I highly recommend watching this. It's quite beautiful.

BOOT EDGE EDGE!

Pete Buttigieg had another town-hall rally in Cedar Rapids tonight, where he continued to inspire and enthrall and impress the hell out of a packed room of supporters and still-undecided caucusers. His messages of big-tent inclusivity and his standards of decency and his unfailingly measured and principled and educated policy proposals shaped more than his well-rehearsed stump speech; they drove thoughtful, meaningful answers to audience questions drawn randomly from a literal fishbowl in front of everyone. Pete doesn’t just talk for the sake of talking—he has things to say that he’s clearly thought about and taken the time to research and understand and make informed opinions about.

Issues related to mental illness—and caring for people with mental illnesses—came up more than once over the course of the evening, and amid discussions of stigma and a lack of available care and his loan-forgiveness proposals to draw more people into the field, he specifically mentioned bipolar disorder. I was sitting with my dad in the ADA section, wedged between him with his cane and a stranger with hers. My tardive dyskinesia—a permanent tremor disorder brought on by my bipolar meds—happened to be firing on all cylinders tonight, and as I was struggling mightily to sit still and not bounce like an earthquake and jostle everyone wedged around me, my chosen candidate—the measured, educated, thoughtful, egalitarian, inspiring, openly gay, perpetual adult in the room—specifically mentioned ME and my struggles and my family’s struggles ... and he had solid, workable ideas for addressing them for everyone living with our struggles.

And though my meds have also pretty much neutered my emotions and left me virtually unable to cry, I found myself repeatedly choking back tears.

If you’re undecided or overwhelmed or even underwhelmed by the field of Democratic candidates, reach out to me. I’m more than happy to share with you why I find Pete Buttigieg so inspiring and important and eminently capable of leading us all as a citizenry and as a country.

I just had my six-week checkup

(I'm still crazypants biploar but things continue to be stable and we're not altering my meds this time, thanks for asking) and when my psychiatrist met me in the waiting room she asked me if it was OK if a residency doctor observed my visit and of course I said yes because I'm clearly not a hide-my-crazypants-biploarness person and when we got to her office and she opened the door and he was politely standing there waiting to shake hands and introduce himself OH MY GOD HE WAS TALL AND HANDSOME AND LET'S NOT MINCE WORDS HERE HOT HOT HOT and we sat down for my visit but I kept looking over at his let's still not mince words here sexy forearms because that's all I could see besides his face because he rudely wasn't wearing a Speedo and WHY ARE YOU SO HOT STOP DISTRACTING ME and we talked about all the usual stuff like my moods and my appetite and my feelings of control and my ability to concen OH MY GOD I CAN'T CONCENTRATE BECAUSE JUST LOOK AT HIM HE'S TOO HOT TO WALK THIS EARTH trate and any side effects of my meds (still lingering exhaustion, but thankfully it's not 24 hours a day like it has been) and is there anything else I think would be relevant to tell her WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME HAVE YOU EVEN NOTICED THE LET'S AGAIN NOT MINCE WORDS HERE HOT HOT HOT MAN WHO'S ABOUT TO BE A DOCTOR AND I THINK WE CAN ALL AGREE IT WOULD BE A VERY GOOD THING FOR ME TO MARRY A DOCTOR AND HE'S SITTING IN THAT CHAIR RIGHT THERE SO CLOSE I COULD STARE AT HIM FOR HOURS WHOOPS I JUST DID and I said that I've actually ramped up the activities in my life like Follies rehearsals and editing a massive book pro bono and making my bedroom renovation finally really start to happen and cleaning out the storage room in our basement AND WHY WHY WHY DOES THIS INSANELY HANDSOME MAN HAVE TO KNOW I'M CRAZYPANTS BIPOLAR PLUS NOW HAVE A DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH ME BECAUSE THAT PRETTY MUCH GUARANTEES THAT'S THE ONLY KIND OF RELATIONSHIP WE'LL EVER HAVE BUT HOLY SHIT WE'D LOOK HANDSOME IN OUR WEDDING PHOTOS and she gave me some more free samples of my really expensive medication and we scheduled my next six-week visit AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND HOLY MAKE SURE HE'S STILL RESIDENTING WITH YOU WHEN I GET BACK IN SIX WEEKS and I think we had a really productive visit.

I hate it when the bottom drops out

and I have a sudden-onset bipolar depressive episode that abruptly shuts down my night and robs me of the opportunity to spend time with my friends and cast members.

I hate it that I sat immobilized in my car for 30 minutes tonight before I was able to summon the presence of mind to drive home.

I hate it that I keep getting crushes on straight guys.

I hate it that the arrogance and corruption and immaturity and willful ignorance and daily manifestations of ineptitude coming from trump and his vile, insular orbit are so pervasive and so ubiquitous and now so normalized that we all just roll our eyes after each bombshell and wait a day for the next bombshell, which somehow STILL doesn't land them all in prison.

I hate that I'll read this in the morning and be embarrassed that I posted it. But it's what's in my head, it's why I'm sitting at home in the dark right now instead of enjoying a late cast party, and it's my free therapy. And somehow I feel less bottled up and alone when I dump my thoughts and troubles out in the universe so I can sleep.

Good night.

So when there's suddenly a handsome new pharmacist at the drive-through

and he sees your tattoo and asks you tons and tons and tons of questions about it even though there's a HUGE line of cars waiting behind you and then he makes what you hope is more-than-just-chatty small talk as he rings up your four prescriptions and then he proceeds to ask you the perfunctory questions about each prescription that you and he both know only get asked when your dosages change which you and he both know they haven't and as he finally puts the bags of your meds in that little drawer that slides out to your car he brings up the tattoo again and you look and he doesn't have a ring but he does have a pretty spectacular smile and wow does he have a cheerful buoyant personality and you think if he just trimmed his beard a little he'd look great in the wedding pictures and he clearly already has all the information he needs to figure out you're bipolar so he'd know what he's getting into and then you're both totally out of things to say short of one of you awkwardly blurting out an invitation to dinner so you have to drive away and you have no reason to hopefully see him for another month, would you go get back in line for the drive-through and throw caution and possibly even dignity to the wind and awkwardly blurt out that invitation to dinner? Because I sat in my car in the parking lot for a while seriously thinking about it.

But instead I came home and took a shamelessly flexy selfie of the tattoo that started the conversation that got me all aflutter because I don't know why because I didn't know what to do. Sigh.

In which I whine like an entitled first-world child

(Self-indulgent navel gazing ahead. Plus words. Lots and lots of words. With a tinge of judgey misanthropy. Plus some legitimate stuff so I don't come off as some asshole judgey misanthrope. If I've already bored you by this point, you're gonna be hating my by the time I get to the closing parenthesis. Assuming I ever get there. I'm clearly in a cranky mood though, so I can't help you. Or is it won't? Anyway, abandon hope all ye who read from here. You've been warned.)

• Everyone at Kohl's tonight was either moving too slowly, chatting in front of the extra-large clearance shirts so I couldn't get to them or stupidly looking in the wrong direction as they bumped their carts into me.
• Stupidly.
• Plus Kohl's didn't have anything I wanted. At least that I could get to.
• The cute guy who waited to hold the door for me at Barnes & Noble and circled the CD racks with me and ended up right in front of me at the checkout told the clerk that the CD he was buying was for his wife.
• Dinner at Cheddar's was accompanied by a full 30 minutes of bloody-murder baby screams to my right and a bellowing right-wing redneck hawking up gallons of phlegm and emitting an almost visible effluvium of cigarette stench in the booth behind me.
• I got a Facebook memory reminder this morning with my dismayed post about just having shattered my iPhone screen. Which means I've been using and squinting through and whining about my shattered screen for a whole year. The Verizon guy tonight told me I had to get the screen fixed before he could do anything related to my warranty, so I let out a long dramatic sigh and reluctantly decided to suck it up and give up my phone for 24+ hours to finally get it fixed and I drove over to the fully lit screen-fix-it store just as my phone clock ticked over to 7:01 pm. Guess why I'm telling you this. Just guess.
• Aside from a few blips, I've had at least three full weeks of good and engaged and productive and present and functional and relatively happy days. Which is an almost unprecedented record over the last 4-5 years. So the new bipolar med cocktail that initially made me black out and sent me lacerated and bloody to the ER seems to be actually working. But the uncomfortable and frustrating and embarrassing side effects have steadfastly dug in their heels, and I spent the morning wiping miles of spider webs off my face and loudly chomping on invisible gum. And trying everything in my power to sit the goddamn fuck still like a normal fucking adult.
• Plus I seem to have stopped peeing. Both in frequency and volume. Plus I just told you about my pee problems. Which just compounds the embarrassment. Nice going, me.
• Our lying, petulant, willfully ignorant man-boy of a horrifying national embarrassment of a president gave a morally and intellectually infuriating press conference packed with accusations and excuses and insults and tantrums and laughably implausible generalizations yesterday that continues to send shockwaves through the media and the educated class and the reasonable voices that he's well into his second year of attacking relentlessly with a conspicuous and alarming and desperately pre-emptive level of defensiveness. The last four weeks have made my family and my ex and many of my friends almost physically ill with worry and discouragement and deep, profound concern. And yesterday—when I heard a staunch man-boy supporter sum up the press conference with a thoughtfully nuanced "he sure told 'em"—it finally broke me too.
• I have so many shoes and shirts and shorts and pants and belts and socks and probably layers of flattened desiccated cats piled up in my bedroom that I don't even know how or where to begin sorting and inventorying and letting go of any of it. Sometimes it makes me feel all cozy when I climb into bed surrounded by jumbled mountains of all my stuff. But mostly it makes me feel paralyzed with panic and shame.
• All my real-life and Facebook crushes are pairing up and getting engaged and getting married and are mostly straight anyway. Fuck.
• When I blacked out and cracked the tile floor with my face last December, I bit most of the way through my lip. It's still swollen and hard like it's healed as scar tissue and I have a difficult time drinking through a straw or eating without getting food all over my lips.
• Hey, paired-up and engaged and married and mostly straight anyway crushes who've been bored enough to read this far! How ravishingly sexy am I right now? You should date me! It'd be fun!
• Actually, dumping all this whiny shit out of my head and posting it here after everybody's bedtime where it probably won't be seen has alleviated most of my crankiness. Thanks, Internet!
• Except I'm still furious and incredulous and devastated about the petulant, inarticulate man-boy.
• And frustrated and embarrassed by the spider webs and invisible gum and whatever fresh indignities tomorrow has in store for me.
• Plus Bitch Kitty will sleep contentedly on my clean laundry but won't exist in the same room with me unless she can draw blood or crush spirit. And sometimes it just quietly destroys a little bit of me.