I can fly, and other fun delusions

This blog came about in a wonderful hypomanic moment of clarity. The stars aligned. Angels sang. And something said, "Get a blog, you must document this."

"This" means the fun land of bipolar disorder.

Wikipedia refers to bipolar disorder thusly: "Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood clinically referred to as mania or, if milder, hypomania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes or symptoms, or mixed episodes in which features of both mania and depression are present at the same time." Wikepedia says a lot more about it as well, so it's worth checking out. My official diagnosis is Bipolar 1, with psychotic features. Maybe I'll talk more about 1 vs 2 later.

But what does this mean to me? Well, it means that things get pretty interesting.

It's currently 3:00 in the morning. I haven't slept more than a few hours a night for at least two weeks now. No I'm not tired. It's like the need to sleep has suddenly evaporated. Also I might be spending a little too much money. I just moved to a new city so I've had to buy things for the new place, but it's gone a bit too far. Maybe I didn't need all those shelving units that don't fit in my room and will never be used. Maybe I shouldn't have done that before my rent check came out.

But alas, no sleep and weird spending are hallmarks of mania. Or at least, hypo. I'm not quite sure where I fall. I'm also rather irritable and like to talk at the moment, so I'm a joy to be around.

But I digress. And I'll digress a lot. Because manics tend to be rather distractible. I just realized that since the ceiling above me slants in an A, the light fixture is much too high for little me to reach. When the light burns out, I'll have to call the landlord. And god, there are so many infomercials on at this time of night. Also, my cat is being annoying. There. See?

The feature of my own bipolar illness that I was going to talk about are delusions. See, I tend to get deluded when I'm either manic, or depressed. One of the early ones for me was that I could hear peoples' thoughts on the subway train.

Yes, delusions are scary to the person who doesn't experience them. They're scary to me, too. And I can almost hear people hissing and crossing themselves. Bipolars and Schizophrenics and other sufferers of mental illness are people. They are not contagious. They are not a sign of the apocolypse. They are usually intelligent and are really great people once you get to know them. I mean, geez, haven't you ever felt like you could tell what someone was thinking?

But I digress again. This was more than the passing thought that I could tell what they were thinking. I could hear what they were thinking. And they were thinking that I should be dead.

That was a scary one. It was what led me to my first hospitalization. I'll talk about that in some other post. Some delusions I can look back on and they're actually sort of funny. During the olympics last summer, I started watching them day and night. By the end of them I was totally convinced that I was the next gold medal olympian. I've never had any sort of athletic training. I kind of dance. That's it. But I was sure that I'd pick up an olympic sport in no time and not only that, I'd be gold medal-worthy in two years. I even paid for trampoline lessons that I never actually went to because by then I'd gone back down again.

See, that's another thing that happens with manics. WE ARE KINGS OF THE WORLD. When you're caught up in a euphoric mania, you can do no wrong. You're invincible. So of course I was a gold medal winner. They're not all about being superman, though.

When I was in the hospital I shut myself in my room alone for six whole days. I told the staff that I was radioactive, that I'd caused a rip in time and I'd broken from my predestined path, and that anyone who came in contact with me would have bad things happen to them.

Yeah, they got me out of that one by putting me on an antipsychotic. Which I still have to take today. (I see you thinking "Oh no, unclean." Shh.)

And then there was this one time in the hospital when I became obsessed with a particular painting of squares. I wasn't sleeping by this point so instead I was bugging the staff to let me into the room with the painting. This little woman/girl in pyjamas and sock feet standing in the darkened hallway, bargaining with a nurse. I needed to study the painting because there was a message hidden in it that only I could decode.

Sometimes I still wonder if there really was a message amongst all those squares. It makes you wonder, what separates strokes of genius from strokes of madness? There's another future topic of discussion.

I have a few other fun experiences like the time I believed that the FBI was after me because I was onto their secret cloning experiment and I hid in my closet for six hours until it got dark.

I wonder about delusions. From the outside they just look like you're going crazy, but once you get inside you see the indentations it leaves in your present and you think that maybe those strange illogical beliefs come from some real place. My old therapist once said that my psychosis was only an exaggeration of what I deep subconsciously thought or feared, it was taking those dark places and forcing them to the surface.

So am I this random psychic radioactive olympian painting-reader who is wanted by the FBI?

Maybe in some parallel universe I am.

Oh and I have a confession to make. I've never really believed I could fly. Yet. So I guess the title of my blog is somewhat misleading. Don't tell anyone.