I wrote this super awesome blog post this morning. Well, all my blog posts are super awesome, because I’m a rock-n-roll awesome writer. But man, this one was good. And I spent a good two hours on it.
When I went to save, there was a glitch, and I lost the entire post. It was gut wrenching enough to write the first time. But all that sentiment is still back there, percolating in the back of my head, and it will recreate itself, and it will be even better.
In the meantime, it shall be known that after six months of extremely encouraging stability in what I believed was my successful outstanding effective management of my bipolar symptoms, even to the degree I announced to close friends I was no longer depressed (prematurely it would appear), the events of the last three months have thrown me back into ultra-rapid cycling bipolar. Those events have included coming face to face with some serious health issues with my mother, as well as serious health issues that have come upon me, seemingly right on queue at age 59. I’m smiling. Because what else can I do? The agony. The irony.
There is rapid cycling bipolar, which I have, but my case of ultra-rapid bipolar disorder is far more insidious. This article explains your garden variety rapid cycling bipolar disorder:
“Rapid cycling is a pattern of frequent, distinct episodes in bipolar disorder. In rapid cycling, a person with the disorder experiences four or more episodes of mania or depression in one year…”
Under normal circumstances, that is prior to the last six months of what I’ve lovingly referred to as my period of relative stability, I cycle between depression and mania several times a week, even hour by hour throughout the day. My primary state is extreme, debilitating depression, with the mania thrown in there every few days for the relief of my addled brain.
Those are the times I just just just KNOW I’ll be on the NYT Bestseller List. Those are the times I just know what I have to say is so extremely important, it must pour out of me onto paper, and the people that are desperate for that information will receive it, they must, they will, of course they will, because that is how the Universe works. Good always trumps evil. Things always work out. And it’s truly nothing to do with the fame and fortune of the bestseller list, not at all. It’s the opportunity to get my learning, my healing, my tools out to the people that suffer as I do. So they needn’t suffer as I do.
The mania and grandiosity is delightfully entertaining, not only to myself in my own mind, where I think I am the laugh riot of all of eternity, but it’s also a delightful respite from my sadness, which is brilliantly laugh provoking entertainment for my friends. Laughs that birth tears of laughs and laughs and tears and laughs. The best kind of happiness anyone can receive. I gift that! That comes out of ME. That is the best part of mania. That is the exhilarating part of mania without which I fear I might not survive.
I don’t believe any of my friends are thinking, “Oh here’s Coco again! Being her silly self! That vixen! That life of the party!” Maybe people that don’t know me well, with whom I’ve not confided my mental illness, but not my friends. They know I’m bipolar, they have bipolar friends and family, they know the symptoms, they know my struggle, they read my mood, they take it in stride, and they also do what they can to comfort and support me – to tide me through when the tide is out and everything is ugly and mucky and smelly. They don’t think I’m smelly. They get me, they love me, no matter what level the tide.
I found an article: Handling the Highs and Lows of Ultradian Bipolar Disorder—and Love. This article is not only particularly important in understanding ultra-rapid cycling bipolar, but it also references Episode Three of Modern Love (Amazon Prime) that might as well be my story. PLEASE watch the entire episode. If nothing else, please watch the final scene.
In short, I’m sick again. I may have lost a friend over it, which isn’t unusual, not at all surprising. Some things have to fall away because some things just aren’t compatible. And to make things work, to make the pieces fit, sometimes it’s all just too much. It takes an incredible amount of Perseverance. Ah, Perseverance, my favorite word. But even I am unable to always Persevere. We are only human, after all. None of us can do it all, all of the time.
When things don’t work out, when I want things to so badly badly work out and it’s simply not possible, I blame no one. At who’s feet would fault be lain?
[Initial publication date 6/12/2022.]