Words from a Bipolar Mind in Real-Time
By: Rob Walker
Tags: Positive Thinking, Bipolar, Self-awareness, Insights, Mental Health

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

From one thing to another I happily flit and while I’m doing that I rarely finish it

Reading then listening then filling a form then all of a sudden I’m feeling forlorn

I try and stay focused, intended, and free yet it changes so much with all that I see

I bought audiobooks and happy I was, that I’d got them, at last, now they’ve shelved for tommoz

After 30 minutes of listening, I was in such awe when my mind wandered off at a knock at the door

An Amazon delivery, a parcel on the floor, a happy deliverer whose to do so much more

10 minutes later saying goodbye after 3, the book I was listening to now wasn’t for me

Shoving my food to the back of my head, the next thing I knew I was lying in bed

Cozy and warm and under my quilt, I lay there staring with a transfixed guilt

Falling asleep until around 3, I got up and made myself a nice cup of tea when all of a sudden I noticed my thinking was ‘going as fast as somebody blinking’

Racing and choppy my thoughts they were going and keeping a track sent me twoing and frowing

I thought I could handle coming off of my meds and a while I did fine now I’m sat here two heads

Back on the pills I’m having to go but it’s good that I see this, I’ll start the morrow

Hours I slept and when I did wake for the kitchen I headed and a pill I did take

Capsuled and coloured all blue and brown I felt all sped up and couldn’t slow down

Mania mania you aren’t for me and I hope this works quickly setting me free

Through years of this problem where slow becomes fast, no longer I’m left feeling quite so aghast

Somehow it’s come easy that this time around, I’m able to notice before running aground

Bipolar and mania where did you come from? You make life so crazy, you’re twisted and long

I’m thankful and glad, at this time of year with COVID and Lockdown I’m not going mad!

All locked up here in my tiny Lil flat, I write this with Cheer, not with tit or with tat

Things are a muddle right at this time but soon enough I’ll fall back and stand there inline

The way my mind races and goes off on tangents just having a pill slows it down into fragments

Fragments to see, and to ponder upon, sit still and be counted you tiny neuron

Projects of projects of myself I try, to understand and believe in and now I may cry

Filling my time should be easy to do, but my mind keeps a wandering, I’m stuck here like glue.

After being medicated for depression and pain for a long time I became aware that I was feeling spaced out, so much so that I daren’t drive, and with the doctor’s help I weaned myself off of the meds that they thought were causing the problem. I reduced and reduced until I was clean and it turned out that I had gone nearly 2 weeks free. I was feeling great in myself, focused, and clear-headed and I was telling myself that I didn’t need that shit and that I could manage on my own.

You know how things just creep up on you and before you know it you can be in the middle of something that overwhelms you? Like being in debt and not answering your letters, or putting off doing your food shopping until you’re REALLY hungry where you overspend or ignoring all the little stressy things until they blow up out of all proportion?

Bipolar does that. It creeps up on you and bang! It’s there engulfing you with either mania or depression — Up or Down, that’s how it goes.

And it also has this uncanny neat little trick of making you think that you’re fine and you can do it ALL on your own, that you’re invincible and superior, and with that comes a change of mindset where racing thoughts keep you from slowing down. Where all of a sudden you can’t concentrate or stay focused for very long at all and your world becomes one long line of chops and changes. But it’s all in the head, it’s the neurotransmitters in your brain that aren’t bridging the gaps that feed messages.

I’ve suffered from this for a lot of years now and that’s more or less the reason why I haven’t got very far in life, but after spending so much time being medicated and on that level that it gives you, I’ve learned to slow down enough, even when I do become manic or depressed and if it hadn’t have been for that awareness I don’t think that I could have realised what was happening after I came off of the meds.