To my mother Faith and father Jack… My Rock
To my bipolar peers… My Rockstars
My bipolar brethren:
Are you frustrated like me? Communicating the feeling of bipolar to our loved ones is impossible. They can’t walk in our shoes. They don’t “get” us. But for the sake of our mental health, we need them to better understand us and throw more sympathy our way.
Talking only get us so far!
I use painting, prose and poetry to express my moods.
When the three are experienced together, compassion follows. They “feel” me. My process had had a profound impact on my relationships with loved ones and myself!
Since we’re kindred spirits, I want to share it with you. The doctors have a prescription pad and a couch. I’m hawking paint brushes in their lobby!!!
Art is the conversation. Herein are many examples.
Let’s go!!!
Jack
1.) Open
I am severely bipolar 1. This book is crafted for you, my peer. It is my way of paying homage to you, an unappreciated gem whose alternative feelings shower our world with color. I do not pretend to know what you go through. I just want to share with you a way I draw closer to my loved ones – and myself. The better they understand my emotions and me, the deeper my relationship with them. Sympathy follows. Maybe my process will resonate with you. If not,
I hope you feel me, your brother, in these pages.
Throughout my life, I’ve been miserable at sharing my feelings. In return, my loved ones did a miserable job “getting” me. I blamed them. They need to try harder! They have no clue what I’m going through. But then I stepped back and contemplated this cycle. I realized that I need to point the finger at myself. I’m responsible for putting them in their confused state! They’re not clairvoyant. How could they determine my moods from just conversation? I think I do a decent job “feeling them”. It’s time to flip the script and have them “feel me”!
So I put this collection of paintings and poems together, interspersed with prose, for a different kind of communication. Varied art forms, when experienced whole, elicit a keener insight into our nebulous universe. It’s an artistic tool which allows us to take better inventory of our disorder and convey it to our loved ones more meaningfully.
Talking only gets us so far. When we communicate our emotions, we say I’m “down” or “depressed”. We expect them to interpret those one-word descriptions. We need to dig deeper and sensitively express the moment. Poetry is a step in that direction.
Angst is all about me. I’m imprisoned; caged like a rat. Nailed down to the floor, the world takes care of that.
I doubt I’ll survive a bitter culmination… Rotting away in a cell… No emancipation.
They scorn. They mock. I cringe. They rock. Bleeding head to toe… No help from the flock.
So lonely in this place, I feel disgraced. Will I see my family again? Feel their embrace?
Just me and my lord, I’m dying by the sword… I scour my brain, obsessed… Is this on my accord?
When I simply say, “I’m depressed”, I’m leaving the receiver’s interpretation wide open. I cannot assume that my definition of that word is universal. What if our sister received this poem instead? Sure, it would upset her, but she would have a keener understanding of our troubled situation. She would be in a position to sympathize and alleviate some of that torture. That could be the difference between life and death. In order to clue sis in, our communications need to be colorful and elaborate.
Descriptive rhymes can help minimize our divide and stimulate clarity. But that’s only part of my communications concoction. Let’s hit them over the head with another type of expression to further drive home the point – a painting:
That’s graphic! After experiencing this, our sister will likely take us seriously. She’ll also be more emotionally available. These are two big necessities in our struggle. Of course we can’t create paintings and poetry in routine, everyday communication. However, making this an exercise reinforces one’s ability to elaborate, which ultimately earns sympathy.
And for the record, sympathy means two different things. One definition is negative – feeling pity or sorrow for one’s misfortune. We don’t want to experience that. The sympathy I’m referring to is sharing understanding for one another, striving to reach a common feeling. Why not facilitate their understanding so they can play a pivotal role in our catharsis? Aren’t you tired of their quizzical stares, misdirected consolations and empty affirmations?
This artistic process has worked for me.
2.) Inception
Fresh out of graduate school, I was working for Canon in New York. Living at home with family, I was incurring bothersome sleep patterns in which I’d alternate between racing thoughts, exhaustion and anxiety. I'd stare at the walls for hours on end. I'd sit up and mutter to myself. My experience with the universe was shifting. Rather than reacting to extraneous activity impacting my life, I was creeping deeper into my brain. My personality was always emotional and a bit manic, but now I was depressed, detached and less in sync at times. My catalogue of emotions was widening. My mother, a nurse, figured I had a sleep disorder and I should talk to a psychologist. Maybe the doctor could suggest cherry Nyquil and we could call it a day. So I traveled down Route 17 to Paramus, NJ and sat down with this doctor. He asked me a battery of questions. It took him about fifteen minutes to say, “Jack, you are showing symptoms of manic depression. You need to visit a psychiatrist.”
I will never forget that drive home from the psychologist's office. You would think that I would be overwhelmed with grief, but I was awakened. I had been questioning my fleeting grasp of society and inability to string rational days together. Normalcy had escaped me. However, this doctor branded my behavior! He opened a door of understanding that, on an initial level, tabled my predicament. I make more sense to myself! I was naïve to celebrate what has come to be a lifetime encumbrance.
Prior to greeting my mother, I had mixed feelings. I was elated to tell her about my disorder because I could get help and talk out my problems. Yet, I was upset for her. She would be broken hearted that her baby was diagnosed as mentally ill. I pulled into our steep driveway and entered our home through the kitchen door. Mom was there washing dishes and, as if it was a routine visit, asked me “How did it go?” I gave her the news. She had her “game face” on, not showing a lot of emotion. She was, however, shocked by how happy I was to have a label for my ailment. Moreover, she was in disbelief that such a thing could be true. Ninety minutes ago when I kissed her good bye, I was her normal kid. She didn’t sleep that night. She was devastated.
I never had the illusion that my illness would go away. However, I thought I could manage my emotions into a box. I could corral its onsets, punch it in the mouth with my intellect and spit it out with a cocky grin. I think most mentally healthy people expect that from us. We should learn after a few rounds on how it pops up and that we should be able to squash it. But it does not work that way. Imagine a loss of a loved one and how you felt. Could you talk yourself into joy to overcome that moment? How about the ecstasy at the birth of your baby? Good or bad, when the tsunami comes, we have no control.
The psychiatrist confirmed that I was Bi-Polar 1.
I was cavalier about the diagnosis. How ignorant! Even though the news resonated in that it aligned my symptoms to a designation, I did not figure the brutal emotions that would befall me. I don’t think the bipolar havoc had completely reached me yet. I was content knowing there was an umbrella for my occasional lunacy and angst.