I’d Really Love to Write Something but My Anxiety Won’t Let Me, Sorry
Please don’t hate me.
Dear Reader,
I have written a draft for two nearly identical stories and a poem about how much I like to hear that people love me. They are sitting in my drafts folder because they are crap. They are Not Good (TM).
This is probably because I’m full-swing in the middle of a depressive episode.
We’ll get to why I feel that way in a second, but first let me tell you something that I haven’t told you but you could probably guess anyway:
I’m manic depressive.
That term is outdated, but I prefer it to its accepted, clinical term: Bipolar 2. I’m not ashamed of being Bipolar but I think the phrase does little to describe what being Bipolar is really like. Especially Bipolar 2. When people hear “Bipolar” they think of sad party girls or Craig in Degrassi (my first exposure to Bipolar Disorder) or someone maxing out their credit cards or having a lot of risky sex or that Saved by the Bell episode with caffeine pills.
And sometimes it can be those things. But my Bipolar is the quiet, muted kind. The kind that pushes me to write a month worth of articles in a week or spend all of my meager barista paycheck on cheap shirts at Forever 21 then crying in the dressing room because the song they’re playing reminds me of my dead friend. It’s the insidious kind of quiet that doesn’t really show itself until you’re 22 and taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Urgent Care and they send you home because you tell them that you’re not suicidal. You’re not, it’s not a lie, but something is very suddenly wrong and you don’t know why or how and isn’t this what you’re paying them to figure out?
Carrie Fisher did a pretty good job of describing it thusly, “It is a kind of virus of the brain that makes you go very fast or very sad. Or both. Those are fun days. So judgment isn’t, like, one of my big good things. But I have a good voice. I can write well. I’m not a good bicycle rider. So, just like anybody else, only louder and faster and sleeps more.”
Like a pilot fish on a very confused shark, my anxiety works symbiotically with my disorder. My disorder tells me I will be fixed if people love me more. My anxiety tells me I have to behave a certain way in order to be loved. I police myself constantly and over-correct where faults are perceived. If, for example, a partner fails to “match” me in terms of expressions of affection- forgetting plans, not including my laundry with theirs, failing to offer me a drawer- my anxiety immediately swoops in to tell me that they don’t love me as much as I love them, that I am making a fool of myself for letting my manic episode make me too affectionate and that I need to correct my behavior ASAP.
My disorder counters that I am unlovable and that it’s not my partner’s fault for not doing those things for me and that I need to be even more accommodating. Usually, it just ends with me crying because I’m so frustrated and I don’t know how to tell my partner because I am sure that admitting my brain is broken will drive them away for sure and then I’ll never be loved or normal. I’m a writer and I’m trying to say what’s wrong but the words won’t come. It’s the worst kind of constipation.
Before you ask, I don’t take medication for this. I mostly self-regulate and rely on CBD for when my anxiety gets unmanageable. I am aware that this is probably not the healthiest approach but the last time I was medicated, I put on 15lbs in two weeks and then I was just depressed and anxious for new reasons. And it really sucks that we live in a society where I’m more worried about the appearance of the meatsuit that carries my brain around than fixing my actual broken brain but I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Edit: I am now on 100mg Lamictal and have never felt better. Be open with your psychiatrist about your fears and needs around medication, friends! It helps them help you!
So, anyway, how do I know I’m having an episode?
- I’ve been sitting at my desk at work for 3 hours now and have accomplished nothing. I only had one job to do and I can’t bring myself to do it. I have zero motivation. I wrote this instead. This entire thing. It’s now been 5 hours.
- I don’t sleep. It’s not that I’m not tired. I am. I just. Can’t. Sleep.
- In the morning I’m unable to get out of bed. I just lay there for about 15 minutes until the anxiety over possibly being late overrides my anxiety about what fresh hell another day in Corporate America might bring and I get up.
- I read your comments to a few of my recent articles and cried over how nice they were.
- The nice French man who owns the crepe restaurant under my office offered me a free Diet Coke and called me “Princess” and I cried because the only other person who calls me “Princess” is my grandfather and I haven’t called him in a while because I’m an awful person.
- Someone close to me said that nothing matters because we all die anyway and they meant it jokingly but I mistook it as that certain brand of Rick-and-Morty-nihilism and burst into tears because EVERYTHING MATTERS SO MUCH.
- I dyed my hair. I’ve been dying my hair since I was 17 in an attempt to control literally any aspect of my life. Rationally, I know this is because I am experiencing a transitional period in my life that relies heavily on the feelings/decisions of others so I focus on what I can control. Irrationally, I know my hair MUST BE A LEVEL 6 GOLDEN BROWN RIGHT FUCKING NOW. For what it’s worth, I look amazing.
- I cut my own bangs in the bathroom at work. They turned out surprisingly well but it was still a gamble.
- Now aware that overspending is a symptom of Bipolar 2, I force myself to only spend money on things I “need”, like $130 worth of frozen vegetables. My account is literally overdrawn.
- I sat in my car and listened to the Two Door Cinema Club cover of the Jurassic Park theme and cried.
I want to write, I really do. I feel this intense pressure ALL THE TIME to build my readership- especially since learning that the girl who went viral after copying my and Caitlin Hall’s work now has 14k followers. But, for the same reason I can’t get out of bed or respond to comments or answer my texts or call my grandfather- I just can’t. And then I hate myself for not being able to. I feel like a hack. I suppose that’s why I’m telling you all this.
That, and because I want to tell someone. Writing about my depression and anxiety in passing is normal. It’s a normal thing to do and to have. But writing about a specific illness, especially one as stigmatized and misrepresented as Bipolar Disorder, seems to mark you forever. Somehow, in my head, there is a distinction between “Girl on the Internet Writing about Depression” and “Depressed Girl Writer on the Internet”.
I know that’s not the case. I know they’re the same thing. But it’s been there long enough to put me off ever mentioning it by name. I’m afraid one is perceived as more of a burden than the other. I’m afraid of being the one that’s the burden.
I’m still the same person I’ve always been, I just sleep and cry more. In a week or so, when something good inevitably happens, I’ll pop back up again.
This is just how it goes.
