This summer is known as the summer of murderous rage. It’s quite alike summer of 2013 in that I was in a hypomanic state, but otherwise it’s quite different. For one, this summer I wrote like a fiend. Some of my best books to date, in my own opinion. I didn’t forget what was important to my: my writing.
I suppose this summer was a bit of a mixed state though, with both hypomania and depression. Because I had a lot of energy – to the point where I did several things at once, and managed to complete tasks in record-time – but it also turned into uncontrollable tears quite easily. Or maybe I was just rapid cycling something extreme? I don’t know. All I know I wrote a lot, and I loved it, but I was always angry.
I was raging most of the summer. For small, little things that doesn’t really bother me when I’m on a baseline mood. People gambling for example, or the customers in general, or a car coming exactly when I was going to cross the road. Small things I never think about now, but this summer it could bring me into a fit of rage that lasted for hours.
It’s exhausting. One night after work (where I was so angry), I came home and was suddenly so depressed. I was tired of everything, so I got online and sent off a request for an appointment with my doctor. I got an answering text the morning after, but I had to get through the weekend before I could see her.
When I did, she mentioned bipolar. I agreed. I’d just finished two novels with a bipolar character, and him and me… not quite alike, but a little. The doctor wanted to refer me to the psychiatric service in the small town where I go to college, and I couldn’t be happier. Finally.
I should’ve been in the system years ago, what with living with a parent who suffers from a mental illness. But no, nothing happened with us kids. Now, however, I took charge. It was hard, it was horrible, but I did it. I don’t like to speak about personal things, but now I had to. If I wanted to get help, I needed to speak. If I didn’t get help, I don’t think I could’ve gone on. Not like I was that summer.
But strange as it might sound, if I had to pick between this summer and the last one, I’d pick this one. Because at least I was able to write – and I wrote a lot. And it was good writing too. Despite the irritability, the anger, the rage, I’d take it every day over the false happiness of last summer, because that was truly a nightmare. This was too, of course, but not quite as much.
