Category: Bipolar Disease

A Story For All Of Us

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

apartyMania is rich with almost-entertaining stories of bravado, of haphazard action, of disobeying most laws, of discarding sexual partners like “he loves me, he loves me not” petals.  But to a Manic, his/her episode could last years resulting in an incoherent swath of personal wreckage whose repetition finally drained even a mother’s irrevocable devotion (tucked in the coffee can behind the flour); The Manic loves a great party yet never buys a round.  The Manic’s desperate all in bluff with a pair of five’s causes a stumble, then a slip, finally sinking to Mania’s Skid Row: rancid, broke, estranged, lost, and nameless.  Until Sanity emerges from her safe place dragging you past leering, inflated, lobby guards who toss their opinions about each other like outfielders in a softball game.

alowlandSanity does her best to shield Mania from their sickening taunts; too late: liking to the daring distillers in Scotland (less than two %) who cross the authority of majority by bottling their whisky unfiltered and unadulterated, Mania scoops up her life’s residue and bits of character and leaps over the guard stand tackling two and beating the outspoken guard screaming, “However I am, I’m still human!”  It is said three guards and a janitor finally regained control and thus depositing Mania somewhere deep within the bowels of Sanity.

At night, seconds after bedroom lights dim, from somewhere very near or very far, Sanity faintly hears Mania’s outcry, “However I am, I’m still human . . . “ascottishgirl

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Just when . . .

~ Harlan Didrickson

. . . we acclimated ourselves to the $350/hour shrug by complacent psychiatrists seesaw of Bipolar life, Medical Doctors proudly (by way of tests) declare weighty physical diagnosis like heart failure, severe edema (not endamame), osteoarthritis, Spinal Stenosis and an unconscionable number of my life hours enduring the shotgun pellet spray of “these should help” pain reducer until the tide of physical illnesses recedes. I’ve lost the moniker “difficult to diagnose” to the “everything bagel” patient. When did MD’s quit being curious and courageous?

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

adepressedgal

A few weeks ago I was incapable of simply managing daily routines such as bathing; I couldn’t process dual stimuli so if I was brushing my teeth and a faucet was turned on my attention went to the running water and my brushing slowed to a stop as though someone had killed the power. There was no conscious thought besides a gnawing, chewing darkness as though black velvet curtains had been suddenly drawn, shutting out the noonday sun. If I was present I was only present to the fact that I had, almost immediately fallen down a deep tunnel of which there was no light and no escape and no orientation. Or better, as though I had been swallowed by the immediate mud-slide of my life and in complete darkness and suffocation I simply held on to the one hope that maybe my prescription would act as a breathing tube offering me much needed oxygen as Nick, my psychiatrist and friends and family kept begging for me to hold on as help was on the way.

Two days ago I traveled north to Milwaukee to spend a couple of days with my older brother. We sat for nine hours the first day and six hours the next simply talking. Well, I talked and in a profound gesture of brotherhood generosity he listened interjecting sparingly opinions. It was an exhaasadguyusting experience met with fatigue, resistance and weeping, but I plowed through years of illumination, insights and epiphanies. It was the first time that I was able to track the experiences as they evolved much like tracking a lion or bear by using their footprints in a densely green forest. It was the first time that I was able to collect and sort, catch and dissect, speak and understand a monumental array of thoughts, failed expectations, compromises, distance and pain. My life for the past three years had been laid out before me like a table at Thanksgiving; every piece in its place awaiting their purpose.

Each day my energy has slowly begun to return and I grow stronger. I am still wobbly and use the assistance of a cane to walk; my gait is slow as I amble to the post-box or to the doctor; I often lean upon it when I tire or grab a hold of a fence or the arm of Nick.

But the most important, painful, and fool hardy admission was that I had erected my life cantilevered and precipitously atop a ravine simply adepressedman1for the view.  Then one evening a mud-slide swallowed me, my partner and his family, my career and others at work, my family and friends.   And now, standing at the base of change, the annihilation of my overlooked life, I now stand alone before this devastation, try to catch a glimpse of any familiar object in order to delay the inevitable: to once again try to salvage any pain my uncaged manic self inflicted

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A Recent Visit With An Old Journal (July-September, 2008)

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

astormI do know how it happened, this convergence of the perfect storm, but the why I set it in motion is still a mystery to me. My feelings of absolute worthlessness have been building for years; starting much like the birth of a tsunami deep in some crevice in the ocean, a shifting of my inner tectonic plates, natural I suppose in the grind of life, but this shift caused great, unpredictable movement of the seas of my life which, by all accounts rose higher, and deeper, and soon engulfed the tiny town of my life, built, I suppose foolishly too close to the shore.

And then it came, this huge wave and friends and lovers fled. I on the other hand, all too well aware stood steadfast in its path. It washed over awaveme, this wave, crushing me against the only world I knew now, that which was beneath my feet. Gripping the sand I held firm, never certain that as it receded, that it would not pull me far, far out to sea.

Gradually it did retreat and once again the sun broke the surface and I lay gasping, choking on air which days before had given life and now condemns me to deal with this devastation.

I had a deep sense that not all was okay with me. I often complained of a dark gnawing I had felt, or heard in my mind. I always thought that it was my creative self scratching to get out in the form of writing. But now I wonder if indeed it was my inner self pleading for help. I could never articulate it sufficiently to those around me, nor did I ever think it was truly a cry for help. Until this week when, what I thought was my tidy little world fell absolutely apart. It was this week when I was diagnosed with major depression.

aquietzone2And from what I now understand it is taking a very predictable course complete with dark patches, rough zones, drifting away from reality, but the one part which I cannot fathom is my inability to be stimulated by more than one thing at a time. For instance, I cannot tolerate music playing and talking; I cannot tolerate stress; I cannot tolerate anger or anything except calm. If I sense more than one thing at a time I shut down and go to a quiet place.

I suspect it all fell apart when it all came together; a perfect storm as I have said; a convergence of three wholly separate, yet tumultuous events which I set in motion.

I had been in a loving 23 year relationship. We had all the trappings of a solid relationship: jobs, cars, cat, home, garden, money, retirement. But something was sorely lacking. Me. I wasn’t in it any longer. I couldn’t be in it. Being in it was too painful for me. The hurt which started as aloverskissingsuspicion around my drinking and drug abuse quickly cascaded into a kind of secret identity which I couldn’t share with him for fear of reprisal. I needed the drugs and alcohol to buffer the deepening sadness of my life. I didn’t want to face, didn’t know how to face this gnawing, this scratching which would never quiet on its own. The only way to silence it was through sleep, inebriation or a Vicodin high.

I also had a very romantic side which died when my partner no longer accepted my tokens of affection. It’s not that he didn’t want them, but they grew silly or unneeded or immaterial or expensive or, even I suppose worthless. Aren’t these tokens of affection best saved for times of seduction or apology or bereavement? And so into the roll-top desk of my life I placed this need to “show” my affection in the drawer called “get to later” right next to my sexual desires, overwhelming need for affection and self-worth. I simply closed the drawer and drew down the lid patting those things adieu. I knew they’d be withdrawn at some later date, when the amour would willingly accept my advances.

Should I have simply ignored his requests to cease and continued my gifts? Perhaps. But our finances had become so entwined that he would have known how much I had spent of these trinkets and he would’ve been cross. Could I have paid cash? Of course, I suppose, but when tokens of affection aren’t valued, the value plummets, the surprise ebbs, the feeling I get wanes. I learned to simply file it away.

I knew that our relationship had weathered many storms; it was built strong; based on honesty and open communication. But shouldn’t every abiggameman have a secret or two? A trinket of conquest placed deeply into a suit pocket? An amulet to ward off demons? A trophy? Hung handsomely on the wall? Hadn’t all my friends had trophies? Yes! Oh, yes, they had! Not one friend that I know has ever been in a relationship as long as ours without the occasional dalliance; but mine was different. Mine was a manic affair, built on a foundation of bogs and swampland and prone to sink.  A manic affair is a very dangerous liaison often resulting in collateral damage and repairable of which I did not fully anticipate it’s consequence.

 

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Simple Square Box and Coasters

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 4 Comments

image I’m pleased to share my latest woodworking project, aptly named Simple Square Box and Coasters.  The commission originally asked for a simple slap-together wooden box in which he could place a necklace he purchased for his niece as a Christmas present.  So the slap-together wooden box would be tossed into the same heap of recently bloomed ribbons of nylon and a pile-up of ripped and twisted wrapping paper resembling a fog-induced tangle of abstract alloy.  Really, who remembers the wrapping paper of a long-forgotten gift they received at an indiscriminate holiday, the exception being gifts which modify destiny such as an engagement ring, new car, or divorce papers.  But I couldn’t imageshake the thought; an insignificant wooden coffer hand-crafted to exact dimensions whose sole purpose rose no higher than the oft ignored cardboard box, one of millions prefabricated generic boxes produced by manufacturers. Yet this box really should´ve been seen as the first part of her gift, but instead was just another obstacle to obliterate in a doggedly pursuit of the delightful bauble inside.  And after a few perfunctory refined and delightful “thank you’s,” the delicate bauble was distractedly deposited into her motherCoasters on Display´s cupped hands.  Her mother  placed the bauble (whose importance continued to nose-dive like the stock exchange in 1929) among other gifts.  And the slap-together box had been exiled to the paper mountain, and eventually would be crushed by the insensitive jaws of an indiscriminate refuse collector. Had I blithely reached into my pile of left-over lumber and found a throw-away board I suppose the box would experience a fate very similar to the one above.  However, a particular piece of Poplar caught my eye because of its deliciously creamy base color and like a dried riverbed, a thick, malted-milk brown ran the length of the board which was absent of blemishes, gouges, chips, and knots, a cappuccino’s foam decorated by a creative barista; or, the faintly dusting of heat transforming the peaks of whipped meringue from snow-covered to densely charred remnants of a serial forestimage fire.  I held the six-foot board respectfully in my hands, looked for cupping or warping at its ends like a sharpshooter whose focus remained on his target.  I found the board to be true then placed it on the workbench to calculate the cuts. That’s when it began. I can’t find words to describe it, but it was like balance on a bicycle: no one handed you a ball of balance, you simply had balance.  My experience with that board couldn’t be taught or handed down.  It wasn’t an indicator of mania.  It was simply, to respect the trees life in the differing colors of its rings.  Those rings identified that tree like fingerprints identify people.  And yet it was more:  I felt a growing sensitivity and responsibility to work with the lumber to create an object of beauty.  The longer I listened to the sensitivity of the wood, the greater my awareness of the woods signature became.  It was then that I worked with the wood, and so did the wood with me.