Avert Your Eyes

I admit it. I want to have a great big public hissy fit about my brain. Putting aside the fact that bipolar people get a "side benefit" of being driven, highly intelligent and particularly creative, having this illness sucks the rusty tailpipe of an Edsel. What's the point of being smart and artistic if the words in books just float around and you can't get anywhere near an easel or a pen?

I'm mad that I have to go to bed at night either terrified that I will wake up weepy and self-loathing or hopeful that the bad mood of the previous day will have dissolved by morning and I'll be able to clean up the messes of the day before. I hate being afraid of my own brain.

I'm mad that I can't ever get ahead of the basic things most people do so easily, so that I can spend time on the things that really matter to me. So much of my effort goes toward trying to keep the house clean (ish) and pay my daughter enough attention and stay properly dressed and mail the checks out on time to pay the bills that there's not much time or energy for other things. I could put things aside and try to write or read or do something else, but I am so awful at the basics that I really can't afford to skip a day. If I did, the laundry would ooze more copiously from the furniture, the dirty plates would stretch closer to the ceiling, and the odors would pitch themselves to a place even Febreeze couldn't reach.

I'm mad that I have to take medication to feel normal and that I've spent the last 51 weeks trying to find something that works. I'm mad that I have to be a patient. I have a wonderful nurse-practitioner who really treats me like a person, but I'm always aware of the line between us, that I am the sick one and she is the well one and that I need her to lead me toward health.

I'm mad that I was a little bit crazy and didn't know it and probably did or said embarassing things that I didn't realize were unusual.

I'm mad that I have to think about this chronic illness and that the last year has left me with huge holes in my memory. I'm mad that I have gained 54 pounds in the last six months because of medications and stress and depression. I'm mad that I have to wear my nerd jeans because they're the only ones that fit. I'm mad that I have to go on another diet and lose more weight and be terrified of gaining it all back again if my brain cycles back toward depression.

I'm mad that I'm selfish enough to be mad when I own a house, have enough food to eat, reliable transportation, a beautiful child and sweet husband. I haven't been in a tsunami or through genocide, so what gives me the right to be angry about a chronic illness that can be treated with medication and therapy? I'm alive, I have people who love me, but I'm so deeply unfulfilled at times, it feels as though my life is a waiting room filled with the April 1978 issue of Reader's Digest.


copyright2005Lisa Purdy

Lisa Purdy
LISA PURDY was born in the U.K. but moved to America in 1978. She began showing symptoms of Bipolar II when she was 12, but wasn't diagnosed until early 2005, when she was 35. Her poetry has received awards from the Washington Poets Association and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. She is a former fiction editor of The Raven Chronicles and lives in Seattle with her husband, Matt Briggs, and her daughter, Riley.