Four Days, Two Weeks
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Four days every two weeks and I am functional. Days spent trying to gather all the things I could create, laughing till I'm losing my breath before the time finally runs out.
Four days every two weeks and joy that catches in my lungs. I am clutching onto the rope of hypomania; the closest I'll ever be to normalcy; the closest I'll ever be to being happy.
Four days every two weeks and the unrecognizable reflection in the crooked bathroom mirror. Eyes glittering with life, cheeks flushed, the perpetual grin; to the mirror I say, I own the world.
Four days every two weeks and I am typing, "Off the meds. I feel like I could eat the sun." My best friend telling me, "Icarus, calm down." Calm down; sit down; let's talk.
But I cannot calm down. Four days every two weeks and how can I ever when rapture comes to me like a breath of relief? Two weeks of arms trembling and wounds that have never closed. Two weeks of sobs that are forever trapped inside my chest. Two weeks of forgetting my name; vision blurs and loss so acute it hurts to even speak.
Time is constantly running out. I crush into me this temporary delight. I try not to think of the end as if I haven't lived it hundreds of times before. Four days are not enough. These four days are not nearly enough. But these four days are mine.
I am walking. From work. In the park I don't notice. Down to the little bakery. I'm buying myself a whole cheesecake I know I will never finish. I cannot stop myself. Nobody teaches me how to stop.
In my bedroom I see the sun is setting from the rooftop. I have my pen poised. I have the pictures clear in my mind. I will be painting. I will be writing again.
Four days. Two weeks.
(journal entry from September 7, 2022)
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Current commentary:
It is a bit funny that I recalled this journal entry as I was lying in bed this morning, being sick. Physical, this time, although physical and psychological aren't mutually exclusive for me nowadays.
But reading this journal entry makes me feel a bit thankful. This entry was written by the unmedicated version of me. The highs and lows of my bipolar were still extreme that when my mood crashed I felt this intense grief of losing something that I have always wanted--namely joy.
Hypomania has a way of making me think that it is how I could have been all the time, if I had only been born with a normal brain, and that kind of grief is the kind that I cannot discuss to anyone else. And because my depressive episode were really low, the gap between how I could have been and how I was back then was so wide, the nuance of how neither extremes were accurate according to factual reality got lost in my inability to think clearly.
It has been almost four years now since I started to regularly take medications and go to therapies. Old journal entries do give me perspective. Even as I am sick right now, I can trust that it's not forever. And that is good enough for me.
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