some things i'd forgotten

Well, I've been tagged. I've gotten myself involved in some conversations on a blog maintained by a fellow human being who happens to share my diagnosis. Nothing scary here, it's just that ever since I was seventeen I've known that I have a bi-polar affective psychiatric disorder, formerly known as manic depression. Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain both sang about it in their own way so perhaps it's more prevalent in Seattle than Toronto. I've outlived both of those icons so that at least gives me some sense of accomplishment. The task at hand, however, is not to describe the disease but to delineate the signs that have alerted me to an incipient manic state. Here goes:

1. Imagining that perhaps I was the one to save that pretty blonde-haired girl I had once made out with, and bicycling all night to reach her home after recording a cassette of soothing guitar sounds. Waiting until seven am to knock on her door, and climbing in the open living room window after her mother went to work. I'm sure she was terrified. I left when she politely threatened to call out to the workmen across the street for help. Afterwards following a funeral on my bicycle and arriving home to find my entire family missing. Cutting off my ponytail with garden shears and walking barefoot to the police station. It seems my parents had just driven my grandmother to the airport.

2. Staying awake all night rearranging small and larger objects in my parents' home into exceedingly precarious piles.

3. Insisting my mother drive me to visit the younger sister of an ex-girlfriend and dropping what I considered an engagement ring into her teacup, very significantly.

4. Becoming distraught and angry when none of my high school friends were at any of the bars downtown on a Tuesday night and throwing a potted tree from a grocery store through the window of a donut shop at two guys who I thought had been laughing at me.

5. Kicking the rear door window out of a police car as I was being driven to the station the day before an important exam. I had tried to get my soon-to-be completely ex-girlfriend to talk to me by clasping her shoulders at arms-length. No injuries as none were intended but still assault, I was informed.

6. Flying to London and then to Brussels by bus to meet with a choreographer who I had assumed was interested in my sculptural ideas. Seeing a photo of myself waiting for the ferry afterwards and realising how loopy I had been.

7. Any number of drunken sexual liaisons with women who knew I was only there for the intercourse.

8. Driving a fifteen year-old BMW into the ground while pretending I had a future in music videos.

The scary thing really is that a lot of my manic episodes still veered a little too closely into the realm of the real.