Ivy Tied Up |

Ever not know what to write yet feel the need to write? To get something off your chest yet not know what that something is? I feel that need right now.

I’ve been thinking about all the stupid stuff I’ve done in my past. Some of it I can chalk up to being a teenager, some to mania, but most to both. If that makes any sense at all.

Early on in my relationship with my now husband he saw bouts of my mania. Of course at that time he had no clue what it was. I know he was thinking,”What the hell is wrong with this chick?” yet he stuck around. Further into our relationship he saw more and more bouts of mania and he still stuck around. When he found out I was bipolar he blew it off. Didnt believe it. His aunt is bipolar and she does some really out there crazy things. I wasn’t like her.

Early on I fell in love with his aunt. No not that kind of love. But the kind of love where you feel for the person and are close to them because you understand them. I understood his aunt and she understood me. We get along well. I don’t have to explain myself to her. She knows already. She doesn’t have to explain herself to me. I understand. Its an unspoken bond. Not only do we have that bond but we have alot of things in common. She made being with my dh less crazy. She made it make more sense and she kept me grounded when my world was falling apart. When my brother died it was her I clung to. She kept me sane when my world was spiraling out of control.

People always thought she was nuts. She’d go off for hours in the woods by herself and scream and scream. You could hear her screaming anytime of night or day. People said,”oh she is just being crazy again” For me. It was sanity. It made complete sense. Why not remove yourself from your troubles for a few hours and go scream about them some where that no one else can interrupt or tell you to get over it? Why not take that time. Why can’t you scream if you need to scream? For me. It was real. For everyone else it was insane.

I went insane one time. As I look back I remember bits and pieces of my mania. Not enough to form a whole picture but I can see bits and pieces. This one time I remember it well because dh has brought it up. I think I scared him that time. IT was when my MIL (dh’s bio mom not his step mom that gives me hell now) died. The grief of losing her sent me into mania. It was my way of coping with it. I swung full force into a full blown episode in the middle of the night and started seeing things and started screaming. I screamed for a long time. Looking back I imagine it was pretty scary thing for an outsider to have to witness. Looking back I shake my head and wonder what the hell was going through my mind. I was screaming at the demons that were making me feel so horrible. Atleast thats the sense I can make of it now. I was screaming because I was scared, because I was sad, and because I dont think I knew what else to do.

Sometimes mania makes me high. Sometimes I feel on cloud 9. Like I smoked a lb of dope. Sometimes it makes me angry, bitter, paranoid, possessive, irritable. Sometimes it makes me a not nice person. All the time It makes me different. You never know what you will get. And my mania isn’t always the same. It varies from mild to severe. Sometimes it scares me.

Which is why I can’t figure out why on earth I’d miss the mania.