One Flew East, One Flew West.

I have had a difficult time over the years, due primarily to the efforts of my worst enemy. The enemy in this case being myself. I've had a delightful condition called bipolar mood disorder that I've loved with a passion despite the damage it's done me. In 40 years I've rarely held a job more than a year. I leave jobs for myriad reasons, but I've come to realize over the past year that it's all related back to my brain chemistry. There has been the odd time I found the world so bleak that getting out of bed and going to work was simply too much to ask for. Getting dressed, walking out the door, at some point having to talk to another human being...more than I could face, and another job bites the dust. There have been other times on a manic upswing, compelled by a higher calling I'd leave the menial and meaningless tasks of whatever 'job' I had, convinced that the only path to a creative life would necessitate the burning of all bridges behind me.
By far the most common reason I've left jobs however would be a combination of high anxiety and low bullshit tolerance. There's a period somewhere in between the highs and the lows where an all encompassing loathing and irritability permeates every aspect of every relationship, task, thought, feeling. At times the anxiety peaks into a near paranoia. The fear of losing a job, combined with the anxiety of trying to read everyone's motivations drives me to quit, just to ease my mind. Or the grave insult of being talked down to becomes an unforgivable slight that only a fool or a wimp would tolerate.
That's the way things were. I've since started on an anti-depressant, and I've been on and off of it for the better part of a year now. On it I'm complacent, conformist,calm, collected, conservative and practical. Well, more so than at other times anyway. I've held my job for more than 3 years, and it's a stressful and demanding job with more than it's fair share of bullshit. Twice since starting the meds I've weaned myself off of them. Both times I saw the promised exacerbation of symptoms. Once I exacerbated up, once into that horrible fucking gray area of permanent dystopian aggravation.
I realized that as a provider for my family it's pretty imperative that I stay on these pills.
Today has me a bit nostalgic for the brilliant madness again however. I've just recovered from some pretty painful throat surgery, and today was really the first day that I felt good in long time. I got a good amount of sleep last night after a 20km run on my longboard, and I woke up enervated and optimistic. At work I had a coffee and the caffeine went straight to my bloodstream, which is something I haven't felt in a long time either. I decided I would get 'jacked' on caffeine and I had a couple more pints of coffee. Soon I was rolling in a state bordering on hypomania. I had racing creative thoughts, I was meeting strangers and hitting hard and fast banter that brought huge smiles and that mixed look of bewilderment and amazement that inspired rambling tends to elicit from normies.
I miss that. I miss being able to energize a whole room. I miss having a mainline to the divine where puns and poetic turns and prosaic prolific ideas come at you warp 9 and gaining. So fast, so brilliant, so many ideas and all of them setting off a pyrotechnic cerebro magnificent firestorm in the brain that leaves me amazed I have such thought processes.
I miss it. But I know where it leads too. It leads to explosions of rage at any attempt to control or harness my energy. It leads to dangerous obsessions with ridiculous things or people, to sleepless nights and exhausted family members sick of trying to keep up with me. It leads to flirtations s(without consummations) that risk my entire family's well being and harmony.
I've just taken my little white pill again, before writing this. I'm wired and I can feel HAARP style bolts of neuro-electric blasts rising in tempo and temperament and I know that I could be taken somewhere simultaneously magnificent and horrible if I just let it ride. The temptation is there, even knowing the seriousness of the consequences. It's there because this ordinary life, when I'm not somatized into domesticity is stifling. So I'll take the soma for now. And in a few days I won't miss this anymore. I won't want it. I won't want much of anything, because I'll have a carefully metered contentment that turns me into a well behaved ordinary citizen.