Somewhere Over the Rainbow, I've Lost My Damn Mind: A Manic's Mood Chart (10 page)

Eventually, your injury heals, and you are back to your old self before you know it. But there’s always some time right after you’re cleared by your doctor, when you’re timid while you learn to trust whatever you injured again. You know you’re OK, but in the back of your mind, you can still faintly recall your pain and distrust. Over time, you begin to forget about the injury as it slides to the back of your mind, and then eventually it’s gone and you are back to your old self.

That unfortunately is not going to be a reality for me; I’m always going to have BMD. So I struggle, trying to believe in my mind and trust myself again, and it can get tough. I’m not trying to say that my mind is broken, or that
I’m
broken and can’t be fixed; I’m just saying that I’m a little different now and am still learning to handle everything. It’s similar to when I used to injure myself in sports and then got healed up and ready to go back. The next time I played the sport in which I’d injured myself, I often started out by going at it from a slightly different angle. Right now, I’m looking for that angle with BMD.

I think for me, one of those new angles may be to go out and have a few drinks with a friend and try to forget everything for a little bit. It’s funny how going out on a Wednesday night in The Nasty’s downtown with a dancing bear can make me feel a little like my old self, and how good that can feel sometimes. Is it the solution? No, I know that; but to try and use as many sports analogies as possible in this entry, it’s like sending a baseball player back down to the minors to find his swing. They should know they aren’t going to stay down there for the rest of their career, but it has a purpose, and why not try to enjoy the time that you are down there?

On a non-sport note, I didn’t smoke one fag last night, and the one I took from the bathroom attendant, I gave to the homeless guy on my walk home. Which was my good deed for the day, in a weird way.

Session

JP: So is your reference to the minor league player an attempt at a comparison to yourself being essentially demoted in your life some way with bipolar disorder?

DT: Absolutely. I was still recovering from my first episode and depending heavily on my family for support to live at the time I wrote this entry.

JP: This reminds me of a study I read a few years back that took a look at 166 patients, all men aged twenty-eight, after their first manic episode. Two years later, roughly 65 percent of them had yet to achieve functional recovery, which is to return to the level of independent living, work, and school status that they had a month before the manic episode.

DT: Yeah, talk about being a real bitch for your self-esteem.

KEY TERMS:
CARNIES, KINGS ISLAND, TOTALLY BOSS, CALIFORNIA GAMES

Submitted on 7/14/09

Green

There are a few things that I fear in this world, and one is the spinning carnival rides at the county fair. Another is
“
Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.”
You are probably thinking to yourself right now: “Yeah, who doesn’t fear Carnies? But what’s up with the spinning carnival rides? Those things rock!”

For your information, I fear those rides because I always seem to boot after my turn on them. It’s pretty damn embarrassing; well, I guess as embarrassed as one can get on the midway of the Clark County Fair. I came to the realization today that at times I can be just a little kid stuck in a grown-up’s body.

I spent most of my day today at one of my favorite childhood hot spots, King’s Island. Now, while my day didn’t start out the greatest (we had to park in Drop Tower 39, man, whatever happened to Scrappy Doo 12?) the day was nonetheless radical (yeah, that’s a term from my childhood, pretty tubular, huh?). I was a bit upset that the Smurfs ride is no longer in existence, but my disappointment soon faded as I concentrated on my model shoot via the roller-coaster’s cameras. The double finger point with mouth open on the Diamondback, the double rock out fists with tongue out on the Vortex, the pondering in the opposite direction shot on the Beast, and the always classic double arm flex on the Diamondback; yeah we rode that one a few times as it’s wicked cool. I’m not gonna lie, being a kid was totally boss.

For some reason, during my episode last year, I reverted back to my childhood for certain portions of time. I became obsessed with video games again (Guitar Hero dominated my life) and I’m the furthest thing from a gamer you can find, aside from California Games, of course. I would still to this day binge drink on Hi-C Ecto Cooler from the tin can while playing that incredible Nintendo masterpiece all night long. I also stocked my fridge and freezer with all of my favorite childhood foods. My favorite would have to be Eggo Blueberry Waffles. Growing up, my dad used to create these unbelievably good Eggo breakfasts on Saturday mornings as my brothers and I “rotted” our brains on cartoons. Speaking of those cartoons (which I’m still secretly kind of obsessed with) I came out of my episode with a complete file on my computer dedicated to pictures of Foghorn Leghorn . . .

. . . My apologies for that delay. I just spent the last twenty minutes watching Foghorn Leghorn cartoons on the Internet, and they are
still
hilarious.

That’s just one of the many bizarre experiences and random past obsessions that resurfaced during my episode. I mean, I hadn’t had any desire to play, let alone purchase, any gaming system since I was in middle school, but I bought an Xbox 360 and played the crap out of it during those couple of manic months back in Denver. I hadn’t watched a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon since the late 1980s, yet suddenly I couldn’t get enough of them. Lastly, my diet--well, when I ate; see, I managed to lose about twenty pounds during the episode. I’m thinking of marketing this diet plan around the tag line: “Drop inches from your waistline, while only partially losing your mind!”

Anyhow, back to my original train of thought: my diet consisted mainly of my childhood favorites. I didn’t even know they still sold most of them in stores.

While these may totally seem off the wall (probably because they are) they are a big part of who I am, and I think I forgot about them in the process of growing up and kind of lost who I was. This makes it difficult for me to call BMD a disease or illness when I think it’s played a big part in helping me find myself again. Even if that person is a theme- park junky with an addiction to 1950s-era cartoons who yearns for the taste of Ecto Cooler out of the tin can; basically a big kid.

Session

JP: I think bipolar disorder is a mental illness where the nerve cells in the brain fail to transmit signals. And although a single cause of bipolar disorder cannot be determined, some chemicals in the brain, particularly neurotransmitters, appear at different levels in patients, compared with those without the disorder. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals responsible for exchanging information about specific functions within the brain, such as memory processing and operating the senses. In patients with bipolar disorder, levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps manage pleasure, are usually at levels higher than in non-patients during a manic episode, and lower during depressive episodes. This isn’t necessarily a confirmation that dopamine is the cause, but medications can be prescribed that help regulate these levels, which in turn helps regulate psychotic behaviors associated with bipolar disorder.

DT:
Well,
I think calling bipolar disorder a disease or illness can also imply that someone with the disorder is weak, vulnerable or inferior due to our society’s associations with those words, “disease” and “illness.” I am far from weak, vulnerable or inferior. I am bipolar, which is a mood disorder; is that so hard to say?

JP: No, but to be honest Derek I’m not really seeing how that reasoning is adding up to how bipolar disorder is
not
illness either. And there are a lot of people fighting out there that would disagree with you.

DT: This is how I fight the stigmas I feel in my life and is by no way the only way to fight and I understand that we all fight differently. Maybe in the future my opinion will change with more experiences, but I have yet to experience anything of the sort yet. I just don’t feel like
I have
an illness.

KEY TERMS:
JIMMY V, SOCIAL EXPERIMENT,
3. CRY,
VIRGINITY

Submitted on 7/16/09

Green

Right now, my life is pretty hectic, so I was only able to catch around four or so hours of the Jimmy V charity event spread out on all of the ESPN networks yesterday. I was insanely jealous of the guy who had the winning bid for the ESPN College Football Game Day on Campus Experience. My reasons for this can be boiled down to two simplistic actions I would perform if I had won the bid:

1.) When I got to deliver the mascot head to Corso on set, I would definitely throw the Heisman pose/hand into Desmond’s (dick) face during the exchange.

2.) When I got the chance to meet with the guys during the morning production meeting, I would persuade them that during the game picks segment, they must also pick their favorite sign in the crowd. I mean, it’s only fair to recognize those people who worked so hard on cleverly insulting their opponent’s city, school, family and girlfriends.

I was able to take something of value away from my vegetative state of watching radio on TV. This, of course, is the following quote from Jimmy V:

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.

After hearing this, I sat in contemplation for a while and reflected on what I thought was the meaning behind what Jimmy was trying to convey here. After this deliberation, I decided to try a social experiment on myself (it’s not like I’m doing much else right now) and while I wasn’t really all about trying this for an entire week, I figured one day of doing all three couldn’t be too tough. After going through my day following Jimmy’s words of wisdom, I figured I could determine if I had experienced something special (my mom always said I was special, kind of ironic, thinking about everything now) and write about it. So next, I pulled my best impersonation of Earl Hickey and started a list:

1. Laugh

2. Think

3. Cry.

Then after I spellchecked my list, I realized that I had already completed number 2 (remember “I sat in contemplation”) so I crossed it off my list.
2. Think
. Very nice.

My next to-do for the day was to either cry or laugh, two things I’ve perfected since my episode, so I thought this should be a piece of giant cookie. I should clarify: I’m not a huge fan of cake, so we always had giant chocolate chip cookies from the mall for my birthday growing up. AMC was running
History of the World: Part I
so I figured a laugh was pretty much guaranteed. While I did giggle slash cackle slash chuckle slash snicker, I didn’t wholeheartedly laugh like I think Jimmy was referring to, so I couldn’t cross that off my list.

At this point in the evening, I jumped into the shower, as I needed to start getting ready to venture down to the KY for some elegant riverfront dining (OK, it was Hooters, but they do have really good burgers, I’m told). During my shower routine, I enjoy listening to tunes, and one of the songs that randomly played was Ryan Adam’s “Rescue Blues.” For some reason, since my episode, that song messes with my emotions.
3. Cry
.

Well, it was nearing the end of the night and I hadn’t yet laughed, so I was becoming a bit concerned. I sat down at J.B. Fins, totally disgusted with myself. I had been so close to completing my social experiment but was now convinced I’d fall short of my goal, and the culprit was laughter. The last time I checked, humor was in the title of this blog; pathetic.

Doesn’t it seem like when you’re lower than low, that’s when everything starts to come together? At about that time in the night, on stage, Kevin Fox said these few words: