Just Another Manic Monday

I sat on the table, paper crinkling under me at every uncomfortable shift, mind racing, unable to focus, unable to stop fidgeting as I regaled to my doctor the exploits and actions of the last few months with words tumbling out of me so fast, so furious that I couldn't tell if they were really all in English, if they were making any sense at all. I started to tear up as I was talking.

This is not me, this couldn't be me, I would never say, do, etc I have to be talking about someone else.I am a boring girl that likes to sew, to knit, to craft.I am telling someone else's story, someone else's life. This is not me.

I told him about the marriage crumbling under my feet, about the friendships that I had irrevocably broken at the mere suggestion that I seek therapy, the job that I nearly lost due to the inability to focus on any one thing at any given time. I told him about the weeks (weeks!) that I stayed awake, that I didn't want to sleep, didn't want to eat, that I was existing solely on caffeine and nicotine.

He looked at me with those dark brown eyes, the same concerned doctor's eyes that I have seen since I was 14 years old, the same eyes that I crushed on my freshmen year, the same eyes that told me I was pregnant - every time I was pregnant. "You are right. You are bi-polar. I messed up. You shouldn't have been on this medication."

I sighed, let the air that I had been holding in for so long that I didn't even know that I was holding my breath, out. "What now?"

He explained the pros and cons of other medications, told me how he thought I would react based on my history, my father's history, told me that it might do me some good to completely detox before jumping in to another prescription. And then he asked me if I wanted a note.

A note? A note that would tell them that I was crazy (temporarily) due to a medication that I should never have been prescribed? A note, addressed to every single person that I had come into contact with in the last few months, so they would know that this was not the usual Me, that the usual Me would never say or do the things that I was willing to do over the last few months?

If only it could be that easy.

For my entire life, I have struggled with the being the One that didn't fit. The One that didn't have the same interests, the same thought patterns, the One that didn't, couldn't belong. I am not sure if the bi-polar is what has caused me to be that One. Or if there is some other piece of me that keeps me from being on the other side of the glass, over there where the normal happy people are. The only time that I didn't feel like the One was when I was manic.

So, explaining away the one time that I truly felt that I was awesome, that I had self-confidence, with a note that I was out of my mind?

That doesn't feel right to me.