I have a horrible sense of loss for who I have been and where I have been.
It is really difficult, to give up the high flights of mind and mood, because of necessary medications, even though the depressions that inevitably follow can be devastating. Manic-depression illness often contributes a great deal of energy, fire, enthusiasm, and imagination to the people and world around them.
Mania is a strange and driving force, a destroyer, a fire in the blood.
Like everything else in my life, the grim was usually set off by the grand; the grand, in turn, would yet again be cancelled out by the grim. It is a loopy but intense life: marvellous, ghastly, dreadful, indescribably difficult, gloriously and unexpectedly easy, complicated, great fun, and a no-exit nightmare.
The charade of pretending to be well when I wasn't and going through the motions of being pleasant when I feel dreadful.
Psychotherapy heals. It makes some sense of the confusion, reins in the terrifying, demeaning thoughts and feelings, returns some control and hope and possibility of learning from it all. Pills cannot, and do not, ease one back into reality; they only bring one back headlong, careening and faster than can be endured at times.
Psychotherapy is a sanctuary; it is a battleground, it is a place I have been psychotic, neurotic, elated, confused, and despairing beyond belief. But, always, it is where I have believed - or have learned to believe - that I might someday be able to contend with all of this.
No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressions. I need both. It is an add thing, owing life to pills, one's own quirks and tenacities, and this unique, strange, and ultimately profound relationship called psychotherapy.
