The Lion

March has indeed come in like a lion, though not in the sense of the weather. It’s actually warming up here in Leicester and the sun has been shining the past few days. No, the lion I’m very much afraid, came in the form of some erratic moods.

A week and a half ago, I had a sudden burst of energy. I had been doing a lot of reading for my PhD and all of a sudden, I was making connections and I felt this urge to start writing everything down. My thoughts were flying a mile a minute and I needed to make sense of it all. I sat down and developed a 2500 word outline in one sitting for my first paper. The entire time I felt this energy running through my fingertips. It reminded me of how I felt the first time I drank coffee. It was like I had the power of the universe running through my veins.

I remembered another time about a year ago that I had felt this way. I had been put on antidepressants and I had begun to feel much better. MUCH better. I felt that energy all the time. My thoughts were racing on a constant basis and I found that I was talking to myself much more than normal. No, I wasn’t talking to myself; I was having full blown conversations and even arguments with myself. What’s more is I was arguing with myself in public…about arguing with myself in public. In retrospect, I find it a bit funny. I laugh when I think about it because of the absurdity. It all came to a head one night when I had been pacing around my tiny room, talking to myself. I had the sudden notion that if I were to run around the giant mound in the middle of the college, everything would be fine. Perhaps, in a way it was logical. I had an excess of energy, how do I deal with that? Run it out. The trouble is, I thought I should do this in my skivvies. Thankfully, I decided that it would perhaps be better to call my GP the next morning and get an appointment as soon as possible.

He saw me immediately. I remember bursting into the room and literally spilling out the past two week’s litany of oddities at roughly the speed of light. My GP, an unassuming, pleasant and sympathetic Englishman took it in stride. I’m laughing as I remember his raised eyebrows and look that if I didn’t know better was the result of his thinking, “Oh shit, I think she’s nuts.” He took me off of the medication immediately and my mood stabilised. I began CBT shortly after and I had chalked it all up to a bad reaction to medication. Until this month.

Once I began to feel that course of energy again, it was all too familiar. I didn’t feel I could blame stress and the international move and starting a PhD, at least not anymore. I thankfully never reached the same height as the episode last year, but it was enough to make me book an appointment with my new GP. Then I learned a new word: hypomania.

Apparently, this is the “nicer” kind of mania. It isn’t the kind where you become delusional and begin to think you are Jesus or that you can control the universe with your thoughts. It’s a milder form of mania and it described perfectly what I had been feeling. She had me take a form away to fill out and when I brought it back the next week, I had checked more than double the “normal” amount of boxes. I hadn’t thought it was that bad. I really hadn’t.

Then came the next word: Bipolar.

She explained that she didn’t want to medicate me in case we were missing something else, perhaps a thyroid condition. I underwent a bloodletting and am awaiting the results at this moment. She put in for a referral to a psychiatrist but warned it would be a few months before I heard back. I guess there are still some glitches with the NHS, though were I still in the US, I’d be waiting forever as I have no health insurance back home. I couldn’t shake the impact that word had had on me. Bipolar.

I’ll be honest, I had considered it before. I had spoken to very close friends about what I was feeling but they always seemed to assure me that I was just depressed. The effect of this word was enough to feel like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. I walked home from that appointment and I barely remember seeing anything. I remember looking at the memorial arch in Victoria Park and the flowers in the beds along the walk up to it. Everything else seemed grey.

I began to think about the past month and how I had been feeling. I had felt everything in HD. Every emotion had been more vivid, deeper, and realer. I began wondering if that were really a bad thing. I felt like my protective carapace had been cast off and I had allowed myself to be truly emotionally vulnerable. I had been more open and I had felt everything. The amount of empathy I had felt is almost too much to describe, but at the time I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. It felt really wonderful.

Now, everything was beginning to feel grey. The power of that word had drained the colour from the world. The past few days have been challenging. I haven’t been able to pull myself together enough to work as hard and as much as I want to. I haven’t made it to the box to work out as much either. I can’t peel myself out of bed in the mornings. I still at times feel things in HD, but it seems that it’s only the horror, depression, and hopeless feelings that are vivid. It seems like these elements are standing out of everything I read and watch and do. I suppose the saving grace is that I know that this will cycle out. That it isn’t of my own doing. The trouble is now I feel like I can’t trust the “good” cycle anymore. Is the good too good?

I don’t have a diagnosis yet. There’s still a chance this is a thyroid issue. In a way, I hope it is. It’s easier to explain that to someone than to say I’m bipolar. The one elicits sympathy and understanding. The other, mistrust and fear.