Bipolars should be single: The final installment of The Friend Boy Chronicles

Controversial title, huh?  Before you go off on me for suggesting that it is not possible for people suffering from bipolar disorder to maintain healthy relationships, read what I have to say here about myself and then feel free to judge me as you see fit.

Yup, this is gonna be me for a while, only with a cat instead of a rat. (Copyright © Charles Thomson, stuckism.com)

Remember how I said that I was ready for love, talking all big about thinking clearly and prepared to make grown-up decisions like regular people?  Well, I may have jumped the gun on that one and here’s how I know.  Last week was a bad week.  Not “check myself back into the hospital” bad; more like “I feel bad and I just want to stay in bed all the time.”  For the most part, I did just that with the exception of a few showers, a job interview, and some talking on the phone.  At some point this week, I realized that for the last few months I’d been riding high on a combination of endorphins, caffeine, serotonin (both natural and chemically-induced) and whatever other brain chemicals trigger bipolar mania.  In case you care about my moods, this is everyday life for me, the stuff of 140 characters, not blog posts.  My highs aren’t high enough to make me think I can fly or run with the bulls in Pamplona.  They’re just high enough to make me feel slightly antsy, lose my appetite, and be really, REALLY productive.  So, garden-variety Type A stuff with a little “I’m falling in love” sprinkled on top for flavor.  For the record I am NOT falling in love, though I find it very telling that the “falling in love” feeling is a little bit like a manic attack.  Blame it on the do-do-do-do-do-dopamine.  And that infernal serotonin, which is the brain chemical my medications are responsible for altering.  So…I guess I’m not really interested in Friend Boy, maybe I just need a new prescription.

In all honesty, last week was the big let-down, the big drop-down, and I went into my bipolar-depression cocoon which looks a little like this:  staying in the house, avoiding people and commitments coated with an undefinable feeling of “blah”.  Not bad enough to cry my eyes out (unless it was at the end of the last book I read – totally warranted, by the way) but bad enough to put my head under the covers and ignore the world.  In the process of said ignorance, I grossly mistreated a classmate for whom I was supposed to do an internet project.  Perhaps I over-committed myself when volunteering to help my friend promote his book, and one could identify my over-confidence in my own abilities as a by-product of a manic state.  However, last week, in the midst of my depression-induced fog, I couldn’t quite focus long enough to work on said project, nor could I stomach the idea of talking to my classmate about my shortcomings.  So instead, I didn’t return his phone calls.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do the work, but I couldn’t get myself together enough to do it, or to talk about not doing it without resulting anxiety, hyperventilation and feelings of worthlessness.  I’d worked myself up into a classic “I feel crappy and I feel guilty” moment when I had a huge realization:  I was treating someone else the way Friend Boy – and several other men in my life – have treated me.

Stay with me, readers, while I break it down for you.  My romantic life has been plagued by all manner of men who’ve virtually ignored me.  I often asked, what did I do to deserve this?  Nobody deserves to be ignored unless they’ve wronged you in some manner.  Yet I continually give plenty of people the cold shoulder:  recruiters, sometimes my Dad and my friends, my classmate last week, and my job once right before I went into the hospital.  I’ve been making excuses for myself, believing that my behavior was justified because I felt “sick”, or because facing up to people would cause me too much anxiety.  No matter the reasons, though, I was still in the wrong just like the dates that didn’t call me back, or the guys that broke up with me via silence instead of a direct form of communication.  I’m not necessarily saying that I can’t get some man to call me back due to karmic retribution.  Actually, maybe I am saying that very thing, that I’m putting into the world the same behaviors that I dislike so much in others and they’re coming right back at me.  So until I can figure out how to manage my ownself in relation to other people, I probably shouldn’t be trying to date anyone.  And that means, kids, that Friend Boy is a no-go until I can get my shit together.   This is one of those “everything happens for a reason” moments, and why this “bipolar” should be single for just a bit longer.

For the record, I did contact my classmate and beg out of the project.  He was probably disappointed, and I can live with people being disappointed in me for a while.  What I can’t live with is people thinking that I’m a jerk, so I’m going to try very hard not to act like one from now on.  Call me on that if you see me.