Erica Wheadon
© 2021 Erica Wheadon. All rights reserved.

Tag: bipolar

cavalier as fuck

I don’t know what to say anymore.

I knew what to say about ten minutes ago, when I was pegging damp clothing on the line at four in the afternoon. I carry no false illusion of any of it drying before tomorrow and yet that’s all I can think about now, rather than the flashes of insight, the debonaire prose that now eludes me. It’s almost cruel. Like a dream dematerialising as you awake. Like truth, I suppose, every time you recall it. I hold stubbornly onto a phrase, knowing that I lack the mental room for another. Before I flick the kettle on, I run to my desk and scrawl it on a notepad. The rest will return, I believe. Cavalier as fuck. What’s new.

It’s been six days since I handed in my thesis. The only thing that has mattered to me for two and a half years and now it’s over. The whole time all I could think about was the result – justifying my career choice with a grade, proving that I deserved it. I hit a wall in the final four weeks – creative artefact in pieces around me, questioning my decision to not only take three research subjects within the space of a trimester but changing my research question at the eleventh hour – essentially meaning that I had twelve weeks to research and write 20,000 words. The downside of being a big-picture thinker is that it is difficult to fine-tune the signal – especially with anxiety running interference. Somehow I found my second wind, and made it to the finish line, two days before my extension date. I don’t know if it’s any good. I bat away requests to read it from well-meaning friends with “Maybe” and “One day”. The truth is, I don’t want to even look at the damn thing again. Maybe ever.

What I didn’t account for was the freedom on the other side. Do you know what matters on the other side of your thesis? Fuck all. At first there is sweet relief, that you believe initially to be indulgent. Sleeping in past seven a.m. Late breakfasts. Taking pleasure in reading again. And then the questions begin. What’s next for you? Look, I know people mean well – but I can do without my reverie served with a side of existential crisis, if that’s okay.

(more…)

Rattle and Hum

Well the coffee and lithium cocktail landed me with mild-to-concerning adrenal fatigue. Cockiness, as it turns out, gets you nowhere. I am now on a diet of magnesium and water and abstaining from caffeine.

Well it was fun while it lasted.

Having anxiety/PTSD on lithium is like being kept awake during brain surgery: my fight/flight impulses just carry on causing havoc yet I can’t do a damned thing about it. The body knows though. It always knows.

On the upside – new meds. On the downside, long-release lithium has to be weaned. I should be in the safe hands of Lamictal by the time my final trimester begins. I’m told it will lift the fog. I just pray it can carry me.

It’s ironic, I have always abhorred stoicism. January however (physical responses notwithstanding), has brought with it the kind of quietude I have always resisted and railed against. My impulses are bridled, my moves deliberate. I tend to my brain like a garden. As if my life depends on it. Because it does.

It’s the hardest and most frustrating part to explain – and what I, myself would never have accepted even a year ago – I thought that if you went off your brain, went off your meds, you only had yourself to blame. My retort to that now (other than don’t be so fucking stupid) is – if you wouldn’t blame a diabetic for their levels, then don’t blame a manic-depressive for theirs. End of story.

On the upside, this newfound euthymia has sailed me through my Summer internship. Editing, as it turns out, is second nature to me. I enjoy taking apart people’s words, like a mechanic. Fixing syntax, checking facts. Tightening sentences so that they purr and hum. My creative project has recently evolved and it’s feeling attainable. I just need to run it past my supervisor and come March, I’ll be in hibernation mode, in preparation for my last academic winter.

I am stashing hope in tins and labelling them carefully.
I won’t leave myself short again.

—

Resolution

I started to write a new year’s post but it just felt glib – especially in the wake of the country literally being burned alive. In it, I took stock of the good parts of 2019 (there were more than I realised) and tried to project myself into the future – to figure out what I’d be writing about at the end of 2020, once the shine of optimism wore off and the momentum faded. This time last year I was about to be triggered into a cycle that lasted six months. There were a lot of things I didn’t know then. And some that were fast coming to light.

Despite the anti-resolution hype, January is usually a fairly productive month for me. It’s where I set up all the plans that I will inevitably destroy by winter. This year I’m being strategic – finish my degree and my internship, try to make some semblance of an income, knowing that I’ll be out of action when I inevitably descend into the underworld, to however many degrees this time. It feels weird to plan for it. Make hay while the sun shines, my mother used to say. I recently discovered that coffee cuts through lithium, so I’m thinking semi-clearly again, but unfortunately it has a Cinderella effect, and is starting to wear off faster. And both are fucking up my kidneys, so great. But hey (hay?). The sun is shining, and I’m getting shit done. I’ll take the win.

Shutting down my Facebook has been not just healing but liberating. It’s like being cut off from the collective (#treknerd), but in the best possible way. As my therapist says, if it’s making me spin my wheels, it’s to be avoided. So I’ve curated my Twitter and Instagram feeds, have unfollowed and muted anything that makes me turn against myself, and for once, I’m not overthinking. Last year I felt profoundly alone in a sea of noise. All of it fake, despite its intention. Now, I find, there’s nothing in these waters that interests me at all.

I’ve been thinking back to a time where we all used to be a lot more honest with ourselves and each other online. When we used to write volumes, instead of posting memes. Rants, perhaps, yes. But who cares? I fell in love once with a boy who wrote a blog. Before the word blog was even a word. He was lonely, like me, and he displayed such breathtaking, heartrenching honesty in the public sphere. I loved that about him the most, even if I didn’t fully understand the trajectory of my choices. Gradually that trait that I admired more than anything, shrank and turned inwards and became a cancer. He swallowed himself whole and secrecy destroyed him from the inside, leaving those that loved him in his wake.

I used to think writers were my kryptonite, but I’ve come to realise that’s not quite true. What fuels me is courage. Truth. Honesty. Of all the things I cannot bear, it’s watching people lie to themselves, and then watching the truth seep out through their actions. If you can’t be honest with me, then I never wanted you anyway.

So. 2021, if you’re reading this, I hope that I took my story and made something of it. That’s enough of a resolution, I think.
—

Hue and Saturation

Lately I’ve been pushing each pill through its foil shield so hard that it breaks in two in my hand. I divide and calculate, and consider briefly what it would be like to turn up the vibrancy just for a little while. Nothing long-term. Just a slice to carry me over Christmas. Something to remember myself by.

I wonder if hybrid non-fiction can include part-cautionary-tale.

I write it down just in case.