My favorite analogy for my most loathed foe: depression
I’ve been bipolar my entire life. There. I said it.
I was finally diagnosed in the summer of 2000. This came after I spent three days of pacing, vomiting, more pacing, shaking, trembling, and not making any sort of real sense as I babbled to myself. I was convinced that my brain stopped working, at least in service to me. I babbled, because nothing made sense to me. My husband took me to the hospital, where I was doped up enough to quiet me down, and on an odyssey to get me into a psychiatric hospital.
We live in the fifth largest city in the United States, and after having gone to four different psych wards, the answer was unanimous: no room at the inn.
I wound up having an emergency appointment with the man who is still my psychiatrist, even to this day: Dr. B. I also had an appointment with a clever and compassionate therapist who I no longer see. Long story, and irrelevant.
Grey dirty greasy dishwater. I have an appointment with Dr. B. and I have to tell him that I am sitting there, in the sink. Carrot peelings and used tea bags, and it’s nasty and I am there all alone. The water is cold. And as of right now, I can’t pull myself up and out of the sink. Not by myself. I’ve been through this before in the two decades I have lived with my…
