The Home Run Swing

Being Bipolar 2 can have the occasional upside.

I have stabilized massively. Even taking the last six months in comparison with the last five years, my mental state has gotten exponentially better. As someone once diagnosed with Bipolar 2, I have historically tended to have more downswings (major depression, absolute holes-in-your-gut kind of pain and emptiness, lead-in-your-arms kind of physiological responses to said depression) than upswings.

Upswings come in bad kinds and good kinds. Bad kinds tend to be full of anxiety, which is still an upswing because if you think about it, anxiety is an emotional "up". It's just a bad "up". There's also the kind of upswing where I'm crazy full of creative energy but my decision-making ability drops to zero, so I vibrate in place for five hours, unable to pick a direction to direct my energies.

And then there's the upswing that's like getting a home run.

Today I went and treated myself to a new coffeeshop. I don't think I've ever had Yemeni coffee before. This was gooooood stuff. My "usual" was no usual, it was one of the most excellent buttery-smooth decaf hazelnut mocha lattes I've ever had in my life... so I did a risky thing and ordered a second one because DAMN.

A second coffee, even decaf, often sends me into an upswing with only one-in-three odds of getting the good kind. Today, almost as if it was a birthday gift, I got a really good one.

I got chattier. I wrote 500 words on my next chapter. I finished a hat. If a party had been going on, guarantee you I'd have been at the center and loving it. On the drive home I was singing all the wrong words to radio songs at the top of my lungs and laughing great big belly laughs at myself for feeling as good as I did. I felt like I could talk to anyone and conquer any problem and that nothing could possibly stand in my way. I felt as good as you can possibly feel while still being quasi-logical about what you're capable of. I didn't lose sight of reality and I drove safely home, but every moment was like Jame's Brown's "I Feel Good" song at 400%.

The crash came. It always does. Fortunately, it just brought me back down to my typical stable emotional state with a great deal of bodily tiredness. My muscles feel like they're buzzing with exhaustion and I want to curl up and sleep for twelve hours, but I need to stay awake long enough to go to bed at the right time or I'll throw everything off for days.

There are not many benefits to being Bipolar 2, but there are a few I've gleaned. One is an ability to assess when I need to sit down and make no decisions for 24 hours. I know when to hold still and let everything pass me by. Another is that I never over-rely on my own opinion of a situation because I know exactly how skewed my vision can get. And every now and then, I get a few hours' taste of what a top performing extravert with high positive emotion must feel like.

I'm truly happy to be who I am, but sometimes it is nice to get that kind of experience in small doses.

Today was lovely.