Sunday, February 28, 2010

I Suffer from Extremely Mild Depression

Bipolar disorder, actually. Well, not really, but I am happier some times than at others. In truth, though, my nearly chronic state of happiness is nothing but an endless hypomanic episode masquerading as mere happiness. Do people who are merely happy fill their speedos with Equate Brand Ultra Strength Muscle Rub and watch women's hockey on TV? Some times, out of the blue, I'll tell my wife, "Take your benedryl, we're going to Red Lobster!" because she really loves lobster. What but hypomania can explain that, huh? And talk about impulsiveness and delusions of athleticism--I have $500 worth of impulsiveness and delusions of athleticism strapped to the railing outside my door! Would a 39-year-old non-athlete, who has never been an athlete, and who could be diagnosed as normal control by any competent psychiatrist, ever believe that he could learn to throw phonics monkeys in a green Pyranha playboat with only a few days a year of practice? I genuinely believed that I could! And then there's my depressive episodes which are absolutely horrible. I had one yesterday while I was at work. All I could think about was selling all my kayaks. That and I was feeling tremendous guilt over the fact that I've tried, not outwardly to others but within my own mind, to use my mental non-illnesses (My rational, objectively-thinking mind knows my mental illnesses are not really illnesses at all. While it's true that I feel like I'm drowning in debt, the fact is that I've never been a day late on a single payment in my entire life. It's hard, then, for me to say that the manic spending sprees related to my bipolar disorder have ruined me financially. While it sometimes seems as if my marriage is hanging by a thread, the fact is my wife has been pissed at me for a grand total of perhaps three weeks out of the seven years we've been married, which is less than one percent of the time. It's hard, then, to say that my horrible bouts of depression have destroyed my relationships with the people I love the most.) as excuses for my failure to achieve what conventional American wisdom says is a flourishing life. But that guilt went away, like it always does, as soon as I clocked out and walked through the door towards the parking lot. One smell of the crisp, outside air and thoughts of selling kayaks were replaced with thoughts of paddling them. At once, my depression was replaced with the anxiety that comes from not knowing how long my new state of relative happiness would last. That, and I was wondering if Wister was running.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Take your benedryl, we're going to Red Lobster!" has become my new mantra. I'm thinking of having it put on a t-shirt. And might I add that your parenthetical clause was absolutely Proustian in its length and complexity? It is definitely the writer's equivalent of the phonics monkey, and you executed it flawlessly.

Now please excuse me, I want to read your post again.

UF Mike

carl said...

you can think these types of things but it it not wise to enter them into the record like this. beware the webbots.

red dirt girl said...

i feel your pain. please pass the hypomania. I haven't had a good mania masquerading as happiness spree in over a year !!! instead i just get psychopharmaceutically induced neuroses, 'cause we KNOW i'm not REALLY the paranoid, neurotic, listening to voices type.

xxx

Dave Renfro said...

Thanks, Mike! Too bad I couldn't execute the spelling of athelete or dilusions flawlessly. They stood out like strobe lights today! If I have a mental illness at all, it is that I still have to type wierd and weird together, every single time I try, after using the word thousands of times, to see which one "looks" right. In the end, I still use the spellchecker on whichever option I select. I'm wrong about half the time. Blogger's comment box has no spellchecker so, on this day, I'm going with weird. As far as I'm concerned, wierd is also a modern, completely valid usage of weird (or vice versa). I'm not going to inflict myself with weird anxiety disorder on top of my myriad other mental challenges!

Thanks, Mike!

Dave Renfro said...

Point well taken, Carl. But one must be firm in one's convictions or freedom of speech will become just another idiot buzzword like freedom or democracy. Perhaps it already is. Thanks, though! If they catch me, they'll probably stamp "No Dessert" on my meal card, bend my dogtags, and send my ass to Korea. Kimchi, anyone?

Dave Renfro said...

Hi mule friend! I was thinking of you while I wrote this. I consider myself very lucky to be able to write so flippantly about real-deal brain illnesses that are no joke to those who actually do suffer from them. I was challenging myself just a bit, that I could "find the funny" in something as unfunny as bipolar disorder. I hope I pulled it off.

Hugs,

Dave

red dirt girl said...

Hugs back atcha, Dave.
and a few of these xxxxx, too!

Anonymous said...

I hate spelling. And I don't have spell check either, so I spend half my time looking up words that I know I can't spell, while misspelling all the words I didn't look up because I thought I knew how they were spelled. And it's spelled ewird, not wierd.

Hey Dave!

UF Mike

red dirt girl said...

oh you boys make me laugh. it's plain to see you spell it wired not wierd or ewird or weird ....

snickering
xxx