Three of our board members have grown children w/bipolar illness. They happily commiserated with one another. None of their children are doing well. One man said with a laff that his son has sampled all of the mental hospitals in the Philadelphia area. The boy lacks a goal. He lacks an area of expertise. Find one interest - baseball, blogging, bicycling, basket-weaving - and make it your own. Gotta love something in order to survive.
So, we've got a newcomer there who hasn't the foggiest about bipolar disorder. She's the stand-in for our accountant who was sunning his handsome self in Florida. "He gives, he's Joe" - that's part of a poem I wrote about our accountant Joe Quinones. He sends his associate Yelena of the Ukraine. She's beautiful, the mother of two young kids, and knows nothing, absolutely nothing of our world.
And now she's hearing "bad stories" about people in Our Crowd.
I defend the Underdog. It's part of my character. I begin to speak. I have just eaten some spicy lemongrass soup which has rendered my voice gravelly and scratchy. I must project my voice all across the long table so I can hopefully impress the attorney at law we've invited to be on our board. And he accepts yet! So I say, "When I had the illness, I could not allow myself to be wild and crazy because I was the solo parent of two children I was raising. I sure would have liked to have been wild n crazy but I had to behave myself on their account." The little boy who played with trucks and Legos, the little girl who read "chapter books" as she called them.
I call myself a 'garden variety' bipolar. No bells or whistles. You know what you do with them bells n whistles? You put em in your writing, you keep em in your thoughts, you never let yourself become banal, you let your thoughts whooop out of control and enjoy the ride. And, yes, you gaze at the sky every single morning like it's your last day on earth and you try to take others along with you on the ride.
Because one day you will not awake to cut open the ruby red grapefruit or spoon out your creamy homemade yogurt to eat w/banana & maple syrup or gaze fondly on.......
