THE COLOUR OF MADNESS
A Blog About Living with Mental Illness
Bipolar, Books and Why I Can’t Vacuum at Midnight
This shit is completely counter intuitive, you know that? The less I sleep the less I need to sleep, right now I’m lying in the dark writing this on my phone while hubby snores next to me.
I want to get up and dance, Im unreasonably horny, I want to write for days, sing and shout and get drunk and party the fucking night away!
Right now I know I should be popping a few Valium because it’s somehow already midnight and I’ve been awake since 2:30am yesterday when I finally downloaded my Twitter friend Ryan Heffernans epic Bipolar memoir “Clown & I” digesting it whole, pausing only to drive the kids to school.
I was literally still reading while straightening my hair, making bacon & eggs and feeding the chickens.
It is that fucking good.
Right now I’m buzzing, literally. That manicy anticipation buzzyness that some of you may be familiar with, it overthrows your body like an unclaimed orgasm.
Yeah I should sleep But I don’t want to take the Valium, honestly I just want to I feel like this forever and I don’t really care if that’s not possible. Right this second the world is my oyster, I feel like a hyped up school kid at a slumber party where everyone else has already passed out – I know I should try to sleep, but there is so much to talk to – well everyone else is asleep, so talk to the voices in my head about, so much to think about, problems to solve.
I can’t get up and productively clean the house like I used to at my friend Ella’s place when I was a teenager. I was always the last one awake at her parties- at all parties really – but her parents were hoarders, true hoarders of the narrow pathways through the house, stacked up magazines from 1983, 10day old plates in the kitchen variety and when it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and nobody’s left standing except your bright eyed bushy tailed hypomanic self, then one tends to decide do the dishes or clear up without regard or understanding of the mental illness/ ocd component of hoarding and what this attempt at filling time and being simultaneously useful would actually do to accidentally fuck them up even more…. Sorry guys. I’m older and wiser now, still awake but wiser.
But right now it’s 2018, I’m stuck in bed when I desperately want to get up and write on the actual computer because I’m lying on my stomach leaning on my elbow and my left arm keeps going to sleep, but if I do that one of two things will happen, I will get lost writing in a sea of nonsensical paragraphs until sunrise or hubby will wake up notice me missing and get pissed off because he’s aware that I’m aware that I’m elevating and while he’s happy to receive the sexual benefits, me choosing not to give a fuck and do the right thing puts me deservedly in the bad books.
So if he wakes I have no valid excuse to be up and about not “at least trying to sleep” because the dishes here are done and everything is relatively sparkling already from today’s cleaning while reading efforts I’d do the floors again but the other 5 members of my household get understandably shitty if I vacuum when they are trying to sleep.
Why can’t we just pick and choose when we feel good? Why the fuck am I rapid cycling so badly right now? How is it possible to want to die with your whole heart one day and then know with absolute certainty that you can conquer the world the next? Why do I have bipolar? I fucking love it and hate it so much at the same time, black and white like most of my race car style thinking – is that why I love zebras and pandas? Maybe I can relate to not quite knowing if you are a horse or not or which colour is your primary one? What is the fucking colour of madness? It’s the name of my blog and I keep changing my mind about the answer. Originally google told me it was orange and I didn’t agree but then Trump got elected president and I thought maybe google was right all along…
Anyway, I’m going to stop drivelling on, if you had time to read this post then you have time to go and download “Clown & I” It’s $14 on kindle and worth every cent, even if you are a cheapskate like me who normally keeps it under the $8 mark – lucky I’m a touch hypomanic otherwise I may not have downloaded it and then given the butterfly effect of life, the future of the world quite possibly would have fallen as part as we know it. besides Ryan could use the money, he’s got a kid to feed.
2 Comments on “Bipolar, Books and Why I Can’t Vacuum at Midnight”
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THE COLOUR OF MADNESS 
Now Kate you give my book a great wrap in this piece, but honestly it was the rest of it that had me pissing myself laughing and identifying in the mega coincidental kinda way when I should be going to sleep. Next time you want an excuse to get off your elbow and climb out of bed, tell your hubby you’re writing a book. Because that’s exactly what you should be doing. I loved that.
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Loved this. Really captured how hypomania can feel. And finally… someone else who can freely admit to sometimes not giving a shit and going with it… and admitting to the hypersexuality! I feel you 💜
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