My Life with Bipolar Affective Disorder

I made a film on the weekend. The idea had come to me as I was walking to work on Friday morning. The others wouldn’t be back until Monday, so it was something to do to pass the time. It was going to be a film about being alone in the empty house, and about myself, about them. It used to be like that every night — where I used to live — in a neighborhood so poor, in an apartment so small with a horrible smell that did not disappear, an apartment without hot water, or heating. There, in that life, there was nothing; there was me at the kitchen table staring blankly at the wall, there was silence, isolation. There is a contrast now, I wanted to capture it. I filmed my weekend. I recorded myself and edited it over three days. And even though I ran out of food, it did not occur to me that I could have walked to the supermarket to buy something to eat. In fact, I did not leave the house at all, not once. I drank a bottle of wine, but it had no effect on me. I drank a lot of coffee too. My project swallowed me up into deeply focused concentration. Trying to stop myself felt like tearing velcro away from a felt wall. Even cleaning the dishes, or wiping down the table, left my body screaming in resistance. Do not stop, do not stop, there is so much more to clean! There is so much more to do! Watching, and re-watching, and watching again, and again, and again, the same clips, over and over, almost obsessively. My body clung on so tightly to the sort of comforting ple...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Bipolar Personal Stories Source Type: news