One Sunday, while I was still moping about yet another love affair gone south, I came across a quote from Wolfgang Goethe: “If I love you, what does it matter to you?” I was struck by lightning realizing that being in love has nothing to do with the other person. It’s like saying “I love you, but it has nothing to do with you”. All these women I had fallen in love with over the years; All these crushes and lusts and compulsions were about me and me alone! But what about everything I learned? She had believed those relationship people who said that couples come together to solve problems from their childhood. My spirituality was affected because I also believed that falling in love was actually two souls coming together to promote their eternal healing and rise closer to God. What about the angle of evolution? If we don’t have the instinct to unite some of us, we would surely go extinct, right? Still, those damned words of Goethe are so clear to me. If falling in love has nothing to do with her, then surely something must be wrong with me.
When I fall in love, I lose the limits of my ego. All I think about is being with her.
I don’t eat I lose interest in important things like my job, my bills, and my friends. I’m moving a million miles a minute like a hyperactive kid… well, like a maniac. So I looked it up. Mania manifests as hyperactivity, grandiose behaviors, unreasonable assumptions, and sometimes high-risk behaviors. So that’s it, I’m manic! No wait! I also feel sadness, a kind of stressful depression. If her voice wasn’t on the phone, I’d rather not talk. I would die a thousand deaths waiting for my email to be answered. Did she read it? Is she Me she ignoring her? Is she reading another man’s email? Where is my cell phone? It’s charged? She would call myself to make sure it was working! I doubted myself constantly. I promised and prayed. Argh! I couldn’t get up from the couch, but I sure could jump to the window when I heard something like the sound of his car door closing. Of course, all the sounds were remarkably similar to the sound of his car door slamming shut. Isn’t that depressing? I looked it up too and now I’m manic and depressed (and obviously confused).
So what triggers this love affair? Why her and not her (headless from left to right). Why now and not then? The clear and brutal insight I gained from Mr. Goethe’s simple question is that falling in love is the start of a completely selfish mood swing that manifests itself in behaviors described as mania, followed by (and often preceded by) depression. I also searched for that. The Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual (DSM IV) defines these alternating mood swings as Bipolar Disorder. That’s all! I have a mood disorder!
Now, I was ready for a relationship when this last one came up, so I can rationalize why I ignored the red flags. There was the old boyfriend who loved but didn’t love the thing about him, the “let’s go slow” thing, the “let’s be friends” thing, the “my animal totem is a turtle” thing. Flags? What flags? I did not care! Sure, I can be a friend. Yeah, slow is good, sure, sure, I can do it slow. Hell, he would have done anything: he just wanted a girlfriend. I could see that she was starting to fall for me too. Well, she tried it herself, anyway. There was the come here go thing, the wonderful hugging and kissing cafes by the river one day, but the next day I would feel like an autism therapist…here turtle turtle. I was confused. I sought advice from my friends, my doctor, and the 7-11 employee with the bar on her tongue. In retrospect, I only heard advice that fit the bill for my manic episode. I ignored the fact that she cut me off from the rest of her life, except to meet another friend at the nine-hole or an after-work meeting from a previous job. I ignored my friends’ warnings about always being available. I heard the “Come out and win!” instead of “What’s in it for me, anyway?”
Until Wolfgang shared those words with me, I had found refuge in relationship books about being in love; that two people are brought together by a deep need to solve the problems of their childhood. Well, that seems pretty selfish now, doesn’t it? Still, I can’t give up a lifetime of finding excuses, reasons, and justifications for the emotional battles I’ve waged. I refuse to write off all that time I spent in therapy disengaging from my angry inner child again. Also, me and my little inner man finally have an agreement.
I will not abandon my hard-earned spirituality either, though there is this nagging thought that where I thought I had fallen in love with this woman, all these women, because our souls sought healing, the mood disorder now tells me that I am. I suffer from a combination of insufficient dopamine levels that slow the action of my neurological synapses and restrict blood flow through my limbic system, causing whatever that kind of thing causes. Well, mess or not, my God and my soul be still. Through the years and through the problems, I have found comfort in assigning a good part of the responsibility to my soul. He’s the big shot and obviously he doesn’t tell me everything, so for self-preservation reasons I think I’ll stick with it.
My behavior in the latter case was particularly troubling. She wouldn’t allow herself to fall for me and I didn’t handle it that well. She showed. Why is emotional dissonance so powerfully disruptive? Every day I lost confidence in something else; the postman, my golf swing, the sunrise. I would start spinning because the spam letter for twelve free CDs was misspelled with my name on it! I had days, even weeks, of misstep after misstep, as if the universe was trying to make a point. One day in particular I was having a terrible time. I was breaking bits, hitting my knee, selling a stock only to see it jump 30% two days later, couldn’t spell the value, and then I was alone on Valentine’s Day.
This was the most intense relationship I had ever been in. And I take as further evidence that what I learned was for me and had little to do with her. She was a catalyst for my journey, acting as a mirror or sounding board. Throughout this episode, I picked up one spiritual book after another; Heavenly Visions; Seat of the Soul; The four Agreements; God, we have Harley. I found solace in the rocks – spiritual vibrations to soothe my soul. I had my palms read, my chart charted, and numerology of my numbers. I would sit and listen to that drum CD while my visions took me swimming with a giant gecko lizard (my chosen animal totem at the time). jeesh! Is this love like the Lutherans taught me?
Like most people in the midst of turmoil, he knew he would pull through. She once said that she could handle the breakup of a relationship. Rejection was easier to handle than intimacy because she had more experience with failure. Well, isn’t that nice to say about how we live and learn in the 21st century (although she actually said it at the end of the 20th century).
Having a mood disorder is a heavy label for someone (although it becomes more popular as pharmaceutical companies increase advertising). It’s not as popular as codependency, but it’s coming, and with good reason. Just as we believed that the earth was the center of our universe, only to finally agree with Copernicus that we are not, and just as we believed that alcoholism was a moral dilemma caused by lack of willpower and moral turpitude , only to discover a genetic component, so we will find in the comfort of a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder the means (and medication) to accept ourselves a little more and cope with another day, through one more rejection. Of course, a new relationship might be easier if I’m on Depekote and she’s on Lithobid, we could be pharmacologically compatible. Only our therapist would know for sure. I read that fish oil helps this condition. Omega 3. It’s supposed to help frontal lobe blood flow, it’s good for the skin, and I only have to eat 24 goldfish a day because according to the book, it’s most potent when they’re still alive. I got the book at the airport from a bald young man in a robe.
Why is it a “disorder” anyway? Isn’t bipolar just another version of the individual? A wide variety of personality traits are needed to sustain our highly differentiated and complicated culture. Just because the teachers have to work harder and the parents get angrier and people like me end up in the sales or the carnival, why is that a disorder? I know people without labels who throw cigarette butts out of the car, don’t flush, order catalog cards in the library with Kleenex up their noses (I’ve got a cold, sorry) and even stick their finger at me because they don’t like my changing behaviour. lane. That is normal?
Maybe having a mood disorder is a product of evolution; proliferation and differentiation of the species. It is entirely natural for a segment of the population to have an attention span of seven seconds, alternating periods of mania (what mood was Newton in to create mechanistic physics by watching an apple fall?), and even a depression that hits us on vacation. busy. weekends: we seclude ourselves and free the roads for all that traffic. Heck, we’ll probably even save lives! We are great street vendors, artists, musicians, comedians, politicians, writers and therapists. We are also heavy alcoholics and drug addicts and are strong supporters of the gambling and tobacco industries, but that’s another story. I take some comfort in knowing that many important people were bipolar, including but not limited to Sir Isaac Newton (he redefined the role of the apple), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Leo Tolstoy, and Earnest Hemmingway.
I am recovering from this last brush with the Tortoise intact. One must wait for recovery time, time, time, I guess, I guess, I guess. I’m fine. I haven’t bounced in anyone’s arms. I haven’t descended on the pits of casino gaming or chocolate covered almonds (okay, maybe a pound or two). I’ve continued to meet women thanks to that canyahookmeup website, but these fine women don’t come close to the euphoric potential I demand for an episode. Maybe it’s okay to go slow and be friends first. I’m just not completely convinced that I’ll get what I need this way: a part of me wants that euphoria.
Am I better for experiences? Yes. I long ago embraced the principle that the only expectation I have for whatever I go through is to become a better person. Although I complain about love, moods and the Goethe quote, this new reality suggests that I stop looking for “the one” and not rely on constant excitement and euphoria. The next time I meet a woman who blows my mind, I’ll do well to remind myself that as pretty, shiny, and promising as she is, my attraction may be less for her and more for my Combination Disorder. of internal chemistry, instinctive need, a spiritual longing and some external trigger, probably a blue moon, a tide or some butterfly blowing wind in some far field. I’ll have to take it from there.