I can feel myself slipping into an abyss. I could be sliding into depression or a mixed state if I can’t stop it from happening. Just so we’re all on the same page, a mixed state is a mixture of mania and depression (e.g., feeling depressed and irritable but also having racing thoughts and being unable to sleep). I’m being overly cautious—at this point I might just be feeling a little down or in a bad mood, but I can’t sit around and do nothing while I see what pans out. That’s not how having bipolar works (or should work). To try to explain how I’m feeling—I feel sad, like the smallest little thing, happy or sad, could bring on tears. I feel like an impending doom is slowly coming toward me. I don’t feel confident about myself or my social interactions. I am irritable. I am forgetful. And on and on.

It’s not surprising at all. I figured bipolar symptoms would emerge eventually with the presidential election looming, since it is likely to be the most influential election in our lifetime. The COVID-19 pandemic is still going strong and causing havoc in everyone’s lives. In addition, autumn is always an uneasy time of year for me. It is the time of year when I got diagnosed, and every year since, it has been a struggle to remain stable in September and October. I want to fully bask in the colorful beauty and mild weather of the fall, but my edginess always gets the best of me. Perhaps it’s the (what feels like) abrupt change from summer to fall, including less sunlight (here’s a good article about seasonal patterns in bipolar). Change can be tough for anyone, but it is certainly no friend to those of us with bipolar. There’s a bunch of other stuff that I am currently dealing with, household drudgery and other health annoyances. I won’t bore you with a laundry list of vexations, but one is peculiar: my right earlobe somehow got infected, a first after getting my ears pierced back when I was four. I should probably see a doctor, but I keep thinking it’s getting a little better. Still, I have thought jokingly, I wonder if I’ll end up losing my ear? Then van Gogh, long suspected of having bipolar, and I would have two things in common.

There’s all of that going on in the background and then on Friday, I had a really bad day at work, which is uncommon. It just felt like one thing after another was either going wrong or changing. Then on Monday (Indigenous Peoples Day), my parents and I took my daughter Pearson to Mingo Creek County Park, and we were having a great day. Pearson splashed in the creek, played in the leaves, and had a blast on the playground. But while she was on the swing she fell and got hurt. It ended up being nothing serious, but it was my fault. She was laying on her belly swinging with her arms stretched toward me, and I was grabbing her hands, holding her for a beat, and then letting her swing back. One of these times it didn’t go as planned, and she slipped out of the swing as she swung back and hit the ground hard. Her mouth was bleeding, so I initially thought she knocked some teeth out. She ended up with a small scratch on her forehead, a swollen upper lip (not too bad really), and a decent-sized brush burn on her neck. Her lip bled for a minute and she cried briefly, but soon enough she wanted to run around again on the playground. However, for me it was a major blow. I felt and still feel terrible that it happened, that she was scared when she fell, that she had visible cuts from my mistake. I should’ve known better, even though we’ve played that game a thousand times on our swing set at home. But this was a different swing set—the swings were much larger and heavier, and maybe I misjudged how long to hold her hands. I’m not sure what happened, but I feel extreme guilt about it, even though she says she feels fine and nothing hurts anymore. The next day was picture day at her school, so the guilt was amplified even more. She didn’t care at all, but I feel bad that she won’t look as good in her pictures. Not for me, but for her, if that makes sense. And now I have to go into another week of work after that terrible day on Friday.

This is how it goes sometimes. For me, if I have a lot of things not going right all in a row, my bipolar can be triggered. I didn’t have to figure out what to do to attempt to stop the depression or mixed state from coming. After 20-plus years, I know instinctively what to do, and this is my plan. I plan to talk to some of my people this week. “My people” are my closest friends and family, the people who lift me up without trying. The people who love me, and if I tell them about how I’m feeling, they won’t patronize me. They will let me know that they love me, let me talk, and probably will say something silly to make me laugh. I won’t call all of my people, but I will call a couple of them. They are in a rotation, like pitchers on a professional baseball team. I don’t need them all at once, and this way I don’t feel like I’m overburdening any one person. Trust me, I loathe having to deliver the news that I’m not doing well. I know that they will be worried after the call, even if they say they aren’t, even though in my mind they should not be. This is normal life for me, but not for them, and I get that. They will be concerned, but I need them. They know that, and they have assured me over the years that they want to be there for me. So I let them. It took many years for me to let them, and I’m so glad I got there.

I will also go to bed on time each night, which means 9 PM and not 9:30 or 10 PM like I sometimes stretch it. I will do my best to eat healthy. I will avoid caffeine, which I’ve already been trying to do because of all the election chatter, but sometimes I slip up. I won’t slip up now. I will exercise. I will shower at least semiregularly. I will take my vitamins. I will take extra Seroquel, which is the rescue drug I use in situations like this. 

There isn’t much more I can do besides not overextend myself with activities and projects inside the house or out. If I feel myself slip a little farther, I will contact my doctor. I could do that now, but I still feel like perhaps I’m overreacting (like with the earlobe). Perhaps I’m just having a few bad days in a row. This is how it goes. It can be really hard to tell, and it’s a total mindfuck. With bipolar, you have to live through the bad days that everyone has and then see what pans out—will they trigger an episode? I hate the uncertainty of bipolar. I do what I can to stay well, and sometimes it’s not enough.