but all I see is penguins.
And when I finally see the polar bears,
I'm still painfully aware that I'm floating...
On an iceberg.
I wrote this poem for my poetry class last semester, and I thought it was a break through. I was so excited because I finally found a way to express exactly how I felt. After years of not understanding, I could finally put it down on paper in a quick stanza. And I was so excited to tell the people who knew...but they aren't poetically inclined, so it sounded like a poem about penguins. So I thought-- I'll have it anonymously presented in my poetry class and see how they like it.
They didn't get it.
And that's kind of how it feels being bipolar. Even when some part of it finally makes sense to you, nothing can help other people understand, because they don't speak the language. And that's the most disheartening part.
I haven't been super down for the past year. I mean, not like I was during the diagnosis phase. But I haven't been super up, either. Well, I was for a time.
See, if you don't understand this poem, let me break it down for you.
They call it bipolar. Meaning you're supposed to experience both the high and the low, right? You're supposed to see both "poles;" be both on top of the world, just as you are underneath it. But I feel like I'm mostly at the bottom (which, given, is bipolar II). And therefore, I'm seeing penguins (because they only live at the south pole). But when times get good, like when I'm up and seeing the polar bears, I know that I'm unsteady. At any point, I could go straight down to the bottom again. And I'm floating. I am always isolated, in a way. And the cold is like the medication--even if I'm feeling good, it's because of a chemical in a pill. I'm still dissociated, in a small way, from my real self. And I can never get back to her.
I feel a lot better now. But I don't know if I'll ever NOT feel numb like this. Because every time I feel like I'm normal again, I remember....I'm not.
