It begins

Several months ago, I started feeling poorly. I wasn’t ill in the traditional sense. I was gloomy, depressed, nervous and irritable all at the same time. I have had bouts of depression in the past before. I’ve even been put on medications to try and combat what a doctor told me was a “brain chemistry imbalance.” I don’t recall the medication ever really having any effect on me.

However, this was different. Christmas was not enjoyable. Neither was New Years. I felt indifferent to the football playoffs (of course, it didn’t help that the Buccaneers were a terrible team last year), which I had always watched from the first kickoff to final whistle of the Super Bowl (please don’t sue me for using your copyrighted phrase, NFL—I know I’m supposed to call it The Big Game or some other such stupid shit because you want to protect your stupid words,… then again, kiss my ass, NFL,… sue me,… I don’t have a cent anyway). I was unemployed yet finally working toward my Bachelor’s Degree (yes,… twenty-or-so years too late, I get it!). I was applying to graduate school and taking the GRE (which I smoked, by the way). But I didn’t enjoy anything. I totally lost interest. I insulated. I started ignoring my daughter, my wife, my house, my dogs, bathing, the television, porn,… you name it, and I forgot about it.

Then I got a job. I really thought that this would make a difference in my life. I thought if I felt like I was trying to make a contribution to the success of a new organization—as well as to the finances of my own household—I would feel different,… feel better,… finally pull myself out of this funk.

Except for this,… it was a job waiting tables. I hadn’t waited tables since the early 90s,… and I had forgotten how much I hated it. I once read a study that said the Number 1 most stressful occupation in the US at that time was being a Dentist,… the Number 2 was being a waiter. Jesus-Christ-on-a-Pony I hated that job. It certainly didn’t help that the upper management in the place was so trigger happy that they continually seemed to fire people at an alarming rate. I saw people fired in the middle of a shift. I saw servers fired in the middle of the dining room in the middle of a shift. I was told at one time (by someone I won’t name out of discretion,… okay it was Chef Jeremy,… I’ve never been good with discretion, fuck it) that I was, “fucking retarded and didn’t know how the fuck to do my job.” I would walk into the restaurant every day wondering if it would be my last,… if I would screw up so significantly that mine would be the next head on the cutting board (they didn’t use chopping blocks because they would have been too expensive).

Surprisingly, this environment didn’t help with my emotional state. Shockingly, I didn’t feel any better at the end of a shift than I did at the beginning, regardless of the fact that I may have pocketed a whopping $140 or so on a decent night. In fact, I felt worse. Much worse. I started having anxiety spells,… anxiety spells that began to incrementally become more significant,… anxiety spells that eventually led to full-blown panic attacks. There were times I would go into my walk-in closet, close the door so it was completely pitch black, curl myself into the tightest ball possible and cry uncontrollably for nearly an hour at a time. I was losing it.

And so I made a decision to try and cope more successfully with my contemporary situation by doing what I was absolutely certain would work: I drank more. Surely, increasing my alcohol intake would make me feel better. Yes, I know that alcohol is “technically” classified as a depressant. But I knew what the fuck I was doing and who the fuck were you to question me on how I wanted to live my life? I had identified my new coping technique,… and it tasted like beer,… lots of yummy, delicious beer. I had always been a beer drinker. I had a period in my early twenties where I tried to become more refined,… I attempted to drink scotch or bourbon or some-other-such brown drink because that’s what REAL adults did. But when I did, I became belligerent and difficult to deal with—and the hangovers were so much worse. I went back to beer. And I stayed in a beer bottle for the next twenty years. I would submit to you that I never went a full three days without drinking at least a couple of beers a day for that entire period of time. I drank beer,… it was what I did,… it was part of who I was,… it was just a natural extension of my personality, wasn’t it? In fact, it enhanced my personality,… the only problem was that my personality was that of a complete asshole.

The moods started swinging between depression so debilitating that I couldn’t even leave the closet,… much less the house,… to anger so sharp that it developed into a rage that made me unrecognizable to myself. I truly felt like I was losing it. I was not going to be able to hold on to my waning grasp of reality for much longer. I REALLY WAS GOING CRAZY! I haven’t even mentioned the developing mistrust of everyone and paranoia I had started experiencing.

That’s when the people I love and who—I’m pretty sure—love me stepped in. They urged me to go speak to someone about my condition. Then they begged and pleaded with me. Then they threatened to put me into a 72-hour observation period in a hospital against my wishes (the infamous Baker Act here in Florida).

I got it finally, and an appointment was made to see a fully-licensed, competent, highly-recommended psychiatrist. This guy was going to be a mix between Mister Fucking Rogers and Doctor Fucking Phil, I thought. Oh, it was going to be all candy and nuts for Christmas, I thought. I resented people for demanding this drastic step of me. I didn’t need this. I wasn’t so bad off that I needed to go see a psychiatrist.

Then there came the weekend that I had to call off from work three days in a row because the panic attacks were so deep that I thought I’d never get out. Tranquilizers prescribed my regular physician weren’t enough to combat these attacks. I truly thought the only way to feel any better was to keep taking these tranquilizers until I could finally catch my breath. Until this thought occurred to me,… one more of these tranquilizers, and I might just get so relaxed that my lungs would decide for me that breathing wasn’t so necessary for me anymore. Okay,… so maybe the psychiatrist was an option after all.

I went to see him the following week. I sat there for an hour filling out paper work and then another fifteen minutes waiting for him to come into the examination room. It was a comfortable little room with really shitty paintings hanging on the wall. Now, I’m no art critic, but if this was what this guy considered real artwork, I’d have to reserve my judgment on anything he said being worthwhile. I sat there and guzzled water out of liter-sized bottle and coffee out of the largest cup 7-11 had to offer. I didn’t like this guy already and I hated him for what he represented in my mind—failure,… failure so significant that I needed to seek someone out just to help me whistle my way through a cloudy fucking day.

He came in. He smiled. He introduced himself. And I found myself liking him,… the smug jagoff. He listened to me for about forty-five minutes. I explained my current situation very similarly to the way I’ve written it here. I talked to him about my previously diagnosed Clinical Depression from a dozen years ago. I told him how the medication never really seemed to help back then, but that talking to a mental-health counselor weekly did provide me some relief—at least temporarily,… for a day or two. He listened. He nodded. He pecked out notes on his shitty little laptop with a screen that certainly was no bigger than nine inches—I remember thinking for the very first time that size, indeed, does matter. He handed me Kleenex for the tears and coasters for the water and now-empty coffee. And he let me finish. Then it came time for him to speak.

He told me that he thought I had been misdiagnosed all along. That clearly what I suffered from was not simply Clinical Depression. That I was having to deal with more complex issues than an anti-depressant would combat.

And then,… he said it,…. “I think you’re bipolar.”

Next time,… living with the stigma.