Mother's Day

I love my Mum, but I don't do Mother's Day. We have come to an arrangement.

Now, let me explain. For some reason, be it the alignment of the stars, the change in seasons or insert clever anecdote here, this time of year hates on crazy people like me. This is the first Mother's Day in six years that I have not been either too depressed to drag myself out of bed or too manic to tell the difference between my mother and a large pineapple.

The worst Mother's Day we've had together was in 2008. It involved a nine hour car trip from Victoria and me at my most manic. I was hospitalised the very next day. The old man was driving (he is very old school in that respect, driving is the job of a man). I was on the back seat obsessed with my iPod, playing certain songs over and over again at a volume which Im surprised hasn't done permanent damage to my hearing. Over the course of this nine hour Mother's Day journey, my darling mummy would have looked over her seat to check on me over a hundred times. Completely powerless to do anything but concerned about me so much that on her special day I was probably the only thing she thought about.

I tend to burn people out. I have a few good friends that somehow put up with me and I hope they stick around. Even if they try though, they will never view my bipolar as intimately or with as much compassion as my mother does.

She deals with the fallout of my manias. She has seen me lie in bed for weeks on end. She knows me at my worst and at my best. While she hasn't been the most helpful to my mental wellbeing at times, she has given more than her best to understand and do whatever she possibly can to ensure I stay in the world of the living. My mother is very stubborn as far as I am concerned. She brought me in to the world all those years ago and has spent the rest of my 21 years making sure I stay in it.

At this point, I wish I could climb the moral mountain and tell you all that every day should be Mother's Day. That we should love and respect our mothers every day of the year. I only wish it were that simple. When you have a mental illness like bipolar, you never know from one day to the next how capable you will be of loving and supporting those around you.

Mental illness is in it's very nature selfish. You try pretending you are Yaweh for a day and then tell me it is anything but self-centred. Those around you feel it most and I know this because I have experienced the other side of the asylum. I attribute the fact that I am still around to rant at you mostly to my family but particularly my mummy.

My mother is caring and understanding when no one else is. I can have a screaming match with her one minute, shortly after discover I need help with something and know I can still turn to her. She is the most selfless person I know and will ever know. All she asks of me in return is that I follow my dreams, stay true to myself and have a conversation with her once in a while. She cares. Not just for me but for every person that is lucky enough to know her. My role models aren't famous people. They are people like my mum that do what they do day in, day out without recognition because it is just the person that they are. She is a gold standard. Someone whoose blood I am very proud to have flowing through my veins.

I urge you all to love, respect and appreciate your mother's. Be it on Mother's Day or another random point in the year of your choosing. When the appocalypse is upon me, be it zombie or other wise, when things are just FUBAR, there is only one on this earth that gives me a 100% guarantee that they will be in my corner of the proverbial ring. I am just hoping when mania strikes again, I am sound of mind enough to know the difference between my mother and a large pineapple.

Happy Mother's Day to all you amazing mummies out there but particularly mine. When the day comes that I have to put you in a home, I will make sure it is a nice one.

With all my love and never enough gratitude,

Your mentally unstable Son.

Stay awesome.

Max Power

Shocker! I was in one of my favourite establishments for the purveyance of my beloved amber fluid the other night. It was here that I had a rather interesting yet somewhat puzzling conversation with a friend of mine.

You see he, like me he finds it somewhat problematic containing his mood within any sort of completely functional range. It was in between the gulps of fermented beverage and the usual shit talking he shared with me a fun fact. A fun fact which at first, I could not quite comprehend.

The title of this blog refers to where I like my brain to be, right of the center. A little bit on the high side and going fast enough so that if you ever get me to be quiet, you might just hear the whizzing sound it's fans make. My friend, lets call him 'Max Power' as my hair is super dry at the moment feels completely the opposite. To Max, being a little left of center, that slight blue twang is what sees him at his most functional.

At first I was baffled by this statement. To me it seemed a conflict of interest that Max could derive enjoyment from being slightly depressed. As the conversation evolved, I gained understanding and it gained the thought-provoke attack.With bipolar, while it is never black and white we really do get the best of everything. There are both positive and negative elements to all the mood states; high, low and mixed.

The highs give us a taste of invulnerability, confidence, creativity and the incredibly fun ability to embrace ones inner 5 year old. I would continue but I do not want to make you mentally sound types jealous. In short, imagine the best you've ever felt be it drug induced or else ways and imagine doing it for months on end, without the drug or whatever else it is that floats your boat. For me, the highs come with an incredible productivity. I sleep less, do more, think harder, better, faster and stronger.

To the lows, as Max put it, they give us poise. You get the chance to sit back and reflect with an incredible thoughtfulness that comes with thinking more inwardly. While the productivity takes a knife to the eyeball, chances are what you write and or do is more profound. You feel things and take in things that the high you usually has fly right past him.The brain fans slow their pace, more of a calming breeze than a gusty head wind (terrible pun, deal with it!).

I've been contemplating why I like to be on the right side of the spectrum. I discovered that there are negatives to both sides of the tiny little fence in the middle I never quite manage to sit on.

Depression is not all that fun for me. It is something I try and avoid just like that strange red headed  midget I went to school with.... and of course chihuahuas. Being on the right means that if you stumble a little, you still maintain a tight grasp on life. I find it much harder to claw my way back to the world of the living when I am depressed than employing a sleep parachute to drop back down into reality.

On the other hand at the unrelenting ends of the bipolar rainbow, I would rather be severely depressed than ludicrously manic. With depression, I am still in control of my actions. I don't believe taking my own life is an option for me. I have been to the edge of the cliff and decided it is just a bit too far to jump. Plus, I am a big wuss.

With a mania, I am completely out of control. I could spend thousands of dollars on rubber chickens, think that they can make me fly and proceed to jump off the Empire State Building. Perhaps my delusions involve me becoming a martyr. I decide I need to save the sharks from the dolphins, go swimming in the ocean cleverly disguised as a whale to kill those pesky buggers in cold blood and then provoke some Japanese whalers into shooting me with a harpoon gun.

I would love to  wrap this post up with a suitably profound conclusion containing shiny and elaborate word play. If however you have made it to the end of this rather intense bit of word filled bile, I apologise that this monologue does not have a neater ending. Obviously my thoughts on Max Power's fun fact require more time down the pub to develop. I will wait till I have my next low and perhaps let you know how it pans out.

I sincerely hope you all got the reference. In case you didn't or you just love yellow people with eight fingers, another gem from the you of tubes. Just strap yourself in and feel the G's!

Stay right of the center or, if you prefer, to the left. I personally, kind of sort of maybe think that possibly I know where I want to be.

Stay Awesome.