One of the interesting things about mental illness is the
questions it causes us to ask ourselves. I’ve been diagnosed Bipolar I for 5
years so I’ve experienced quite a lot in the realm of emotions, but there are
two, or rather one and a nonentity, that have always confounded me. The lack of
emotion, or emptiness, and anxiety.
The way I describe bipolar depression to people is the lack
of any feeling at all, it’s not tearful sadness, it’s a vast wasteland of
nothingness. When I experience it, I, much like Muslims with their art,
experience a horror vacui, or, fear
of emptiness (I’m currently reading a book on Muslim art and architecture so I
thought I’d throw that in there ;)). I thought nothing could be more like hell
than the day-pre-diagnosis-that I laid in the chapel of an empty church crying
out to feel God, to feel anything, and felt nothing. I will never forget the
stained glass of that tiny chapel.
The other emotion that stupefies me is anxiety. I’m not
talking about the feelings of being worried over a test or whether the girl you
like will say yes to going on a date with you. Circumstantial anxiety. I’m
talking about the clenched stomach, fast heart rate, sweaty palms,
absolutely-no-reason-for-it-at-all clinical anxiety. I went through months of
gut-wrenching days and nights, drinking myself under a table, before I finally asked
my psychiatrist for a pill. The Klonopin helps, it just makes me run into
things (lack of orientation is a side effect). When I was deep in the throes of
anxiety, I begged God to take it away, even to give me the abyssal emptiness
instead. I didn’t care, I just didn’t want to feel like I was falling at every
moment.
Tonight, I sit as the rain gently falls on my windows and my
lavender candle crackles in the background. Oh, and the pink noise, my infamous
comrade in combatting sleepless nights. There is a collection of Hemingway
short stories that I’m working my way through (although I particularly savor
his writing and never want it to end, the conclusion of A Farewell To Arms left me gasping for breath). And I feel it. Not
the anxiety. The emptiness I so prayed for. I’ve been staring at the bookcase
across from my bed for an hour and now I wonder: was this a good wish?
*The title of this blog post comes from a lyric from a First Aid Kit Song called Shattered & Hollow
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