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How I Deal With My Bipolar Brain: Listen to the Giant
A Twin Peaks brain hack
As I’ve written elsewhere, I have a tricky bipolar brain. I never quite know how to describe this, but it’s like: Sometimes, I suddenly find myself walking in dark waist-high water nobody else can see. Sometimes I walk into an invisible noose hanging down from the sky and don’t know how to get out. Sometimes I can’t remember a single good thing about myself, and I’m so angry and embarrassed about this fact that I spontaneously combust like a trash fire.
Mine is also an alcoholic brain (7 years in recovery, but the -ism is still in there, trust and believe), a brain recovering from perfectionism and people-pleasing. It can loop old hurts until I’m playing mental tennis with a person who isn’t even there. It is, if these things matter to you, a Virgo sun, Pisces moon, Leo rising brain: detail-oriented, with a tendency to wallow in emotion and a persistent desire for more attention. It is a massively creative brain, spitting out hundreds ideas daily which range from short stories I should write to ways to destroy the Amazon empire to a promising tamarind salad dressing. It frequently wakes me up in the middle of the night looping a verse from a Lekeili47 song.
It is, in short, a fun (and sometimes challenging) place to live.
