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Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003 - 6:19 p.m. TAKING A KNEE During a football game, when the clock is running out before halftime and a team is being blown out its opponent, the quarterback typically will kneel so that the clock runs out and the players can go into the locker room and regroup. This New Year, as usual, I will be doing just that. Once again, I will likely be loveless this New Year, and I will be forced to take a knee so that I can start a new half. When I was a boy, I used to look forward to the holidays with such anticipation. In fact, I even believed in Santa Claus, not because my parents told me there was one, but because I wanted there to be one so that the possibility that a magical world beyond my ordinary, sometimes miserable life might exist. Over time, as my soul wept through my horrible adolescence, this magical world could not withstand the dark storm of cynicism that began to fill my life. No matter how generous people would try to be toward me, I felt hated and unloved. Christmases became nothing but celebrations of loneliness and despair. Two Christmases ago, the first Christmas after my diagnosis, I came home from my Houston-Chicago back-and-forth job, and basically sat through my Christmas like a lobotomized vegetable. No one cared to talk to me, and when they tried to, I would tell them to leave me alone. I sat there realizing that I might be that way my entire life, with any hopes and dreams I once had swept away. I knew my job was headed down the toilet, I saw my physical appearance becoming repulsive, and I could not carry a conversation because I did not possess enough mental faculty. Inside I cried, but my drugged-out body could not express my sorrow. The next Christmas I had been on a six-month break after having been relieved of my Houston job and was on half the medication. I had been interviewing for jobs in the New Orleans area and had landed one after the start of the New Year. I actually began to see some light at the end of the tunnel because I knew I might be able to function normally again. However, I did not even care in the least bit about whether or not I had a social life. At that point, just being able to enjoy the company of my parents, the only ones who seemed to care for me during that difficult time of my life, was all that was important to me. Right before I began my New Orleans job, I took a trip to California to see my aunt and two of my bipolar cousins. The one I spent most of my time with, I will name him Pete, is a dual-diagnosed bipolar, meaning he is also alcoholic. He spends most of his time “in between successes,” as he calls it, because he has difficulty holding down jobs. Despite his employment difficulties, he is very instrumental in promoting alcoholics anonymous, and has even founded a chapter in his area exclusive to dual-diagnosed bipolars. He is a great inspiration to me because despite his hardship he is always trying to help other people with their problems. The illness has nowhere near affected me as much as it has affected him, so when I think of how bad things are for me, I think of his struggles and realize how lucky I am. I experienced my next Christmas near my current, most effective, level of medication and after having worked for the state for seven months, including my first “crunch.” Instead of taking time off after the crunch, I continued working. I thought that work would help distract me from the insurmountable truth that was looming over me. At age 25, I still had no social life, no friends, and certainly no romantic prospects. It was much easier for me just to concentrate on my job than to try to fill these giant gaping holes in my life. The pain of my loneliness was becoming impossible for me to escape. At the time, I had an extreme distrust toward mental health professionals, particularly after my experience with my first therapist and all those really bad psychiatrists who put me on one drug after another without ever understanding what they were doing. However, I tried to put all these issues aside and went to see another therapist. Our initial interaction was not a pretty sight. I fought him tooth and nail. I went there and argued with him. I insisted there was nothing in me that another person could love. I insisted that everything I would try would fail. I insisted that everything was hopeless, that my life was a wreck that could not be salvaged. He basically told me that if all I wanted to do is go in there and argue with him, there was nothing he could really do for me. So I stopped seeing him. So another year went by and I went to work every day, came home every night, maybe worked out, ate and then went to bed. Even if I wanted to get a life going, my job made it difficult because it had me doing projects out-of -town. Outside of work, my life was spent in misery trying to find anything that could occupy my mind without having to deal with people. No one gave a shit about me, I felt at that point, so why even bother. I hated my condition in life and wanted to do something, but by that time, the next “crunch” started. After the crunch, I took time off work and did my trip in solitude to the Florida Keys. As I sat on the sunny, peaceful shore of Long Key, I decided I would go back to that damned therapist and do whatever he told me. After a few sessions with my therapist, I thought I might need an outlet for all the hardships I was trying to overcome, all the anxiety I was having to face, the extraordinary vulnerability that would be exposed, and the history that would always follow me. Thus began “The Experiment.” So far it has had its ups and downs, but I still believe the most interesting part has yet to be written. However, this holiday season, I looks like I will be taking a knee. But the game is far from over. |