When You Have to Box Your Way Through Rapid Cycling Bipolar

I have symbols tattooed on my arm. In case I forget. In case, one day, I wake up in a strange place, in a strange mind, sans words or weapons, behind the guise of the mental health system. These symbols represent stages, tenets, of a very large thought. Mental martial arts, if you will. They keep me boxing; they keep me sane and functioning. I worked hard to formulate these ideas. Many brain cells were sacrificed over the years in the name of progress, many before I was ever diagnosed with anything.

• What is Bipolar disorder?

The institutions of intervention, official and familial, never did much for me in terms of, well, intervention. So I fought and learned. Boxed and studied. Sacrificed and trained. It’s been a never ending journey back and forth to the blackboard from my seat. I have formalized the conditions of severe retribution and retaliation for my natural state.

It sounds like a little much. It is. It’s necessary.

Rapid cycling bipolar doesn’t ruin my day anymore.

But it tries.

No one has any clue that I cycle randomly throughout the day at work. The medications stifle it to a certain extent, yet my mind is essentially a random idea generator. Don’t be fooled, by “idea” I just mean a stream of thought. They can be helpful, harmful, distracting or the ever popular all of the above. I’m not sure if anyone can appreciate what this means. My mind never stops. Ever. It’s a constant stream of associative thought and imperceptibly swift mood changes. This is not particularly useful at work.

It’s a condition of constantly having 12 to 15 thoughts on the tip of one’s tongue. It’s a condition of the three stooges all trying to cram through the door at once and ultimately failing upon all three counts. So, enter the training. I’ve spent the requisite 10 thousand hours to master the craft of meta boxing, of essentially bullfighting this associative stream of madness. It streams. I wouldn’t say I ignore it, but I just don’t actually engage it. Through detachment, I kind of let it dance by itself in the corner like that friend who has had too much to drink.

Unfortunately, that dancing companion is my main consciousness, which means I’m not left with a ton of weaponry to deal with my surroundings. My tattoos and the invisible scars from a lifetime of conscious battle cling to my mind as I interact on various levels, without the use of most of my available brain power. It seems to work well enough, though. Aside from certain idiosyncratic behaviors, I manage. My speech can be stunted or stuttered on occasion, though, as I sometimes struggle for the correct words to reflect thoughts on that secondary platform. Sometimes I just can’t get ahold of them at all and must remain silent. Writing is a different story, so I try to express as much as possible that way.

No one at work has any idea, to my awareness, that I’m not speaking to my capabilities, that I’m sacrificing brain power in an effort to control myself. It’s been a struggle, from time to time, to accept that many of the people I know don’t actually know me very well. I have thoughts, ideas that go beyond casual conversation. I walk around, and I see the angles, I see the subtleties of situational dynamics. Through the process of controlling myself, through all of the symbolism on my arms, I have learned how operate within those angles.

Every day is a boxing match. Every day is an opportunity to demonstrate the skills I have acquired. Detachment is but the first of seven symbols. Overt associative streaming is but the first opponent. Every day I practice my martial arts, and every day no one has any clue. Perhaps one day I will speak my mind.

In the meantime, I box. It’s what I do.