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THIS IS ME TRYING

Lizzie

MARCH 12, 2004

I F THE MANIC STAGE WAS EUPHORIA AND THE DEPRESSIVE STAGE WAS HELL, THEN THE euthymic stage fell somewhere in between.

For a person like me, the third stage was the goal.

For a person like me, the third stage was the hardest.

While the second stage was crippling and the third was mundane, the first was world-shattering.

The sneaky part about being manic was the allure. In the throes of an episode, I felt invincible, like my brain had been switched to an exciting new frequency and I was suddenly seeing the world through a new lens.

An exciting lens.

An addictive lens.

A lens that spared me from feeling empathy and guilt and all the other crushing emotions that consumed me during the depressive state.

It was an altered state of mind that distorted my view of the world and snipped the wire inside my brain that linked my conscience to the consequences of my actions.

The clearer my mind became, the worse my guilt grew. Because with clarity came consequences and I was drowning in mine. Months of fluctuating moods had resulted in my world imploding around me, and the medicine flushing through my veins provided me with a glaring itinerary of proof.

I couldn’t run from it.

I couldn’t hide.

All I could do was sit on my bed and work through the guilt, shame, and self-loathing.

I wasn’t ready to go home yet, not even close, but the urge to race back home, fall to my knees in front of Hugh, and beg for his forgiveness was potent.

He was suffering the consequences of loving a person like me.

I knew I would break him back when we were children. It was the reason I tried so hard to push him away when I was manic. Problem was, I never thought it through until it was too late. I was under some false assumption that I could somehow live without the boy that breathed air into my lungs when nothing had ever been more impossible.

He was brave and honorable, and I had taken that away from him. I had taken his shiny halo and tarnished him beyond repair.

I remembered the boy he used to be before everything went dark, but I had a real hard time remembering the girl I used to be.

She was so faintly imprinted in my memory that I doubted she ever existed to begin with.

The doctors explained the episodes to me and assured me that I wasn’t a sex addict, but that I experienced bouts of severe hypersexuality when I was in the throes of mania.

When the depression kicked in, I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I didn’t want anyone’s hands on me.

The doctors told me that was okay.

That these feelings would come in waves.

They wouldn’t always be present.

At the hospital, I was screened for a wide range of sexually transmitted diseases, and thankfully, all the results came back clear.

Afterward, I was offered a birth control implant in my arm to prevent pregnancy for three years.

I took it.

Because I was a mess.

The equivalent of a human wrecking ball.

Everyone and everything I came into contact with ended up ruined, and I didn’t need to bring any babies into the world and ruin them, too.