Now...
..."Can't we all just get along?"
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Song's over: Activision cancels Guitar Hero series
The big news coming out of the video game industry today is Activision shutting down the Guitar Hero series: once one of the most insanely popular set of video games in recent history. The company cited declining sales as being the biggest factor in the decision to bring the "music 'n rhythm" series to a halt.
This reminds me a lot... a whole lot even... of the "video game crash" that took place between 1983 and 1985. This might come as a shock to the younger readers of this blog (ooh-boy am I dating myself here :-P) but once upon a time, video games were not "hip" at all. Ya see, in 1982 the Atari 2600 was the king of home video gaming. It seemed nigh-invulnerable. But within a year or two the home video game industry hit rock-bottom hard.
What happened? Mostly it was a market way over-saturated with games that were, well... crap. Turkeys like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (a title now infamous for how Atari paid the mob to bury millions of unsold E.T. cartridges in a New Mexico landfill) and Pac-Man (HOW did Atari mess that one up?!) did plenty enough damage, but so too did M*A*S*H and Porky's and Custer's Revenge (I refuse to even begin to describe what that game was like, it's so unbelievably... wrong).
Same thing has happened to the music game genre. Between Guitar Hero and Rock Band and seemingly "new" titles for those series every few months - not to mention the over-abundance of the gaming peripherals - there is simply too much music video gaming on the market right now.
I don't think the genre is ever going to disappear completely. But today's announcement from Activision is certainly gonna obligate the studios to re-assess where music gaming goes from here. Personally, I think it'll prove to be a good thing. It has mandated an obligation to be innovative. I've little doubt that music games will not only continue to be produced, but will also become better in the long run.
Congratulations to Denise and Nick...
...on the birth of their new son Olin!
What a beautiful little baby! God has certainly blessed them :-)
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
My prayer for this afternoon
My Heavenly Father,
This afternoon I ask for peace and comfort for those who need it most.
And for myself, I ask only for a peace of mind that I have been unable to know for so very long.
YOU GO GRANNY!! 75-year old woman stops SIX jewelry thieves with her handbag!
"I was not going to stand by and watch somebody take a beating or worse so I tried to intervene," said the sweet little lady in the red coat and white tights. The 75-year old retiree, who declined to give her name, witnessed a gang of six punks on motorbikes trying to smash their way into a jewelry store in Northampton, England with sledgehammers.
With store employees looking terrified from within as the droogs began pounding their way to the goods, "Super Granny" came running up the street and began beating the hoodlums with her handbag! She even knocked at least one of them off of his moped. Four of the six were arrested.
Witness heroism in action, dear readers!
Monday, February 07, 2011
BEING BIPOLAR: Video Log 2: Depressive Episode #1, "I Want To Live"
I was wondering over the weekend if this might happen. And unfortunately, it has now. I am writing and posting this video during a bipolar depressive episode.
I need to reiterate something: managing bipolar disorder doesn't mean that I'm going to be totally free of its effects. There will be times when I go through episodes of severe bipolar. But I am thankful that it doesn't have to ruin my life as it has before.
I said last week in the first Being Bipolar video supplement that I intended to document a bipolar episode if and when it happened. This is the first bipolar depressive episode that I have been able to record. I don't think there's anything in this clip that most people would at all consider "disturbing" but, I wanted to give a heads-up about all the same...
And Part 4 of Being Bipolar should be up later this week! :-)
Two upcoming new features on The Knight Shift
As if the Being Bipolar series wasn't enough: I'm about to put even more on this blog on a regular basis!
(Maybe it has something to do with the recent redesign of this place, that it's just demanding lots of new content...? :-)
The first is something that I've had in mind since Christmas, and is coming out of some necessity but also I think it'll be a lot of fun: Movies I've Never Seen! It's like this: my DVR is fast filling up with stuff that I've recorded from TCM and some other channels. And I haven't seen them yet. Like, not ever. Even though most of these are movies that I've heard of all my life! Well, I'm going to begin watching them, and posting reviews of them here. Expect that to start up sometime this week.
And then, there is something that... is going to be quite different.
It's like this: for awhile now I have been wondering if, well... I should perhaps consider going into ministry.
(Feel free to laugh at that. I don't mind. I find myself chuckling a little at it myself :-)
I could literally write thousands of words expounding upon that notion and why it is in my head and why I am entertaining both doubt and un-doubt about it.
Well, it occurred to me over the weekend that... maybe I should "try out" a bit what that would mean.
So beginning this coming Sunday... and I don't know what this will be about, 'cuz I really am just waiting for God to show me... there will be A Sermon A Week. And each Sunday for the next year, Lord willing, I will be posting a "sermon" (actually just a glorified essay) for anyone who might come across it.
To me anyway, that is gonna be much more interesting than Movies I've Never Seen. And hey, who knows: God might lead me to write a message based in some part on one of the films that I'm about to watch.
Well, like I said: Lord willing, this will be going on for the next year. And if I stumble and fall and fail to measure up to that goal well... I'll have tried. And I'll no doubt have learned something along the way (which itself will make this worth doing). But I really am going to aspire to go the whole way.
So then, expect the first chapter of Movies I've Never Seen in a few days and A Sermon A Week this coming Sunday! :-)
Sunday, February 06, 2011
GYPSY: Halfway through and more still coming!
One of the audience members was overheard today saying that this production of Gypsy by Theatre Guild of Rockingham County is one of the best musicals she has ever seen around here. And apparently she wasn't alone.
Last night's performance played to an almost solidly sold-out house! And normally there's a much smaller crowd for Sunday. Well, considering that this is a Super Bowl Sunday at that, I'd say it was about three-quarters full... which was impressive business.
It wouldn't surprise me if Gypsy sold out for this coming Friday and Saturday. And who knows: maybe even the final performance next Sunday. 'Twould be sweet!
So if this might be your first time enjoying the tale of the legendary Gypsy Rose Lee and her outrageous mother, or if you've seen the show many times (I met a lady today who saw the original Broadway run with Ethel Merman) you are in for a crazy good time! Gypsy runs for three more performances. Click here for more information.
(And I must say: I am exuberantly relishing the fact that I have the best line of the entire show :-P)
Today would have been the one hundredth birthday...
...of the last real President that the United States has had, and probably will have for a very long time to come (if ever again).
During the past week I've read a lot of "analysis" about the life and career of Ronald Reagan. Much of it done in the name of "demythologizing" the man: looking for the "true" Reagan, as it were. Most of it having to do with his actual record on taxes and the size of government (something that he was famously on record for wanting to dramatically reduce).
Ronald Reagan wasn't perfect. I don't know of any President that was (even George Washington gets demerits in my book for how he handled the Whiskey Rebellion). But, there is one thing, if nothing else, that will always make me consider Reagan to be the greatest President during my lifetime...
President Ronald Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union without firing a single shot or losing one life in combat on either side of the Cold War.
It didn't see fruition until the year after he left office. But it was the policies that Reagan began during his term that led to Russian communism bankrupting itself to the point that it could no longer be sustainable. Communism was going to fail regardless (it'll always look good on paper but in practice, well...). But its slow descent into ruin would have on its own most likely given the Soviet government enough desperation to conquer more territory... at terrible cost.
What happened to accelerate the Soviet Union's collapse? Three words: Strategic Defense Initiative. Yeah, the so-called "Star Wars" scheme. I'll never believe that Reagan seriously thought it was ever going to work. But the sheer idea of SDI was enough to drive the Soviet economy - already stretched thin 'cuz of its overwhelming military budget - to even worse levels of fiscal stress.
That might be the greatest stroke of statesmanship genius in any living memory. Certainly one of the finest in American history.
And if I need any more reason to think so highly of Reagan, it is this: sitting on a shelf just above my computer monitor, is a sizable chunk of the Berlin Wall. The wall that was going to last forever. The most tangible symbol of the Cold War. I'm looking at that stone-sized fragment of the wall even now: smeared in green and blue graffiti.
"Tear down this wall!", indeed.
So on this day, The Knight Shift raises a toast in memory of Ronald Reagan: All American.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Opening Night of GYPSY was a riotous good time!
Just got back from Opening Night of Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy and it was a scream! The house had a good crowd and everyone was laughing harder than I've seen in this county in a way long time!
Cigar (played by Yours Truly) and the talent of the Wichita House of Burlesque!
Left to Right: Tessie Tura (Ashley Pearson), Electra (Beverly Burke), and Mazeppa (Anne-Marie Castillo) 
I must admit: I wasn't sure about being in this show at first. But now I'm glad that I'm doing it. This has been some of the most fun that I've had in quite awhile.
Well, can ya blame me?
Left to Right: Tessie Tura (Ashley Pearson), Electra (Beverly Burke), and Mazeppa (Anne-Marie Castillo)
And here's me in my Cigar getup holding the real star of the show: Tebow Wasmund!
Now, I can't post any video from the show itself, 'cuz that would be some bigtime copyright violation (and in spite of my reputation that is something I have never approved of). But during rehearsal on Wednesday night we did make a few fun clips of myself in character as Cigar...
And here's the wildly talented Peggy Wasmund (yes, she's Tebow's owner) doing a completely surprise ad-libbed... performance.
I'm already looking forward to tomorrow night's show! Gypsy plays five more times between now and next Sunday. Click here for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's website for more information. Hope to see you there and... "let us entertain you!" :-)
Friday, February 04, 2011
My prayer for this day
I have to try. I can't not try.
I have only ever fought hardest for that which was worth fighting for.
I no longer know whether to expect anyone else to believe that. But my Lord and Savior knows.
Dear Father, please let all that I do be to Your glory, and not for my own sake.
I only ask that in Your own way, that You remember Your servant who has failed more times than not, but has ever sought to put You first.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
BEING BIPOLAR: Video Log 1
The idea hit a few days ago: as well as writing about having bipolar disorder as part of this blog's Being Bipolar series, that I could also do video entries as a supplement to the written material.
So today I went out and got a webcam and... well, here's the first one!
I intend to also record myself if/when a bipolar episode hits, and post the unedited footage of me talking about what it's like.
Expect more videos soon!
It's Batman! It's Scooby-Doo! It's... "Weird Al" Yankovic?!?
"It's the holy trinity of pop culture!"
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
For those following the BEING BIPOLAR series...
...and there are lots of you, apparently :-)
I am currently planning something of an experiment. If there are any questions - any at all, 'cuz there is very little that I have thought would be off-limits - that you have about bipolar disorder, e-mail them to me at theknightshift@gmail.com.
What I am particularly looking for are any questions that could be directed toward a person suffering bipolar, about what having bipolar is like.
Any question that you have about bipolar, shoot it to me. Y'all will be finding out sooner than later what this is for.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Meet the proprietor of the Wichita House of Burlesque!
He's cheap! He's sleazy! He's loud!
He's... Cigar!
Just got back from another technical rehearsal for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy. This was my first in costume as Cigar: the owner of the burlesque joint that Louise and her crazy mother (and Herbie, can't forget poor Herbie) wind up at. And I am having a fantabulously great time in the role! Cigar is one of the most fun characters that I've played yet!
By the way, that entire costume is something that I put together. The fedora is one I've had for a few years now. And that bow-tie: I remembered that bow-tie very well 'cuz for this fourth grade program we did at Community Baptist School many years ago, Dad for whatever reason thought it would be classy if I wore a bow-tie. That thing was positively humungous when I was nine years old! Everyone in the sanctuary - students and teachers alike - were giggling at it. And that made me start giggling when it came time for me to speak my part! Ahhh, where do our fathers come up with such things...
Anyway, for some reason that tie just popped into mind and Dad found it sure 'nuff. And between that and the fedora and the cigar and all... yeah, that looks like a burlesque owner from the 1930s :-)
Gypsy opens this coming Friday night! Come if you can. This threatenspromises to be the most outrageous production in Rockingham County history!
BEING BIPOLAR, Part 3: The Hell Curve
In Part 2 of this series, "Sketching Unquiet", I wrote about what bipolar disorder is as a medical condition, and then I attempted to roughly approximate what it’s like to live with it on a daily basis.
In the week and a half since publication I've re-read that installment of Being Bipolar at least a dozen times and the more that I do, the more I can't help but feel led to ponder and expound on it further. Now don't get me wrong: Part 2 was the best that I could have written... at that time. But the composition and publishing of "Sketching Uniquet" has not led cleanly to the Part 3 that I had originally planned.
Instead it has been like God is showing me "Chris, you wrote about your understanding of this and doing so has helped you to understand it even better... so write that this time."
See how this is working out, Dear Readers? Being Bipolar is not a series of retrospective reflections about living with a mental illness. Indeed, there cannot POSSIBLY be any "retrospective" at all. That would imply that I have completely conquered this disease and that it will never, ever again be something that I will be fighting against. That it will merely be something that I can look back upon and feel some measure of gloating about "Hey, I licked this!"
And that would be a lie. Because I am never going to completely lick this thing. Bipolar disorder has no cure. There is only a lifetime of controlling this as best I can this that I have to look forward to. And the more that I discover about my own condition the more I am learning how the struggle to manage bipolar disorder is as unavoidable as bipolar was at all.
Bipolar disorder was a disease that I was going to be hit with. I can see that now. It was a condition that I was born with as much as some are born with hemophilia or congenital heart defect. The only way that I would have known a life without bipolar disorder is if God Himself had allowed me to be mercifully free of it.
I've already written about how I have cried out to Him, especially during these past few months. What happened to precipitate that? Ironically it has been my own recovery from two years and more of the worst of bipolar that I have experienced (and Lord willing will always remain the worst that I have had to go through). Bipolar took away feeling from me. It took away sympathy and it took away empathy and it took away the capacity to fully love and feel remorse. As one good friend put it: I went through the past two years "numb" to most of the life around me. And then just before this past fall something finally "clicked" into the right place in my neurobiology and everything that I should have already been feeling on my conscience crashed down on me.
There is a thorn in my mind, that I have cried out to God to deliver me from. And still, He won't do it. "My grace is sufficient," He has told me just as He told the apostle Paul that His grace was enough to let that great apostle endure life with the thorn in his flesh. I do wish that God had never let me have this. Because I have to believe that I would have never have had to lose friendships, opportunities, and my marriage.
But, it was going to happen. Bipolar was set to strike me and there was nothing that I could have done about it...
...but there is plenty that I can choose to do about it now.
So, I can never be cured of bipolar disorder. But I also believe that God has a purpose for everything, and that for those who love Him that even the trials and tribulations of this life... no matter how painful and bitter they may be to go through... He can and will use not only to make manifest His wonder and majesty, but also to deliver us to greater things than we could possibly imagine.
The only "selfish" reason I have for doing Being Bipolar is because working on this series is helping me to explore and understand my own condition. Beyond that, I am doing this because I know what bipolar does to individuals and their loved ones... and I will do anything within my power and ability to spare others that unimaginably severe grief and suffering.
And, I am doing this for God. Not because I feel like I "have" to, but because I want to. If He has allowed me to have this condition, then I absolutely and sincerely do want to use this to give all the honor and praise to my Lord and Savior.
Isn't that what all of us who have chosen to follow Christ are meant to do, with the trials and tribulations in each of our lives?
We serve and follow a living God. He is shown to be great in our weakness and frailties. If I am strong for doing this series, it is only because He has brought me through worse than fire and fear.
And like every other trouble in life, this also is a means of growth and learning. So it is that I will never stop learning from being bipolar.
And I'll never stop sharing what I am learning from it.
And if I was always bound to have bipolar, well... I feel no small amount of gratitude that I am able to write about this.
So in the past week since writing Part 2 a new model (well, new to me anyway) of what existence with bipolar disorder developed and coalesced together in my mind, and it immediately occurred to me that many people would find this of immensely more help toward understanding this disease than any amount of words that I could write with that goal in mind.
I call it "the Hell Curve". And yes it is meant to be a play on words with "the bell curve" (quick, get me to a punnery! :-)
Now, math ain't my strongest suit (in fact I had to get some advice from a way smarter person than I'll ever be in the realm of higher numerical operations) but regardless of that, I am going to put into graph form how most people experience mood and emotion. And then I'm going to present what it is like for a person with bipolar disorder.
Here is how I pray you and everyone else reading this blog experience – more or less – normal mood during the course of your life...
A nice, simple sine wave. You have ups and downs. Mountains and valleys. Peak moments of joy and thrill and rock-bottom periods of sadness and depression. But even when you have your "down" times, you almost certainly know to expect a rebound back up. And I am aware that real life isn't that clean and neat. That it would be really nice if our moods could be so perfectly rhythmic. But that said, you gotta admit: that is a graph that suits the needs of visualizing normal moods.
It's something so beautiful, that it almost makes me cry to know that I can't know what it must feel like to have that day after day, week after week, month after month...
And going from left to right, that is your cycle (I hope) of mood through time. Keep that in mind. You, good reader, if you are so blessed, have a good ol' fashioned two dimensional representation of your moods.
That graph is nothing like what a person with bipolar disorder can know on a routine basis. Oh sure, there can and thankfully are periods that I can have "ups and downs" like most people. And I am glad that at last those periods are becoming longer and longer as I learn how to better manage my condition. I wouldn't be able to document and chronicle my own personal journey with bipolar if I wasn't at last afforded that because of medication and counseling.
But that isn't something that I dare believe that I have the luxury of finding complete rest from and letting down of my guard again.
This is the Hell Curve. Here is the graph for bipolar disorder...
At the moment I am writing to you from what I call the "Productive Life Zone" (sounds like something out of Star Trek, doesn't it?). This is where most people spend their entire lives at, without ever knowing any different. That is where I wish that I could have spent my entire life at. But the best I can do is strive and work and pray that I can maintain a presence there, for however long I possibly can. Within that zone, that narrow band of sense and rational mind, I am completely as good a person as anyone is likely to be.
The problem though is that as a person with bipolar disorder, I can not be perfectly secure in that zone. Because my own mind – if I cease to manage my condition - will begin to tear me apart between the wildest extremities of heightened mood and uttermost depression. Trust me: if I could I WOULD stay nestled and safe in that zone... and never have to endure the pain of being yanked violently between those two realms of wild emotion and agonizing darkness of mere being.
THAT is a picture of bipolar disorder, ladies and gentlemen. THAT is where I and many, many others must live and contend with every day of our existence. And I am glad that I can know and appreciate this now. I wish that someone could have shown me this graph a long, long time ago. It might have saved me a lot of pain. It might have saved others in my life more pain than they should have ever had to go through.
It is called the "Hell Curve" for a reason. Because if I can't maintain myself within that very slim margin of mental clarity, my life can, will and does become a living Hell. It turns into Hell for those that are closest to me and who I care about most. It is because I was incapable of abiding in that zone that I lost... well, darn nearly everything that I held precious.
Knowing where I need to be, where I must persist in being, I can have a life as normal and wonderful as anyone. But I've got my work cut out for me. I can't see going without medication and counseling for as long as I live. But I know where I want to be. I know the life that I do still want. And that is worth doing what I can to stay "in the zone".
Notice that the curve doesn't cycle up and down. On one side it soars and on the other it plummets. There is no upper and lower limit to the Hell Curve. If I were ever unable to stop – or for someone to help me stop – my mind from climbing in mood intensity, it would doubtless take me to a very dark place that would end... well, it would end bad. And if I were to slip into a state of bipolar depression that could not be abated, I would perhaps inevitably commit suicide. That is, if I didn't understand bipolar as well as I do now, because I do understand that this is part of the medical condition. It's not a part of the real me. But bipolar and suicide is something that I'm gonna go into further in an upcoming chapter of Being Bipolar.
On the "normal" sine wave for most people, there is mood across time. I noted that it's two-dimensional for "regular" people, right? The Hell Curve adds in a Z-axis to the graph (remembering my eighth grade Pre-Algebra class, which I never failed to give poor Mr. Hill no small amount of frustration... but I'm glad that I get to acknowledge now that I did learn something useful from him after all :-). The Z-axis becomes time proceeding for the bipolar person, so that's then mood across three dimensions. I'm trying to keep within the Productive Life Zone while working to manage my bipolar across time. Doing what I can to keep my mind from deviating toward one mood pole or the other.
And if I can stay within that zone, no matter how much time goes by, I know that I can and will have at long last the life that I have been unable to most fully enjoy until now. My being here has become a work of art in multiple dimensions, across a span of time and will continue developing and growing into what God would have it become, for the rest of my life.
So in a way, having bipolar disorder has helped me come to appreciate how beautiful and precious life really is. I don't know if I could have come to the perspective that I have now, if I did not have this to overcome.
And as one friend put it over the weekend: God never lets anyone be an overcomer if there is nothing to overcome to begin with.
But back to the Hell Curve. Again, I wish that I had been given this model years ago. It shows not only bipolar disorder and what it means to struggle with it, but it also has much to illustrate about how this can be an extremely difficult illness to give medical treatment to and to bring it under control.
The biggest example from my own life that I can think of was a time between late 2004 and around the middle of 2005. That was when I was working on my first film, Forcery. The one that spoofs Stephen King's Misery, but in our version it's George Lucas being held captive by an obsessed Star Wars fan. Forcery had been a personal dream of mine since getting the idea in 2001... even though I had no idea at all how to put a movie together.
Well, come summer of 2004 I had a script, a camera, and I had a great cast, including my lifelong best friend Chad Austin (who I persuaded or conned or something into playing George Lucas... and he did a terrific job in the part!). There were fits and misfires... not to mention how I nearly burned down my parents' house with some real fire... but come late fall of 2004, I had all the footage that I needed to assemble Forcery.
And then, my mind went from working at a hard creative high... to dropping like a stone without warning. It was as if as soon as the last bit of footage that we had shot was in the can, that I became totally drained. And not just of creative juice either: my mind rapidly and without any obvious reason became void and empty of all passion and desire.
It was a severe episode of bipolar depression. But I didn't understand that at all at the time. Or at least, I didn't completely understand what that meant. I didn't know what it was doing to me.
I struggled to find desire again. I struggled to find my energy and determination. Yeah, that is the word for it right there: my "determination". Where was it? To have that suddenly robbed from me was unendurable. Meanwhile the months were going by and creeping into 2005. I had set a goal for myself that Forcery would be finished in time for the premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Why? Not just 'cuz I thought it would be great publicity for my own film, but because I really did want there to be as much attention as possible, while the "iron was hot" so to speak, on the efforts of the film's cast. Chad Austin, I have known all my life. Melody Hallman Daniel, the amazing actress who played Frannie: well, she became a great friend too and I was seriously hoping and praying that Forcery might somehow propel her onto the big screen where her talents deserve to be.
(And in a way, I did succeed. Forcery, including Chad and Melody's performances, became included in the award-winning documentary The People vs. George Lucas. Chad and Melody are being seen on real movie screens all over the world right now! And I've heard that a lot of people have been enjoying Forcery for the first time because of it :-)
Anyway, back to the story. Time was against me. But my mind was against me even worse. It was like a thick heavy steel door in my brain, shutting me away from the DETERMINATION that I needed to tap into. But, I just couldn't get to it no matter how hard I tried to focus my mind on it.
In early 2005 my psychiatrist prescribed a medication. We thought it would elevate me out of depression and get me to a point where I could be functioning and creative and able to work again. I was totally debilitated in mind and... well, we had to try something.
The medication turned out to be a horrible, horrible mistake.
Did it take me out of the depressive leg of the Hell Curve and propel me toward the Productive Life Zone? Yeah. Yeah, it did that, most certainly. But the medication wouldn't STOP there either.
My ability to compel myself with drive and desire went from a state of near-zero, and shot up like a rocket to a place that I never, ever want to be at again for as long as I live.
I know of no other way to put it than this: the medication, which was supposed to work on one extreme end of my bipolar, drove me crazily toward the other end.
The medication made me feel almost God-like. And that was very, very wrong and I even knew that it was wrong!
But the sense of euphoria, the feeling that I could accomplish anything, was so intoxicating and overwhelming, that my mind couldn't or wouldn't make the connection to the drug that I was prescribed.
The people who have known me for most of my life will tell you: I have always been an inquisitive, curious, scholarly kind of guy. I read the entire World Book Encyclopedia in the summer after my second grade year. Things like science and politics and history and religion were what I was "into" as a kid, more than sports or whatever (although I did pretty good on the swim team in high school, but anyway...)
A friend in college once told me that I had a very analytical mind. But that it was keeping me from really enjoying the grace of God: that I should just accept God and His ways instead of trying to understand it (and if you ever read this, please know that I did finally get to that place and I'm thankful for your telling me. But, I'm digressing again...)
You can't begin to imagine what a mind like the one I have turned into, when medication drove it into what I have come to call a state of rampancy.
If I couldn't do anything because of bipolar depression, then accelerated bipolar thinking was even more hideous in its ability to incapacitate. Nothing became beyond my ability to take apart and comprehend. Look, I know what I'm talking about, because my mind did things... things that I wrote down even... during those few months, that I could NOT and WOULD NOT have ever done if the "real" me had been able to be at the controls.
What kind of things? I now have an understanding of God and the physical universe, and how His laws and its laws are not exclusive of each other at all but rather complement each other beautifully, that I did not have before then and likely would never have arrived at where it not for my mind going places that Thomas Aquinas would never have dared. I could practically see space and time and matter and energy working in ways that I hadn't realized before. Instead of being overwhelmed by the scope of the universe my mind began to comprehend it as was not possible previously. I could zoom my attention from the scale of a subatomic particle on through where I was sitting in a room on through the void between the furthest galaxies...
Somewhere in there I began to feel the desire to die.
No, not in the "Goodbye cruel world" sense that I'm sure my words have just suggested.
How do I put this? Okay: instead of being driven to wonder about suicide because of depression and the absence of feeling, now I was seriously wondering if dying might free me of the confines of flesh and allow me to become a creature of pure mind. Death wasn't a measure to escape an unendurable life. For longer than I have the heart to admit, death became something to consider pursuing to free me to exist in a whole 'nother and greater state.
Delusions of god-hood? Or was I thinking that I was only trying to be what God wanted me to be, were it not for things like hunger for food and desire for intimacy holding me back?
It was the most powerful that my mind has ever been. And looking back, I do realize that there was no delusion involved: my mind reached a place of comprehension and ability and understanding that... we aren't meant for. That none of us are meant for. That I certainly will never be ready for on this side of Heaven.
It was the rarest of the rare air that has driven some of the greatest of geniuses and artists to madness even unto the bitter end.
Two things kept me from destroying myself one way or another in that time. The first was Forcery, and knowing that I needed to finish it. That I should get it done for Chad and Melody, and for Ed, and for everyone else who helped me make that movie. And in each their own way, Chad and Melody and Ed helped me to keep it together not just for Forcery, but for long afterward.
The second thing was my wife. Who I will never stop regretting the pain that I put her through and wishing that I could take it all back. I don't know if I will ever see her again, this ended up destroying our marriage so thoroughly. But, I have to thank her. She was always the best reason that I ever had to persevere. If it were not for her, I have no doubt that I would not be here at all to write about this.
Well, it was too long before we understood that it was the medication that was driving my mind toward the other length of that cruel geometry. I went off of it in June of 2005. But by then I had become addicted to that particular medication. I'm still addicted to the drug, even though I haven't taken any in about six and a half years. Just as recovering alcoholics can't drink alcohol, so I also now have a well-developed relationship with this drug. It was many months of "coming down" and "detoxing" it from my system and my psyche... and it only served to add even more pain and confusion to what I was already going through because of the bipolar. Part of the summer of 2005 I felt great sadness and sorrow for what I had done. I cried a lot. My wife told me that she was proud of me for working through it.
I want to believe that she would still be proud of me. I am always going to be grateful to God for the time we had. I am a much better person for her being in my life than if she had not. And I doubt there are many ex-husbands who will ever be able to say that.
I want to believe that everyone who I have been blessed to have had in my life would be proud of me for what I am doing now, that I am talking about having this illness. Praying that this will find its way to others who would need to read what one has gone through with bipolar. Praying that this will help steer others clear of the suffering that I and too many in my life had to experience.
I will always be living on the Hell Curve.
But I thank God and I thank the many people He has put into my life, that it's not a curve that I have to be graded on.
Very special thanks to Ashley Trent McHale for telling me that y=x^3 is the formula for the curve that I was trying to find :-)
