“The more I am spent, ill, a broken pitcher, by so much more am I an artist – a creative artist . . . this green shoot springing from the roots of the old felled trunk, these are such abstract things that a kind of melancholy remains within us when we think that one could have created life at less cost than creating art” Vincent Van Gogh

With the exception of Anhedonia (which was created during a major depressive episode, or perhaps created the depressive episode itself), the majority of my creative works have been completed during my seasonal hypomanias, April and May or in late fall. Oddly enough these periods are usually the most productive for artists and writers with manic depression. Lucky for me they also happen to fall at the end of the semesters at Emily Carr. I am not saying that I am an artist because I am crazy, I am saying that somehow like the Borg I adapted and was able to use my moods to fuel artistic ventures, as did many great artists.

Possibly one of the most difficult things about treating manic depression is that the drugs can minimize creativity, sometimes even destroy it entirely. If your vocation happens to be a creative one, the possibility of losing your edge in order to maintain your sanity is pretty frightening, and probably one of the big reasons why people quit their meds. And to be perfectly honest, after you see the face of God, who would want to go back to a hum drum existence?

I have self destructed numerous times in the name of art, to the point where I expect it. I wonder sometimes if that is just the way my particular creative process works, or if it is the way my manic depression works, or is it both? I find increasingly that I cannot seperate the illness from myself, as much as others would like me to. It is a part of me, like the air I breathe, and as much as it can be a pain in the ass, I also have a fond respect for it.

In Kay Redfield Jamison’s memoir An Unquiet Mind, she says that in order to defeat a monster, you must first make it beautiful. In my own way, I am trying to do that. I believe madness has a role in human society, I believe that there is a place for us. We were once honoured people who had visions and went into the wilderness and brought back ideas for our community. Now we’re just sick.

There is a way to bring the visions back into the world though, there’s art in all it’s varied forms. Norms might not realize it, but their world is constantly being influenced by madness, by the people who go to hell and back and bring with them some blood, some love, some god. I wish that for every crazyphobic media propaganda about madmen killing people, there was an acknowledgement of the huge contributions to society which the “mentally ill” have made and will always be making.

Sylvia

Last night I went to the Ridge to see Sylvia, a film about the life of Sylvia Plath. I wanted to write an interesting and insightful review of this film, but the fact is, I can’t. I cannot get over the fact that the film is basically all about Sylvia’s life in relation to a man. Why do these films about the lives of notable women artists and writers always focus on the men, how the men in these women’s lives impact them? Why is it not the other way around? Why is Sylvia’s life before Ted Hughes not important?

I found the same thing happened in Frieda. One might say that it’s because of the times in which those women lived. However I think there are far more interesting struggles going on in the lives of women such as Sylvia Plath and Frieda Kahlo. Consider Kahlo’s self portraits examining her relationship with chronic and severe pain, or Plath’s writings on madness. These lifelong struggles situated within the female body are minimized and ignored in favor of whatever penis was strutting around at the time. The implied message is that the only important part of a woman’s life, even a woman such as Sylvia Plath, is their husband and the things they do for their man.

The good news is that since it was a reperatory cinema I only paid five bucks.

The Joys of Mania

Possibly the most difficult part of being manic depressive is the highs. When I’m low I know something is wrong, even if my brain starts spinning stories of who hates me and why they hate me. But when I am high, I have no idea how sick I am getting. It feels good. It’s like being on drugs. And when you’re used to being depressed and down and ready to snuff it, being happy is a revelation all on it’s own.

Being happy isn’t a bad thing, but this kind of happy is deceptive. Suddenly you’re a superhuman, not needing sleep or food, thinking all the time, and creative thoughts start pouring out. It’s the creativity for me that makes me want to hang on everytime the mania comes out.

There are definitely things I hate about having a chronic brain disorder. I hate not being able to discern between a genuine emotion and a symptom. I hate the physical exhaustion of depression. I hate the wild paranoid thoughts of mania. I hate the fact that 90% of marriages with someone who has manic depression end in divorce. I hate that I’m 25 and my mother still has to worry about me.

But I love the creativity.

I love the spiritual epiphanies that occur. I love the fact that I can absorb new information like a sponge. I love the abstract thoughts, the symbolism, the expansion of mind that lets you go just that extra step further to make something powerful. I love the energy that can get poured into a project. I love the sudden insights that come one after another.

Manic Depression is a curse, that’s true, but it’s also a blessing in an unusual way. A lot of creative people with manic depression don’t want to get rid of their illness entirely. It gives you shining moments of brilliance inside of a dark world.

Sometimes I think, maybe I have this disease just so that I can feel everything in a far deeper way than most people.

Welcome to Fit of Pique. I will be your host/ess. I am someone who lives in between worlds, between white and native, between boy and girl, alternating manic with depressive. Two-spirited dyke queer indian halfbreed crazy mad lesbian boy butch homo.

A year ago I spent six weeks in a psych hospital in Montreal for an episode of manic psychosis. I’d spent years trying to avoid a hospitalization. And in some ways I always knew, I ALWAYS knew, that I would end up there. I have mixed feelings about the entire situation. In a lot of ways it was a really abusive, scary place to be in. In other ways it probably did save my life. I also have problems with my medications, I don’t trust the pharmaceutical companies, I think their primary concern is money, obviously. And yet my mental health depends on these drugs that have made me gain a lot of weight and put me at risk for diabetes. As someone once pointed out to me, I could be fat and sane or skinny and suicidal/manic.

Madness is still something that a lot of people have shame around. How could you let your brain go bad like that?! There’s an assumption that crazy people (I am reclaiming the word crazy) really do have control over their illness, that they have chosen to be crazy. The fact is, nobody chooses it, it chooses you.

My particular brand of craziness is manic depression, my first manic episode was kicked off by Effexor, an SNRI classed anti-depressant. (SNRI means Seratonin Norepinephrine Re-uptake Inhibitor) Some research being done now suggests that migraines and epilepsy are connected to manic depression. Perhaps it’s happening in the same area of the brain. What is interesting is that when I was growing up I had horrendous migraines which would last hours, often with severe visual disturbances that basically would leave me blind until it passed. I also had seizures growing up, usually the staring variety, but one time I blacked out and woke on the floor with my mother in a panic saying I had a grand mal. The medication I am on now was actually developed with epileptics in mind, and is still used to treat epilepsy.

Madness is a difficult illness to educate people about because the injury is inside of the brain where no one can see it. I was surfing around one day and came across this link which shows different brain scans, including a scan of someone with bipolar. It was amazing to see the proof. Being manic is a bit like having every switch turned on, all the lights, the t.v., the stereo, toaster, blender, computer, vacuum, a whole house of things going going going. Everything matters. Thoughts fly faster than the speed of light, space-time becomes warped, and if it gets really bad the hallucinations start. Being depressed, on the other hand, is like everything is off. There’s no more electricity. There’s no sun. There’s no feelings sometimes. Nothing matters.

My name is Thirza, and I want to be your friend probably, but I am socially awkward, so sometimes this is all you’re going to get.