My nieces are now young women, one turning 18 this year, the other 16. It makes me think of what life was like at that age – well for me anyhow. In my final year of high school I was hardly present, I had an older friend with a car & we’d take off for the day or I’d lie to mum & say that there was a free period or some other fabrication just to be alone. I didn’t even show up for detention for not turning up! Towards the end of grade 12 the year coordinator called me up to his office to talk about my truancy and to enquire as to what my ‘plans’ were once school had finished. I told him I was off school so much due to bad PMT – he didn’t believe me. He told me I was setting a bad example & gave me the ultimatum of either ‘pulling my socks up’ or leaving….. I chose the later.
What followed was a one year period of absolute anarchy, by the end of the year I had left home; shacked up with a guy I met from Sydney; & had began experimenting with drugs. I was promiscuous; bold; I made rash decisions; was careless; & I did not give two hoots about my parents & family. I was acting totally out of character, I look back now & don’t even recognize the person I was during this ‘phase’. For a long time I tried to pretend that it never even happened, like in ‘Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ – erased from my memory. I became a stranger to friends from this time - I didn’t take their calls; ignored them in the street. It has taken me a long time to accept her as being part of me & to get to a place where I could forgive myself. I am not going to blame my actions on my Bipolar, even though it probably played a part in it all, as I need to take responsibility for my actions during my reckless rampage.
Looking back, once this ‘phase’ was over & I had returned back to my parents’ home, I enjoyed a few years of normality with a few intermittent ‘highs’ in-between. It wasn’t until I was about 19 until the dreaded depression hit again. And as old Bukowski puts it, it hung around like a rash & might I add an itchy rash….always demanding to be scratched. And I’d have to say that the depression never really truly left me after that, I became accustomed to it – It greeted me every morning & hung around all red & inflamed till about midday, the passing hours my only source of amelioration. Sometimes there would be an exacerbation & it would flare up in the early hours of the morning – you could almost set your clock to it.
What followed was a one year period of absolute anarchy, by the end of the year I had left home; shacked up with a guy I met from Sydney; & had began experimenting with drugs. I was promiscuous; bold; I made rash decisions; was careless; & I did not give two hoots about my parents & family. I was acting totally out of character, I look back now & don’t even recognize the person I was during this ‘phase’. For a long time I tried to pretend that it never even happened, like in ‘Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ – erased from my memory. I became a stranger to friends from this time - I didn’t take their calls; ignored them in the street. It has taken me a long time to accept her as being part of me & to get to a place where I could forgive myself. I am not going to blame my actions on my Bipolar, even though it probably played a part in it all, as I need to take responsibility for my actions during my reckless rampage.
Looking back, once this ‘phase’ was over & I had returned back to my parents’ home, I enjoyed a few years of normality with a few intermittent ‘highs’ in-between. It wasn’t until I was about 19 until the dreaded depression hit again. And as old Bukowski puts it, it hung around like a rash & might I add an itchy rash….always demanding to be scratched. And I’d have to say that the depression never really truly left me after that, I became accustomed to it – It greeted me every morning & hung around all red & inflamed till about midday, the passing hours my only source of amelioration. Sometimes there would be an exacerbation & it would flare up in the early hours of the morning – you could almost set your clock to it.
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