My Mind is Broken

It is 3 A.M. and it is another night I cannot sleep.  I have taken two sleeping pills to no avail.  When I am manic sleep does not come easily.  I write.  I eat.  I check email.  I pace the rooms back and forth, in and out of bed.  Luckily my husband does not wake during my perambulations.  The mania is not of the inflated ego variety, though I have had that at an earlier time in my life.  Years ago I remember going by Harlem on a bus route home one night when I was flagrantly psychotic and proclaiming, “These are my people!”  Why I said this I couldn’t tell you now– sparked most likely from some manic feeling of camaraderie. But, of course, it was beyond grandiosity and just plain crazy (yes, that is a psychiatric term).   Perhaps the roots arose out of the closeness I had with my Sicilian grandfather who was not exactly white and who had much spirit– what an African-American might call “soul.”  And from my father, a jazz trombonist, who spent his youth sleeping in bathtubs in Harlem when he would come to the city from white suburbia for jam sessions.  He, too, like my grandfather, had “soul”  hidden under white skin.

In any case, thanks to the anti-psychotic family of medicines I am not grandiose tonight. I did forget to take my meds the other night  and, like Karma, that affects everything about my life.   I am just raring for the day to start, for the morning to come.  I see a drunk sitting outside on a stoop smoking.  I want to see, not the people of the night, but the purposeful people of the morning, going to school, going to work, walking their dogs.  Two hours and forty-five minutes to go.  And then time to wake up, have coffee, pray, make plans for the work of the day.  How can fifteen minutes seem like an hour?  How can the cool night breeze masquerade as a morning zephyr?  I will make one last attempt to go to bed and sleep.  First, I will post a video of Jusuf’s, formerly known as Cat Stevens, of a beautiful hymn he sang, “Morning Has Broken.”  I am also posting a photo I took of a marsh in the morning light.  Enjoy!  And Good morning!

This was written a year ago in a mild manic episode.  Right now I am fighting depression triggered by Lyme disease and antibiotics.  I have zero creativity so resort to rewrites.  Hope to be back writing soon and commenting on fellow bloggers’ posts.  Please excuse the silence but that is how it is being Bipolar.   (Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html  for information on, and to purchase, my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)

September 5, 2013 | Categories: Animal & Landscape Photographs, Bipolar Disorder, Music & Thoughts, Nature Photography, Videos | Tags: African-Americans, Bipolar Disorder, Cat Stevens, Grandiosity, Insomnia, Jusuf, Mania, Mania and insomnia, Soulfulness | 12 Comments