Bipolar

What is bipolar disorder? Have a looksee: [link]

Several of my best friends and a couple family members have suffered from bipolar disorder. It is truly agonizing at times, for all involved. I've come to realize that some of my favorite fictional characters have traits of Bipolar Disorder, the soaring rushing wildly productive wildly creative quixotic manic heights, the turn toward too bright and too frantic and too frenzied, and the crashes, the lethargy, the self-flagellation and self-loathing, the immobility, the grayness, of depressions. The worst times are when they come together, the highs and lows simultaneous, when laughing and crying occur at once, when the feeling of gravity is so clearly coming. I have even been on migraine medications and suffered migraine episodes that mimic the symptoms of a mild form of the disorder, to the extent that doctors once speculated whether I had Cyclothymia. It kills me, and if it is a MILD form, then damn, can one imagine having it full-blown?.... Compassion please!

This could be read as a portrait of a favorite character whom I believe to have been bipolar, or as it was more intended, it can just be a more general visual seizure of a man in simultaneous neon mania and molasses-like despair. The worst part in some ways is the guilt of knowing you are abnormal and it is hurting others in ways you can barely control. Here is, again, where neither condescendence nor callousness, but compassion, is needed.

When the night shows
the signals grow on radios
All the strange things
they come and go, as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There's no point in direction we cannot
even choose a side.

I took the old track
the hollow shoulder, across the waters
On the tall cliffs
they were getting older, sons and daughters
The jaded underworld was riding high
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky
and as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain
was warm and soaked the crowd.

Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.

When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see
The actors gone, there's only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they'll
use up what we used to be.

Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
in any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.
~Peter Gabriel