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The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Especially around deadline, the room buzzes with activity—keyboards clacking, editors yelling, reporters cackling—the perfect stereotype of a tabloid newsroom.
Journalism was thrilling; I had always loved living a reality that was more fabulist than fiction, though little did I know that my life was about to become so bizarre as to be worthy of coverage in my own beloved tabloid.
Clinking our bottles of Sierra Nevada, we bonded over our shared dislike for shorts and our passion for Dylan’s Nashville Skyline. Stephen was alluring in that languid, stay-out-all-night kind of way: a musician with long, unkempt hair, a skinny smoker’s frame, and an encyclopedic knowledge of music. But his eyes, trusting and honest, have always been his most attractive trait. Those eyes, with nothing to hide, made me feel as if I had dated him forever.
To keep calm, I fixated on the strangest and most colorful of the paintings—a distorted, abstract human face outlined in black with bright patches of primary colors, red pupils, yellow eyes, blue chin, and a black nose like an arrow. It had a lipless smile and a deranged look in its eyes. This painting would stick in my mind, materializing again several more times in the coming months. Its unsettling, inhuman distortion sometimes soothed me, sometimes antagonized me, sometimes goaded me during my darkest hours. It turned out to be a 1978 Miró titled Carota, or carrot in Italian.
Over time, the tech’s mild flirtations teemed with a strange malevolence created entirely by my churning brain.
“I used to try to forget about you,” Randy “the Ram,” a washed-up pro wrestler played by a haggard Mickey Rourke, says to his daughter. “I used to try to pretend that you didn’t exist, but I can’t. You’re my little girl. And now I’m an old broken-down piece of meat and I’m alone. And I deserve to be all alone. I just don’t want you to hate me.”
There are times when you feel like the best in the business, and other times when you’re certain that you’re a complete and total hack and should start looking for an office job. But in the end, the ups and downs even out.
I would soon learn firsthand that this kind of illness often ebbs and flows, leaving the sufferer convinced that the worst is over, even when it’s only retreating for a moment before pouncing again.
The bright blue wedge of an Eclipse gum sign emitted electric swirls of aqua and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I could feel the colors vibrating in my toes. There seemed to be something exquisite about that rush; it was simultaneously enervating and thrilling. But the thrill lasted only a moment when, to my left, the moving scroll of “Welcomes you to Times Square” caught my attention and made me want to retch in the middle of the street.
“No, no. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m all fucked up. I’m crying for no reason,” I sobbed. As the crying spell took over my whole body, I became prisoner to it. The more I told myself to stop, the more powerful the sensation became. What was causing these hysterics? I fixated on anything my mind could grasp, picking apart the minutiae of my life, anything that felt uncertain. I’m bad at my job. Stephen doesn’t love me. I’m broke. I’m crazy. I’m stupid.
I suddenly felt in control of every part of my life. That buoyant happiness had returned. But even then I recognized it was a perilous happiness. I feared that if I didn’t express it and appreciate it, the emotion would blaze and burn away as quickly as it came.
The healthy brain is a symphony of 100 billion neurons, the actions of each individual brain cell harmonizing into a whole that enables thoughts, movements, memories, or even just a sneeze. But it takes only one dissonant instrument to mar the cohesion of a symphony. When neurons begin to play nonstop, out of tune, and all at once because of disease, trauma, tumor, lack of sleep, or even alcohol withdrawal, the cacophonous result can be a seizure.
Often people report feeling déjà vu and its opposite, something called jamais vu, when everything seems unfamiliar,
I was a slave to the machinations of my aberrant brain. We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.
Another site listed at length the famous people who were suspected to suffer from bipolar disorder: Jim Carrey, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Vivien Leigh, Ludwig van Beethoven, Tim Burton. The list kept going and going. I was in good company. “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness,” Aristotle said.
Maybe it’s true what Thomas Moore said: “It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.”
The mind is like a circuit of Christmas tree lights. When the brain works well, all of the lights twinkle brilliantly, and it’s adaptable enough that, often, even if one bulb goes out, the rest will still shine on. But depending on where the damage is, sometimes that one blown bulb can make the whole strand go dark.
