Bipolar Express

Dealing with an episode of Bipolar Disorder

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Here they come again arriving unannounced from the dark recesses of my mind like rude house guests. Drinking my last beer, their feet on my coffee table, rearranging furniture, hogging the TV remote and whispering their subversive agendas without culpability. They're hooligans with blatant disregard for my mental well being. Residing in the catacombs of my subconscious undermining my psyche. An enemy that I create and give birth to.

These voices don't speak with actual words; they can be best described as misspelled sounds and mispronounced thoughts. Among the antagonists exists one that speaks with an English accent. I refer to it as "MR. SUNNY SIDE UP" or Humpty Dumpty portraying himself as a voice of reason. It tells me to not listen to the voices. Which just further adds to my confusion being that it's one of the voices. So how is it possible to take the advice not to listen to the voices? It never says the other voices but always the voices.

I first became familiar with the Humpty Dumpty syndrome as a child of eleven years old. My mother introduced me to my first Psychotherapist. There would be a long list of "the rapists" compiled during my lifetime. I heard them discussing my mental state on one occasion and he referred to my condition as Manic Depressive with a Humpty Dumpty Syndrome.

An allegorical term from the children’s nursery rhyme, Humpty-Dumpty, who ‘...all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put him back together again’. The term refers to a disorder of s disability neurosis in which there is physical recovery from an injury, but the ‘scars’ of childhood psychological trauma intervene, preventing mental recovery. The name Humpty-Dumpty phenomenon has also been used in reference to Borderline psychiatric personalities that can’t be salvaged. Since then the term Manic Depressive has been replaced with Bipolar Disorder, a less sinister and menacing description.

Lewis Caroll: Mr. Dodgeson, first introduced Humpty Dumpty in an illustration as an egg in 1810 in "Alice Through The Looking Glass". However nowhere in the rhyme does it mention or describe him as an egg. And why would he sit precariously on a wall being fragile and risk disaster? My theory is that he was pushed! The real question that should be answered in the rhyme is by whom and why?

Similar to the Eggman, I also enable imminent catastrophes to proliferate. Always creating situations or scenarios that are sure to end unfavorably. I am forced to disarm emotional bombs that I have hidden, without any idea of their location. Mental incendiary devices I concocted while being in a state of incognizance, not knowing what wires needed to be cut to stop the explosion. I am coerced to participate in this deranged psychosis by none other than myself! I have come to understand only one fact concerning this mental illness ... it is inherited. Gives me cause to want to fire up the old chainsaw and make firewood out of the family tree.

By Judge Burdon