Today is a gray day in my brain. There's a little cloud in my head, and it makes me feel vacant and non-emotive and flat. It's not a BAD day. Just a gray one. Nothing particularly bad or good has happened, and there isn't anything on my mind that's bringing me down. I just wake up, and I know, starting then, that it's going to be a gray day. These are the days where I'm just tired of everything and can't summon up the motivation to be anything but a useless lump. The days where I don't want to talk, I don't want to be around people, and I can't get myself to do anything productive, no matter how badly I want to. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel to even get out of bed, and then I still have a whole day left to try and live. These are the days that have nearly killed me, over and over again.
For a while, these were the days where I'd put my latest emo kid soundtrack on repeat, write in my journal, and cut myself with the razor I kept clean and sharp in my wallet. I would go climb up into the hills of Palmer Park in the pouring rain and consider diving off a cliff, just so that I wouldn't be around to waste everyone's valuable time and energy anymore. There was nothing left of me on those days. Those thoughts and feeling weren't my own. They were just the things that came naturally when that mood settled in while I slept. I became this empty vessel, and then my mind would pour into me all the negative thoughts and feelings I carried around in the back of my head day after day. All my doubts and insecurities and everything that brought me down, all piling up and swirling around in one big cocktail of depression.After a year or so, I went for help. My mom took me to the doctor, and I was diagnosed with chemical bipolar disorder. It's an imbalance of the chemical rhythms of your natural biochemistry that causes your body to produce certain brain chemicals erratically, so that they interfere with the psychological happenings of your brain. Basically, there were periods where my body produced all the happy chemicals I could ever want, and then there were periods where it didn't produce enough, and the withdrawal caused a crash. I would feel great for days and days, on top of the world, like a superhero, and then I would suddenly slump and have nothing to go on, no life, no energy. Nothing at all.I had the option to try antidepressants and other medications, and I decided not to. The thing about my cycle is that it isn't all bad, even if it isn't all good. The medications would put a damper on the cycle and cut out those lowest lows, but at the cost of all the highs as well. I would never have the insane lows, but I would never have really great days either. I would just live caught somewhere in the middle, dependent on the medication to keep me there. At my age range, there was also a risk that taking the medications could cause my lows to get even lower, and press those thoughts of suicide until I acted on them. Going off the medication for a period could have the same result. Altogether, I just decided it wasn't for me. That I'd rather try and fight the gray days the best that I could without artificially changing my body chemistry.I tried B-vitamin supplements, which helped. I would be more energetic and lively on even my worst days, but it was only a cushion. I still wrestled with the gray days, and nothing ever made them stop being gray. I quit cutting myself not long after that trip to the doctor, and I haven't picked it up since. I can't say that the thought doesn't still cross my mind, but I no longer carry a razor in my wallet, and I don't even think I own a single blade anymore.
Skip back to today. The first time I can remember having a really gray day was almost eight years ago. That trip to the doctor was close to seven. I've carried on living with chemical bipolar disorder, week in and week out since 2008, and I'm only just starting to figure out this fight. I've tried a lot of stuff, been positive, talked with others, laid all my emotions out and had others carry me through. There have been some really great times, and some really great high streaks. But the lows always come back, and, as of late, it feels like they only get lower and lower. I've felt more dead within my own body the last six months than I have ever felt before in my life.But I realized something the other night. Despite all the gray days, and the bad days, and the really awful days that usually end with rage and tears, there's some part of me deep down that doesn't stop moving. It doesn't comprehend GOOD and BAD days, just days. It doesn't need motivation or rewards or discipline. It's an engine, and it just keep chugging on in complete ignorance of how I might feel. I noticed it after a week or two of some really hard days. I felt totally done and worn out and without a doubt the worst I've ever felt, and then I got up the next day and went to work and went to church and had an 18 hour day, and then I did it again, and again, and again. Good mood, bad mood, gray mood, whatever. I just kept moving.It's not like the moods went away. They were still there, wrapping up my mind and dictating all of my actions. It's just that I noticed this little piece somewhere in the middle of all the swirling emotional chaos that seemed out of place. I could be screaming and raging and crying and throwing things and completely unable to think or feel anything, and this little piece was just there, ticking away, completely apart from my whole mess. It took till last night or so to really put my finger on it.
I've always kind of felt like a robot in social situations. Like, I have this programmed set of behaviors that are all that I know. I can perform this certain set of actions, and everything I do comes from that set of possibilities. All around me are people, going about their daily life and interacting, and I see the things that they're doing, and I try to copy them. But from my limited set of behaviors, I can only manage a crude mockery of what comes naturally to everyone else, and I always feel out of place. Like I just don't quite belong, and everyone sees it and is amused by it, but understands that there's a difference between us that means that we will always be separate in one way or another. I can try to move like a normal person, but I'll never be one.It took me a long time to work out that metaphor, just by the way, but that's exactly how it feels. I've thought for a very long while that it was a bad thing, and I've tried really really hard to learn how to move and think and act like everyone else. I tried for so long to be who it was I thought everyone wanted me to be, and it never worked, and it always hurt. But after my realization the other night about this little dynamo burning away at the core of me, I'm starting to feel like maybe being a robot isn't such a bad thing.Yeah, I still feel like I'm on the outside of most social interactions. I still feel like there's something there that separates me from everyone else, and I still feel like there always will be. But the things about me that make me feel that way are all tied into this little dynamo that has carried me through every single gray day I've ever had, whether I felt bottomed out or not. The parts of me that make me feel so robotic are undoubtedly and irrevocably part of the same system driven by that powerful little engine. That engine that can't stop, won't stop, can't even comprehend the idea that there might be anything to life counter to motion. It just runs, and on my very worst days, it keeps me running.So now, when I wake up in the morning and I realize that today is going to be a gray day, all I have to do is rest on that little engine. I'll get out of bed, get dressed, and go about my day, knowing full well, that engine is somewhere deep inside of me, and that it can't be stopped. On my good days, I'll let it build up momentum and race me off to bigger and better things. On my bad days, I'll let it carry me through at whatever pace it happens to be running that day. I'll still feel gray, and I'll still feel like a robot, but I'll keep going, because there's some part of me built to do just that. To keep going, and nothing else. Nothing can stop it, including me, and I wouldn't dare try, even if I did know how.
I'm far from the only person out there experiencing life this way. Many have done it before me, and many will still be doing it once I'm long dead and gone. So here's what I have to say.It isn't the gray days that will kill you. It's the thoughts that the gray days open you up to. It's not the quiet moments, when you're all alone and no one else is around. It's the moments when you're completely surrounded and you feel like no one else wants you there. Those are the hardest to live through. Those are the days when it's the hardest to see the point in carrying on. And there is one. There's always a point to life. The gray days just keep you from seeing that.So my advice to you is this: Always remember that no matter how hard the day is, it won't kill you unless you choose to let it. The gray days don't hold the knife. The gray days don't tie the noose. The gray days don't pull the trigger. You do.And when all your emotional turmoil is swept aside, you can see that. You can see that they're just days, whether they're good or bad, and that there's so much more in life that matters. You can see that it's just a gray day, and that it's nothing to hurt yourself over. Gray days are temporary, but the scars you choose to make are permanent. Don't let something that will pass, that has no power over you, leave that kind of permanent mark on your life. Because they will pass.They'll come and go like the wind and the clouds and the seasons that change, and you'll still be there, living through all of it. Life is far too valuable and precious to throw away over something as fickle and changing as the weather. And I'm sure that somewhere deep down inside you, there's a little engine ticking away, just like there is in me. Just hold on tight to that powerful little dynamo and let it carry you through the day, and maybe tomorrow, you'll have the strength to carry yourself.
