I am not God....yet.

.
.....Bipolar mania is fun and amazing. At least for the person who is experiencing it first hand. Friends and relatives of the bipolar individual often times find manic loved ones to be a real pain in the butt. Mania brings such a feeling of power and joy, the bipolar avoids taking the medication which would bring him back to normal.

.....My mania brings about a feeling of closeness to God. Maybe “closeness” isn’t quite the right word to describe this. It is more like, “I am God’s right hand man, and if anything ever happened to God, I would be more than qualified to take over.” God doesn’t audibly speak to me. This would be annoying. In a manic state, I already know everything there is to know, so if God told me something, it would be like my wife harping about the need for the garbage to be taken out. Of course, I need to share my infinite wisdom with the people around me. When I start telling complete strangers how much I love them and how everyone goes to heaven, it is time to take my meds. This could become quite problematic if God ever decides to talk to me for real. Should I attempt to fly from one building top to the other, or is the mania trying to fool me.

.....Mania often times causes the bipolar to misinterpret outside stimuli. There may be a hot blonde woman staring at me. I would take this to mean she thinks I am scrumptious and irresistible. In actuality, she would stare because I am wearing a tinfoil hat and I’m trying to smoke a cigarette through my ear. The fun part comes when I decide she is just playing hard to get and her well-built boyfriend is only pretending to be infuriated.

.....Holding down a steady job can often times be problematic for the bipolar individual. Looking back, it probably wasn’t a good idea to tell my boss, “You have no authority over me!” The police officers escorting me out of my workplace did not seem to fully understand my story of managerial conspiracy and deception. Coming back an hour later and picketing in front of my workplace felt liberating, but again, probably wasn’t helpful in the “I need to make a living” category.

.....In some ways, I am jealous of my bipolar friends. My buddy, Rick, has some pretty amazing manic stories. He knew about the government conspiracy to make us use gasoline. He set out to prove that vehicles could run on water alone. He turned on the garden hose and filled the gas tank of his father’s truck. Sure enough, the truck ran just fine (for two blocks). He even once had the thrill of driving the wrong way on the Interstate. This would throw the government agents off track as he traveled to Mt. Zion in Utah. In Oregon, a bipolar family friend stripped naked and painted his body red with latex house paint. He then climbed up on the roof and started dancing around with a machete. After hearing about this, I told my wife to keep a video camera near, if I ever show signs of mania.

.....I currently wish to keep my family and my finances intact, so I take my medications regularly. I’ll have to settle for living the mania vicariously through other bipolars. Maybe, when we reach Heaven, we will find an eternal state of mania. I’ll check with God on that one.
.