Cyclothymia

I am either high (in transmit mode) or low (in receive mode) and when I am in transmit I can hardly keep up with my joy. I get up sometimes at 2 or 3 AM and bake bread and write letters and walk all evening and then go to bed exhausted at 7 or 8 PM.

This morning I witnessed a Maxfield Parrish dawn. I woke up with joy in my belly. My energy mood cycle lasts three months, often triggered by the full moon and changing seasons. After transmit mode I will have three months of wretched self-doubt and melancholy. It is called cyclothymia. It is how I am made. It is the brain chemistry I inherited. I often feel that I am from another planet, probably Saturn. I require daily asthma medicine to breathe normally, so that proves it.

I am lucky to be able to nurture and tame myself by grounding the highs and lows so I do not end up destroying myself, getting put on drugs forever, or being locked up in a hospital. I avoid drink, drugs (both legal and illegal), even travel to other people's houses for any length of time. My cure is writing and walking and playing my saxophone, baking, cooking, having solitude, drinking hot tea, and snuggling with Lily dog.