Springtime Hypomania
I was having a conversation with someone a few days ago about my reoccurring hypomania that happens every spring. They asked me what happens and if there were triggers that set me off. I began thinking back to the spring and trying to remember events or possible triggers that happened. I couldn’t really remember a specific trigger, but I could clearly remember the mental/bodily sensation. I explained to them that I would just wake up one morning with a completely different sensation. I would feel great, no, wonderful, no, perfect. The world was mine. My mind was filled with goals that my body was itching to complete.
I continued to explain to them that every spring when I awoke from my winter lows I would get this great urge to work on the lawn/garden. I would become obsessed with gardening. It began with the simple task of cutting the grass that quickly escalated into a shopping spree at the local plant nursery. My initial intent was to cut the grass, and then it was only to buy one or two flowers, and then the one or two flowers turned into 20 or 30, and then the five dollars I set out to spend turned into three hundred,
Last year, when I got home from the nursery I began planting the flowers, but was quickly side tracked by new thoughts that I needed a new border for the garden. The border that I had wasn’t good enough. I needed a rock border. As I was thinking about the border it began to rain and I started having thoughts about quitting for the day, but I couldn’t because I needed a rock border. This pushed me to run into my house and get my car keys and leave on a great rock hunt.
I drove out onto country highways with no destination in mind. I just needed rocks!!! I searched for a couple of hours and finally came upon a collapsed rock wall on the side of a highway. I pulled over and begin loading my car full of large boulders. It was still pouring rain and the cars that were driving by were giving me weird looks because I was loading my car full of rocks on the side of a highway in the pouring rain, which I guess was a little bizarre. I made four or five trips to the same location and a thousand pounds worth of rocks later my rock border was complete. Ahhhhh… the satisfaction I felt. I remember thinking to myself that this garden was going to be the best garden ever and that gardening is going to become my life. I thought maybe that I should switch careers and open my own nursery. I thought this was the perfect plan. I could then garden all the time and make money doing it.
Three weeks later I lost complete interest in the garden and the project that I once obsessed over was overgrown with weeds and grass.
Tags: bipolar, bipolar disorder, manic depression
