Push

It’s a phys­i­cal push­ing sen­sa­tion inside your brain. From the very back of your head—the urgency to do some­thing, FAST. Blow through thirty cross­word puz­zles in an hour. Read the same three books over and over, almost able to read it by mem­ory aloud, you’ve mem­o­rized the words by now. Read every sin­gle thing on the inter­net that’s shiny and caught your eye while you’re pro­cras­ti­nat­ing at work. The object of the focus doesn’t really mat­ter. You’re in hyper-focused mode, trained, like a run­away train, your brain is push­ing that hard, on the thing at the end of your focus.

That push is so hard, and so nar­row, trained on what­ever the cur­rent, manic obses­sion is, that every­thing out­side that focus is mean­ing­less noise. Things you like to do, like blog, or write, or take pho­tos, or cook, or go for walks, or laugh with your hus­band over what­ever silly thing you’ve ban­tered between you—no longer impor­tant. Social inter­ac­tions with friends, fam­ily, and spouse are irri­tat­ing, infu­ri­at­ing inter­rup­tions. Don’t they know that you HAVE to fin­ish what­ever it is that you’re doing? Or keep doing what­ever you’re doing, in per­pet­ual emo­tion, because if you stop? Well, you’re not sure what will hap­pen if you stop (except that you’ll have to face life again, but you push that thought aside quickly each time it arises, stomp it like a cock­roach, in fact), but you know it will be bad.

It’s not just in your head—it’s an over­all phys­i­cal feel­ing. Your eyes are strained hard on what­ever you’re doing. Star­ing things into sub­mis­sion, until they lull you into a calm state, as long as you can keep up with your lat­est obses­sion. There’s a hol­low place under your sternum—it’s not like hunger, but it’s close. It’s a need to fill your­self with your obsession—to keep the other, less com­fort­able thoughts at bay. It’s a push– keep going for­ward. Not in the right direc­tion, you’ll real­ize later, but at least you need to keep moving.

Some­times it’s euphoric, and your per­cep­tions of the pesky inter­rup­tions of life are of amused tol­er­ance. “If only they knew how impor­tant it is, what I’m doing,” you think. Other times (like this last time) it’s more mixed. If peo­ple don’t stop inter­rupt­ing you, you’ll scream in rage. “Don’t they know that you’ll die/ cry/ never get to sleep/ fall apart if they keep inter­rupt­ing you?” is the thought that occurs when you’re try­ing so hard to put them off, so they leave you alone with your focus.

Of course, at the time, it all makes per­fect sense. It’s only later that you shake your head at your­self, dis­gusted all over again that you missed the warn­ing signs. You feel sorry for your­self, maybe even lonely, or aban­doned, that some­one didn’t see through your lying protes­ta­tions that you were fine, to grab you roughly by the shoul­ders and shake you, frog march you to your psy­chi­a­trist. Later, you know that they were try­ing to give you the ben­e­fit of the doubt, to let you take care of your­self, since most of the time you’re fine, inde­pen­dent, per­cep­tive, funny and lucid. Every­one is enti­tled to low peri­ods, even the cra­zies. It’s just a steeper slope down for you from “low” to “seri­ously messed up and get­ting worse every day.” It only takes a lit­tle push to go falling, head over heels, ass over teaket­tle. You end up dented at the bot­tom, won­der­ing if you can push out the dam­aged areas and work the same way again. If you can push through it again, back to nor­mal. Where push is evened out by the pull of your usual inter­ests, out­side of your head. And where you can ask for help, ask some­one out­side your head to give you a push—in the right direction.

I should note that while this is writ­ten in the present tense, the descrip­tion of the sen­sa­tion is sev­eral weeks past, now.