Okay… if I have any fan who reads my Blog I want to apologize to them for neglecting it for so long. The truth is, I had a relapse. I have Bipolar Schizoaffective Disorder, and since my last Blog I simply went insane. I hope I have recovered now. Yet I guess I will tell you about it. You see… the people who I know don’t always understand my illness. My fellow Jews understand. And of course the crazy people I worked with at a mental health club (volunteering) did. But when I get outside those two worlds… than there is something so harsh and unrelenting that people face me with that I finally flee, humiliated. I remember at a Kansas writers group I tried to explain, the last time I saw them, what was wrong with me. I simply told them I had Bipolar. Yet I am sure I heard somebody say, “Why can something that only exists in your head be that bad?” I know it is hunger or starvation exactly, but I don’t think there is much worse than being a crazy person. And I am. That’s why I understand the type.
To tell you the truth, I think I have an ex-friend from that group who really imagines it is more suffering to be a virgin–yes, I am one–than to go insane. I can’t figure out why. For all I did hope to get married someday (the family is out; I’m 43), I really can’t imagine why simply not having sex is really the worst suffering a person can have at all. I mean, after all, what if nuns and priests in the Church feel the way about it that I feel about Kosher. For me it is, “Of course I keep Kosher. I’m a Jew.” And they say, “Of course I am celibate. I’m in the clergy.” Keeping Kosher was hard at first… but not after a while… I do dream about love some, but if my true love never comes… at least I still have God.
They didn’t understand that in that group of friends: why was I so obsessed with my deity? I didn’t really blame them, but in that time when we were writing together, I brought a book about God because that was working on. And yes, Jews are in all my stories. Yet I didn’t really think I was proselytizing or anything. I just write about Jews because I love them, and they are my people. I didn’t really think my stories had to be about secular atheists and agnostics–or about Christians–more because I was a Jew than because I actually disliked either of those two groups.
I can feel my typewriter with a certain feverish thrill than only lunatics can understand. I don’t even know if our doctors can ferret out what we really feel. During this last week, I “saw” a Hollywood Star–forget which one–and he told me that I was his perfect saint who he was going to kill… no, worse, he was going to take me to hell to torture me through all eternity… I was in total shock and panic mode… and I hid the symptoms from my mother, because secretly I was afraid she’d lock me up.
I write this… do you know it is the funniest thing? I have never wanted to be remembered as a Bipolar Patient. It hurts to much to have Bipolar. I wanted to be remembered as a Charles Dickens–that great a book. Yet when I died, even if I went to Heaven… I wanted all my private tears forgotten and erased for the rest of time… That is what it is like to be a Bipolar patient… to really be in hell, and not know how to escape…
Well, thank you for reading this. Forgive me if it was hard to take. Tomorrow’s Blog, when I write it, will be better.