Baggage

I had to take a long flight after a manic episode. When I got to the baggage claim, I was exhausted from hours of no sleep and plomped down on some chairs to sleep. A security guy at the airport came to see what was up.

"She has Bipolar Disorder."

My Dad's explanation scared the security guy and he quickly left. If you need some alone time, telling people you have a mental illness is a good way to scare them away.

Party

I also went crazy at a New Year's Eve party. I tasted everyone's food, which didn't make me too popular. My "special power" awarded me that night was the ability to taste the life of each person through their food. The scariest thing that happened to me was when I was thrown into the sand by a Frenchman and my new "special power" became the ability to transmit energy through the sand.

Meat

It was a relief to learn I was Bipolar.

In my support group, I was regarded as the star pupil. Of course, there were only three of us. One woman had more serious psychosis during her episodes than I did. She had to hide behind the bar in her basement because everything was slowly turning into meat that just might possibly eat her. I'm not sure, but maybe she had some PETA influenced nightmares. The teacher was probably not a vegetarian, but he was also Bipolar, which gave him more understanding of us. That, however, didn't make the support group any more effective for the rest of us.

Zombie

During one of my manic episodes, (I've had a few), I heard the Cranberries song, "Zombie" over and over. Not in my head, as you might guess because I was crazy, but in stores. For some reason, it was popular in the country at that time. I thought it was meant for me. I walked around, aimlessly looking for things that I didn't need or want to buy. Luckily for me, my manic impulses never tempted me to buy houses or cars like some do. Instead, I bought books that I was too zoned out on Valium to read and cheap clothes, which sometimes didn't fit me well enough.

As I shopped and heard the song again, I kind of liked it. I liked the special feeling of having my own song, even if it was a song from the 90's dedicated to the undead, which was ironic because I felt like everyone around me was actually the undead.