Nature

Though I think it's somewhat hilarious now, I have a crystalline memory of the first time art moved me to tears. I was about six years old, and I had a plastic record player on which I was playing the Muppet Movie soundtrack. I was coloring or something and listening to the record. The third song on the album was "Never Before, Never Again," sung by Miss Piggy. This was before VCR had entered my life so I had no recollection of the (somewhat funny) cinematic context of the song, only bittersweet lyrics sung in a poignant but silly voice. A six year old with very little comprehension of romantic love, I was suddenly arrested by those words-- "Never Before, Never Again," as an abstraction. That something would happen once in a present moment and then vanish. I remember mulling over the concept of something beautiful being manifest and then an impossibility, barred from grasp. I had a funny feeling. Then I began to sob.

My mom was upstairs in the kitchen and I remember creeping up the steps to find her, and comfort. "What's wrong?" she asked. I remember withholding that the cause of my tears was a sad song sung by a stuffed pig puppet. I believe I was partly nervous about being told it was nothing to be sad about and felt kind of funny, because the song is somewhat funny. I just answered that "it was a sad song," and remember going stone silent about the details. I couldn't articulate the context being six, but the memory is firm in my mind. I was afraid of my sensitivity.

Because I was not diagnosed until I was approximately thirty (in 2008) the question remains as to whether I was bipolar before that. One doctor referred to my life's events at that time as a "perfect storm"-- precipitating the condition of mania. I was working full time as a professor in a library, and going to school full time for my Masters in Fine Art and neither environment accounted for the immersing stress of the other. One doctor said that once bipolar patterns are introduced, it's like a marble in a groove in the brain-- the brain knows how to get there and given stress, will. Other doctors have expressed mistrust of the "perfect storm" assessment of the onset. All have thought most say the stresses I was under, both those I have written here, compounded with others in my life, were significant enough to induce a break of some kind.

I can't say, having only lived as myself in this life, whether my emotional or mood experiences are different or not. I do feel an imperative to make art. That has been with me since I was a child, a toddler, a baby even. When I am not creative, the pain locates itself physically within my body, so being an artist is less of a choice for me, if I am to be happy and whole. Less particular to although maybe more acute or someone with bipolar disorder, listening to ourselves is a sometimes difficult but truly necessary action. Planting my experience of life through art, through writing, through exercise, or a walk or conversation with a friend, this insistence on honoring my feelings is what brings relief and pleasure.