Conversations with Absolum

A giant blue caterpillar is sitting before me, smoking a pipe, blowing the smoke into intricate shapes. Once a circle, then a star, the smoke is beautiful, and it smells like blueberry pie. For a second, I am hypnotized. My trance is interrupted by a loud, deep voice. 

“Who are you? ” the caterpillar says 

“I'm Kaiya!” I say back 

“No, WhO ArE YoU?”

“Well, I'm Kaiya!

I sit there and stare at him in silence now; he says nothing more and continues to blow the smoke shapes in the air. They smell sour now. In silence, I am left to ruminate about who I am; I don't have an answer. 

Sometimes, I get so excited for absolutely no reason, and sometimes, I want to strangle everyone around me just because they dared to breathe. I remember coming home from school, and my mother would scold me for my attitude, remarking that I was a happy little angel just last week. And this week, she barely even knows me. Sometimes, I barely even know myself. There have been so many car conversations about being unpredictable and almost emotionally delusional until I'm not. 

I remember sitting in the shower for hours when I was younger, meditating on who I am; I still don’t know, and it’s incredibly frustrating. I am constantly trapped in the conversation between Absolum and Alice.

There's a silence in my room that I cling to; there's a siren in my mind that I'm trying to run from. My mind is so loud that I want to turn it off, so I look for a distraction. I’ve heard that sometimes pain helps. In all my 17 years of living, I have never been so desperate to resort to blood. But desperate times mean desperate measures. 

There's something so pretty about scars and blood. Sometimes, I think about how nice it would be to carve shapes into my skin, like a tattoo I put there myself. I stare at myself in the mirror for ages, gripping the plastic dermaplaning razor. I've always been very particular about the kind of razor I take to my flesh. It must be easily controlled, like a knife, but only used on the surface of my skin. I took that razor; I know it was pink and sliced hard and fast across the top of my wrist; I didn't want to puncture a vein. That would be too messy, and I didn't want to die. The pain and the ritual of cleaning myself up calmed my mind. It was as silent as my room now. From then on, I always had a razor and band-aids on me. I'm now addicted to the peace that comes with blood and pain. The following week, I was back to normal, and the scars disappeared. Now, if nothing lasts, who am I? 

Did you know that 1 in every 150 adults struggle with bipolar disorder? I didn't either. But I think that's important to who I am. That's one of the few things I know about myself. I am 1 in the 150.   It was almost ironic when I was diagnosed; although the signs were all there, people would prefer just to think I’m quirky. But being quirky doesn't make you a danger to yourself; I'm a danger to myself, not others. So I’m sometimes a danger to myself, but who am I? Am I just a collection of symptoms?

Did you know another symptom of bipolar disorder is hallucinations? I didn’t; I always thought it was expected to see people in your room at night or cartoons on the wall that could talk. I think my first hallucination came when I was 15;

There's a crocodile in my room. There's a loud, constant ticking coming from his mouth. He walks around aimlessly. He sleeps when I sleep and is awake when I’m awake. I must run when I leave my bed so he doesn’t get me. The tick-tock is incessant; there's not a single clock in the house. It’s all in my head. 

Before my diagnosis, I thought I was just immature and was unfortunate enough to be plagued with nightmares; did you know that 0.53 percent of the world experiences the same thing? Luckily, my hallucinations aren’t super harmful; they just scare me and make me run at odd times; it's the weirdest thing when I see and hear a tiger in the ricks gardens in broad daylight; a tiger that no one else sees, sometimes I think it's bizarre to be me. But still, is that who I am?

There's a needle in my arm, and I'm in a dirty bathroom; the toilet reeks of my own vomit. My party dress is torn, and there's white powder all over my nose. My legs are sprawled at a weird angle, and I can't bring myself to move. I'm trapped in a pool of my pity and sweat and stink. I dont like it, but I push the needle deeper into my skin. I'm addicted to the chemicals that are killing me; I plan my death constantly; it's a ritual to make me cry. 

I constantly have this dream where nothing happens; just a tombstone is in my vision. I look at it, and it’s blank, yet I know it's mine. No one is there, and nothing is on it; it’s a forgotten tombstone. That dream scars me so much that I can't sleep at night. I am afraid of the idea of nothingness, fearful that when I die, I will sit in the dark alone and confused, yet I still believe in God. I believe in an afterlife; I just hate that I dont know for certain what it will be or if I'm even good enough to experience a good one.  Thats six things I know about myself: I'm 1 in 150, I'm a danger to myself, I like to cry, I starve when I'm sad, I like reading, and I'm afraid to die. 

I turned to the blue caterpillar and looked him in the eye. He was sitting still, smoking his pipe.

“Who are you?” he asked once again, and this time I answered, 

“I’m a symptom.”