Ludicrous

This story is a patchwork of a series short pieces we had written in class, always with a specific wordcount under 100, always beginning 'x' is for which we had to turn into a story of 10x150 segments

Ludicrous

Ludicrous, a word where form really does imitate content. A word meaning to be as foolish, absurd or unreasonable as to be amusing, which itself sounds as foolish, absurd and unreasoned as to be impossible to say with any gravity. A word that, even expressed with the greatest vitriol, imparts a sense of comic disbelief in the circumstances that provoked its exclamation. It has its etymological roots in the Latin 'ludicrum' or ‘stage-play’. Shakespeare would have it that ‘all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.'  So if the world is a stage and we’re all players, and stage plays are the very foundation of the ludicrous, then it naturally follows that life itself is foolish, absurd and unreasoned. This is how I try to see things when I recall all the knee-jerk, stupid and embarrassing things I have done while afflicted with manic depression.

 

The Royal Society of Psychiatrists explains that someone suffering with manic depression will have ‘severe mood swings that usually last several weeks or months.’ The condition comes in a range of guises including ‘low or depressive episodes’ where sufferers will experience ‘feelings of intense depression and despair’, ‘high or manic episodes’ that entail ‘feelings of extreme happiness and elation’ and ‘mixed episodes’ which might for example take the form of ‘a depressed mood with the restlessness and overactivity of a manic episode’. Perusing this useless bunch of generalisations you might be forgiven for thinking you yourself fall somewhere on the spectrum of this disorder, seemingly encompassing as it does every combination of human emotion going. In fact bipolar has become a kind of slang buzzword for anyone who is playing up a bit. But let me assure you reader, you have no idea, it is so much more than that.

 

My memories of my first manic episode are intermittent, like snapshots captured by a stroboscopic lamp, which form a sort of badly drawn stop motion animation in my mind of those events. That is the best way I can think to describe how it seems to me, the only description that captures that heady energy, which while only allowing you to interpret information in fragments, gives you an unwavering sense of conviction in all you do. As deceptive as a politician and as disorientating as a narcotic, it’s as if your mind has gone into diaspora. Another impression I get is that of a comic strip with pages torn out, the action framed in crude intervals, with exclamation marks and onomatopoeic sound bubbles. What I’m trying to say is there’s an unreality to these memories, a sort of reverse mirage effect where what is real appears as a shimmering illusion.

 

My father, a doctor, styled himself as the custodian of my ailment, quite without qualification. General Practitioners are exactly that: general. Let’s imagine my life as a play. My father would be Prospero, vaguely despotic and manipulative, played by someone like Anthony Hopkins, while I would play the part of Caliban �"no�" Ariel, Ariel is more fitting. Ariel who was freed from the pine tree only to live as a slave under the threat of being confined to that most solid of all trees, the oak. That’s how my life feels; like a procession from pine to oak. Coming out of a deep depression only holds the promise of a dizzying high. The deeper the depression the more untethered the high, which despite giving you an unmitigated sense of disinhibition, only constricts and chokes you like bindweed, every bit as beautiful and every bit as aggressive, overrunning your perceived Eden.

 

The RSP states that bipolar usually manifests in your late teens and early twenties. They were bang on! I was officially diagnosed at eighteen after my first long-term relationship collapsed. Break up, break down so to speak. But thinking back to my childhood, I’ve always oscillated between hyper and brooding spells. I always got other kids into trouble, pulled dangerous stunts or been overly quizzical. My main accomplice/sidekick was my brother. We were enrapt by nature, trailing flowers, bugs and mud into the house despite the reprimands of our mother. We would bandy about in our childish way, dizzy with the excitement of the fresh spring air. We would always climb the fence to rag around by the rickety hen house, often straying too close to the goose trying to pet her young. When the gander took exception, we took heel, my brother always too slowly, the gander pecking triumphant.

 

First to punish me for my misadventures was my father. He was an imposing figure, very strict, but perhaps I needed that. Still, when stranded in thought as I often was, feeling lost; my father was the rock I anchored myself too. I remember drifting through tall swaying grasses that filled my peripheral vision, parted only by the broad backs of my father’s legs striding ahead. His legs seemed impossibly big, like they could never tire or be brought to their knees. I trotted along behind, exhausted but vigilant. Among the grasses there were antlers to be found, even deer skulls. A strange aura emanated from these objects, a dark, morbid fascination for a creature, almost mythical, that had been subdued. My father had dived from the track and returned clasping a snake behind the head. It was memories like this that imbued my father with his magical, Prospero-like quality.

 

Central to my father’s regime was the idea that honest, hard work would set me straight. I was pressed into all kinds of jobs, a paper round, waiting and café jobs. He hoped a bit of responsibility in a low stimulus environment, with discipline and regular hours, would curb my manias and keep me moving when depressed. Later I signed up to events agencies that staffed festivals. But I was still bored. I’d stand, listening to my knotted heart beating out time in boredom spasms. I’d stand twelve hours, often without a break, thinking of the six hours still to go. I remember my fake ready to help smile, less Hugh Grant rom-com more Heath Ledger’s last act. No one needs your help when you’re stood, glowing in a snot-green Oxfam t-shirt, next to a fuckoff great sign pointing them to the car park. “Have a safe ride home guys.”

 

Another facet of my father’s regime was vigorous exercise. He thought if I expended my excess energy in a controlled sporting environment, I would be less liable to flip out. This was effective to an extent, although I believe the causality varied from my father’s theory. Perhaps he saw some sporting promise in my excessive energy, and he wasn’t altogether wrong. I played county tennis and rugby at school, but did not have the focus to take things to a higher level. In the gym, when I taste the acrid smell hanging in the air, accentuated by the heat of bodies, I think of the rare pride my father beamed from those playing field side-lines. The regular clank and thud of salt incrusted iron forms a hypnotic soundtrack, to which I intone the old mantra; healthy body, healthy mind, healthy body healthy mind. I hate to show weakness even now.

 

You were the same. I maintained the illusion of your strength right up to that incident in Canada. You had come out to meet me on my season. You had been so proud when I got the job ski instructing. You believed I had finally mastered my emotions and shown I could take responsibility of my life. That illusion was shattered when you arrived. I had barely held it together those six months and the first time you told me to ‘calm down’, the old daemons awoke with vengeance. I remember how old and tired you looked in the front of that ambulance as they drove me to the hospital. You seemed to shrivel with my every demonic shriek, like you wouldn’t even resist any more if I had broken into the cab and assaulted you. I wanted that old flame in your eyes, but they were soft and watery.

 

It’s too late to show you that I have finally become the master of my own life. I have a degree, a job, a wife and children; all the indicators you used to measure success. My children are healthy, happy little boys. They may develop problems later; eighteen hangs on the horizon like a storm cloud. But the electric current won’t tear them apart as it did me. They will light up the sky.

You would be proud of them, they have your quick-mindedness, your strong legs, and they show great potential on the tennis court. I wish you could teach them the backhand stroke. You were a much better coach than I am, and I appreciate now how patient you were with me when I come to teach my own boys. This is our curtain call and we will stand shoulder to shoulder when we take our final bow.

 

Word count: 1500

Reviews

[Vishuddha]

Really terrific. You write as though you know what you're talking about. Autobiographical? I lived with a bi-polar sister for 15 years. I can see how she may well have been going through life as you describe it.

[Frank]

Well written

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