Bipolar

I watched Next to Normal today on YouTube. It's my next dream role, to play the mother in that musical. The references to her bipolar disorder of course remind me of my aunt, but more than that, they remind me of myself. I don't think I have full-blown bipolar, but I do sometimes feel the waves to depression and mania hit me. They go quickly and are attended to my own monthly cycles and aren't nearly as aggravated as my aunts are, but it feels like small waves in what could become a tsunami.

Today was rather depressing, but I've trained myself to become numb to the sadness. Two other things had led up to the event that eventually "broke the camel's back" as my mom used to say.  The first was when I went to Church for the Christmas eve surmon. My favorite thing about going to Church was hands-down the music. I am happily a non-practicing muslim, but if I were to ever have doubted my religion it would have been to join the Church choir that all of my more musically inclined classmates had joined. Well, in my zeal to fit in and to make a good impression, I had ended up embarassing Steven to no end. "Can't you ever just fit in?" he asked me as we made our way to the communion line. I thought it was because I had respectfully bailed at the last minute. After all, only Catholics are supposed to take communion. I had a very lively aunt that had been divorced five times and as divorce was prohibited by the church, she couldn't take communion. Hell if a muslim was allowed to take commuion. Well, it wasn't because of that. It was because I sang too loudly.

The next incided was that, while trimming the tree for (arguably) the first time, I had broken one of Steven's glass ornament. It was one of those chintzy glass and plastic ones that are prone to cracking, but this one had a B glued on in kindergarden glitter. Boston Red Sox paraphernalia from some teacher or neighbor or something. Suddenly the world stopped and it was of utmost importance to fix it for everyone in the family. I was left decorating the tree for myself, while Dad and Nanay doted on Steven nostaligia. Steven is always placing great importance on all sorts of trinkets, but too many things have broken in my life to place much on sentimentality. My siblings destroyed my belongings, my parents destroyed my childhood, and my divorce destroyed my heart.

Maybe I'm sounding too morose. There are a lot of things in life that are worse than my lot. My parents provided for me, my siblings are my best friends, and I still am young, witty, and attractive enough to make a family anew. But I hope you will allow a little sorrow from time to time.

Anyway, the next day, Steven was showing off this ceramic baby boot that he's shown me for the third time already, and I lifted it to look at the writing that curled around the bottom. And he started, very forcefully in my opinion, to put it down. I felt rather embarrassed about it, and rather than conceding, I made sure to carefully hold it close and over the shelf, so no amount of klutziness on my part could break it. But still he persisted. Over and over again, he wouldn't stop. I could hear his dad prattle about him being the next Steve Jobs and whatever arguments I had gotten into with him, he was obviously right. I had just about enough, so I put the boot back and went upstairs, making it clear that I was going up there hurt.

Steven didn't come up to follow me, like my family would have. Instead, I just fell asleep, exhausted from the poor schedule that we've been on. (We had stayed up until 6am singing the music of Hamilton) I had been asleep for a while, when the next thing I know, Steven is coming upstairs and crying. I jerked upright immediately upon hearing his sniffles. After prodding and rubbing his head in the crook of my arm, he told me what was bothering, his mother thought I was overly sensitive and "just wanted Steven to be happy." Apparently I had ruined Christmas.

I don't know how to feel really. I'm a muslim, and I had ruined Christmas. It would have seem cliche if there were any TV shows that addressed how muslims spend Christmas, which as far as I know, is complaining about Christmas and then going to fancy dinner parties with friends. Occasionally we all get piled up in the car to check out the Christmas light show at Lincoln Park Zoo, and because we definitely needed a tradition as far as I was concerned, I started taking the family that was my age and younger sledding to McHenry Mound and then for Sushi. Sushi and Sledding. Was there fighting, hell yeah. But we talked about, and we made sure everyone was cool afterwards.

The creepy silence gets to me here. Steven, just waiting to come and cry to me for something he could have just come up and talked to me about in the first place. The silence of his mom, her ability to push her feelings so deep that I can never tell what she's thinking at all. People talk about this exoticism in silence, but I am beginning to realize that it is a soul-crushing numbness that perhaps even I'm succumbing too.

May I forever have my voice.