Primordial Chaos

Not a song title, but a lyric from Born To Run by K-OS

Alright,

Explaining this is going to be weird, and many assume it means I'm bipolar. Most of the people who see me on a regular basis know vaguely of this, understand it for the most part, and have seen it in action. Two of my friends who ARE bipolar said it's nothing like anything they'd experienced or heard of. I say it's Asperger's related. Regardless, because it's so weird, I figured it would make good reading, for those who are a bit further away from me and don't get to see this. (Lucky you!)

A friend of mine who passed away earlier this year came up with this "theory" about me. Quite a few years ago, he picked up that I do this, and gave the parts of it a name. I hadn't realized I do it until he came up with this theory. I still have the diagram we drew while having this discussion. I miss him a lot right now....moving on.

His theory was that when I experience the extremes of emotions I do one of two things. If it's negative, like hurt or sadness, I can pent it up, or use it rather immediately. If it's positive then I use it right away and can't store it. Penting it up is bad in general, I know. But I can also use that energy and emotion later, even years later. To clarify this using the terms he chose and stuck with....

Penting it up is rather self explanatory. I take the bad emotions, hide them from most everyone, though some leaks out usually, and it somehow gets "stored" in my mind. Using this pent up "energy" it is when it gets curious and bizarre, and I thought it was a fascinating discussion and theory.

When I "use" good emotions, I take that good feeling and use it as energy. I go into a "trance", as he called it. I get stronger, faster, mentally quicker, memory recall improves, I become "smarter",and reflexes are quicker too. It also seems to magnify my good mood even higher. It's not a strong enhancement, and lasts for a very short time, couple of hours max.

When I use "bad" emotions, I take those angry, hurt, upset, distressed feeling and use them as energy too, and I also go into my "trance". However, I become A LOT stronger, faster, quicker mentally, memory recall becomes rather unusually precise, I become much "smarter", much quicker reflexes, but unlike good emotions, I also gain extreme focus and lose all sense of pain and fatigue, mentally or physically. This comes at a price, and because I'm releasing bad moods, my mood becomes straight fucking horrible. Supposedly, the tell tale signs are me scowling, I don't look around at the setting where I am, my eyes seem "dark", and arms are always crossed. From my perspective, my vision gets really sharp and I can focus on small details off in the distance and gather info on them. My mind feels dark, like there's nothing there but darkness, hate, anger, sadness. My vision seems to almost become tunnel vision and I focus straight in front of me at basically all times, usually at something in the distance. I feel very...strong and intimidating. I get into a major alpha female mode, and technically alpha male too, I mean I just feel like I am unstoppable and there is nothing beyond or above me.This effect lasts as long as there some negative incident bouncing around my mind. I can do this at will.The effect wears off once I have reconciled that event with myself. I can't just constantly think of bad things one after the other and this work.

The side effects appear according to how long I trance out. Couple of hours or less, I'll be back to myself in about an hour. Up to a day, my mood is shitty and I am hostile for 2-4 days. Up to 5 days, which is the longest I've ever hit that extreme enrage trance, my mood is fucked for 2 weeks to a month. Of course, I'm mulling negative situations, so my mood going south isn't that abnormal. However, during that time I start to address the reason(s) that situation was so negative. I eventually think it out and come to an acceptance, and I come out of my trance.

Again, I can do this at will, and have done so for tests I was not confident about, and it's usually why I do it. Short term, no long lasting effects. It happens on its own if there's all kind of shit on my mind, some of it is stressing me out or upsetting, and it's to a point where I can't think clearly, these tend to last for days.

The bad emotions trance was named chaos trance (AKA CT to most of my friends), because after me biting someone's head off in the middle of one, my friend said that it was like I was summoning energy from evil lord chaos himself. The good emotions one was named ascension, hell if I know why, wasn't there for that naming incident.

Despite some of the interesting effects of CT (I run the mile a full minute faster in CT), I don't like it. At all. It means I'm hurting, I'm upset, I'm reliving something painful, I feel threatened...nothing good is going on inside my head. But I always focus my energy to something positive, studying, reading, exercise, cleaning, stuff like that. I snap at people who try to get chatty with me and become even more uncommunicative, but I don't hurt anyone or anything. So between that and resolving some issues mentally, it does serve an interesting purpose. But it fucking sucks for the reasons I said above, the pain, the anger, etc.

Despite what it initially sounds like, it's not bipolar disorder. First, I've been checked for that like 6 times, and I never meet the diagnostic criteria for any version of it, even mild. Second, it's not an oscillation between highs and lows, it's more like just a bizarre mental state of high focus for both the good and bad. Third, I can control it, I can end any of it besides the crappy mood for thinking about sad things, but even that lessens A LOT by being under my favorite blanket for a couple of hours. NOT sleeping, but just being quiet. Fourth, it is rarely triggered by an event, most often *I* trigger it to cope with whatever is in my head that needs to go. Or call it bipolar, whatever. Labels don't concern me, it is what it is.

I think of it as more me thinking something to death, but in a good way. Regardless of anything, if I am in intense thought, I get really irritable and antisocial. I really focus on resolving why I whatever issue still bothers me or is bothering me, and that of course comes with some emotions about how I feel about whatever happened. I use that emotional release as motivation, I guess. It's more a coping mechanism than anything, and I've been told by a few psychologists these heightened mindsets while in intense thought are not uncommon in Asperger's Syndrome. So, that's what I think it is, and that's what it is on my end, really intense focus and working off some negative feelings. It's like a form of meditation, but you're trying to create peace with yourself over something in particular instead of chasing zen. either way, it's a clearing of the mind.

I should have just called it bipolar, this post would of been sooooo much shorter, ha! Just imagine how much time I spent writing this stuff. :P Despite all of this explaining, I bet very few will understand it. Just call it bipolar and move on, if you're in that category. I've been called worse.

I got French verbs to conjugate!

~A.