Fear drives avoidance behavior. The flight of fright. Maturity may be feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Fear is looking over the edge of a building and feeling terror. Fear is watching somebody jump out of an airplane and parachute to the ground.
Fear is driving my friend M. She gets frightened and won’t leave her home for days. She sat down next to me while I was tuning a guitar and I asked her assertively to leave me alone. My tone of voice frightened her and she went into withdrawal from our previous friendship. She used to call often and now does not call. She used to email me and I would email her and now she only sent a brief email acknowledging mine and saying that she is having physical problems with her post-polio concerns.
She and I are very much alike in some ways. She seems convinced that bipolar disorder is the basis of her discontent and confusion in life. She is seeing a psychiatrist noted for his expertise in pharmacology, and from what she has shared, she has tried several medications – perhaps many – that have not worked successfully for her.
There is an intensity about her that is unusual. She has a intense eye contact when communicating with me and sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable. I joke with her. She has a quick wit and the humor is one of the pasttimes we have enjoyed together.
Our commonality is in that we believe bipolar disorder is defining our lives, that the disorder is, and it is keeping us from finding our dreams.
