"hypomania" poems
I live my life in extremes
Polar opposites attract in the center of my soul
And for some reason, living on opposite ends
Seems to be a fashion trend
I am not the "I made out with every girl in my college sorority
So now I'm bisexual" type of queer
Not to out-and-proud vomiting rainbows type of bisexuality
I am the bisexuality that gets erased
The eighth grade girl who, when she told her first boyfriend she was queer,
He told her she was over dramatic and crazy.
I am the bisexuality that gets oppressed
Because I am confined to the walls of a shrinking closet
Or is it expanding?
I have lost my sense of left or right
Up or down
Yes or no.
I am not your manic pixie dream girl type of bipolar
Not the girl who needs saving from her mental illness
Not drowning.
I am the bipolar disorder that becomes overwhelming
The depression that chains me to my bed in the morning
The hypomania that seems euphoric, but is never happy
The grey area, the lone horizon, the empty space in the middle
Seems like something I drive through over the speed limit
Every day of my life.
While my extremes do not look good on your favorite actress
They look beautiful on me.
Not an outfit I can strip down when it goes out of style
Not a channel I can change when it is not appealing anymore
But I will learn to love my fluctuations
My mood pendulum
My love pendulum
I am swinging from state to state
But at least I am flying
Instead of falling.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 11:59 PM UTC
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock
It's already 5am
And here I am
Wide awake
As thoughts run
Through my head
Like a bullet train
Am I relapsing again?
Or I'm just on the edge
Waiting for a helping hand?
Or maybe I'm letting it be
For I've missed
Insanity to seep inside of me
Seeing that I am able to write
Shows clearly that
Hypomania has arrived.
Welcome back,
My frenemy.
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 12:58 AM UTC
I was told to write down my identity
a neat sheet of paper
that would briefly explain me
I pondered a while
attempting to identify
a few key moments of my history
Do I tell of the immigrant?
or the miracle child?
do I speak of depression
and how I so rarely smiled?
Should I tell you about the language
I so rarely spoke
for fear of fitting a stereotype:
the terrorist trope.
Shall I explain hypomania?
and how I couldn't sleep?
and how the monsters I dreamt of
into my conscious peripheral would creep?
How I couldn't seek help
until I was almost twenty-one
because in my parents' culture
mental illness doesn't exist.
My parents were Palestenian refugees in Lebanon- but that's their story not mine, right? They were married for seventeen years before they had me. They tried to have children almost from day one- but that's their story not mine, right?
Finally they immigrated to Canada for a million procedures that would give them a baby. After six years of treatment, a random obscure procedure worked and I was a bun in the oven- but that's their story not mine, right?
nine months later I was born.
I was a miracle baby and the "light of their life." so they named me light: "Noor."
I was born at North York General with a priviledge my parents never dared dream: Canadian. Safe. Not a refugee. They had someplace that they'd send me for university.
With our new, safe nationality
at forty days old
I was taken to the UAE
I was raised on Western books
and Western TV
raised with ideas that just didn't fit
in a muslim family
(at least my family is liberal, unlike the UAE)
I haven't scratched the surface of who I am
and depending on the pieces I tell
I haven't scratched the surface of all that I could be
what I choose to write is how you will read me.
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 3:39 PM UTC
It's a fascinating experience indeed
To know you're unbalanced
To know there's something wrong
To be really very confident
and to have red flags waving
But people are easily fooled
So you enjoy your high
Knowing you should listen to your therapist
Knowing she's absolutely right to worry
Knowing you'll disregard every one of her warnings
Knowing you'll lie over and over again
Because you want to be free
From the ******* of the pills
You just have to know
If they're what's ****** you up
Feb 12, 2021
Feb 12, 2021 at 4:08 PM UTC
flip of the fingers house of your hands
steepled fingers like wooden roofbeams
diamond studded knuckles, rugby thumbs
palms over the dome and push doors
blueberry jars clink with raspberry under
the faded overhang of the balcony, leaves
me for sale and fortunate, slated skin,
mouthed promises against pixel skimmimg
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 4:43 PM UTC
wings in my brain
make it easier to see
i'm left out in the cold
doesn't matter, it's all good
money is no problem
people are awared
drugs are already here
can't really get my head around
why I feel this way
why it sometimes gets easy
to later just fall, into pretend
"you're bipolar"
they said
"welcome to hell"
they said
and nodded
laughed
fell into their beds
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 11:41 AM UTC
High highs,
and low lows.
I wouldn't have it any other way,
I dare say, I have never felt more alive.
Casual Thursday identity crises that are anything but casual,
a relentless battle with self.
Regardless, it's time to saddle up.
Get out of your car,
relinquish the cigarette smoke and anguish,
we've all got **** to do,
and so we abide.
I am biding my time to unbind my euphoria.
A moment so clear and distinct,
where it's 2 am, the coffee house is closing,
and we've still so much to say.
I am well on my way,
despite the massive lack of sleep,
coffee and cigarettes to eat,
and it's better than a five course meal.
Optimism and bliss, for an instant,
that feels perhaps, in perpetuity.
Intermittence of all that was ever felt,
in greater doses,
to feed an addiction
of high highs,
and low lows.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 7:53 AM UTC
3/15/2015
everywhere I roll
on the bed there's a
glass bottle waiting
to be crushed under weight
and bleed shards peppered with
red chrysanthemum petal
excuse everything I do with
"I was manic back then"
everything was beginning to get
tragic back then truthfully
first baby december days
and here we are in March
we haven't spoken in three months
and we will not forever.
I know when you say
Never Again you mean it because you had said to me earlier I Love You with the same vehement strength and I knew you meant that.
When I think of it,
butter knives pry my ribs open
the pain of the cut still hurting me
such a long time afterward and
nowadays I spend my days sitting on steps smoking a pack, kissing men trying to replicate something. And what?
it seems I am so detached from love, now I am trying to replicate me leaving a dorm room looking around hoping no one noticed
and sitting on a bench writhing because
I have so much to say and not one soul really truly wants to hear it, besides from men who've seen me naked and read my poems and
I only find that thoughts of dying,
not suicide of course just dying
are the only accustomed ones that I enjoy
I ***** onto the sidewalk
(hopefully my weaknesses my desolation right? Like the black humor of plague times)
blink my eyes
(Patients of severe depression are said to have melancholy, heavy grazing eyes. See Ian Curtis)
check my phone
(last call I made out was 8 hours
ago. no call back)
move toward nassau street now,
the long term suffering victim
of too much love,
and I can understand
why people **** themselves after
ten year long relationships.
however I am not so vexed,
just resentfully doleful and I
decide I shall blame tonight's
little dorm room nightstand on
sweet hypomania.
Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 12:41 PM UTC
How many times, must I swing from a height
To an inevitable hollow of apathy and decay?
Riding the crest of a 30 foot wave
Strewn ashore to begin paddling the sea of life anew.
Stability is a still lake, calm and serene
Yet lacking sublimity and inspiration
Passivity, the bitter sweetness of fitting in
Normal I may be, but seemingly dull.
If only I could be coherent
When high, like tributaries to a river
Each stream of consciousness
Adding to a global master plan.
Exodus of the emotions, the Latin ecstase
As it pours forth unending, without pause
Elation edgy yet welcomed
To some my words seem without cause.
Surely there is some truth
Some empirical evidence that says
Hypomania is unsorted flourishing
Condensed and concentrated well-being.
Feb 17, 2014
Feb 17, 2014 at 8:37 AM UTC
My love for you is
Just like hypomania
Pure, sleepless, happy
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 4:40 PM UTC
And then the brain chemist spilled
An entire bottle of hypomania
Into the *** of depression.
Hell has many names.
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 11:22 PM UTC
Do it now
Keep going
Never stop (repeat)
**** the consequences
Don’t slow down
Live fully in every minute
Expect everyone else to
Hold them to impossible standards
So much to do
So many ideas
No time
Who sleeps anyways?
This energy builds and destructs
Explodes into my life in a rash of impulses and hurt feelings
My mouth ****** off more people
Get kicked out of another bar
Alienate another friend
Write more checks that bounce before the ink is dry
I am stuck in a prison of abstract ideas,
And overpowering emotions.
A random coagulation of quickly scrawled,
Half formed ideas
Spewing from unimaginable imaginary conversations
With people that never existed
Scribbled incoherently with no regard for structure or form.
Then reedit, again and again,
Until the nonsense is decipherable to normal people.
I am afraid of stopping
Of being too slow
Terrified of complacency
Get happy
Sad
Angry
Don’t give anyone a second to catch up
Moods change with each tick of the clock
ADHD…Nah.
I can focus
Hyper-focus, intently
So much so that I forget to eat, sleep, breathe
Forget that time and the world exists
Was this what Picasso was like
As he obsessed over a canvas
Or ******* as he whipped paint across the floor
Chain smoking his life through his fingertips
Casting the spent matches into the paint
I can’t stop once the adrenaline starts
My head is a toxic chemical soup
The only antidote is a massive rush of endorphins
If you catch what I mean
Here’s all this information
I’m going to keep bombarding you with it
Make something out of it
If I’m satisfied
Maybe I’ll stop
(I won’t)
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 10:57 PM UTC