Spring has finally come to Marin county.  It was seventy today.  I bitched all winter about wanting spring and I spent the first week of it lost in a bipolar low, bitching about something while my “chemical imbalance”  took me for a dark ride.  I made the mistake of watching the documentary “The Bridge.”  This happy, “feel-good” (very sarcastic there) film shows actual footage of people committing suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge.   They filmed it for three years straight or something.  Crazy…  Really a well made film and more about suicide and bipolar and mental illness than the bridge itself.  This one kid with bad bipolar 1, maybe 21, jumped and as soon as his hands left the rail he decided he wanted to live.  I had a similar experience with my own attempt, although mine less dramatic to be sure.  But I understand his sudden desire to live again.  That same calling can change the world.  He went in and tucked like divers do, saving his life.  Some of his spine shot into his intestines he hit so hard from 225 feet up.  In the midst of the insanity, he felt something BIG move across his leg.  He said in the interview “first I lived from the jump, and now a Great White is about to fucking eat me!”  It turned out to be seals brushing him up to the surface.  He believes it was divine intervention.  It is hard in animals to see where nature ends and God begins, but I love to follow that mystery.  I have hear of dolphins protecting U.S. Navy men in the water from Great Whites.  Hard for even the most cyincal person not to me moved by such tales as these  But what this poor kid went through, into that freezing cold water.  Jesus, it must have been hell on earth to jump from 25 stories, while people walk by taking pictures and gazing all around at the pure wonder of both the bridge and the Bay’s beauty.

The boy who jumped was in a coma for a while at Marin General Hospital.   His father, a businessman in SF, could hardly believe it.  And yet, 24 people jumped from the Golden Gate in 2004 and more than anywhere else on the planet.  This is not a record to be proud of.  As a woman says in the film, “there is NOTHING romantic about it.  He is simply dead.”  I don’t suggest you watch The Bridge if you struggle with depression.  This film makes Schindler’s List seem like Groundhog Day .    After I sat through the hour and a half film the little bit of happiness I had left all but died and I went into a week-long slump of suicidal thoughts and fantasies.  I lay in my room for days, drinking and isolated, a slow but effective suicide of my own.  Don’t I know better?  Hasn’t the darkness already been there and done that?  WHY?  WHY?  Smetimes I hate this fucking disease, imbalance, Biplorar, my soul “stranded in some skin and bones” (thanks Bono)  I tought of jumping myself, ending this retched pain for the last time, silencing this ruthless fucking demon that never, ever surrenders.

But the power of happiness returned today.  I sang loudly while listening to Josh Grobin and Simple Minds in my Jeep, animated in my rebirth under God’s skies.    I laughed and forced that damn happiness to come.  I have known you before, a feeling of such love and inspiration it takes much to contain and everything seems alive again while the Spirit Flows from within.  I want to do everything and love all around me.   I stayed productive.  I have a good friend who reminded me yesterday, “if you could only remember that they are just thoughts and emotions and you will feel DIFFERENT in a day or two!”  That sounds overly simplistic but it is so true.  I will thank him later for those simple, all important words that only a true friend can say.

I climbed to the top of a beautiful hill in San Rafael.  You can see the bay and the hills all around.  I go up there to rehearse sometimes – acting and singing.  I was sitting there and this old, limping dog came up to me.  I petted him or her and she took off, struggling to keep up with her owner on the next hill.  I thought of how animals just keep fighting, even the blind ones with only three legs.  I sing this song of hope today, under the lovely skies of Marin county with a heart full of new hope.  The wind is warm again and the green hills look like Ireland and New Zealand all rolled into one, lovely northern Californian moment.  There is a feeling in the air.

“Create, yeah.. cause’ in a spiral I wire Grace to the fire of Open Souls”

Tags: Bipolar a beast, Happiness Bipolar, Relentless Bipolar, The Bridge depressing