today's flavor: B A S E L I N E
anxiety : 0
agitation : 0
After having spent the weekend at the beach while on muscle relaxants, I feel like I'm on a big, fat, mallow-flavored cloud. I had hoped to get a light tan to give myself a healthy-looking glow, but there wasn't much sun these past two days - which was great too since that meant cool-ish weather.
Nothing remarkable or noteworthy to blog about on being bipolar this week. That's sometimes the case when I remain at baseline / slight episodes: things are so okay, they're just ... okay.
But I'm not complaining, alright?
Just so this blog won't go to sleep, I thought about sharing another scrap from the memoirs of my manic-depressive youth. I suppose it was from lounging in the pool that I happened to remember a distant pool-related incident from when I was a teenager. In the said incident I exhibited a tremendous amount of antagonistic energy during an apparent manic episode: I pushed a boy into a swimming pool. Why did I do it?, you may ask. To this day, I will answer that I thought it was fun. To be honest, I'm still laughing.
I was seventeen and had just started college. A friend of mine from high school thought of getting some of her acquaintances together for a bit of bonding. She was planning to hold an 18th birthday bash in a couple of months and wanted participants in the program to get along before then. Since it was just a small, unstructured get-together, and since I was one of those involved in her said upcoming event anyway, I volunteered our place.
At that time, I lived with my mom in an upscale apartment complex that had a pool and a large party area. Perfect even for small, unstructured get-togethers. After all the expected people arrived and before anyone got dressed for swimming, my friend (the then-debutante-to-be) collected everyone by the poolside for an activity that was supposed to be an ice breaker and relationship builder in one. She put us in little groups, and each group was to build free-standing but buoyant structures out of drinking straws.
In another group was this guy from the other university who I'd met only a few minutes earlier. He seemed like a very nice person, only he came off as ever so slightly annoying, and was a tiny bit of a know-it all, the kind that could benefit from a little more loosening up. At the moment that their structure was being tested, he was crouching conveniently at the edge of the pool, showing off the Marithe & Francois Girbaud tag on his rump (the year was 1995; jeans were worn low-waist). I tiptoed over to his branded behind and gave it a shove, and ka-ploosh! The neatly dressed, neatly-pressed Atenean was chest-deep in pool water, fancy jeans, leather shoes eyeglasses and all. And I -- well, I laughed away.
The other guys thought that was rather shocking, though not completely unpleasant. The girls thought it was absolutely appalling. Prior to this little gathering by the way, my friend the then-debutante-to-be and a few of our other kabarkadas had already warned the other people about me, that I could be quite an obnoxious pain in the neck. See what a handful I was - my friends thought it necessary to warn people about me so they can brace themselves when I got too vicious.
After I'd had my needed dose of fun, I apologized to the poor bloke and offered the use of our shower. I took him up to our apartment and waited until he finished while the others commenced by the pool area. So yeah, for a solid chunk of time I was alone in an apartment with a guy I just met, who was right at that time taking a shower. Kinky. Seemed like a predictable setup for a B-rate teen porno plot, but no, we weren't the tinyest bit attracted to each other. At least not at that time. ;)
After that day, my friend the then-debutante-to-be thought it clever to stick us together for her cotillion de honor. She said it was because he was the tallest guy, and I was the second-tallest girl, but the tallest girl was close friends with this other guy, so it made sense to pair me with Mr. Girbaud jeans. Needless to say, I had to spend whole afternoons every weekend for the next few months practicing with him, filling up awkward silences with equally awkward apologies.
He apparently came to forgive me, and we eventually became close friends. Due to a daily telephone habit, there was a very slight attraction that grew on both sides, though never really enough to make anything out of, and not ever much for B-rate teen porno scenes. I don't recall how we ended up being not friends anymore, but just as with most of my friends from that period, I dropped out of their lives and hadn't bothered to keep in touch. I thought of finding him on Facebook, but I don't remember his name.
So that was today's tale from the memoirs of a manic-depressive teen. And as abruptly as it began, so shall it end.
