bipolar disorder and compulsive lying — explained — 1 brief investigation

the apartment is honest only because nobody else is in it. bipolar disorder and compulsive lying, the search said, share traits. tom, comparison-wise, did not have either, only confidence. the drawer of certified letters and the unopened mail pile share a wall. a kindle, in my hand, is the same as reading. they are not the same as each other.

writing this from my desk on a thursday at 12:51pm. carla is in a vendor walkthrough on the third floor, the kind that begins with coffee and ends with someone agreeing to a follow-up. i have, by a generous estimate, the rest of the morning before any of it makes its way back down.

so. bipolar disorder and compulsive lying showed up together in a search bar last night, in the kitchen, because i was reading something else and the suggestion box did its small unwanted favour. i was on a kindle. the kindle had three open books, which is, by my own reading, a kind of evidence. i was not looking up either of those things on purpose. they arrived in the same suggested phrase, side by side, as if a careful person had filed them on the same shelf and left.

i want to say, before i go any further, that i am not the careful person. the careful person is a doctor. a doctor is, somewhere, a man with a job and a calendar and a pill organiser. i am here with a notebook and the unopened mail pile and a kindle that thinks i should be reading other things. the larger noun lives in the pillar piece, liar — a definition i’m fairly sure about, which i keep returning to whenever a phrase like this one arrives. this post is the smaller, more careful working version, written from a desk, with the right amount of caution for a thursday before lunch.

i am writing this carefully. i am also writing it briefly, because tom would be polite about it and the apartment, on a long enough timeline, is louder than the kindle.

bipolar disorder and compulsive lying, the careful working version

the careful working version is this. one of these has a name and a doctor. the other one is a habit, mostly. one of them shows up in a calendar with appointments. the other shows up in a kitchen, with envelopes, and with a small “i’ll get to it” said to nobody in particular at 11:47pm on a sunday.

i am not going to define the first one. the first one is the kind of word a person inherits from a doctor, not from a kitchen. i can tell you what the second one looks like, because the second one lives at home with me and i have, by my own count, observed it for years. the second one — what the cluster calls the small repeated unprompted automatic kind — is the one i can speak to. the larger picture, between the two, is too big for one investigation. the working bullets for the smaller half live in the cluster if you want the unglamorous version.

i’d rather not pretend the comparison is mine to draw. i can sit next to it. i can say where each one stops being mine to talk about. the careful version is: don’t put a name on a person from a kitchen counter. that is not what the kitchen counter is for.

tom would have a doctor, a calendar, and a pill organizer

tom, to be specific, is the old college friend now with two kids and a wife and a volvo and a pension he understands. tom would, in this scenario, have a doctor. tom would have a calendar with the appointment in it, and the appointment would be in red, and the calendar would be on the fridge, and the fridge would be the kind of fridge that contains food and not, as mine sometimes does, only condiments.

tom does not have either of these things, as far as i know. tom has confidence and a pill organiser for vitamins. tom’s mail, by his wife’s testimony, is opened the day it arrives. tom’s small “yes” at the till is, mostly, a real yes. tom does the careful thing. i do the smaller, less careful thing. we are both, on a generous reading, valid. mine has more envelopes.

i bring tom up because tom is the comparison i keep using to know where i am. tom is the calibration tool. if tom would, on a thursday, have an appointment in his calendar, then the matter has a name. if tom would, on a thursday, simply open his mail, then the matter is a habit. between those two thursdays is, on a careful reading, most of my life.

the unopened mail pile, my most accurate journal

the unopened mail pile is on the kitchen counter. the pile, by my last count, is sixty-eight envelopes deep. the pile leans, faintly, in the direction of the toaster, which i find ominous and also, on some days, comforting. the pile is, in its way, my most accurate journal. the journal i keep on purpose is two days long and consists, on most pages, of the word “today.” the pile keeps better notes.

THE PILE. KNOWS. WHAT I. SAID. LAST WEEK.

here is what the pile remembers, briefly, that i had told myself otherwise. i told myself, three weeks ago, that i had paid the gas bill. the pile contains the gas bill, unopened. i told myself, last month, that the bank had stopped writing. the pile contains four bank envelopes. i told myself, in passing, that the doctor’s office had not, in fact, sent the reminder. the pile contains a small white envelope with the doctor’s office’s small white logo on the corner.

none of this, i want to be specific, is bipolar disorder. all of this is the smaller half of the comparison. the smaller half is the one i can speak to, because the smaller half lives in my kitchen and writes its own evidence in a slow, southwest lean.

the certified letter drawer as exhibit, again

the drawer of certified letters is the second exhibit. the drawer is in the hallway, lower right, under the spot where i never put keys. the drawer contains, by a count i have not run in a while, eight envelopes that arrived with a green sticker and required a signature. i, in person, signed for each one. i, in person, then put each one in the drawer. that is, on a careful reading, two distinct decisions.

the first decision is the small one. the small “yes” at the door, where the courier is in a hurry, and the door is, briefly, all there is. the second decision is the bigger, slower one — the one that goes from “i’ll open this later” to “later is now a drawer.” the cluster has a longer note on what that pattern actually looks like in the smaller signs that arrive at the door first, which is honest about the part i find hardest to admit.

i’d say, on a generous thursday, that the drawer is the more articulate of the two pieces of furniture. the pile leans. the drawer holds. between them, by my own reading, they make a fairly accurate map of the small repeated automatic habit i can describe. neither of them, however, is a doctor. neither of them is a calendar. neither of them is a pill organiser. the drawer is a drawer.

why the comparison is too big and i am too small

here is where i pull up. the comparison is, on the strict reading, too big for the desk. the careful version of any sentence that puts those two things together involves words like traits, overlap, co-occurrence, words that come, properly, from people with calendars and offices and books that do not also contain three other open books. the cluster has a smaller cousin entry for one slice of the noun, and even that one i wrote with a tea going cold and an awareness that the tea was the most reliable witness in the room.

i can talk about the kitchen. i can talk about the drawer. i can talk about the small “i’m fine” said to nobody. i can also, briefly, talk about how the cinema version of any of these phrases — the cinematic confession, the swagger, the man flying a plane he does not own (you have, possibly, seen the film about the man flying the plane he does not own) — is not, on the strict reading, the working version.

the working version is small. the working version is, mostly, a habit. the working version is the unopened mail pile and a kindle that thinks i should be reading three other things at the same time. reading on a kindle is, by my own quiet conviction, the same as reading. it is not, however, the same as the doctor. the doctor has a chair and a calendar. the kindle has me, on a sofa, with three open books, on a sunday, telling myself i am fine.

verdict, the table is honest where it is empty

the table is honest where it is empty. the empty cells are the ones i am not the right person to fill. the filled cells are the ones the apartment, on a long enough timeline, has filled for me.

carla is back from the vendor walkthrough with a folder and a face that suggests the walkthrough was, on balance, the walkthrough. the pile, technically, is back at home. the drawer is, technically, in the hallway. i am, technically, minimising this tab.

so. the noun lives in the pillar piece. the smaller habit lives in my kitchen. the named thing lives, properly, with people who own calendars i do not own. tom opens his mail. i write a small careful working version of the comparison from a desk. we are both, on a careful thursday, about as valid as we are going to get.