bipolar disorder and pathological lying — explained — 1 brief investigation

the coffee shop is loud enough to think in. bipolar disorder and pathological lying, the article wants compared. the voicemail at home is full at eight months. the third yoga mat, rolled, is also full of itself. the unopened mail pile is the real diagnosis. pension is faith-based. so is the order i just placed.

writing this from the desk on a thursday, 11:34am, carla is in the vendor walkthrough on the third floor and the order in front of me has gone cold in the way only a third refill goes cold. the coffee shop scene above happened on a saturday and i’m reporting it back from work because that is the only place a list gets typed. the morning has roughly thirty-eight minutes of cover, which is generous.

i am not a doctor. i am a guy with a pension i thought about for twelve minutes and a yoga mat that has out-survived two relationships. so when the search box asked me about bipolar disorder and pathological lying, i did what any honest idiot does. i declined the medical comparison and made a list of household evidence instead. that is the entire investigation. that is what you get for $0.

the pillar of this whole investigation into liars and what counts as one is sitting on the homepage of the cluster, and i’m pointing at it now because i want it noted before i lose nerve. i would also like to mention that the kettle in the coffee shop sounds exactly like the kettle in catch me if you can, the one frank abagnale never quite outruns. i bring it up because i, too, am being chased by a kettle. mostly the one at home.

1. bipolar disorder and pathological lying, the coffee-shop list

here is the entire list, in the order it occurred to me at the corner table. five items. not four, not six. five is the number you can count on one hand without using the thumb, which is, for me, a personal achievement.

item one: i decline the medical comparison. item two: the voicemail, full eight months. item three: the unopened mail pile, also eight months, suspicious symmetry. item four: the third yoga mat, briefly tested. item five: the pension, twelve minutes of total adult thought.

i wrote this on a napkin first. then on the back of a receipt. then in a note on my phone titled “list”, because i have not earned a better filename. the napkin has been logged as evidence. the receipt is in the receipt wallet. the phone note is the only one that survived.

2. item one, why i decline the medical comparison

i decline. politely. i can spell neither side. i have looked them up in the way an idiot looks things up, which is to say i typed three words and read for ninety seconds, then i closed the tab, then i opened a different tab, then i closed that one too. by the count i keep running, i had forty-seven tabs open during that window. none survived.

what i can tell you is what happens in my own kitchen, at home, when i am alone with the toaster. i tell small lies to small objects. i tell the kettle “two minutes” and mean four. i tell the dishwasher “tomorrow” and mean march. i tell the third yoga mat “tonight” and i think it has stopped believing me. that is not a diagnosis. that is just a tuesday. or, today, a thursday.

this whole bit pairs with the longer note on what pathological lying actually means in a regular sentence, which is a piece written by me, also from this desk, on a different morning, with a different cold drink.

3. item two, the voicemail, full eight months

the voicemail has been full for eight months. i know because a caller left a message in october and got the “mailbox full” tone, and i was, in a small way, proud of the system. that pride lasted twenty seconds. then the second man called. then a third man. by the running tally, three men have been declined by my own phone in eight months. i did not declarethem. the inbox did. there is a difference. it is the difference between cowardice and architecture.

“bipolar disorder and pathological lying” — the search wants two clinical things compared. i am offering instead one full voicemail and the word declined. it is not a comparable trade. that is the joke.

THE INBOX. DECIDED. ON ITS OWN.

4. item three, the unopened mail pile, also eight months

the unopened mail pile is also eight months old. i did not plan this. it is, however, suspicious. the symmetry is doing something to me. eight months of voicemail, eight months of mail. i am either consistent, or i am building a hobby. there is no third option.

the pile contains: the bank app printouts i still get because i cannot work the bank app, two letters from the taxman in serif font, one yellow envelope with a window i recognize, three credit card offers that survived the box and the door, and one wedding invitation that i already missed. i am sure of the wedding because dave called to ask if i was going. i was already not going. i had not opened the envelope to know.

this links naturally to the tells of small lies told to oneself, because the lie i told myself was “i’ll get to it sunday,” and sunday is, by my own admission, a day that should end at 6 PM, which leaves no time for envelopes.

5. item four, the third yoga mat, briefly tested

the yoga mat is the third one. that fact is now public domain. it was tested for one (1) afternoon, in the kitchen, with a video paused at minute two. the video is still paused. i can prove it because the laptop is still warm. the mat is rolled. it is, in some way i don’t want to investigate, judging me from the corner.

i am not going to pretend the yoga mat is comparable to a clinical condition. it is not. it is, however, a small lie i told myself in a store with a fluorescent ceiling. “this one i’ll use,” i said, out loud, in the aisle, like a man making a vow. i made it. i broke it. i logged it.

6. item five, the pension i thought about for 12 minutes

twelve minutes. that is the total adult thought i have given my own pension, lifetime, to date. i timed it because the kitchen kettle was on and the kettle is honest about the time it takes. eight minutes on a tuesday in march, three minutes one november when the envelope arrived, one minute sometime in 2024 when sarah said the word at the office and i pretended to know.

this is, conveniently, the hot take of the post. a pension is a faith-based retirement system. i did not invent this position. i hold it because i have not earned a better one. holding it is cheaper than rejecting it. faith costs nothing, until it does, at which point it is, by definition, no longer faith.

7. verdict, the list is short, on purpose, again

the list is five items. it is on purpose. a longer list would be a confession, and a confession is, in the household i run, a category error. one cannot confess to a kettle.

so the verdict, such as it is: i am not the right person to compare bipolar disorder and pathological lying. i am, however, a reliable narrator of one small kitchen, where eight months of voicemail and eight months of unopened mail are sitting in suspicious symmetry, where the third yoga mat is rolled, where a pension has been thought about for twelve minutes lifetime, and where the order in front of me at this desk has gone cold for the third time today. the cluster’s longer file on this is in the broader notes on what the word actually does, written, again, from this same desk, on a different cold drink.

the storyline tag for this one was the unopened mail pile, which is the only storyline that arrived without me asking. it is also the only one i can prove. the rest is napkins and faith.