Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

In the hu­man­i­ty of those chal­lenged by bipo­lar­ism, unipo­lar­ism, de­pres­sion, dys­thymic dis­or­der, autism spec­trum dis­or­ders, mood dis­or­der, and a host of oth­er men­tal health is­sues, there ex­ist zones of noth­ing­ness.

In most of these con­di­tions, peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence al­ter­nat­ing re­al­i­ty of highs and lows in which they feel un­usu­al­ly buoy­ant and en­er­getic and then over­whelmed by sad­ness, guilt and some de­gree of hope­less­ness.

The med­ical dic­tio­nary says, "these pe­ri­ods may last for days, weeks, or months and run the spec­trum from mild to se­vere. These episodes may be sep­a­rat­ed by pe­ri­ods of emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty in which the in­di­vid­ual func­tions nor­mal­ly."

Se­vere lows char­ac­terise noth­ing­ness. These can ap­pear with or with­out warn­ing, with or with­out recog­nis­able trig­gers, and may fol­low a pe­ri­od of en­er­getic in­ter­ac­tion or one of re­pose.

Noth­ing­ness ren­ders you a ten­ant in your own body. You are a tourist on the board­walk of the vast ocean that is you, watch­ing your­self ebb and flow and not be­ing able to do one thing to in­flu­ence it. In fact, it is un­re­spon­sive to in­flu­encers.

When this lodger oc­cu­pies me, I say to those who em­pathise with it suf­fi­cient­ly, "I am not user-friend­ly" and that, I've found, is an ad­e­quate cue to warn them to leave me alone.

Gen­er­al­ly, I with­draw and I al­ways say that ac­tion is to pro­tect oth­ers.

But with­draw­al, while nec­es­sary, is un­com­fort­able for those with whom you have con­stant in­ter­ac­tion–for me, that's one sis­ter, one aunt, one girl­friend, and one boyfriend. They abrupt­ly find that their calls are not be­ing an­swered or re­turned.

Noth­ing­ness says, "Talk to the hand" or the an­swer­ing ser­vice or some­one else–not me; not to­day!

Good peo­ple, some­times I want to re­spond but then you start ask­ing me stuff like, "You're eat­ing? You're tak­ing you meds?" (my sis­ter's favourite duo), or the dis­be­liev­ing "What's wrong with you?" be­cause I am in the yard and my clothes are on me in the cor­rect or­der.

Or­di­nar­i­ly those are not of­fen­sive but in a pe­ri­od of noth­ing­ness, even good morn­ing greet­ings can make one testy!

Two weeks ago when I was slid­ing down the slip­pery slope and you could hear the "fedup­ness" in my voice–it usu­al­ly bleeps every­thing–my girl­friend sug­gest­ed that what I need was a "kick in my a**e!"

But, she reads this col­umn every week and un­der­stands the is­sues be­yond most peo­ple, so, I knew she was jest­ing and I ig­nored the com­ment.

No ex­ter­nal ac­tion re­al­ly im­pacts the noth­ing zone. One can­not just "get over her­self" and no de­gree of pos­te­ri­or in­frac­tions is like­ly to change the colour of the mood.

Noth­ing­ness, quite apart from pulling away from friends and fam­i­ly, has a telling ef­fect on its cap­tive body.

Get­ting out of bed each day is an is­sue. For my ther­a­py, I have dogs that need food, wa­ter, and ex­er­cise dai­ly, and cats that re­mind me that I'm re­spon­si­ble for their well­be­ing. I used those and my gar­den as my fight back against stay­ing un­der the cov­ers for the past two weeks.

I heard my­self say about six times in as many days, "I do not like peo­ple". My Aunt Agatha who is a rock in my life and al­ways a port, whichev­er wind blows in, com­pas­sion­ate­ly said, "In­deed, you can get fed-up of peo­ple. And more so be­cause peo­ple are es­pe­cial­ly un-nice these days."

The thing is though, when in a place of noth­ing­ness, I hon­est­ly have no in­cli­na­tion to be with or around peo­ple.

In fact, a long time ago I re­alised that I had been sink­ing in­to that symp­tom of stay­ing away from groups, events, and the like. But be­ing an­ti-so­cial pro­tects me from over­ex­po­sure and shields oth­ers from moods that be­set me un­pre­dictably.

Noth­ing­ness does not like to bathe or pay at­ten­tion to per­son­al hy­giene so the bath­room is a spite­ful place where it goes for dai­ly pun­ish­ment, if or when it goes! It hates food, but loves snacks–nuts, pota­to crisps, brown­ies, cake, in fact any­thing with sug­ar would suf­fice.

De­pend­ing on which men­tal health con­di­tion at­tends, one can ar­rive at noth­ing­ness af­ter run­ning the gamut of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing "feel­ings of self-im­por­tance, ela­tion, talk­a­tive­ness, in­creased so­cia­bil­i­ty, and a de­sire to em­bark on goal-ori­ent­ed ac­tiv­i­ties, cou­pled with the char­ac­ter­is­tics of ir­ri­tabil­i­ty, im­pa­tience, im­pul­sive­ness, hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty, and a de­creased need for sleep." (med­ical-dic­tio­nary.com)

Or, for long pe­ri­ods, one can be at a point of "ex­treme­ly low en­er­gy, slowed men­tal and phys­i­cal process­es, and more pro­found fa­tigue", bet­ter de­scribed here as noth­ing­ness.

You can com­plete your os­cil­la­tion in 24 hours, one day, one week, one month or two years, again, de­pend­ing on what por­tends,

So, for those who think we're elic­it­ing sym­pa­thy or be­ing in­dul­gent, noth­ing­ness is an au­then­tic con­di­tion–a dead zone of sort, where all kinds of zom­bies play on your mind and with your body, too.

And, for the ben­e­fit of those who asked about my noth­ing­ness of which I spoke in last week's col­umn, I hope that I have pierced the dark­ness ad­e­quate­ly.

?