Did my medical condition create the artist within? Or did my natural personality quirks enable the disorder to take root? There have been well-documented studies on the correlation between bipolar disorder and the artistic temperament, but which created which? And which created me?
The questions twist themselves around my brain, but never find a conclusive answer. I suspect both culprits and consider myself guilty of their influence, for good and ill. For better and worse, this is who I am. And this is the story of my rollercoaster through life, love, bohemian ideals and disillusionment, and the pursuit of mental health.
Persephone was once a beautiful young girl full of naive joy and remarkable promise. She danced in the sunlight in fields of flowers. Perhaps this was all she did. Perhaps this was all she knew. And then one day the bottom dropped out. The ground underneath her feet split in two and she was stolen into the underworld, a place where no flowers grew. A place without sunlight. Her mother, Demeter, goddess of growing things, mourned her loss with a sorrow the world had never seen. All plants and crops began to die, such was her pain. But Hades, the lord of the underworld, refused to release Persephone, claiming an equal love and claim to her life. Persephone, as young and naive as she was, was helplessly caught between the two and unable to claim her own future. Finally a deal was struck- she would spend half of a year underground with her captor and mate, and half in the sunlight with her mother, for whom the very flowers grew.
Such was her life, caught in a constant transition between the two worlds, living in both but fully belonging to neither. I like to think that she found a way to reclaim her power and sovereignty throughout the cycles, finding the good in all and grace in darkness. But perhaps she only ever lived in a half-light, never knowing when the ground would give out beneath her.
I find she is my sister. I, too, am seeking for some semblance of solid ground throughout the tumult of emotions, the sometimes terrifying (sometimes ecstatic) highs and the devastating lows. Sometimes reality melts away and there's no way to know what's real, or who I truly am. And so I search for an equilibrium, a balance, and beauty. I'm caught between the two worlds I inhabit, but learning to reclaim my power in the midst of the forces trying to tear me in two.
I am Persephone's sister.
