Cyclothymia, the seasons and a week in the life of a troubled teen

The strange and fun thing about the crazy version of me is, that it is bordered somewhere between me being creative, bored and impatient to the point that I peak in some odd situation that I got myself into and then fall down like a phoenix on fire. And then I want to sleep it out. Obviously.

For me this feeling can't be a diagnosis because it is the only reality that I know, and in fact the only stable undertone in the patterns of my behaviour, when I seriously think about it. Cyclothymia is natural and healthy for a lot of people because for them it is like driving down a familiar road, almost on muscle memory. It rides with the weather and the seasons. It reacts to light and temperature. It has a rhythm. It is a force of nature, like the seasons.

Way up north

I have this theory that for the people of Iceland, light depression and light hypomania (or pitch dark in some cases) are a natural psychological state, which is no wonder. During the dark months of the winter, the body produces mass amounts of melatonin so you become sleepy, drowsy and monotonous to the point of depression.

Meanwhile it is windy, black and stormy outside and you have to battle a snowstorm to get your car door open, and still be in pure denial that it is actually challenging, and sometimes horrible, to live on this fucking island. You are like that “Everything is fine” meme where a smiling dog with a cup of tea sits at a table in a house on fire.  Everything is fine because you have a big bowl of snacks, a variety of anti depressants and a Netflix account.

And to the extreme opposite, during the bright months of spring and summer, the body and the brain experience a blitzkrieg of INTENSE daylight „therapy“ (for some much unwanted) that pumps them up and makes them want to go out and DO things>

Go fishing, barbecuing, arrange huge soccer matches for kids (a torture for introverted parents), go camping, go to cottages, hold weddings, paint roofs, build fortresses called “pallur” around their houses, buy icecream and go to the swimming pool. Get crazy drunk downtown and eat a hot dog that might make you regret it an hour later, go to a party with random people and make new friends, have accidental sex with someone you've just met and stay awake until 12:00 the next day because you have no idea that it’s actually morning because it’s light 24/7 anyway. The sunlight hurts the brain and you are dehydrated but you keep going anyway. Your phone is on 2%. The ocean is calm. You can see the reflection of the mountain in it. Everything is bright blue and intensely yellow, like the intro in the Teletubbies.

Mondays

Sometimes it get’s way too much and you just want to stay inside, but you can’t because you start feeling guilty about not being OUT IN THE SUN. As the days get warmer, The People of Iceland want you to go outside. It’s a demand, an obligatory duty from everyone around you, national peer pressure.

-Kva! Ætlaru bara að vera inni í sólinni? Það er fimmtán stiga hiti! Drífðu þig út maður!

Translates: If you belong to this nation, you must go outside!

1980-1984

When I was around ten or twelve, I really enjoyed staying inside when it was super sunny outside. I just liked chilling on the brown leather couch and watch spectacles of dust, from the fuzzy brown floor-carpet, float weightlessly in sun-rays that broke their way through the dark curtains. The dust looked like an infinite galaxy in the sun-rays. I disappeared and became just as weightless as the dust. I vanished and it felt good.

Sundays

I also used to enjoy napping or zoning out to the sounds from small airplanes on Sundays. On calm, sunny weekends they were very predictable, because in Iceland, everyone does the same things at the same time. That went for the hobby pilots too. I also listened to music with headphones. I loved that enough for another chapter. 

Saturdays

Late at night on Saturdays and Fridays, and probably on other nights as well, I used to break into cars. I was still a tween. The area below the block of flats where I lived was full of car repair shops and there were lot’s of unlocked cars there. All kinds. Big and small. Me, along with some other kids, used to go straight for the glove compartments and nick whatever was in there. Normally we found coins and cigarettes. Sometimes porn mags. It was a competition. Who got the best stash that night. 

Fridays

Another crime I used to commit as a kid was stealing AA batteries in food stores. They used to be overpriced, like proper razor blades are today, but easy to nick from bigger shops. I then took the batterie pack to a smaller shop, where they were sold from behind the counter, and told the assistant that I had bought the wrong ones, but since my mom had already bought the right ones, I wanted to exchange the batteries for a pack of Viceroys. What a criminal! I was 14.

Thursdays

During a period, that lasted for a few weeks in my life, I used to go home after school to sniff glue and watch VHS recordings of music videos with my girlfriends. There were like five of us and we did this when our parents were at work. We also used to hyperventilate, choke each other by the neck and pass out for a few seconds. Top class entertainment and a cheap and easy way to get high.

Wednesdays 

Take the bus downtown after school, go to the arcade, play Pacman and Galaxy, go on a shoplifting raid down the main street, come back to the arcade with expensive suits and pilot jackets, „sell“ the goods to the twenty year old guys behind the counter and get coins for the game machines instead. We did this regularly.

Tuesdays

Go to school, go through hell. Run home like a fugitive. Read and watch films.

Mondays

Go to school, go through hell. Run from the bullies. Run home like a fugitive.

The past few months, day's and weeks have been weird to say the least. The emotional level of uncertainty and need for structure has reached a new climax. Covid with all of it's crazy rules. Back back and forth and forth... And then 2021. A new year and suddenly a new horizon. Surprisingly christmas went really well and the numbers of infected went down. The rules almost went back to normal, for a short while, and then suddenly here is an earthquake for you. Enjoy it. Pretty big. 

Things fell down from the shelves in the town of Grindavík, closest to the origins of the quake. A road ripped open. Kitchen cabinets fell from a wall.

One earthquake is fine. I'm used to that, everyone has experienced them but these ones went on for three weeks. They just came randomly and shook the earth. It's so crazy. The earth is the only thing in the world that we think we can think upon as solid. When you go out on the sea you expect the waves and billows. Big bumps. But the earth. You made a deal with it. It's supposed to stay put. When it doesn't the situation can become sort of traumatising. 

I felt sea sickness to begin with for about ten days. Then that stopped and I stopped feeling the earthquakes even though they were many a day. I only felt the last big one before the volcano eruption. And yes. Now there is an active volcano blowing close to the airport and gas is in the air (John Paul Young. 1978).

And as of today, the covid cases are increasing, the government considers/or has decided to open the borders up again for citizens of the UKandUSA. And as for me. I'm just trying to focus on studying anthropology with the effort of a brain that is a bit overworked from ignoring this sci-fi like weirdness around me. 

Later!

Thoughts about unconscious thoughts

When I first started blogging it was called a weblog. Something you did on the web - and it was logged. To begin with, for the first few years, I didn't really want anyone to know who I was. It gave me the freedom to write just like I was writing in a diary but at the same time publishing it, to myself and possibly some random surfers. 

I used to write whatever that came to my mind and sometimes my mind  wasn't even in the game. I just sat down and started writing. I think that's what I'm gonna do now. And just like then, most of the sentences will start with the letter I. Because blogs were to begin with, the stuff that went on in peoples minds, before it came an outlet for the angry ones and later it was all about pretty girls and funny girls trying to sell stuff, secretly.

Right now I feel a bit weird like most of us. This corona shit is a gigantic wave of weirdness, cabin fever, confusion, uncertainty. In a way it's like being in a vacuum. Going from day to day. Nothing to do. Nothing on the schedule. Most of my friends have taken up walking. Like Forrest Gump. Well he was running, but it was something to do. A way to stop thinking. A way to forget. We like that. Activating the body calms the mind. Reminds us that we are a body too. 

Knock out

They say that a lot of thoughts are unconscious. In a way that seems a bit weird. Since when you are unconscious you aren´t really thinking. Being unconscious means knocked out. So a lot of us literally run away from unconscious, knocked out thoughts, and to "run" even further from them we knock ourselves out in a myriad of ways. 

 

Psychologists don´t really recommend unconscious, knocked out thoughts. Clear thoughts are preferred. And they give you therapy to dive down and get your unconscious thoughts up from the bottom of the ocean of your being. Sometimes I feel that this is way to much of a hassle. Is it really going to change that much?  Not really. Is it? To dive down for a pile of dirty pain, - and do what with it? Will it vanish when you put it on dry land?

And isn't there a lot more down there? Why bother? 

The "should" stuff

Christianity, and a lot of other religions, have this thing about separating mind, body and 

emotions. Separate flesh and spirit. Probably to make it all more manageable? Control your lust. Whip it out in the name of love for a perfect structure. 

My main religion is writing. Taking things from inside of me, from the place between my ears, behind my eyes and mouth, putting it out with my fingers to understand things better. It makes my life more manageable and structured and yet I don't really practice it like I "should".

There are a lot of things I "should" do. It will be like that forever. And possibly, when I pass away into the wonderful deep sea world of being knocked out and unconscious, I might not even do it like I should have.

Later!

A fresh political party, born from the fist of the credit crunch

I live in a small country. One of the smallest in the world I suppose. The inhabitants of this island are around 300.000 and that's clearly not a very large number.

In spite of the smallness we have four "large" political parties here. One of them is to the right, two are supposed to be in the middle and one is to the left.

It seems to me that from the beginning of adulthood, people place themselves somewhere in this group of four. 

They decide who to follow and from then on there is no way back. It's "us" and "them". And the leader of the particular political party that they choose to follow becomes some kind of a guru. Everything that this particular person utters becomes "the truth" and everything that comes from the other parties is "bs". We have chosen a political soccer team and by that, simplified our lives to that extend.

And just like watching a game of soccer with shouting hooligans we can watch our politicians, standing there in parliament, trying to convince us about the quality of their ideas, but to me it has always seemed that most of the energy goes into badmouthing what "the other party" wants to say or do.

The primary purpose seems to be about winning followers and gaining power. Just like any cult.

After the crunch the left wing influence has grown remarkably. The right wing, or the Independence party, that has ruled the country for the past 18 years, get's the blame: "Under your ruling we got into this situation," people shout. But I must admit that I am rather lost in this. I don't honestly belive that it is their fault or in fact anyones fault. Just a complex chain of global events that lead to this downfall.

What is the situation in countries that have been ruled by left wing parties to this day? Or until the crunch? Is it any better? Does it make sense to blame the right wing policy or is the answer deeper? Do we possibly need to invent an completely fresh method of managing a country? A more active democracy, for example using the Internet as a tool to the means? How can we avoid corruption and minimize the effects of human defects?

Could this be possible here in Iceland? We are more like a clan of people than a nation.

The answer lies with a new party called the citizen movement or x-o. It's main goal is to get into parliament, only to make rules and changes that create a more active democratic participation from the common Jane and Joe and outrule a lot of the chances of corruption.

I hope that something good can come out of this. You would think that such a small clan should be able to create change, faster than a big one, but time will tell...

I'll keep you posted.

The revolution is on

Ok... this is the day that Obama turned to president and this is the first day of the real revolution in Iceland.

The protests have been going on since noon. People have lit a bonfire in front of the parliament, police is using tear gas, everything up in flames. This nation has not protested so hard since 1949 when Iceland signed up with Nato.

We want the government out. We want new managers in key financial institutions. And we want to vote again.

Since this thing, this credit crunch happend, no one has resigned, no one has said they were sorry. All they can say is "We understand your need to state an opinion and we think it's ok." Horrible arrogance that seems only an invitation to more anger and frustration. Some of them add "I used to protest myself when I was young".

But it's not just youngsters protesting. About 2000+ were there today. People of all ages and from all different layers of society.

I predict that if we don't get new elections asap... some people in government will get hurt. I think that something will be clear in February and that serious change will take place in March.

you should be able to find videos from the protest on these pages

www.visir.is
www.ruv.is
www.mbl.is

Read this

Iris in the Huffington Post

A little post from the host

I have been lazy recently. So probably my postings here will be like the truly honest men in this world-few and far between them... but occasionally I will post something. Like today for example.

I've heard some foreigners say that Icelanders seem clueless now. Like a lamb just about to be slaughtered, not knowing what is coming... but then I hear the people here in Iceland reply that we are so small, such a small nation... that our power to do and change stuff is much greater than the power of those who live in bigger nations.

Personally I have no idea what is coming but I know the law of cause and effect and that I can truly do something and create some change, depending on what I choose to do and to whom I talk.

One of the things I want to do is to sign up in a political party that will soon be created. The only goal of this party is to get into parliament to restore the democracy that we all want to live under. The one we chose so many years ago before this thing started to revolve around personal gain and power of a few individuals, their friends and relatives, who have shared these seats for decades.

I want to bring down this northern Sicily and create a nation that can be a reminder to others that anything should be possible... if there is a will, there is a way.

Got involved with a group of entrepreneurs and it people last Saturday. We want to think up some good ideas and make them happen. Making things happen is good fun.

Must admit though that at the same time that I write this, I feel a little worried about the future. These things happening in Gaza and the tension between Russia and Ukrania... I don't know. I worry that the law of cause will lead to some destructive effect if we are not careful and if we forget to learn from past mistakes.