Who am I?

"Have you ever found yourself wondering if you are a high functioning idiot, or a low functioning genius?"

This was a question from one of the readers of my blog. This person understands.  It comes from a similar experience to my own.  It gets at the core of one of the most difficult issues for me.  Identity.

At issue is two very distinct experiences of life.  At one end of the spectrum, during times of depression, the simplest of tasks seem insurmountable.  Clarity of thought is illusive.  In my woodworking shop I find myself barely capable of completing one step, and then all momentum is lost, and I have to dig deep to reorganize my thoughts, and trudge onward.  And yet there is this memory of times that were very high functioning.  An idiot who has moments of greatness.

And then at other times I'm "in the zone".  My ability to analyze, conceptualize, and visualize possibilities is impressive.  Tasks are accomplished in a seamless flow.  Everything seems possible.  Give me a few acres of land, and a $5,000 grant, and I can turn it into a 15 million dollar senior housing facility.  Energy abounds.  Get out of my way.  I've got this.  Until I don't.  Its like a rocket being propelled into orbit with almost enough fuel, running out just before enough momentum is achieved, and then falling back to earth.  A genius that can't quite make it and continually crashes.

Somewhere in the middle there is the place of balance, if you can call it that.  That seems to be what the goal of treatment is.  Eliminate the highs and the lows and stabilize in the middle.  Sometimes I yearn to find that place of balance and stay there.  At other  times I fear losing part of who I am.

When I look at the totality of my experience I find myself wondering what part of that represents my true self.  If there was a time in my life that I'd like to relive continually, it would be that period when I was doing the development work on the senior housing.  I felt so "alive".  At other times it is the melancholy, pensive, reflective Scandinavian self that seems like the real me.  At one end of the spectrum a developer doing great things.  At the other end, a preacher probing the depths of the human experience.

The highs and the lows have so defined my existence that it is difficult to wrap myself around and identity carved out of the middle.  It seems so painfully average, nondescript.  Perhaps this is why so many people decide after stabilizing on medications to cease taking them.  There is a desire to experience the fullness of their selves, both the height and depth of the human experience.  But the disparity between the highs and lows is so profound that the extremes can seem demonic.  Or if you prefer, psychotic.  So extreme as to loose touch with reality.

Sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ, forever.  These words speak of our Christian identity.  They come to me now.  And I hear them in a bipolar manner.  Soaring like a dove, nailed to the cross.  The height and depth.  I wonder if Christ yearned for that place in the middle?