When I was a teenager and first becoming moody, artsy, interested in literature in earnest, fascinated by words and eager to try to assemble some in a compelling order myself I was reading a lot of Plath in the basement and I remember writing a journal entry and a lot of juvenile poetry saying, "I think I'm less interested in happiness than other people, not that I want to be unhappy — no interest in suffering for its own sake — but maybe I want something else more... Maybe I'm willing to forfeit some happiness chips for meaning and for passion." [...] Afterwards knowing that that had been my diagnosis someone gave me a magazine called 'The Icarus project' which was about bipolar kids. And I have flipped through it feeling all shook up because there were these poems and there were these pictures and there were these songs... And one of the writers that said, "One of the features that sometimes people with bipolar report experiencing is feeling like when they're in the throes of that overwhelming sensation that connections are made plain to them" and I thought "That's me! It's only when I write metaphors that I'm really pleased with that I'm in those throes of those weird moves" and then my question was, “How many chips am I gonna forfeit?” And then my question was, “Is the part of me that's broken my favorite part?”
UMN Wellbeing Experience: Dessa Presents "Greater Than the Greatest Good?"
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