"Stormlight"
The dualities of a bipolar mind.
“Stormlight” is a strange kind of glow.
It’s the moment right before everything breaks open.
a hush in the sky,
a pressure behind your eyes,
a beauty so sharp it almost hurts.
That’s what it felt like to grow up with a mother who lived in cycles of brilliance and collapse.
Some days she was made of radiance - magnetic, funny the life of the damn room. Other days she vanished, even when she was right in front of us.
This poem is not my story, exactly. It’s not hers either.
It’s the voice I imagine she might have had if someone had handed her a pen in the middle of the rise or the panic of of the fall. It’s what I wished I’d understood earlier - when she was still here.
That being the storm is not the same as choosing it.
That some people don’t get clear skies.
That loving them means learning to dance with weather you can’t control.
This is Stormlight.
“Stormlight”
The dualities of a bipolar mind.
by Kelly Colon
Some days, I wake up made of sunlight. My mind sparks, my body hums, and the whole world feels WIDE open like every door is already saying yes.
On those days, I talk fast, I think faster and believe I can outrun anything. People call it confidence, but it feels more like falling upward beautiful, breathless, a little dangerous.
I know they worry when I'm like this. I see the way they hover, soft voices, careful eyes like touching me might shatter the spell. But they don't understand, I'm not fragile in the light. I'm limitless.
And then come the other side. The drop, the fall. The quiet that feels like drowning.
I disappear, even when I'm still in the room. My thoughts turn thick, like walking through mud with weights strapped to my ribs.
I hear them tiptoe. I feel them reading the air before they open the door. Is she okay today? Is she here today? Is she her today?
They don't know I'm asking the same thing.
I didn't choose to be this way, to be the weather. I didn't ask to be the storm you plan your whole life around. I didn't want my moods to become the atmosphere you have to survive.
But I see you. The way your shoulders tighten. The way you adjust, pivot, soften. You think I don't notice, but I do.
What you call "mood swings" feels, from in here like losing and finding myself over and over and over again
When I'm high, I don't feel reckless. I feel right. Like the volume finally matches what's always been playing inside my head. By the time you cal it "too much" I've already run past the edge I never saw coming.
When I'm low, It's not that I don't care. It's that everything hurts to touch your voice, your hopes even your kindness. Some days I pull away not because I've stopped loving you, but because I can't stand how much I'm letting you down
You think I'm changing on you. I feel like I'm breaking on you.
I can't promise steady. I can't promise easy. I can only promise this:
I'm not doing this to you. I'm in it with you. Fighting a brain that wont hold one shape, trying, every single day, to stay reachable from inside my own storms.
If you live with bipolar or you love someone who does, you already know this kind of weather. You know the bright, impossible light. You know the quiet that feels like drowning. My hope is not to romanticize any of it, but to name it. To say out loud that being the storm is not a character flaw, and loving someone inside that storm is not weakness. It is work. It is grief. It is love. And for some of us, it is the only kind of sky we ever knew.