On Moodswings, Attention and Words

I often tell people I’m bipolar. Now, I most definitely do not suffer from bipolar personality disorder – I just feel like I oscillate between two distinct personas so frequently that it just throws my day into disorder. It’s really frustrating. My personalities lie on the extreme ends of the spectrum – either I stumble around in a drunken, happiness and cotton candy filled stupor, or I’m moody, groggy and intensely averse to conversation. There is no middle ground. Sure, I could be spouting the absolute worst puns and cackling like Ursula one moment, and be bemoaning the sorry state of my quiff and scowling into space the very next.

It makes me hard to deal with. Communication is a two-way street – we respond and adjust the way we talk, act and behave in accordance to the person we are interacting with. We react instinctively to bodily and verbal cues to make our conversations as smooth as possible. When I suddenly switch on my moody hologram, it sends a signal to my friends to be distant as well. I’ve heard on many occasions, whilst staring into the distance with my eyelids drooping and a frown plastered on my face, my friends saying, ‘He’s having a moment, leave him alone for a while.’ Distance invites distance. Moodiness invites disdain.

But when I’m back to my chirpy self, all is well in the world. A spring is introduced into my step, my jokes-per-minute rate increases exponentially and grating laugh (that I learned from watching hours of Graham Norton) I’ve become associated with makes an unwelcome return. This is when I feel my social circle actually come alive – I often feel like I’m the life of the party amongst my friends. Whenever I’m upbeat, we get loud, obnoxious and irresistibly rowdy. But once I sink into my temporary pool of despair, silence and awkward tension-building prevails. It must be so tiring to have to be friends with me, to have to deal with my mood swings and to be constantly on edge, not knowing when scowler Sean makes a return to spoil the party.

I gave this issue some thought the other day and deduced what was causing these way-too-sudden and way-too-frequent mood swings. I came up with an analogy to perfectly describe why I feel the way I feel.

My emotional state of mind is like a car with its rear trapped into a pool of quicksand. Now usually my engine works fine and I’m able to rev up quickly and speed out of the pool into the horizon ahead, beaming and genuinely excited about the things I see around me. That’s my normal phase and one I’m fortunate to inhabit most of the time. But when I stay still for an extended period of time, or when I remain quiet without anything exciting really piquing my interest for a while, my brain shuts down and my car sinks gradually into the abyss. That’s what makes me upset – periods of silence, boredom and overly-extensive introspection. In a social setting, I do enjoy being the joker, making crude remarks and snappy quips. But when I take a backseat and listen to others’ stories for perhaps half an hour or longer, I begin to drift somewhere within myself. I lose focus and interest and I very obviously begin to retreat into myself and away from those around me.

Okay reading the last paragraph aloud made me realised what a conceited prick I appear to be. Let me qualify myself. I’m not an attention seeker. I don’t crave to be the focal point of every social interaction. In fact, sometimes I dread attention; eschewing into another tangent for a second here, but I feel really uncomfortable sometimes when I feel like only my voice is being heard in a group interaction? I don’t know, it’s kinda like pressure of sorts, feeling like you’re the only one carrying the conversation and having to be constantly interesting to engage everyone around you single-handedly. I love conversations where different people shoot from the hip, where a common topic ignites flames of passion within every individual present, with each person compelled to put out their own unique perspectives and anecdotes. I love seeing words and stories bounce off one another and instigate one another. Don’t y’all agree with me? I mean, the best conversations amongst friends occur when one guy starts telling a story, and another is then triggered to share a scarcely related story, in turn triggering another friend and so on and so forth till the subject matter has totally shifted from where it was initially, and people begin wondering “Wait, how did we get here?”. Those are the times where people begin feeling comfortable with each other. I see it a lot in people’s Instagram captions – phrases like “cosy times”, “comfy times” etc. These are the moments they are referring to – times where friends can just be themselves amongst one another, and are free to really speak about the most trivial of things on their mind without ever feeling pressured to say certain things or act according to whatever social cues. That’s what communication is (to me at least) – spewing out everything and being able to derive something out of nothing.

Anyway, so yeah, I’m not one to dominate conversations. I’d say I just like to be stimulated. Being able to make a contribution in a large social setting is the most direct way of engaging oneself with those around you. Having a unique opinion is the one way of telling those around you that you are listening, internalising, reflecting and ultimately seeking to add value to a multidirectional exchange. No one likes human backboards – those who sit aloof at the corner of the table, silently nodding their heads and providing occasional spurts of awkward laughter but remain unheard throughout. No one likes people who just agree (well, unless they’re named Donald Trump) with everything they say and reflect it back to them without offering alternative (facts heh) angles that take the verbal exchange in a new direction. Communication shouldn’t have a structure. Sure, it’s a two-way street, but this path isn’t a straight one. Good communication takes you on turns, sudden detours into dense foliage and illegal hairpins back to where you started. A lack of predictability translates into excitement and stimulation. And that’s what intrigues and engages people.

Staying silent for a long period, just absorbing what people around you are saying without processing it and creating an opinion of your own draws you into a lull of monotonous nodding, “mm”s and gradual disengagement. I guess that’s why I switch into my moody self sometimes in social settings where I feel ‘social inertia’. I hate it when I feel trapped in conversations that don’t go anywhere – if that makes any sense? I hate listening to the same stories told over and over again, the same topics that some of my acquaintances just can’t seem to detach themselves from. That’s not why we speak to one another.

I remember watching this Eddie Murphy movie a couple months back about a guy who is suddenly cursed and can only speak like a thousand words for the rest of his life, causing him to realise how important each and every word he says is. I adopt that approach to conversations. I’d like to believe that interactions are finite. A catch-up session with a friend doesn’t last forever. When I end that interaction, I like to look back on the things we’ve said fondly and think to myself, “what an interesting conversation that was”. When I communicate with my friends, I like to explore new ideas and vicariously live through new experiences recounted by my peers with aplomb and vigour that only they know. I enjoy listening to my friends’ stories because they’re unique to them and foreign to me – I’ll never know what they’ve been through (only they do) so anything I hear from them is an eye-opening anecdote.

I’m not perfect either. I’m complete shit at small talk. With new people whose interests I haven’t quite ascertained, I often find myself repeating the same things with them – “Oh, I have a twin sister”, “What school are you from?”, “What’s your favourite colour?” (Yes, I’m 19 but I find this to be a really good conversation starter, try it out yourself). I create inertia as much as I admonish it, I’m gonna put my arms up and admit that. But I hope to change that.

I guess I now realise that speaking and being actively engaged in conversations are incredibly empowering. To have a voice and an audience is powerful. But this bestows upon you the responsibility to tell an engaging story – and this could be about literally anything be it your vacation experiences, or even TMI stories about your first sexual encounters. Either way, you owe it to your audience to take them on a ride and make their time listening to your words worthwhile. Heck, you owe it to yourself. Everyone has an interesting life, as mundane as it may seem to them. What is boring to you is new to someone else – so you don’t really have an excuse to telling an un-engaging tale. Own your life. Take pride in what you’ve been through. Be accountable for your being. Tell your story to do your own life justice.