You read the warning sign before boarding, “As the most amusing and painful ride in the park, the Bi-Polar Express will leave you feeling like you are concurrently experiencing the best and worst moments in your life. Board at your own…” before finishing the sentence the floor opens from under you. Naturally, you scream in fear as you fall into a cold, dark cave. Everything hurts when you land. You blink to coax the blackness into shapes. Eventually you make out what seems to be the entrance to a tunnel. Getting off the wet, rocky ground slowly is the only way your body will allow you to move. Elation fills your heart as you see another sign etched in the wall.
“To continue, turn right. To EXIT now, turn left.” Your body immediately starts to feel stronger as the fear of being trapped in a shitty death ride for the rest of your life dissipates. You turn left. And to your terror, feel a giant loss, as if part of you is dying. You turn around and see you, or what looks to be an exact replica of you, turning right at the same junction. The right turning version of you is clearly experiencing the same pain as you. Her face is contorted as she feels down the center of her body, the same place where you feel as though someone took a machete to your corps. What was one now is two. Both are you.
“Fuck this shit!” you yell as you walk through the tunnel towards the EXIT sign. You are not about to be played by mirrors and actors in some strange carnival ride gone wrong. The other version of you disappears through their tunnel. You can’t see her anymore, but you can feel every bit of her. She’s in control of her thoughts, but they are still in your head. Playing like a movie in a movie. “It’ll stop once I get out,” you think. Your fear that it will not be that easy is confirmed as the floor falls out from underneath you yet again.
This time you land in a chair on a roller coaster. Relief consumes you, “this HAS to be the normal part of the ride. Thank the gods,” you think as the safety bars lower around you and the ride takes off. All the while you’ve been attempting to ignore the loud, scarred, lonely version of yourself that, for some reason, turned and went right. Whatever she’s been doing, must have been terrifying because all of the messages and feelings she’s been sending have followed the themes, “RUN, stay alert, danger, hide, and fight!” Another dark tunnel is ahead. The line down the center of your body burns where you split before. Every inch closer the coaster brings you towards the tunnel, the burn becomes more and more excruciating. What began as one extra version of you in your head somehow split to two. At the same time, you enter the tunnel. The burning stops. “Oh no,” you say as you look back and see another version of yourself sitting at the platform. The voices in your head split again. Four.
“Where are you?” – Alone. “It doesn’t matter, get the fuck out.” – Altwo. “You are going crazy!” – Althree. “Judging yourself is not going to help you get to safety.” – Alfour. As you react to their thoughts, you can feel all of the other yous reacting to your thoughts. All the while, the ride speeds up through the pitch black tunnel. Each time you come to a crossroads, the ride splits along with your mind and your body. Each time, more and more versions of you are thrown into your head and theirs. Until eventually, you appear to be constructed similarly to a large city’s metro. The bi-polar express carves somewhere between eight to twelves tracks in your brain. On each track, four to six trains run at a time, each carrying their own thoughts, feelings, and reasoning. Making any given moment, a moment for anywhere from one to seventy two trains full of those unique (yet often opposing) thoughts and feelings to be running through the same being, you.
Normally when you get onto a ride, you expect to get off at some point. However, that is not the case for this ride. There is no EXIT door, medicine, therapy, job, drug, guru, religion, or perfect environment that can undo that which was created long before your birth. You are now trapped in a cave with all of your thoughts and feelings, forever. Enjoy, the bi-polar express.
ALways ONE never ALONE 