excerpt from Daisies

KATELYNN

I just remembered, I think my step mom said she was bipolar, too.

 

RACHEL

Really, she called herself that?

 

KATELYNN

Yeah, she would tell us she had something, maybe she said bipolar or maybe she said something else. I don’t remember. I don’t know if she was ever actually diagnosed...or in treatment. I guessed she was, you know, mentally ill, but I didn’t know what with. I probably believed that she was bipolar or whatever she told me she was, cuz I didn’t know what that was or what it looked like. Never thought about manic depression really, until now...‘Now’ meaning since I met you.

 

RACHEL nods.

 

KATELYNN

What does it feel like to you? How does it make you feel?

 

RACHEL

It makes me feel...sensitive. All of the time. To emotions, to light and sound, to people...Sensitive. To concepts, and ideas, and cosmic forces...It makes me feel like I have no control.

 

There is a lot of space between her words during this conversation, she really wants to get her answers right.

 

KATELYNN

All of the time?

 

RACHEL

No...And out of control internally, not externally...It tricks me, it tricks me into hating myself sometimes...It makes me feel extreme.

 

KATELYNN

All of the time?

 

RACHEL

Yes. Be it extremely sad, extremely euphoric, extremely shameful, extremely tired, extremely numb, extremely apathetic, extremely confused, extremely irritable, extremely playful, extremely rebellious.