It’s early morning right now, quiet and calm. I am not scheduled to work this weekend and was busy most of the day catching up on housework. I’m finally feeling better after having been sick the last several days, so you would think I’d be relishing the time to relax and reflect in a quiet and peaceful environment. Work (in a hospital emergency room) is constant noise and activity, motion and lights, smells and sights and stress. You barely have time to finish one task before another one rears its head. You definitely have to have a certain personality or constitution to do this kind of work. I go home most days mentally and physically exhausted.
Sounds like a place you’d be crazy to miss, that you’d be running out of the door as soon as your shift was over, doesn’t it? There’s a label given in health care to people who crave the craziness- trauma junkies. So as I sit in my peaceful home, I am restless and I realize it is because I miss being at the hospital, I miss the flurry of activity. If you’ve seen the movie The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner’s character experiences something similar with being addicted to dangerous military activities. It’s as though I can no longer separate myself from who I am at work. You know how people say they give “110% at work”? Yeah, I give 120%.
Is it the bipolar that makes me this way? It’s been shown that people with bipolar and other mental illnesses have a greater tendency towards addiction. Or is it just that I have found the place I truly belong as far as work goes?I prefer to think it’s the latter, but it’s an interesting topic to ponder here in the silence.
photo credit Mitchell Hawkins
Filed under: Self Discovery Tagged: addictive personality, bipolar disorder, mental illness, work 
