{op-ed}Bipolar essay (uni, October 2007)
Kai on September 3rd, 2008
(author’s note - this was written in response to a lecturer questioning why I couldn’t move my appointment for councelling. I think I really upset her, but at least she knew that I could document appropriately - I thought it was worth sharing)
Xposted to Kai@LJ and bi-polarbears
Written, 10th October 2007.
I wrote this entry because I’m of the opinion that people (in general) don’t understand how it feels to be like me. And though this is mainly complaint, I’m going to start with the positive.
Being bipolar is awesome in many ways. It’s something I’ll never change - never remove, because to remove it is to alter, at the core, what I am. I was asked a while back what I’d do if there was a cure for bipolar disorder - and I answered that I liked being bipolar. It sucks when I’m depressed, but I guess that’s my price for being brilliant occasionally. Dave said to me once, that I’m as awe inspiring and bright as a star when I’m at my best. I don’t know if he’s right, but I do know that I see things differently. Colours are, whole experiences for me. Trees are an amazing juxtaposition of terror and wonder for me - I’m scared of the world, on the whole, but incredibly at peace in the heart of nature. Despite the fact that though I see beauty everywhere, it’s incredibly difficult NOT to see danger too.
I think differently too - I tell stories that others just don’t think of - like merry-go-rounds full of corpses, and being shot in the head by one of my characters, cause he didn’t like ‘Mary sues’ - he thought, it turned out, that I was IAB (he’s a police man). And there, I betray my other oddity. I think of my characters as real people, living in my head. It gets slightly schizophrenic in there sometimes - when I’m arguing with my pen names, and my characters. I’ve likened it to a ‘green room’ - and mostly, they wait their turn.
There’s more good to being bipolar than that - my memory doesn’t work well, but I have an unerring ability to see the conclusion of most stories. I’m not always good for that, but most of the time, I see twists coming. I don’t think in straight lines either - I’ve got ‘intuitive’ down to a fine art. One of my counsellors said it was something like parallel processing - I just think I consider things differently.
It’s an unenviable position to be in - knowing, with crystal clarity, exactly how dark things get. How much it hurts, till every breath literally paralyzes me because it’s all I can do without crying. Sitting up in bed makes me cry. Texting a friend and begging them to help me before I do something stupid fills me with shame. Crying in public is about the ‘worst’ of the sins I can commit. I was always told not to make a fuss, not to cry. People aren’t used to seeing others crying in public. We cry in private - just as we hurt ourselves where others can’t see. We do it because we’re already hurting others with our sadness, our inability to interact and be the people they need, so we stay home.
I don’t choose to be bipolar - its part of my genetic code. Therapy - the one that I go to anyway - is designed to teach me ways - not to live with it myself, but to cope with the fact that there are people that don’t understand, or choose not to. Invariably ‘normal’ people think that they won’t ever hit the stage that I’m at. And I sometimes look at them and hope they don’t. It takes a very strong person to survive as a bipolar, and even in my broken state, I’m stronger than most.
And at the same time, I’m weak. I can’t deal with people fussing over me. I can’t stand it for my friends to be put out, but at the same time, I deeply need them. I can’t be alone, but I don’t want company. It’s like having something inside your head throwing a hissy fit no matter what choice you make. Dammed if you do.
The worst of it is the feeling that it’s screaming in there, constantly. There’s this, glassy, numb feeling in my head - like it’s full of ice. Slide down a bit, and my cheeks are burning - it’s either hot, stinging, painful tears, or because I’m mortally embarrassed and trying not to cry. I wish myself dead frequently when that hits me, not because I want to hurt others - but because I want to STOP hurting them.
I’m competitive at the best of times, but when I start falling out of ‘favour’ - either in reality, or because I just don’t understand, that hurts me too. I can’t laugh it off and bounce back now - and I misunderstand and second guess so often it’s hard to get people to actually talk to me. I question everything - from whether the kids are mine, to sometimes, whether life is real. I’ve been known to deliberately do something stupid just to test it - like cut myself. I’m mortally ashamed of that too - perversely though the scars remind me I’ve survived again. Each notch though gets that little bit deeper. I’ve nicked an artery twice doing that and it’s so hard to explain to doctors, cause that’s one of the few cardinal sins of mental health. We don’t hurt others, and if we can help it, we don’t start self harming.
And that’s the thing. It’s not exactly a compulsion. I’m incredibly lucky. I don’t like drawing my own blood, but if it comes down to it, I need some reason for the amount of pain I’m in. If I know there’s something physical there, I can live with it - or at least hang on till I can breathe again without thinking about it.
I’m paranoid too. I get scared that I’m going to burn down the house - or that someone’s coming to get me. I’m highly suggestive - if someone says something to me often enough, even if it directly competes with my beliefs, it’ll stay with me. This means I can be influenced to another point of view, eventually. Worse than that, I actually believe in ghosts and axe murderers and other stuff that, to be honest, is fairly unlikely, but still possible. When the nuclear threat starts ramping up, or they talk about terrorists, I start working out how to get back to David and my children. As far as I’ve worked out, I’ll get about halfway home, if I’m lucky, if it happened at Uni. I’m terrified by that, but I have no control over it, so it’s a fairly moot point. When I’m really having trouble with other stuff though, that starts really bothering me.
Things like leaving the gas fire on - or the cooker - or the boiler randomly exploding, a fire in the garage - a fire next door - a fire in the attic cause of the electrics. Those things I know about and I check for. I wake up about 10 times a night and check the house. Sometimes I just see if I can smell anything in the air. Other times I’ll check the whole house. Where we used to live, I couldn’t hear the rain.
Here, I hear it, and the first time I woke up and it was raining that hard, I thought someone was in the bathroom washing off knives. I couldn’t move for four hours.
That’s called sleep paralysis. It’s also called ‘night terrors’ - something most psychologists think we outgrow as children. It’s got many names - though the most poetic is the Japanese description, kanashibari, which, roughly translated means, bound in metal. I also get the other half of that aspect, hallucinations. Sometimes I forget, but most of the time I remember.
When I’m very depressed, or incredibly stressed, I disassociate. It’s like flicking a switch. One minute I’ll be stammering along - and the next I’ll be gone, completely. I think my nose is bleeding, or at least I’ve been told that I act as if it is, and wipe it, usually till it does. I don’t talk, and certainly don’t recognize people talking to me. And I’m usually inconsolable coming out of it - to the degree that the only way Dave’s found of shaking me out of it - something that a psychologist in Edinburgh corroborated, is getting me to respond to something tactile. It’s a bit difficult to carry my furry blanket around with me during the day, but that’s what worked last time.
The sum of all of this that sometimes I can’t cope with the real world. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t want to put people in the position of needing to work out how to handle me. It’s really unfair, but I’ve never met a group of people, on the whole that knows what to do with me. More importantly, I don’t interact well with the bits of the ‘world’ I should, and that distresses my friends. Which is disruptive, which, in turn, triggers yet more guilt in me. So, I usually choose not to put myself in that position willingly - there’s no promising I won’t go there, occasionally, unwillingly, but if I can avoid it, I don’t go out at all when I’m having a bad time, and head home if I know I’m going to be triggered into it. Therapy triggers me a lot. Not always, but often enough to make me cautious.
