People like to act. I like to act. Someone told me that you’re Bipolar because you’re an actor, an artist, and that makes sense. But I don’t know how true that is – the acting, art, madness, creativity, and all the rest. I know that people like to act. We do. We all act all the time. We like to act like things are okay, and that we are above board. Life is like that. We value those who ruthlessly put themselves first and then when they do we allow them to tell us what evangelising should or should not look like. When we notice someone losing power, we call it entertainment, and with all our good intentions we also enjoy it when someone else gets put down because an eye for an eye makes the world blind but we do like blindness. We do like bloodshed. We shouldn’t – but we do.
Putting things into perspective is a good catalyst for the mind over matter approach but this is an anniversary piece. It’s the one year anniversary of when I properly entered treatment for Bipolar Disorder I – the most severe form. And it’s been the ride of a lifetime. The truth is there are no truths. There's one big truth, but it's enveloped by a wide array of mistruths, surrounded by smoke and mirrors, and insidious, mocking, disguises. For what? Nothing. Obscurity, denial, and deranged undermining for the sake of ego. Then what do I do? What do we do? We write. And the words are there - are here - to ensure that I don’t forget and that you don’t forget. That we never forget what it all does mean, and if we can't get to that then at least we can remember how it feels. That’s what anniversaries are for - right? In theory? An occasion to remember something fantastic. To celebrate something memorable. Good. Happy. Hopefully happy more than anything else. But this isn't happy, is it? Bipolar Disorder I is both comedy and tragedy - like life itself.
So whilst this isn’t a Happy Anniversary Love Letter, it is a Love Letter of sorts, to an Anniversary of Acknowledgement. Having a mental health history is one of the most terrifying things in the world because some people see it as worse than a criminal record. And it does feel like a criminal record. I wrote a piece about Bipolar Disorder back in 2017/2018 about the first major episode I’d had in 2016, which dated back to an incident in 2010, which is when I first began seeing a psychiatrist, which had triggered the start of the illness and many, many years, what felt like decades at times, passed before a final diagnosis. However, the reality of the actual diagnosis is much less accurate than I have been able to state because getting a diagnosis is incredibly complicated. The first time they didn’t exactly say Bipolar, they said maybe Bipolar, but I still called that piece Bipolar because I needed an answer, something, a word, to be able to talk about what was happening because it had gone beyond, way beyond, "I think I'm depressed" or "we think you're depressed." The treatment began with a psychologist, then depression, and before then and after then, and I admit there was a lack of consistency on my part because I was so young. There were certain things I cut out of my life, and certain things I should have cut out of my life, but I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. And then rather obviously, although far from simple to explain, I eventually relapsed. And the second time is when they finally said, still with great reluctance, that yes now you are officially Bipolar. The reluctance is tough to explain. It's not that I am not Bipolar, and it's not that they don't know that I am Bipolar. It's the fact that because it is incurable and because they are trying to shield me from the reality of what they are saying as it is such a cruel experience already the doctors always attempt to shift the conversation to other aspects of managing the illness - like lifestyle. It's in an attempt not to overwhelm you further but when it's made clear that the medication is going to now be for life - I know what they are trying to shield me from. They are trying to make me hopeful, to resuscitate me, because psychosis is death and being back in society amongst people again after that is terrifying, and being told this is forever will only make me imagine what it's going to be like when I have to go through this all again. Because I may have to. I appreciate what they were trying to do but this was the second time I had died so I had some understanding of what the future was going to look like.
I didn’t want this to be my life. But it is. And the medicine is necessary. I am still sad to report that after many years and 365 days of official treatment and acknowledgement, I haven’t been absolutely on it – but there are many things I almost do not do at all. And I am proud of the almost because it took ages to get to the almost. Without the almost I probably wouldn’t be alive today and that is why Bipolar disorder is so scary. You don’t have the option to be the typical human. The selfish, narcissistic, asshole who is praised by society for just ruthlessly pushing through no matter what. You know why? Because you can’t! Because being that type of person is impossible when you have this illness. You can barely fight for yourself so how do you confront the reality of life? Which can be brutal. And I’ve said it a million times: it’s worse than having a broken limb because a broken limb can be seen. Unless you behave like a lunatic, which most of the time people with real Bipolar Disorder try very hard to avoid doing, no one can tell what’s wrong – and when you fuck up, and the mood swings make you act like the lunatic you were trying so hard not to be, you eventually once again are misunderstood and written off as difficult, weird, strange, rebellious, outrageous, volatile, and characterised as someone who only you know was in reality not even entirely there. You left your body and went somewhere else and now you are trying, in recovery, to come back.
But it's not easy and there are no magical solutions or quick fixes.
I am not blind and I do not spend a lot of time thinking about how blind people feel. I am not deaf and I do not spend a lot of time thinking about how deaf people feel. I am not dying from a terminal illness so I do not spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to know you are going to die soon, although life expectancy for those with Bipolar Disorder is significantly reduced. So, I have thought about death a lot. Because the greatest respite for Bipolar Disorder is suicide ideation – when the pain gets to be too much, there isn’t much else you can do, but imagine that eventually you will be set free by – well when the substances and distractions run out, and you can't be patient enough with the medicine – death. What else is there? Otherwise, you’re going to have to wake up and do it all again and again and things don’t get better and where are you? Who are you? Where is everyone?
I’ve written about this before and guess what I’m going to have to write about it again. And since I understand that empathy is tough to sustain - I am not blind and I do not spend a lot of time thinking about how blind feel, I am not deaf so I do not spend a lot of time thinking about how deaf people feel - so I know I cannot expect other people to have the time or innate desire to empathise with me. I have to do that, which is made harder by the fact that no one else fully can. Not in today's society. So I have to write about it.
Average recovery time for Bipolar Disorder is never. Yes, you read that right. There is no full recovery. There is no long-term remission. The truth is simple and hard. There is no cure.
Yes, there are many things with no cure, and we must all learn to live with that reality. And I am still trying to accept that I must learn to live with that reality because even if I can deny it – we are encouraged to deny it, to an extent – we will always eventually have to confront the reality we deny. For me, this has meant years of my life spent in misery and agony, with pockets of sublime bliss and beauty. It's like life is for most, only the contrast is so high, the colours are so saturated, everything is amplified, everything is extreme. Honestly, at times it’s worse than prison because at least in prison you know you can’t get out because someone won’t let you because they put you there for a known and named crime. With Bipolar Disorder it just feels like you won’t let yourself, so you beat up the self that is already sore, trying to revive it by killing it further. It is so vicious. So, a great deal of time is spent learning not only how to describe this process, how to talk about it, how to come to terms with what the hell is happening, because it is terrifying, it will always be terrifying – no – a great deal more time is spent learning to be ok with it. To live with it. To live. And when society slams you and your former selves stare and glare at you asking you what the hell happened and where the hell are you now, blaming you, punishing you, you have nothing to say to them except the truth: that this was something you did not and could not have chosen, time slipped past you and is still slipping and sliding and whizzing by and you are helpless. You are vulnerable. You cannot do anything except for learning to accept and it is awful because time is finite but if you push it too far, if you push yourself any harder, you may have even less time than you have now because that edge is lethal – that edge you fall off and into when you enter an abyss in your mind, which is ready to kill you.
And it will kill you. Unless you can vow to show yourself the love, empathy, and compassion that life doesn’t allow.
Which is my only reason for writing this again – it will always be the reason. To be allowed to survive is a scary thing to write about, but it is the truth. In vastly different circumstances I wouldn’t be writing this, publishing it on some website, and sharing it in the hopes that some people understand. That maybe I understand. No.
I would be dead. End of story.
It would take less than one minute for the world to forget, and a handful of people or more would sit around remembering how wonderfully weird I was and how much potential I had.
It happens a lot. And then they, too, would have to move on.
But I’m still here. And that’s why I’m going to make sure I make that matter. As much as I can whilst I am still in recovery. It takes more than four years for even 70-80% recovery and I am nowhere near there, I'm about 40%, halfway? What those numbers truly mean, I do not know. There's no way to calculate that, only symptoms and feelings. An ongoing, exhausting, difficult process and journey. No one would choose this.
Yet, this is a love letter to me and to my life. And To My Madness. And as long as I can love, I will continue to live my life, and battle this until the day I die because I've decided and reminded myself that living actually is beautiful. It really is. And one illness will take a lot from you, but it won't take everything. I'm not letting it take everything. It definitely can, but I have fought so hard, and so I will continue to fight. I have to make it mean more than defeat and anguish - more than lost time - which is definitely what it is, but it is more than that, too. And I am going to keep looking at what more there is here than the obvious, than the surface, than the mundane, cold, dawn-light dull, night darkness, and rawness. There's more to be uncovered.
So, A Love Letter To My Madness is how I move forward. How we move forward. And I will see you later, because I have to go take my pill or pills. Truth is I still don't always remember. Sometimes I just fall asleep because my brain is too exhausted from battling another day. And it hurts because I remember when I wasn't like this. When my brain wouldn't give up on me. In fact my brain ran on overdrive, and that contributed to this amongst other factors. I still know what I am capable of. No one can take from me what God gave me (people remind me of this a lot) even though I'm agnostic, and don't believe that God had much to do with it. A spiritual power, an understanding that there is a reason I am like this and I am going through this for a reason is how I make sense of it.
So yes, the times have changed, drastically, and I have to accept that in order to survive. In order to live. And in order to love.
And I do love My Madness. I have to.
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