Bipolaxed

I am feeling really tired and weepy today. Jesse said i was giddy yesterday. I loved writing to him so much that i was giddy. And today i am flat and tired and teary. Bipolar. Welcome to bipolar world. I was diagnosed about 14 years ago. I was also diagnosed with PTSD, dissociative disorder and schizo-effective disorder. At first i thought i was all about the bipolar, up and down, manic, depressed. Thats what seemed to be happening to me. even the kids said in family councelling when asked what they though of mum's bipolar, "it's easy, when she's manic she shops and when she depressed she stays in bed". Jesse was about 12 and Kobe was 6. They had me sussed out and they thought the councellor was an idiot.

I look back now and i see i was more than bipolar. After an involuntary admission to the psyche ward i was discharged when i was sufficiently compliant and drugged enough to be convenient for society and the psychiatric staff to manage. I was given a piece of paper with the name of a leading psychiatrist on it and was instructed to make an appointment, He would be waiting for my call. I called and made my appointment. He was a very old man, maybe 80 years old or so. His practice was in his home. While waiting for my appointment i noticed a little old lady wearing an apron pottering around the kitchen next door to the waiting room. She asked if i would like a cup of tea while i waited and i politely declined. Her husband shuffled in to the room and ushered me to his office.

I sat in his tiny office and took in my surroundings. His medical certificate, his photography in frames on the wall. His coffee table with knick knacks and him, staring at me with a notebook and a pen. I found his photos calming and the discomfort i felt under his gaze and being asked to answer his questions was tempered by staring at the soothing images on the wall. He walked me through the bipolar survey. Tick enough of the boxes to questions like "do you ever put yourself in danger when you are feeling uncontrollably elated", and you win the prize, a diagnoses. However many boxes you tick and to which ever applicable boxes you tick determines your bipolar status, bipolar 1 or bipolar 2. I scored a 100% no need for any more questions thank you very much as i have bipolar 1, manic and depressed.  As he walked me to the front door he expressed his satisfaction at having successfully diagnosed another fellow bipolar. He had disclosed his own status during my appointment. He said he would open a nice bottle of shiraz to celebrate that night. I left his house feeling confused, angry and panicked at the thought that he was my future. i'd already wrestled with my addictive demons before, several times. Does bipolar mean i will always wrestle with the mask of addiction? The thing i knew so well through my own experience and the experience of others in my family. Would i always be that person who reached for the celebratory drink, or drug as well as the commiserating drink or drug? I was upset because I saw this man as an expert, he was on the board of the Melbourne clinic. He was the author of several books about bipolar. He had made groundbreaking advances in the understanding and treatment of people with bipolar throughout his long career. And he was just another drunk with a headcase and a certificate to talk to other headcases.

I drove home with a fierce defiance gurgling away inside of me, growing by the minute and threatening to explode and spew forth. I got home and walked into my office with my desk, computer, telephone and couch tucked behind the door in the perfect position to flop onto and be invisible. I quickly surveyed the walls and went to my bedroom to search for boxes and boxes of my personal photos and cards and images that i had accumulated over the years that all told a story . A story that brought a lifetime, my lifetime flooding back to me with a smile. I tipped them out onto the floor and began covering the main wall of my office with photos of me doing fantastic things and images of colourful happenings that i'd picked up over the years because they'd spoken to me and cards from friends and from Andrew (Andrew and I were in the habit of sending each other postcards with odd images on them, images that when accompanied by one sentence from either one of us that referred to our quirks and embarrassing foibles that we'd embraced as endearing qualities after having been caught out by each other and made to wear said foible with pride) that i'd kept for years. These were my favourites of all the photos and interesting images. The weird postcards with seemingly nonsensical images  that all made hilarious sense once you turned them over and read the one line followed by "love Andrew xoxoxo". I stuck photos and cards on that wall until the wall turned into a canvas of my life in collage. I was so fucking determined to prove myself as being more than bipolar. I scanned the wall and soaked up what i knew of myself. I was resentful of the implication that everything that i'd done in my life was even partially due to my bipolarity and i the dehumanizing way i saw myself experiencing that, i stood there and i looked at every picture and i told myself that was ME in that experience. It was a genuine Joanne-ism in colour on my wall, next to another Joanne-ism, and another and another.  I was not going to be reduced being the sum of a mental illness. I claimed my right to see myself as authentic, not sick and unbalance and in need of chemicals to make me normal. I finished the job and stood back enjoying the work i'd done. i was smiling, and i kept smiling even as i wondered to myself if obsessiveness was a part of bipolar and could fierce determination and defiance have anything to do with it. All i really knew was that my identity was under threat and i didn't know what to do.

I went back to see the old psychiatrist the next week. He wrote a prescription for me for lithium. Lithium i thought, the drug Spike Milligan took. Maybe i could be funny. Maybe i could be ok. If Spike was the genius that he was maybe that meant i could keep my identity and be me and not a zombie on psyche meds. You see, people will say to you "It's like having diabetes, you take your medicine and you are ok". It's not like having diabetes at all. I have diabetes and my pancreas has nothing to do with my identity. How i see myself. The way I see the world. The colour of my experiences. I fought the medication choice for years, i still do. Psychiatric meds alter your mind. Who I am is in my mind. I don't believe in a soul. The closest thing i believe in to a soul is the stain and energy we leave on those we touch in our lives. That stain feels palpable. Its why i believe our lives are not just our own and even though i have been suicidal for years and often when i wake in the mornings in incredible pain and my first thought of the day is "not another fucking day" and i fantasize about it all ending.....even so.....i know i will never kill myself because i don't want to leave my boys with that human stain, that energy. My life belongs to them too and i am thankful for that. The thing with taking bipolar medication is, it does change you and it may tone down the depression you don't feel it as often or with such desperate disabling intensity, it also tones down the mania. While most people will agree that mania is not fun, there are elements of epic highs and outstanding capabilities and the capacity to feel with a fucking capital F. When you are manic or on the way up to mania you can feel like you are operating on a higher plane. Colours are more colourful, brighter, deeper, more meaningful. Music speaks to you like it's whispering your thoughts, your feelings, just for you and you know what every word is saying to you. You know it like you wrote it. When you connect with someone you feel like there is no-one else on the planet but you and that person. No-one else can hear you and they've all just disappeared anyway. Insignificant disconnecters.. If you've ever seen the movie Limitless you could appreciate bipolar mania. At the end of that movie i was wide eyed, mouth agape, telling people that that was what bipolar was like. There's no reason to suggest that when you are in a manic state and you are flying comfortably that you cannot learn a second language in an afternoon, research and write a paper on a subject you previously knew nothing about with expertise and irritating confidence, be so attractive and magnetic that having sex with anyone you want to is entirely possible, However when you crash you crash hard. You cant leave your bed. You can't speak. You can't take responsibility for taking your meds. Black is blacker and as deep as the ocean. Your head is foggy and heavy and your tears are bigger and slower and drop harder.

The thing i have found about bipolar is that if you have a carer, someone to look out for you, they can calm you down when you are speaking to god through the tv and they can watch out for you and remind you that you will feel better soon and you need to take your meds and if you're really lucky they will bring you those meds and help you with your injections and your pills. I am one of those really lucky ones. Bless you boys. Anyway I have one boy home from school and the other one is on his way so i will talk more about this another day. Bi- Polars!