My Bipolar Experience

I was searching the internet for stories of people suffering through a bipolar experience because I was desperate to feel understood and less alone. I realized that I am a person having a bipolar experience, and maybe I have something to say that would make someone else feel less alone.

The grandiosity of me thinking anyone might care to hear about my menial life is ironic, I know.

I was diagnosed bipolar I at age 27 after extensive psychological testing. And again at 28, 29, and 30 after each of my involuntary hospital stays. Bipolar type I is diagnosed to individuals who suffer at least one manic episode and one depressive episode each year. Also sprinkled into that diagnosis are episodes of manic depression (basically you’re incredibly hype about sadness) hypomania (small instances of mania), rapid cycling (many, frequent swings between manic and depressed) and psychosis (an oh-so-fun total dissociation from reality, I often refer to it as “spiraling”). I wasn’t happy when I was diagnosed, but I can admit there was some relief to know that my impulse control problems and the constant battle to manage my thoughts and behaviors were not due to me being an inherently irresponsible and selfishly immature human being, although I am often still met with this belief from people who don’t want to accept mental illness as an explanation for poor behavior. The truth is, the people who take the time to really know and understand me know that the behaviors I exhibit when I’m very sick are drastically different from my authentic character. It’s also true that now that I know I am mentally ill, it is my responsibility to find treatments that work for me. It is not a carte blanche to be a justifiable lunatic. (Sorry to use the word).

A year in my life, as categorized by my diagnosis, typically looks something like the following description: I spend a decent part of the year trying to defy and deny my disorder. I wake up and face each day with strength and power and an admittedly unhealthy level of perfectionism. These are the moments I convincingly manage to build relationships and achieve accomplishments. To let myself down at all would be to admit that I’m trying to navigate life with a sick mind that can’t regulate itself properly. It would feel like I’m subscribing to the belief that mental disorders are, in fact, a disability. They put you at a disadvantage in a systematic world that punishes people for being different in any way.

I can’t possibly let people know my nervous system is constantly convinced I’m in grave danger.

I work insurmountably hard to mask the fact that the level of effort I’m putting in to my life, just to appear functional everyday, is taking every ounce of energy I am capable of providing at all times. I might compare it to trying to complete a triathlon each day. My psyche is a constant dichotomy of dueling thoughts (polar opposites, hence “bipolar”). Part of my brain is rooting for my success, telling me I am capable and I can function. The other part is working at full speed to deconstruct any false (or even real) sense of safety, to remind me I’m in danger and no one, including myself, is trustworthy. I genuinely believe both parts of my battling thought processes are alive in my mind to protect me, but the simultaneous existence of both creates an internal war.

“You can do this, you have been-and you are-doing it” the productive brain, the survival instinct, works to convince me. While my destructive brain argues:
“Doing what? Suffering through each miserable day in isolation so you can wake up and do the same tomorrow? Set yourself free of the agony of life, welcome death as a blessing.”

I am actively working to quiet intrusive thoughts, stay grounded in reality, and convince myself that my life is in my control and I am not in danger. All the while remaining guarded, because you never know who wants to hurt you. And, unfortunately, my experience has been that 9.5/10 people will hurt me. I was bred to be a people pleaser. It’s the only reason I have been given to believe my life is worthwhile. Bend to the will of a persons desire and maybe, just maybe, you might feel worthy of affection, affirmation, and praise. The only glimpse at value I’ve really ever known. Any moment in my life that I’ve tried to self advocate have been the same moments I’m reminded I’m no more valuable than a paper plate. Very easily disposed, forgotten, and abandoned when no longer useful.

At some point, because it is inevitable I will not achieve perfection, I truly won’t even get anywhere close, I falter. I lose the battle in my brain. The mess of my neurology becomes unmanageable. I am, ultimately, not in control of my cortisol, serotonin, or dopamine levels. Our society has convinced me to believe that these stumbles are chosen and willing decisions I’m making, to lose the battle with my thoughts. The thoughts that tell me I’m disposable and valueless. Why am I working so tirelessly to prove I deserve my life? And to who? People who will wash their hands of me the minute I no longer benefit them? So I submit, I submit, I wash my hands of myself.

I falter. When I do, it typically is not gentle nor easily recoverable. The failure is so powerful and impressive that I completely surrender. You aren’t flawless? Well, then, you’re worthless. This is my thought pattern. It’s largely learned, but also very real and very loud. I shatter. You cannot convince me in these moments that you care about me, even if you do, there is no reality that exists for me that can persuade me to believe my oxygen intake is justifiable. I deserve nothing. It’s a very melodramatic, self-absorbed, pity party that I habitually throw for myself. And because I am burdened with self-awareness, I recognize the audacity and narcissistic nature of these thoughts, and I plunge deeply into guilt.

Mania, meet depression. I can’t get out of bed. These are the times in my life when I’ve lost relationships, abandoned jobs, and been nearly homeless. I will do anything to make the hours of the day pass by with as little consciousness as possible. Sleeping pills, opiates, alcohol. Often toeing the line of overdosing, pretending to leave my fate in the hands of the universe. Anything to escape the hours of the day while trying to silence the voice in my head that’s desolately attempting to grant myself life. The days I work to erase, the “down-days,” are really a fight against the suicidal thoughts that race through my mind. Sleep through the day, black out or something. Just don’t kill yourself. You might feel better tomorrow.

And eventually, sometimes very eventually, tomorrow arrives. I get up and try again. I attempt to reassemble the rubble of the life I’ve destroyed. Make due with the remains, it’s less every time.

Peppered within the long moments of try-hard mania and desperate depression are the moments of hypomania. This is where I exist a majority of the time. If you were to watch the life I lead when I’m alone like a fly on the wall you would see that I spend many days wide awake, with barely any caloric consumption. I’ll rearrange my furniture, I’ll read multiple books, I’ll make wreck-less purchases for hour long renovation projects. When I’m hypomanic but feeling lower (lacking sincere amounts of dopamine/serotonin) I’ll seek external input like physical affection from casual sex. I will spend days surrounded by random people, hopping from one person to the next. I’ll make even more wreck-less purchases. I will often end up with a random person in a random city doing, more than likely, dangerous amounts of drugs. Walking a carefree tight-rope, hovering just inches above death.

I thought I had a drug and alcohol problem, but apparently my behavior wasn’t that of an addict, specifically because I was never physically dependent on any one substance (except maybe nicotine). When I was ****ed up on pills or blacked out on booze I wasn’t displaying addict behavior, I was displaying some form of psychosis. To quote a police officer who tried to help a friend while they struggled in vain to talk me off the naked-and-screaming-in-the-street ledge: “this is something much more complicated, intense, and dark than just drugs or alcohol.” It would have, and has, looked even worse if I had tried not to dull the misfiring in my brain with the substances. I wasn’t a slave to the substances I was abusing. It took time, but I learned that I was self medicating because navigating life as a person suffering from bipolar disorder, from my own experience, was so uncomfortable that I was desperate for relief. My skin would crawl and my heart would race and my brain would rapidly fire thoughts like “nothing will ever be ok,” “everyone hates you” and “you will not be ok, ever.” And honestly, maybe I won’t.

But I’m still allowing myself oxygen, at least for now. The voice in my mind that is desperate to survive has not yet suffocated. As I mentioned, I am burdened by self-awareness. I have endlessly researched this affliction. I am wise to it’s incredible challenges and viciously aware of the statistics. Only 30% of people diagnosed with this disorder will find a way to survive it for their entire lives. If that doesn’t tell you how furiously those of us with this illness are suffering, nothing will. Ultimately, I am doing my best and beyond that, I am powerless.