September 12, 2005
Reagan Airport, D.C.
Seems like the bipolar diagnosis merits a new journal. The BP journal. Covered with dizzying, what, flowers? Brain cells? Scrambled and chaotic.
I hear someone paging Christopher Crapps. Christopher Crapps. Christopher Crapps, please come to the courtesy counter.
I am self-conscious, as if I am Christopher Crapps, of the unfortunate name.
Is that the thing a bipolar person hears? Wants to hear? Always looking for the twist, the punchline, the unexpected. It’s unpleasant. The second-guessing was bad enough always before this, and now, it nears comic proportions.
Is this a bipolar hand? A bipolar face? Okay. Perhaps. The relief is there too—the ‘yes’ of it, the recognition in the descriptions. Is it possible as they say that this—all of my this-es—is an illness? It seems indulgent to say so, to clamor for a definitive diagnosis, to join the ranks of the medicated, the ‘mentally ill.’ Because that is what I am agreeing to. I am shaking that hand if I fill the prescriptions offered.
“You understand, you will need to stay on these medications for life. This is not the sort of thing you go off of.”
A life sentence, in a way, although of course, I am not so naïve to think this is the grimmest of circumstance. But still, something has been shattered, and I found myself choking back tears on the plane ride down here to VA. Because now I’m at a loss, a bit more than before, to tell you what is real, what is core, what is me, and what is illusion. I don’t want to be any hazier than I already am to the people who love me (or are trying to).
I’m laughing, too: Oh, what? Not everyone is consumed by shame and regret? Not everyone is “haunted”—the word that disturbed A. the most: “Haunted. Haunted. You are using the word haunted.”
As if I didn’t—can’t—hear myself.
“Yes. Haunted.”
She does not wake up from dreams sobbing. It is not something I can explain. It would be like explaining garish color to a content blind friend. There are surely better similes and metaphors but I can’t find them now. I can only sit in my shallow stew of embarrassed, oh-so-THAT’s-what-my-brain’s-been-up-to, and wonder what comes next.
To whom does one reveal this sort of thing? There are already folks who don’t know what to make of me, so how would it help to tell them I don’t know what to make of myself?
I’m stumped; they’re stumped. A fine mute standoff, plenty of embarrassed glances down at shuffling feet. Bipolar feet pointed at “normal” feet. And here I thought it was loveliness, even in its horror. A loveliness my antennae seemed to pick up that others’ did not, or didn’t want to, not so much. But…no? The loveliness part of life is pathology? Loveliness too acute? Too scorching?
I’m not sure I buy it, but then I buy it, I buy it, there is sense.
Another relief: the devastating insomnia, the symptom I can report most confidently, most surely, has been with me for so long. Who could deny this? I know that I do not sleep—no one can tell me otherwise. If I could only sleep. But my not sleeping, they say, is beyond my control. There is no stupidity, no stubborness to it, not on my part. It’s my brain to blame—wearing its mysterious, ghostly paths over and over. Haunted. Yes. There is no better word I can find.
My brain has ruts, grooves, depression-roads like deep wagon tracks in mud. I think of mud—wet slop—rather than the airy “kindling” I am now reading about. So much to read, dear God. Kindling, in bipolar disorder, happens when the brain burns brighter and bigger unless tamped down, snuffed out. Left unchecked, the raging bipolar brain goes higher and lower all the time. Left unchecked, will this ‘kindling’ burn me to a crisp?
And what, exactly, is it claiming as its own? Is the soul tucked safely away somewhere else, perhaps behind my ear like chewing gum, or curved quiet and low under my heart or spleen, trying to save itself from the drugs designed to keep it all sensible, sensible, in check. “Look how she repeats herself,” they will say someday, reading this. “TWO ‘sensible’s!”
No! I wanted two! I did! There will be much of this, I can see, much inane mental protest and tug-of-warring. I wonder if my inner dialogue, already so noisy and noisome, will only increase in protest—wanting to be less easily explained away, wanting to come from the right place, and not the wrong.
I am wrong, all wrong? No right happening up there? It cannot be true. Cannot. Suddenly my brain needs a safety gate for the stairs, outlet covers, window locks, and screens I can’t push out. My brain is not to be trusted. Left to its own devices, it will steal the matches in the kitchen drawer. Plays with matches. Unruly. And here I thought—when the beauty would sear me and send me soaring—that I was rich in something most did not seem to have, or were not willing to talk about. I still think it, but now there’s the new voice, the babysitter, to remind me that the thought is grandiose and I’d better settle down. A warning sign.
I am trying to operate on my head by looking in a funhouse scramble of mirrors. Who can think clearly in that environment?
Ah, it’s all self-indulgence. I am going to get some airport food. THIS is easy: I like that, I want that, I buy that.
I eat that, and I am full.
If I write about this, I am writing about this to see what I have to say about this. The only way.
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
I am convinced that any brain can find it’s way. And while it’s unusual for me to be so glass-half-full, the positivity seems solid and worth standing on. Map and compass, surfboard, and plenty of all-weather-gear… that’s my suggestion. The world will always be a challenge for your Bipolar Bear Brain. It’s an adventure, and you need a pith helmut.
For the record, my security code is: FAME
I saw this t-shirt yesterday and thought it might make you laugh a little.
http://www.loiterink.com/bipolar/196/
I was diagnosed with Major Depression in 1996 and was promptly started on an SSRI. I have been on an SSRI since with the exception of a few times when my prescription ran out and I was too lazy to get it filled in a timely manner. The first 2-3 days off my meds I feel fine but that quickly evaporates and I am left with feelings of sadness, rage, and w-t-f-is-wrong-with-my-head?? Oh, and THEN my libido returns and really? This is a good time to have sex?? Horny and homicidal – kind of a cruel twist. For a long time I have not shared with others, outside of my family and those few friends with whom I really feel safe, that I have depression and am on medication. Partly I was embarrassed though I truly do understand that this is not “oh, I’m kinda sad” but serious mis-wiring/mis-firing in my brain of which I have no control or ability to talk myself out of. Depression runs in my family in a BIG way and we all seem to have a similar version of it. Over the years I have become more comfortable with the fact that this is part of who I am. I still don’t share it openly with others until I trust you (though I suppose I just blurted it out to the whole internet). I worry sometimes about what I will do if/when my husband and I are able to have a baby. I believe it is highly unlikely that I could manage 9 months without my meds and I don’t know that the effects of SSRIs on a baby are well known. (Did I mention that I also have a whopping case of anxiety that is less well managed than the depression? Better to worry and perseverate about the baby thing now before I am anywhere near getting pregnant. Ah well, maybe 2009 is the year that I will finally get myself into talk therapy rather than just talking about how I know I SHOULD go to therapy…)
Anyway, I am finally arriving at my point for writing this long rambling commment (other than the fact that it feels good to write this) – have you heard of “Recovery” in terms of mental health issues? Everyone has heard of Recovery when talking about substance abuse but a few years ago I learned about Recovery as it relates to mental health and the way that I like to think if it is that each of us is on a continuum of Mental Wellness – some days we are More Well and other days we are Less Well – and each day we keep working toward the More Well end of the contiuum. I like this concept a lot bettter than Mental Illness. The word “illness” connotes a certain level of helpless/hopelessness and I don’t feel sick, I am just not always as Well as I would like to be. Wishing you wellness.
(More info about this can be found at http://www.mentalhealthrecovery.com/).
The inner dialogue, the internal arguments, the efforts to re-frame my perceptions and to create positive self talk ….. there were times when I wanted to rip my brain out of my head because it wouldn’t STFU. Sometimes I’d think the wondering whether or not I was crazy was going to drive me crazy.
I like Rebekah’s idea of the continuum and Recovery. I can more easily live with the idea of More Well and Less Well than Mentally Ill. Right now, I’m More Well but there are days when I am not and there will probably be days in the future when I’m definitely Less Well.
More Well will come around, Jenn. In the meantime, you’re writing about it beautifully. I smell a book deal here….
i was totally thinking BOOK too when i read this, like your experience might pave the way to your book deal, which may or may not be what you want.
I found your blog several months ago and have been reading ever since. I know you have no reason to answer this, since you don’t know me from Adam, but I’m curious if your bipolarism has always been with you or if it kind of snuck up on you and then BAM whacked you in the back of the head as if to say ‘SUCKER – I’M HERE, PAY ATTENTION’?
Thank you for being so open and honest with your life and feelings – it’s such a rarity these days.
I was thinking that your flame is brilliant. And that your honesty is some much-needed medicine for people who have preconceived notions about mental illness. Keep figuring out what you think about it.
“’Haunted!’ she cried, suddenly pressing the accelerator. ‘Haunted! ever since I was a child. There flies the wild goose. It flies past the window out to sea. Up I jumped (She gripped the steering wheel tighter) and stretched after it. But the goose flies too fast. I’ve seen it, here-there-there-England, Persia, Italy. Always it flies out to sea and always I fling after it words like nets (here she flung her hand out) which shrivel as I’ve seen nets shrivel drawn on deck with only sea-weed in them. And sometimes there’s an inch of silver – six words – in the bottom of the net. But never the great fish who lives in the coral groves.’
Here she bent her head, pondering deeply.
And it was at this moment, when she had ceased to call “Orlando” and was deep in thoughts of something else that the Orlando whom she had called came of its own accord; as was proved by the change that now came over her as she passed through the lodge gates into the park.
The whole of her darkened and settled, as when some foil whose addition makes the round and solidity of a surface is added to it, and the shallow becomes deep and the near distant; and all is contained as water is contained by the sides of a well. So she was now darkened, stilled, and become, with the addition of this Orlando, what is called, rightly or wrongly, a single self, a real self. And she fell silent. For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of divertissement, and are trying to communicate but when communication is established there is nothing more to be said.” – Woolf
I have to say, I am so appreciative of your many posts this week!
My official diagnosis is borderline bipolar disorder. I think that’s sort of funny, because… what? Borderline? It seems like it should be an *is* or *isn’t* thing. But anyway.
Not a lot of people talk about this. In fact, I am not sure I’ve ever told anyone who knows me in real life, about my diagnosis. Loads of people talk about depression, but no one talks about the pendulum of mania and depression.
For the longest time, my definition of feeling happy was what I now know to be a manic episode. I felt GREAT! Euphoric! Amazing! But everyone was looking at me weird and my parents were accusing me of using drugs.
I had a lot of trouble staying on medications because I never felt “happy” anymore. It took me years to adjust to a new sort of happy. I still miss my manic phases, like I miss smoking. I can relate to so much of what you’re writing now, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your openness and willingness to write about this.
Sorry for the novella. A million thanks to you, Jenn.
Thank you for sharing this, Jenn. You are helping so many!
Jenn, AMEN!
I also can remember the feeling of –What does this mean? These words? Am I what they say? The soaring, whirling, world changing ideas…they are not mine?…they belong to IT?
I felt….what? Cheated? Lied too? But by who? Me? My brain?
Sigh…I feel ya girl.
Also @ Rebekah: “the continuum of Mental wellness” is an awesome…accurate…genius description of the roller-coaster ride.
I love me some BEAW peoples.
Rebekah, If you come back and read comments again, there is a good article in Brain, Child this issue about pregnancy on SSRI’s. There are not definitive studies and there is a conflict in the medical establishment between what’s best for the baby and what’s best for the mother, and which should take precedence. My own experience, having been on SSRI’s off and on for 8 years (and off, like you, when refilling the prescription seemed like too much work), was I was told the newborn baby would experience withdrawal symptoms so I went off the meds at 2 months pregnant. By 6 months pregnant I was a complete and utter wreck and barely functioning, until in a hysterical phone call with my doctor she told me to go back on the meds because it’s better that I was healthy for the baby’s sake. So I did. My baby was fine.
And Jenn, I remember as a kid and teenager, thinking everyone must have this inner voice/dialogue going at a constant rate with themselves, don’t they? And only slowly, later came to realize that no, they don’t. Not everyone has their brain running all the time like I seemed to and not able to turn it off. The meds help manage it, and I am a better me with them. Am I the “true” me? How will I ever know?
Jenn, you are NOT alone. I also have BPD. I was helped a ton by this book: http://www.amazon.com/Unquiet-Mind-Memoir-Moods-Madness/dp/0679763309/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b I urge you to pick up a copy at the library, or bookstore, and read it. Meds for life stink – I am a bit resenful of it all. We will all survive the tests life chooses for us.
Be Well!
Love that you’re doing this, Jenn. Love, Love, Love!
Glad you’ve opened the BEAW store too! Good for you.
Uh…..BEAW store?
Wait…WAIT!
What does it sell?!
Oh my GAH what does it sell!!!!!
I love this stark-raving lovely BEAW crowd. We would make the warmest, wackiest potluck party EVER.
The BEAW store, I forgot that was even on there. I think Simian Farmer, bless him, bought a T-shirt once. That was the extent of it. Now…I don’t even know how to login. Allow me to look into that.
P.S. Someone just told me that there’s someone else using Breed ‘Em and Weep as a blog title, over on Blogspot? What’s the etiquette? Does that happen often? Er?
Thank you for sharing.
Someone using “your” title?!! ROARRRRRR!
That’s mama bear growling – my thought is that there may be some “etiquette” or even legality to intellectual property rights regarding blog domains. Check to see when that person published a first post, eh?
I am very biased but I think there should only be one BEAW and that is definitely you!!
Came out of my cave for this one, didn’t I?
And, yes, Simian bless him did buy a BEAW t-shirt from your “store”. You probably need to add some new merchandise – with polar bears and such :>)
So why did you get divorced? It seems to be the reason why you’re here..the subject that gets danced around a lot. Is it best to keep alluding without confronting? That’s a serious question..I have no idea, just wondering though.
i’d totally buy a MEAW polar bear tshirt, although i’d prefer a sweatshirt because it’s -18 in northern MN tonight.
errr, that’s BEAW polar bear shirt. sorry.
Bad”Kitty”, I can certainly understand your writing “meaw” instead of BEAW. Purr, and all that.
MN is even more brutal than the Berkshires (at times).
HEY! I once bought a pair of BEAW hoojackapiffy boxers for my husband (much as my good friend Simian Farmer would have coveted them). Just so you know, there’s quality stuff at that store.
Hoojackapiffy. Your new readers should really go back in the archives for THAT post! Your comedy and drama both shines, Jenn.
Jenn, I don’t always comment, but I do always read.
Thank you for your beautiful writing and your honesty.
Life can be a painful ride, but you share yours with such touching warmth and humor even when you must be feeling chilled and not very funny at all. Your mind might be misfiring (and I often wonder whose isn’t) but your spirit is awesome.
Please keep writing this down. It’s helpful for so many!
Hi Jenn, I’m a loyal and so far silent supporter here, mainly because someone else has always already said whatever was on my mind, but this post has made me chime in. Both my son and my husband have been dxd as bipolar bears this year, and we finally have a name for the roller coaster we’ve been riding for so long. This post pretty much sums the whole diagnosis drama right up, these are the questions,the emotions, and the incredible pain that go with accepting the reality of a bipolar diagnosis. Thank you for shining a light in the dark places of our hearts, minds, and most importantly, our preconceptions.
found you via stumble upon tonight and must say I’m hooked. Your writing pulls me in.
Hi Sweetie,
I’ve been following along and thinking of you often. What a rough, rough time it’s been, and how very smart and brave you are sounding these days.
I would truly love to hear from you. Shoot me an email if you are so inclined–I promise I’ll write back, and promptly.
xxoo,
L.
I checked out the, er, competition. Not to worry — there is no way your site could be mistaken for it. I will not say anything catty, so I will not discuss the quality of writing over there. Meow. It would have been gracious of this person to acknowledge your site being an inspiration, and including a link, though. Maybe there is more to the netiquette expected, though.
I have not commented more than twice in a couple years, but check in every couple weeks to see how you are doing. I enjoyed reading about a creative familiy in the Berkshires, (I am in Hampshire County, with a Sophia about the same age as yours). As I divorce attorney I read the news last year with dread, and although it is not my business I have to say I understand a lot more about you as you have started to talk about your illness.
I have learned a lot in the past few months. It is clearly a difficult time for you, but I have to say I am in admiration of you strength, your honesty, and the support shown for you here. And although it may be praise that you don’t need from a stranger, unless it is attached to a publishing contract, your writing is really outstanding. FWIW, I am a fan. Thank you.
I find myself wanting to ask you questions as if you were able to explain to my why my dh who has the same as you and still hasn’t quite accepted the diagnosis…won’t read anything or take his meds or let me help. It is odd. Like your brains are linked somehow….we are separating. I feel like I am deserting him, we will still be close, no divorce. I need some peace though, some time to heal too. The unpredictability is what is eating away at me.
I love you lots. Thanks so much for the raw honest real amazing you
i love you.
As usual, amazingly truthful and transparent. For this I say thanks.
It’s so easy for me to sit here over a decade out from my brother’s diagnosis, not much less than that from mine, several years off medication and into a real stability, and think, “what’s all the fuss?” But then I remember that once, it wasn’t just an integrated, celebrated, beloved, if also potentially dangerous, part of me and my life, there and easy and beautiful. It was once scary and overwhelming and, yes, akin to a haunting, and I truly did not know if I would survive. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I could trust; certainly not myself, for it was my self that was broken.
It’s easy to be smug now, easy to be an advocate now, easy to show the sane side of bipolar to the world… but it wasn’t always so.
Thank you for reminding me.