Tag: Bipolar disorder

The Rough Patch

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

The thoughts washed over me like a warm dishcloth in the hands of my mother, softly scrubbing the days grime and grit away.  The thoughts brought comfort and tenderness.  The thoughts eased my anxiety.  The thoughts allowed deep breaths out of shallow breathing.  The thoughts had me wonder, “would anyone care?”  The thoughts came to me through cupped ears, uncertain of the message and always certain of the sound.  The thoughts came to me in hushed tones, as though they were being spoken in a pew in church, or a movie theatre, or a play.  The thoughts popped into my head like bread from a toaster, but with less fanfare.  The thoughts came to me like a piccolo in the distance or the bark of a dog through a curtained open window in summer, somewhere far away, present and avoiding distance.  The thoughts always came to me as I was thinking of nothing else, crept in like an intruder or a rapist.  But the thoughts were always the same, “it would be better if you were gone.”

When you live with mental illness, you also live with suicide.  Not as a threat, or a cry for attention, or a misdirected plea for help.  A life with mental illness means a life with suicide.  And thinking about it daily is a good thing.  For me (and many of my friends who live with mental illness), we understand the destruction, the collateral damage, the years of anguish suicide dumps onto those left holding the bag; this bag, now empty, once held a precious life to those it touched.  But to the person to whom it belonged?  It became too heavy to carry or too light to matter, too crazy or too solitary, too depressed or too manic, too congested or too separated, too observed or too ignored, too involved or too bullied.

To those of you without mental illness a word of caution:  Suicide isn’t the end.  Suicide is the beginning of horrific nightmares, overdue and now regretful answers to calls, lamentable hours sorting things which recently were belongings but no longer hold meaning, the gash of your disappearance which takes years to heal (if ever).  It will never be an answer: it can only be a question.

Journal Entry: July, 2008 (three weeks post diagnosis)

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

After yesterday’s euphoria (the hopeful effect of an increase of medication), I thought, if this is the way I’m supposed to feel then I’ve been depressed for a very long time; I thought, if this is the way everyone else feels, then what have I been missing all this time? The grip of my obsessions were like strong hands around my throat; vaguely familiar hands determined; patty-cake hands.  But yesterday they loosened, fatigued by their own doggedness, they let go as a whistle floated past my lips like the sharp squeak of a slowly deflating balloon.  I saw light for the first time. There wasn’t that constant dullness. In one night my life had been rubbed free of tarnish and shone as though it were new: sparkling like a new silver tea service.
Last night was fitful.  I wasn’t sleepy when I retired though I was extremely tired and the meds kicked in rendering me dopey. I laid awake wondering when my eyes would close, wondering if the next day would see a marked improvement over yesterday. Once I did fall asleep I kept waking at two-hour intervals and needed to use the restroom. I awoke to the smell of fresh coffee which Nick was kind enough to brew, but I felt like the Golden Gate Bridge encased in fog.

Again, today was disappointing. I had blue moods; not quite the deep azure of days past, but not Nick’s sky-eye-blue either.  I felt listless. I pushed myself to work on my blog and again experienced difficulty in navigating through the myriad choices of photographs, layouts and information. I became exhausted quite quickly and felt tension in my head. I realized finally that though I had shown improvement, I was not healed.

I’m a problem-solver by nature and not prone to patience. Get them in, get them out. No problem is ever to great. I can solve anything. Except this damned disease! And it’s in a place I can’t see or touch or feel. It’s up there, back there, behind my eyes, under my scalp, between my ears. I can’t scratch its itch. I simply rub my forehead trying so desperately to relieve its grip like you’d soothe a Charley horse or tired feet.

And so I sit tonight again fearing my bedtime. Wondering if sleep will overtake me quickly as it did when I was a child. My mother used to tell me that the last thing you think about before you fall asleep is what you’ll dream about. I’ve been thinking of sunny days when I laugh and enjoy the loves of my life and am happy.  Disappointingly, the mornings have always come up a bit short.

What Do You Get When You Cross A Desert Box Turtle and Jack Russell Terrier?

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 1 Comment

I’m afraid that my spouse will leave me one day.

Not because of anything I did or said, but rather, because of the things I didn’t do.

My bipolar disorder is treated by amphetamines.  And when they begin weaken I find myself incredibly tired; painfully tired.  This fatigue is called the cliff.

My spouse has the energy of a Jack Russell Terrier and wants to play and play and play.  Problem is, I’m sullen, I’m racing on amphetamines, I crash at turn three.  And he keeps up the frenetic pace: movies, plays, parties, happy hours, garden walks.

Like now.  I’m so tired I could cry, but he’s invited me out for a movie.

How often can I say “no thanks, I’m so tired,” before he finds another Jack Russell to play fetch?

It’s not that I don’t want to see a movie or play, attend a dinner party or picnic at Ravinia, stroll through the Botanic Gardens or Morton Arboretum, I simply don’t have the energy.

I’ve tried to fake it, fallen asleep during concerts and movies; so fatigued that I don’t even stand up at intermission; mind-numbing sleepiness causing me to forget names of close friends or our destination.

How many respectful declines will he hear from me before he invites a surrogate, my body-double, my understudy, my replacement?

 

After Reading This, Stop It or Justify It

~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 3 Comments

Practically every drinking-age adult has, at one time or another, usually while extremely drunk, publicly pronounced their ideas, sentiments, questions, ultimatums, proposals, tantrums or a million different things which, under normal circumstances, i.e. sober, would never eek past their lips.  These are gargantuan declarations!  These are reasons for avoidance, distance, even termination.

And usually forgiven and forgotten.  And rarely, if ever, does the persecution of both the drunk and the debacle continue on for years.

So why can’t people who live with mental illness be granted the same degree of forgiveness after a manic episode that left behind a degree of destruction comparable to that of a bender?

Why is being out of my mind different than drunk out of my skull?  How are the senseless rantings of a brain gone haywire different than the senseless expletives and threats of harm screamed during labor?  Is it easier to forgive mistreatment when you understand the cause and empathize with the sufferer? 

Our society (by-and-large) is hell-bent on maintaining a safe distance, a polite disinterest, and muted intolerance of mental illness by refusing to educate itself.  Does the defense I most often hear, “It’s because they don’t understand what you’re going through,” justify bullying, abuse, denial, exclusion or acrimony?    What is it about mental illness that the majority of American’s find impossible stand?   It’s ignorance; civil ignorance.  If you’re ignorant you’re not required to empathize.  So educated people can mistreat me due to their ignorance of my disease.

Maybe that’s why there are people (who used to be close friends) that remain angry about what I said four years ago while I was losing my mind.  Because they have a right to be as ignorant about my mental illness as they like, but I’ve got to watch my P’s and Q’s so I don’t piss anyone off while I’m in a manic phase.

Why is forgiveness conditional?

Oomphlessness

~ Harlan Didrickson

It’s odd, this.

All my life I carried some kind of drive, as though the first-baseman-mitt-sized hands of a dad pushes a shy son to join the group; nudging, like the dog’s wet muzzle flips your hand like a pancake in order to be petted; knocked, like the brass-ring a toothless lion holds loosely between jaws, and which falls against a brass plate sounding more like the dinner bell than the formal announcement of a visitor.

This propulsion, like a jet plane, carried me to soaring heights where earth stretched like a night watchman and people, critical to life, shrunk so small so quickly that they hardly mattered.  Wouldn’t you think things of such importance could be seen from above?  Monuments can be seen; impact can be seen; destruction can be seen.  But people or their self-designations like importance or starvation or anger or bigotry or religion or anything, anything they’ve said or thought or threatened you can’t see.  You can see evidence, like ugly scars; at night lights dot the darkness like worn drapery holding back dawn, but some areas appear engulfed in flames, such a wide swath of light that I’d heard it told that the moon, once proud of its subtlety, is thinking of moving on, to Mars or Neptune maybe, a planet looking to adopt a real satellite, not some space junk.

The experts (who, self-admittedly, know very little about mood disorders, and even less about proper treatments) have identified this lack of oomph as a signature symptom of depression.  Ironically, the less oomph the more depressed.

Perhaps people have created a number of different systems all designed to manage oomph.  Clocks are oomph speedometers; birthday’s are oomph reminders; corner offices are oomph autobahn; retirement accounts are oomph cruise control.

Without oomph it would appear that I have no where to go and no reason to go there.  When you live with a mental illness you’re still in the same pool with everyone else.  It’s just that you’re knee-deep at the shallow end while everyone else with oomph keeps swimming back and forth and back and forth and will eventually join you here at the shallow end.  As they pass one or two might’ve noticed your inertia and may ask why you weren’t swimming, do you know how to swim, are you afraid to swim?

Oh no, I reply, I am oomphless; my brain doesn’t produce oomph; but in a world that places a high value on one’s degree of oomph, I think it’s better that I look like I have oomph because everyone that has it, is absolutely convinced that everyone has it, and those that aren’t using theirs are. . .

Are not oomphless.