I knew something was wrong with me when I was fifteen. It wasn’t just the fifth new school in five years. (My family moved a lot.) It was something else. It was something bigger.
I asked my parents for help. My grades had gone from straight A's to average. Learning disabilities were the obvious conclusion, but were quickly ruled out. Teachers told my parents that sometimes smart kids don’t assimilate. I was just an awkward geeky kid with lots of potential.
High school turned into college. I had amazingly intense focus my first two years and pulled in a 3.9 GPA. I was that kid who locked myself up in my dorm room and studied. As long as I was focused, I could take 25+ unit semesters and kill it. My energy, my brain, was able to focus on school. After my 3.9 didn’t get me into Berkeley and UCLA, I gave up on being the bookworm.
With so much time away from the books, my head began spinning out. It was like my brain was on perpetual spin cycle. I knew I was worthless. My head jabbered on a million miles a minute all day and night long. I took up writing. My poems and short stories were intense, and dark. Just like me. I wrote every night for hours and hours. This was, of course, before blogging was around or I’m sure all of that sadness would be living online.
I took solace in drinking. When I drank, my head would slow down. I felt normal when I was drunk. Drinking also helped me sleep. If I drank at night, I’d get four or five hours of sleep. Even better, all my friends were partiers. I fit right in.
The problem with hanging out with partiers is that some of those people are legitimate alcoholics. I dated one. One night, after he drank twenty-four Bud Lights, I threw a rum and coke in his face and pulled out a knife and turned it on myself. My roommates tackled me and took the knife. The cops came ten minutes later. I still have no idea if I would have done it.
I was lucky because the officer who (truly) rescued me saw what was happening. He saw how much alcohol had been consumed around me. He saw my illness in my eyes and he drove me around and we talked for an hour. When I was calm, he took me home. Within the hour, my parents had been called and I was booked onto a flight home.
The story goes that I transferred schools my senior year of college because of a family crisis. I was that crisis. I was fortunate that my intense studying came hand in hand with my illness. All of my teachers gave me my finals on the phone and gave me A’s. Imagine that- straight A’s while drinking and being suicidal.
Of course, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder when I got home. But I didn’t believe it. And I certainly wasn’t going to take the medication.
I continued drinking for the remainder of college. Then I stopped. I went into my first job sick, with a spinning head, and the mindset that I could make a great life even if I couldn’t control my head. Or my occasional outbursts. Or the sick anxious feeling I always carried with me.
Eventually I moved far away from my parent’s home to start a life of my own.
In 2002, I went to the doctor for insomnia. I was sleeping 2 hours a night and had been for 2 years. I never felt tired. I knew something was wrong. She took one look at me and said: "You’re bipolar. And if you don’t start to sleep, you will be dead within the next two years."
I was pissed. I didn’t want to be bipolar. Those people were crrraaazzzy.
I said: “I can’t be bipolar. I’m smart! I graduated from a great school! I am a creative writer!”
What a lame reaction.
But that’s the thing about bipolar. It comes with a stigma. It comes with a BIG stigma. Such a big stigma, in fact, that a doctor once told me there was no way I could be a mom and he recommended an abortion. For what it is worth, I am a very good mom. How I am a bipolar mom is likely another post for another day.
So I finally, on my own, began to take the medication prescribed to me. For over a year I lived in a fog while they tried to figure out my cocktail. I lost my job. I started over. I slept. I lost 10 hours of my day. It was like the whole world was put on slow-mo and I couldn’t get anything done.
Eventually, I came out of the fog as the whole, complete, medicated me. You should never feel medicated by the way. I don’t.
Some of my creativity is gone now. That makes me sad sometimes. But I sleep. My head only spins sometimes. I get in dark places still, but instead of that happening once a week, it happens once a year. I still write - but I have a lot more positive things to say these days.
Generally, life as a medicated bipolar is good.
The most important thing for me has been this.
I am not {me} the bipolar.
I am {me} the mother, the significant other, the worker, and the writer.
My illness doesn’t define me. No matter what others think of me, or people with bipolar like me - I am not a victim.
I am not a stigma.
I am just me.
