28. From One Extreme to Another

This week I’m a lot more up and down than I expected to be. This is obviously not one of those periods of remission that I’ve read about! In this week’s blog I’m going to talk to you about some upsetting things so be warned. If you’re not feeling up to it, skip this blog and either come back to it another time or just pretend it never existed. I won’t be offended.

Last Friday I worked from home (that’s not the upsetting bit. Hold your horses!) and as I’ve explained to you previously, I don’t do well with being on my own for long periods. Even half an hour can be a bit of a stretch if I’m in one of those moods. Anyway, I noticed that as the day went on my thoughts became more and more dark and irrational. At the time they didn’t seem irrational, they seemed like valid worries that might affect the rest of my life, but looking back on them now, I can see that if I’d been able to anchor them just a little bit more in reality it’s possible I might not have got in such a state.

What I mean is, I was thinking about my marriage. Often when I’m down everything that I don’t have in life, everything I want but can’t reach and every reason for not being able to progress with my life falls to restrictions caused by my marriage. I don’t know why this is particularly or even whether there is any validity in it at all, but that’s how I feel when I’m down.

For example, I want to earn a bit more so we can go on holiday and travel. My hubby wants to give up work and start a business which I know we’ll struggle with. It will be stressful and there will be no money for years, if ever. We very rarely want the same things in life. So I think about what life would be like if we weren’t together. I think about moving out. How would I cope? I’d be exhausted, life wouldn’t be good, but then life’s not good now. The more I think about it the more depressed I become. So what’s the alternative? And that’s usually when I think to myself that there is no alternative and I may as well end it all now. You see. Not a very rational argument seeing as lots of people have split or got divorced and they manage somehow. But this is the thinking of someone for whom logic isn’t high on the agenda right now.

You know what scares me most about a suicide attempt? The thought of surviving.

I don’t want to have to go through years more counselling, justifying to everyone why life was just too tiring and altogether too much in that moment and probably always will be. I don’t want to have to explain to anyone I love why they weren’t enough to keep me here when in reality nothing could keep me here. For some of us suicide is an option only in as far as when it will happen, not if it will happen. And I think that’s because for some of us the disorder we carry around in our heads is priming us to self-destruct.

I don’t mean all this to be doom and gloom. It’s hard to discuss this subject without upsetting someone in some way. I‘m just telling you how I see things for me. You may agree, you may not.

Then yesterday I was listening to a lesson run by a life coach. She was very inspiring and I always feel uplifted after such talks. But she said something which made me think about my stance on suicide. She was talking about people’s pasts, saying that your past should not hold you back or stop you from trying again and making a success of things in the future. She then said that you have to align your frequency to the plan the universe has set out for you. Now this bit does sound a bit Star Trek but nevertheless her point was valid.

She continued to say that each of us is made happier when we align our actions with our desires, ie, if you want to become a vet, you don’t go to accountancy classes. If you do you’ll be miserable because you’ll be ignoring your inner desire and never allow yourself to work towards that goal. However, if you make the decision to follow the path that has been set out for you, ie, enhance your own abilities in areas you are naturally drawn towards, it will lead to you contributing something worthwhile to the world. If you align your frequency to the path the universe has assigned you, you will be happier.

Then she said that in essence everything is dictated by the universe. None of us would be here if the universe hadn’t allowed it, if life hadn’t been breathed into you. I know this is all a little hairy-fairy but it made me think that perhaps suicide is not my decision to make after all. I’ve been given this life by something else out there. For some that might be god, for others the universe. I have always assumed it is my life force to take and do with as I please, but she made me wonder whether I really have a right to fling it back at the universe when I’m done with it?

I know from my own experiences and how debilitating depression can be that there are those people out there who really can’t hold on any longer. For whom life is just too painful. I also know from a lot of years’ experience that if you hold on for just a bit longer you can often find something worth holding on for. My psychiatrist told me once that these desperate thoughts and feelings are a symptom of bipolar disorder and I will always get better if I give it time. As a symptom of an illness it’s pretty extreme, but he’s right. You get a cold, you’re going to experience the symptoms, that doesn’t mean the cold has to define your actual thoughts and feelings about life. If you’re going through a similar state to the one I’ve described then have faith that in another day or two you will have come through the worst of it.

This is one of those subjects I didn’t really know whether to broach in a blog. I certainly don’t want anyone thinking I advocate the idea, despite me saying I don’t judge those who must be in so much pain they feel they have no choice in the matter. However, it is a subject that, as bipolar sufferers, I suspect we’ve all faced in the past and possibly will do again. I hope that knowing there is someone out there who knows what you’re going through will help at least, and I’d like you to know that having you guys to share with helps me too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/us/suicide-prevention-sheds-a-longstanding-taboo-talking-about-attempts.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=US_SPS_20140414&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=3

26. It's ALL about ME!

I’ve been feeling sorry for myself the last few days, I can tell you. It’s partly to do with this story I’m writing and all the stuff it’s kicking up from my past and partly because I’m still feeling very shaky about things in my personal life and relationship. I’m one of those people who is always looking for the next thing that will make me happy. And that next thing never turns out to be enough. I blame my childhood.

In fact, the more I look back at my past the more I realise just how often I was having episodes which could be attributed to bipolar (although mild, I think they were definitely there, and my husband agrees). I wonder now whether I always had it. This is a big deal for me. I was only diagnosed in my thirties and was happier thinking that it was brought on by my nervous breakdown than I was thinking that I was always a bit defective.

I was a very sensitive child. I could over-empathise to the point of driving myself into a worse state that the person I was empathising with. The thought of global warming turned me into a nervous wreck from the age of 8 onward. I even had suicidal thoughts then. What was the point of carrying on, it seemed, if we were all going to drown, freeze to death or perish under a fireball from the sun?

I had terrible OCDs. I couldn’t fill an ice cube tray with water and put it in the freezer if I’d been thinking about anyone I loved because it would mean their essence would be frozen and they’d be in pain because of me! I was terrified throughout most of my childhood of all the man-made issues in the world, not to mention the issues of abandonment I was dealing with when my parents divorced, the loss of people and things that meant a lot to me, a lack of love from my mother, no guidance of any kind from adults in my life and an inability to talk about my problems when there was no one there to listen anyway. Is it any wonder I turned into a little bag of nuts?

http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/430212/group/Life/ - Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by 14.

My husband says that my need to be adored and desire to be the centre of attention is due to the bipolar but I’m not so sure. I don’t want to be the centre of attention. Not in the way you’re thinking. Yes, I want to be successful and happy, but in an understated way. I want my talent and what I can do to be recognised.

I think all that stems from being a little girl with no one to give her what she needed. I’ve spent my entire adult life, and continue to spend it, fixing the problems that that life installed in me. I think what he actually means is, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of becoming a little self-absorbed when every day you have to be very aware of your own feelings, thoughts, rationale, and logic in order to assess how well you are.

This is why, when I see others suffering, I feel bad that I am this self-absorbed person, always asking that my needs be met no matter how illogical or outlandish they might be at times. I came into work this morning and my colleague is in a bad way. He seems very stressed and exhausted. Because he’s a work colleague I don’t know him well enough to probe so in a roundabout way of cheering him up I asked him to help me with the new software licensing acronyms that we’re going to add to our asset management system. I’m pleased to announce that we came up with the following, and a job well done I might add:

Ass.LicK - Assigned License Keys

U.Ass.LicK – Unassigned License Keys

SNot.LicK – Secure Notes License Keys

24. Feel What's Real

I’ve been going through a stage for some time now where I feel very calm. Overly calm in fact, almost feeling nothing at all at times, but not in a bad way. Not in the way depression robs you of your feelings and leaves you empty. It’s more like I’m happy inside because there’s nothing bothering me, no stress in my life, I’m not worried about any big decisions. This is odd because I do have all of those things to think about but I’m loving the peace this state brings and therefore I don’t want to question it too much.

I confided to my counsellor that despite wiping out all the stresses and strains I usually experience, this state has also robbed me of the feelings I have for my husband and I’ve been doubting whether I should be with him. Since she’s gone through our ups and downs for the last 2 years along with us she reminded me that when my hubby and I are together and working well, we’re VERY good together. I agreed. She then said that it’s difficult to tell what feelings are real when you go through ups and downs in mood on such a frequent basis. I agreed… then burst into tears. Don’t worry, I do that a lot.

She talked me through some of the different moods I end up experiencing thanks to bipolar. There’s this one, where I feel very little but am in an ok state and relatively happy. There’s the one where someone else takes over and I’m not in control, that one I don’t like. There’s the well of depression, which I like even less. There’s the edge of mania where Janice sits, beckoning me to join her. And there’s the actual hypomania. I described that to her in the form of a pizza, ie, if you order a pepperoni pizza from your favourite pizza parlour you’ll get the same thing every time it comes. You order a box of mania and you’re likely to get a new set of gremlins bursting out of it every time. I think she got the idea.

Then she asked me what I thought was really causing me to feel this way about my husband and as is the way when you start talking about something you’re not even conscious of, a lot of stuff came out which surprised me. The upshot was that I was protecting myself.

We’ve been through a lot in the last few years since my diagnosis. I haven’t always felt able to be totally open and honest with him about everything that’s going on with me. Sometimes that’s because I’m protecting myself and other times it’s because I need to protect him. And most of us can say that I expect. Honestly ISN’T always the best policy in my world. If I went around telling everyone I do contract work for that I have bipolar and would really love it if I could get one of my hallucinations to clock in every day when I fancy a day off, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be invited back.

But equally, to not be able to talk about these things makes them seem shameful. As if the disorder we carry around with us and have to deal with every day is ours alone to live with. And even for someone like me, with a loving husband, I still live with it and deal with it, on my own for the most part.

So what am I protecting myself from? Rejection? Pain? Hurt feelings? Someone who I can never expect to fully understand what I deal with every day? I’m pushing him away so that when the day comes that he decides he’s had enough and he can’t take any more bipolar surprises, I won’t have committed my entire being to him. I can walk away knowing that I pulled back before he could and therefore protected myself. And in the meantime I’ll live in a half fulfilling relationship, with a man I only allow myself to get close to when the mood takes me. And I see the flaw in my plan, I really do. But I never said I was good at all this emotional stuff.

My counsellor advised me that this state I’m in now is not one in which I should be making big decisions like filing for divorce or moving to New York to start a new life. She says that my feelings are lying to me. Clouding what’s real. Like depression clouds emotion and only allows the worst through, this state of calmness coupled with my underlying fears about my condition are causing me to question my feelings for my husband.

This is where logic needs to come in. Large decisions require logic and a bit more logic. Because any decision I make now I might regret later on.

21. Over The Bills And Dales

Wandering into Lynmouth the next day we were still smarting a little from the bill we’d received from the art gallery trying desperately to justify it by reminding ourselves that we haven’t had a holiday or weekend off in over a year.

On our way down the hill from our hotel we noticed a sign for another hotel, tucked away in the woods like a little fairy-tale cottage. It looked lovely so I suggested we walk down the long, winding, tree-lined road to the hotel and check it out for our next visit. Half way down the lane it turned cold under the shadow of the leafy trees and it started to feel as though we’d walked out of our own space and time and into a creepy fairy tale. To get to the cottage you had to follow a path which descended into the woods and the closer you got to the building the more it loomed above you. It was looking less like a cottage and more like a small castle by the time we reached it. Turrets strutted out from its rooftops and inside we could see grandly decorated veneered fireplaces surrounded by plush high backed chairs and shelves of old books.

We wandered to the front of the building where a balcony overlooked the hillside down to the sea and that’s when it happened. The large door to the castle opened slowly and with a loud and ominous creek. Both my hubby and I turned to see someone peering at us through the dark crack in the door.
‘You rang?’
I swear to God that’s what he said!
‘I’m sorry?’ I asked.
‘You rang for cream teas?’
‘Oh. No, we’re just looking around,’ I said and we both stood in silence as the large door creaked to a close again.
My husband turned to me and said ‘Welcoming.’

We practically ran back up the road to civilisation, all the way joking that the man’s mother would have asked him to invite the nice people in and put them up in the guest wing but that she’d turn out to be just a voice in his head because she’d actually died 50 years ago. And not like the nice voices in my head that encourage me to buy ice creams and giggle when people trip. She’d be the kind that makes him feel bad about standing over your bed at night watching you sleep, as he tries to hold himself back from touching you!

When we made it back to our own century we eventually happened across a small combined pottery studio and artists workshop. We went inside, weary from our short walk down a bit of a hill (what? We’re on holiday). And inside were some more beautiful things! Paintings of spitfires, boats, landscapes, animals. A whole variety all in different styles and then I realised that a picture of a hare with the most amazing expression on its face was one I recognised from the gallery we’d been in the day before. In fact it was probably the ONLY picture I didn’t buy, even though I wanted to.

The name of the artist was Dale Bowen and looking over at the artist at the workbench I said ‘I love this guy. We just bought some of his work in Linton.’
The artist mumbled something I didn’t really hear and so I carried on, as I do.
‘I like his pictures of rams in spaceships.’ What? I do! Art is subjective, people.
‘Yeah, that’s me,’ he mumbled a bit more clearly this time.
‘Say what now?’
‘That’s me. I’m Dale.’
… silence… awe… shock…
And then it was like meeting three people all in one body. He was Billy Connelly, mixed with some bloke from Stoke on Trent mixed with Michael MacIntyre. He wasn’t just A character, he was several characters. All of whom were very nice guys.

He showed us his work from when he was working for Wedgewood and when we told him we have family in Portsmouth he proceeded to tell us about the time he was asked to make and decorate a plaque for the Battle of Trafalgar 200 years celebrations at Portsmouth Naval Museum. The plaque was to be presented to her Majesty The Queen onboard HMS Victory. He was allowed to bring the plaque in and set it but was then escorted off the base by two burly sailors. The rest of the story mostly involved being in the pub while he waited for his train and being bought pints by all the nice people he met there.

Once my hubby told him he’d owned a bike shop they were both happy as Larry comparing bikes and stories of riding trips. It was, all in all, a very pleasant afternoon and I was sad to leave. Of course I did buy the hare picture and Dale kindly signed a card for me which had his ‘Through The Treetops’ picture on the front. He even drew a pom pom fuzzy creature on it for me. I was chuffed.

Meeting Dale made my entire weekend. I know, it was a close call between him and Mr No Pants, but I think Dale just inched it… euw, I think I’m going to rethink that line.