Person with a puzzle

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers, I hope that you are as well as you can be. My husband has travelled to Paris for work. For us it is a fancy place and my children and I imagine that he is doing nothing other than consuming expensive french-baked goods by the minute. Before he left, I tried to hide my dismay, cried quietly before falling asleep in fear for the time he wouldn’t be around. For the very big part he plays in my and our routine that can’t be filled by anything else. He knows to wake me up on time, how I take my coffee to the precise measure and mostly offers calm and peace to a being beset by a storm.

There was a man who also had a poorly wife and he described her illness as a puzzle that could not be solved. Those vexed by the next piece or completion are frustrated and make great show expressing this. Imagine how they feel he said, in the dangerous and urgent pursuit of a puzzle that can only temporarily be eased. Sigh. I am most afraid that he will realise that it’s better to not be with a person with a puzzle. The person whose mind can change on a whim, who forgets, rarely sleeps well and requires ongoing medical care. I wouldn’t want to because then you wouldn’t have a partner or wife, you’d have a patient.

I always try to be happy, I try to hope for the best. I pray, work hard, and try to do right by my family but there are many times when I really can’t and the addition of the puzzle is perplexing with soul-wrenching exhaustion. I want to get up and fight. I want to feel the might for it. I don’t want to feel the washing machine churning inside my being that reminds me of the several reasons why someone like me is a loud and large dead-end. I feel sad and right now alone. But I think I have to find some ways why a person with a puzzle like me is important, especially me, whether you are in Paris or not.

Broken Bank Account

Hello Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are doing as well as you can be. Lately, I’ve had a much more demanding job. I manage 7 people, multiple meetings and long days. This kind of work has not been recommended for someone like me. My psychiatrist always has underlined that stress is the seed for a relapse that neither you nor I want to go through. A few years back I was barred from working fulltime and in a stressful position like this, and I stayed at home for as long as I could. The truth though is that even when you’ve been deemed broken with all the anticient benefits, I’ve found that my bank account hasn’t been that forgiving.

I am also sometimes the mother and grandmother to 4.5 children. Although they are older other than my grandson, each has their own needs which I sometimes find overwhelming. These are monetary and emotional, and well that personal broken bank account of mine underlines again, the extent to which there is a large deficit. I love my children and grandchild, they are the warmth of my heart but even I finds that too much after a long day, too many conversations and times where I have to pretend that I was never broken in the first place.

My mental health advice would be to find a different kind of role, to find new ways of looking after myself, and real ways to say I can’t anymore, I am spent. To mean it and to actually take care of myself which isn’t medicated sleep. To find a way to recharge before the unfortunate symptoms of relapse rear their ugly head. I haven’t really found long lasting ways to do that, and the relentless cycle of getting up, pretending to be fine, cracking the whip and then renewing by the next day has proved costly especially with my enjoyable habits of a newborn. I will never give up, I will always keep on trying but goodness knows a substantial injection would sure help this broken bank account.

Sanity Sought

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers, I hope that you are as well as you can be. Recently I decided that me and the world would be better off if I were sane, whilst being completely adherent to a handful of daily psychiatric medications. It made better sense to enter into the job market (which I and my family need) with a bit of sanity, mascara and lipgloss. I donned my dress of decorum, my brain of brilliance and even managed to paint my nails. Who knew what would be in store when my arrray of mental illnesses was and are neatly tucked away. The awkward anxiety, palpitating paranoia and deepening depression haven’t ever really been helpful since I’ve been a little girl, so why not give seemless sanity a go.

There’s a problem: at no point in my extended mental health journey (dotted with many, many interesting stops along the way) have I ever been told that your illness will cause you to do the COMPLETE opposite of what you intend. That sanity seeking is compromised when you will tell the truth even when you don’t want to about subjects/humour at inopportune times. That some days your tears are not controllable and that weeping emotions aren’t socially fun. The clumsy, confused, stammering and feeling as if you are a dithering idiot for which you will profusely apologise, your whole life because you changed meds/pj’s/emotions, mental illness keeps it real.

Most of all, no-one tells you about how people look at you and you look at them when you’ve lost your train of thought or spoken inappropriately and recovered, again. It’s darn hard keeping things straight when you are chemically charged just to make it through the day and also from experience, it doesn’t help telling them. I thought I could make it, I thought I honestly could pretend that I was ok and that my madness was only at the borderline level allowed by most. That I could colour in the lines, laugh on cue and fit into the normal few.

Perhaps you will tell me that I should not want to fit in, and that sanity seeking are for those who have truly lost it and you’d probably be right. You will forgive me though for wanting to have an under the radar conversation. For having no-one nod or blink their eyes “sympathetically” for just one day. Not feeling like I want to implode, just one day. My inner anguish is sufficient, must it be branded on brain and body too? I try each day to fight back. To give more and be more. To not worry about the lack of sleep and be there for me and my family. Difference isn’t respected as we’ve seen the world over. I’m so tired of it inside and externally to me. I pray that this is not your experience and that you would never seek sanity. It is in my experience, largely over-rated.

Learning to say no

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. Thank you to those who read my blog and a few new followers. It inspires me to write. It has been a difficult time for me and my writing voice felt blocked. I’ve recently become a proud grandmother but have found complications that come with mental illlness with this little blessing. This includes a granny who battles with sleep, not being able to sit still and wanting to buy groceries and nappies ceiling high to protect us from impending doom that I neither have the funds or storage for. The doom probably isn’t real, but it feels and frigthens my body and being like it really is, often waking me up at night.

As someone with Bipolar Type 2, I experience hypo-mania whether I like it or not. I often explain it as being akin to being eyeore on red bull. It’s tearfully terrific and turns the volume up on the impending doom track I already hate listening to. To quiet it and increasing anxiety, I cook for three days, I plan menus and busy myself with putting a preventative plaster on any area of my life I can at great personal cost. I’m always busy, I’m always catching up and apologizing for my very existence. I know very little rest, although I consistently adhere to my meds and pray for a quiet and peace that mental illness has never allowed me to know.

That’s a lot and all it makes me feel like doing is sighing even more. Instead, I need to learn a small way of addressing how I feel. From experience, blood, sweat, and tears, I have learned that you have to find and fight to chart a way of looking after yourself no matter how many times you fail in trying. Perhaps it could be in learning to say no which isn’t as easy as it sounds. To find ways to say no to the impending doom, the cleaning each room or the cooking of the contents of the fridge. Learn to say no I can’t to things and areas of your life as loudly as you can that it’s too much I tell myself. Perhaps you could try to. I’m trying to succesfully learn how..

Waving the White Flag

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope you are as well as possible. My recent blog and writing have been somewhat fraught – a small demonstration of what I have been feeling and experiencing. It has been a lot to go through. Going through. But I stopped and experienced something important for the first time today. I waved a white flag and conceded defeat. I allowed myself to let go – where I am usually the smallest detail stickler and instead said that’s ok, let’s go the other way. It was uplifting. Freeing. A white flag that allowed me to win in so many ways.

In my recent experience, I responded with aggression, being defensive, and resisting anything I could in an attempt to try to control the unwieldy cycle my life had become. I thought hanging onto the completely unnecessary was necessary to take control of the helm. Then today. Then that one taste of you and me don’t have to do that or tolerate it or feel it. I don’t know about you but I epxerience enough everyday, I need not add dealing with difficult people or situations I couldn’t control with a stringest fist. No. I can wave a white flag and save myself significant energy and emotion that I too don’t really have that much of.

I have learned that letting go and figuring out what is the most important to hang onto, is more important. Let’s be honest – there’s just so much one person can deal with. So much one person can process and understand and I’m not going to use unrealistic standards to judge me. Ok, maybe I’ve started just by saying that. I do now that me is worth more, deserves to be beaten less, and can walk away from conflict and situations that don’t promote my wellness. Maybe you too.

Broken Brain Button

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers, I hope you are doing as well as possible. I’ve had a challenging time of late, going through a medication adjustment. It has amazing side effects. Some of my personal favs include slurring, sedation, and memory loss. The increased appetite which I already have is a close competitor, adding to my already portly stomach. I also sleep eat which is enjoyable but really not advised given the should be apprent choking hazard. This may or may not have happened to me. Let no-one tell you that a medication adjustment is boring.

My most challenging impact now is that my brain isn’t working and as usual it’s pretty inconvenient. It’s foggy, it’s tired, and angry that I will forever have a mental illness because it really is a complete and utter boring bother that requires forever treatment. I also need no further confirmation of how much has been taken away from me and how different I am. Most importantly, I’m not comfortable with this much of my crazy showing in a place that’s never been kind.

This happened with a client I wrote for who said that I didn’t remember what they said (I do take avid notes so could not understand why) and basically questioned my ability to do a job I’ve done for over 20 years. Honestly, I almost burst into tears during the meeting and wanted to telll them that I’m sorry my brain/body/emotions are currently under construction and I REALLY am sorry, but not all the lights are on at the moment. Where I live, if you do that, anything remotely psychiatric, you are relegated to becoming the stay at home/forget about staff if still having your job at all. Pretty inconvenient brain for a billing period.

They hurt me in the meeting. They touched my most important space. There is one part of my mind that worked. My ability to do my technical job. They erased a bit harder the little bit of motivation I try to muster when I really just feel sick. There is no insurance that pays for groceries, water and lights, clothing for children, and other assorted items for the crazy despite the demonstrable contribution they make being weighed down whether you like it or not each day. Today I am sad that my bipolar brain button is broken.

Hotel Malawi

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope you are as well as possible. My stint in Malawi is soon ending, and I am happy to be going home to my family, especially for hugs and cuddles with my husband and children. In truth, the time here has been really difficult and akin in my opinion to the story told in Hotel Rwanda. Hotel Rwanda was an international hotel that housed people during the Rwandan Genocide. It was a story told of people kept safely with dwindling sources of food, and increasing over-capacity when serious danger lurked just outside the walls. Whilst Malawi is not facing the same kind of trouble, it’s people are in danger none-the-less.

The level of poverty in Malawi is astounding and I don’t know how each family with their children gets by. Basic groceries (mostly not meeting children’s nutritional requirements), even maize flour, are frightfully expensive let alone important things like safe water, access to protein and cooking fuel. Many take to begging with no other form of employment, or ride motorbikes under the pretense of being taxi drivers without the requisite skills, training or licensing resulting in one of the world’s largest levels of road fatalities and death. If I could help everyone I would, but I know that’s way beyond my capacity.

I suppose my question to the world is how and when we will stop closing our eyes to the starvation genocide that is taking out beautiful countries and people like these in Malawi. I want to believe that if we all came together and sent what we could (through the right mechanisms) we would be able to help the challenged people who are simply trying to live and get by. I want to believe that we who have so much more would understand and give to those who have so much less. I have tried to give what I could and worked hard whilst here but please let us not forget those that continue to be trapped in Hotel Malawi. Stay blessed and for those who celebrate, Happy Easter.

Harder and Heavier

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. From many ends, this year has been largely challenging and continues to be. I’ve gone through it waking up each morning and asking whether it was really worth it. It hasn’t felt like it. Ongoing challenges and the bleugh, ongoing mental illness which is the only consistent thing I’ve ever known. It will come, it will push you down and affect your ability to carry on. I wonder if we can just digest for a minute that I (and your) experience my mental illness every day, in each issue, all the time? If I don’t feel depressed (and other lovely symptoms), I am second guessing my decisions due to that all encompassing phrase: likely to be psychotic at any given point. It’s peachy I tell you.

I don’t have bad days all the time, there are the infrequent days of sunshine which well, in a percentage comparison, don’t make up a whole lot. When I have the sunshine it’s almost as if I close the curtains too early on the rays that come in knowing that it’s not mine to have. No use becoming used to something that I’m not likely to have or will miss too greatly again. Eyeore much. What I find disappointing is that despite your best efforts, this terror, taunting illness will come and rip the normal carpet right out from beneath you. Mine even comes back for seconds if I haven’t fallen apart sufficiently. I always advocate that you should get back after being beaten down but anyone who’s anyone knows that gets harder and heavier.

There are a couple of suggestions: chug plenty of pills, exercise, drink water, eat, properly, get vitamin D, check in with your mental health team if you can afford it and importantly, don’t research climate change. Right now pills and climate change research are clearly not doing the most. The truth is that it is hard, chocolate is appealing, and lying like a sloth in the hope for motivation happens. Happens a lot. Sigh. I am still going to say as loudly as I can each day that in spite of the challenge, the hard and the heavy, open your curtains, dance, sing and do whatever you have too to fight for you. It may never truly feel like it is worth but it really, really is. I’m still practising saying that former sentence. Let me know what works for you despite the hard and heavy.

Something beautiful

Dear Firneds and Fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. I continue to fudge through 2023 and hope that Christmas will arrive by about Feburary 14th if that makes any sense. When you’ve experienced a lot and your mental health armour has taken a beating, it gets easier to hope for the impossible. Personally, I’d like a calm day. I’d like a no emotions jolting through your body day. One feeling the whole day if that’s even possible too. Instead, my existence is quite the opposite and I wonder how to work on and make it better.

I have four children who although aren’t tiny continue to need my love and support. I get up for them every day and I know that I have to. They are the one thing I’ve never been confused about and that’s saying alot for someone like me. They are four sturdy, argumentative and always hungry reminders that there were some things I did right, and some beautiful things that exist despite what and how my mental illness threatens to take me over. They are the reminder that no matter what happens, there is something beautiful to believe in.

Yes, increasingly I believe that me is important too but that’s really hard with mental illness which consistently says and feels like the direct opposite. With mental illness that says something bad is bound to happen because you deserve it. It says a lot that is far too easy to listen to. I think what I’m learning is that perhaps it’s a better idea not to listen to that feeling or “voice” anymore. Not listen to the repeated sound that hurts at the core. Instead, I think you and I need to understand that we are so much more and well worth fighting for – I certainly plan to try.

More than mental illness

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. Over the last month, I traveled overseas to work in Birmingham and facilitate a workshop. The workshop was made up of different colleagues from Africa and the UK who joined to discuss our future work. I thought I was prepared for it, that I had managed to tuck my Bipolar in and get through each day with grace, a smile and a wave. I was cheerful on the way out, smiled through passport control and even managed an enjoyable 18 hour flight. I figured it was a new opportunity to be a new mental illness free me.

One of the sessions was moderated by an outside facilitator who talked about mental health. He talked about addressing mental illness in poor countries that have terrible practices to address and contain mental health challenges. In these settings that have barely enough he spoke about success stories, about finding people and getting them the treatment – in all manners – that they truly deserve. About them regaining their lives, family and access to their village from which they had been thrown out. I listened quietly and heard loudly that we should all have access to the treatment we deserve and never be treated like outcasts for something that we truly cannot control.

Since I was diagnosed I firmly believed that the symptoms were in control since they were seemingly apparent and buried myself in the tick box description of Bipolar. I lost interest in life, in me and everything around me, probably a lot like a person without a village. However, with the right treatment, right belief, and hope for a better future there could be so much else. There could be me contending with serious symptoms and not them controlling me. There could be me, sometimes struggling, but always continuing to be a more than mental illness me. Please continue to read my story.