Last year, I started the holidays early. I donned my festive gear, complete with jingly reinder bells, baked biscuits, sang songs, watched Christmas movies. The start of the festive season also meant that my birthday was closeby, so I was doubly happy. And then a series of awful things happened, and the end of my year went from triumphant to tearful. Happy to hateful. And instead of ploughing my face into food, as is one of my most favourite pastimes, I cried the season away. FESTIVE. And if that wasn’t enough, because I was um, emotionally extreme, I made a public spectacle of myself crying endlessly as if I was dying, of which I have frequent, fun snot filled flashbacks. Hashtag glamour.
Seriously though, if one looks though statistically at what happens in December, the truth is that too many people end up alone. Too many people are fearful, scared, alone. People with mental illness a lot know what it’s like to be alone. I hate it. And with the dawning of the festive season in my country, the amazing non-existent mental health service disappears even further, just like Santa up a chimney, after you hear the sound of bells. The best you can do for yourself is ask the police if you can drive around with them in the back of one of their vans so you can feel paranoid / sedated / captive / like someone’s listening over the cop radio, they might even be open to attaching a few bells, or bleeping their siren to a well known Christmas ditty. Because frankly you’re unlikely to receive much of anything else and that there frightful option, would seem like fun. At least you’d have company.
If you’re lucky enough to have private medical insurance, you could be admitted to a hospital, where relatives won’t visit as they’re away on holiday or busy being festive, and you’d be serviced by the “skeleton” staff on duty. Wow. My last experience of skeleton staff saw me being so heavily sedated that I didn’t know who or where I was, by a psychiatrist and psychologist who had NO clue of my history – some may find this merry mistake as a lovely way to do the festive – but that’s not my kind of um, cup of pills. My long-standing therapist is also going on holiday. Tomorrow will be my second last session for the year, and I am almost outraged that I won’t be able to talk to him until next year, when my mental health has so very clearly started to melt. The flashbacks of my blue christmas are becoming oh so more pronounced so I’m irritated that my therapist wants to do something like REST. Like spend time with his family. Ok not true. I don’t begrudge him that. But I do think that people with mental illness need more help over the festive season as opposed to less.
I’m trying the most to be reassured. To not worry. To look forward to a few weeks where I may even be able to spend the day on the beach. To see someone lovely and beautiful get married. To make new merry memories. To see my spirit mother (living person note). But my heart and mind are wiggly at the moment, and I most feel like climbing under my bed until the unnesscary fake snow, santa and glitter leave. I especially feel like staying under there if it means that my soft undershell will be protected. I can’t be upbeat today. Or end with some happy thought. Happy hellish holidays, or at least let’s hope for the opposite. Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t. I am 4 M’s Bipolar Mom.
4 M's Bipolar Mom 