The Loneliness of Mental Illness

Perhaps blogging when you are depressed is similar to dialing drunk.  In both instances you are likely to do a few things:  1) yell profanities at the world, yell about how you’ve been wronged.   About how you are the victim. About how things should change to your benefit.  2) You rant inaudibly about everything else, including how inconvenient it is to have lost your balance for a while. In both instances, these attempts are not very useful, and in my experience, met with curious or laughing eyes at your slurred attempts to right those oh so irksome wrongs.  But I’m not drunk, and I don’t drink. But I am feeling wronged.  I am feeling alone. Because the reality of mental illness is that it’s lonely. Very lonely.  Loneliness and wrongedness make for a fiery combination that leave this Bipolar woman spewing splatterings of emotion at all in her path.

Part of the depressions is that I am grappling with my diagnosis.  I am grappling with this daily experience of aloneness which I try to articulate in this blog.   The sea of emotion I regularly confront with my usually unequipped dinghy, hoping and praying finally to receive a rope of ‘sanity’ to haul me back to the big ship where all are as happy as can be.   Because I believe there is another way to live.  A way free from these constant flows that discomfort you, calm you, happy you, sad you.  My medication helps.  It makes sure that the ebbs and flows aren’t THAT violent.  On a Richter scale of 10, I’m now mild I think at an approximate 3.  But I am tired of being thought of as moody, tired, mad, you name it.  I’m tired.  Can’t they see that I go through enough on my own?  That I feel alone all the time, especially in the early hours of the morning when I am deserted by the restful snores around me.

A person close to me suggested that I don’t have Bipolar.  That I am just a creative thinker.  That I just feel intensively.  Let’s not comment on this particular suggestion other than to say, live in my shoes for a day and let’s see how you do.  Let’s see how you  like the long dark lonely halls of emotion you have to walk through.  The waves of emotion that wash over you.   How I wish I pretended these real, gut wrenching feelings. How I wish I could simply unfeel them.  Be happy. Be ok.

So for now I choose to close up.  To close the inner flesh of me.  There is no-one to hold you, craddle you, be your crutches when you can’t walk.  Because the reality of mental illness is that there is no-one patient enough in the world to understand that you don’t know how you will feel when you wake up, when someone shouts at you, that flip flap of a sea of emotion.  You don’t know.  And in my experience they get tired.  And they get tired all too quickly, all too soon.  So I am a sad lonely 4 M’s Bipolar Mom.

 

 

The Depths of Depression

I watched a documentary with my husband.  It was about the Great Barrier Reef and the fact that it was at risk.  A David Attenborough special.  It started with views of bright sparkling water and the boat that would take David and his crew to the best dive spots of the reef.   They had a special deep sea bubble machine, I forget the name, but it could plunge to depths that no-one else had been to.  David and the crew climbed aboard this sea bubble, dove and went deeper and deeper.  You started seeing brightly coloured fish and coral swishing in the water, crabs scuttling and bigger fish swimming by.  Through the bubble they dove with, the bubbles popping around their plunge and with the views of fish and bustling life of the Great Barrier Reef, it was magical.

As they dove deeper, the life decreased, but the coral still lived.  It was almost as if this was the inner most part of the coral.  According to the narration, this part of the coral could re-generate and feed the coral above.  It would grow again, and send little sprinkles of life back up to the coral above, the surface coral that was subject to the wish wash of the ocean and storms that would sometimes crash on the delicate surface of the Reef.  This fascinated me.  Imagine if we could regrow bits that your body or mind needed?  Yes, a nice trick.

However they kept diving.  The deeper the bubble went, the less life existed, and the less fish that swam by.   Eventually they reached what looked like the bottom.  There were pure white sands, dotted with rocks here and there but no life that swam or swish washed about.  It was darker, not blue but indigo, silent and by the looks of it, very lonely.  They landed on the sand and nothing moved, nothing stirred. I almost urged them to swim back up, go back to the bright corals, the scuttling crabs and carefree fish.

Perhaps the documentary encapsulatedd what I had been feeling this week and why I have not been blogging.  A friend of mine is sick.  He has Bipolar too, and is the ‘creative director’ of my blog.  Constantly pointing me out to me this or that fact, the voice of my blog and ideas to write about.  Underlining the importance of people with mental illness speaking out.  He didn’t want to talk this week.  He was at the bottom of the Reef, that lonely indigo place that is filled with sadness, numbness, waves of anxiety. I tried to talk to him, tried to reach out and one week later, I don’t know if he’s really ok.

I have also been drifting a little below the middle of my reef.  I’m needing to re-generate, and grow back some coral – strength, courage, energy – in order to maintain my ‘upper reef’.    I have taken a few bashes.  And I’ve been feeling bashed.  Perhaps that is the best time to blog – to get it out – but I have climbed a little into my inner shell.  The problem with worrying or being anxious is that in my experience, it carries into your sleep.  I’ve spent most of the nights of last week awake, drifting deeper and deeper beneath my Reef.  Feeling lonely.  Feeling breathless.

I spent the weekend sleeping.  My kids didn’t understand this as I haven’t been sleeping during the day for a long time.  I had when I had first started my new cocktail of meds which knocked me out and left me exhausted in the beginning.  And I needed it.  I am feeling slightly better.  But the challenge with me is that I don’t have a sea bubble.  I don’t have something that can propel me into brighter days.  People in the depths of depression don’t.  But there are things that can help – crying with no questions, hugs and cuddles with those you love, trying to eat healthily (don’t do this but intend to), medication, talking, therapy.  Sometimes sleep – the deepest sleep – especially when you can.  These are some of the things that can propel you ‘upwards’.

But I also find that YOU need to be more gentle with yourself.  I need to be more gentle with me, and safeguard being well – for me.   Do the things that will clear my currently stormy sea.  I am thinking about me and my friend.  People who live and sometimes endure living with – mental illness. I am not at the depths of my depression – but I am at sea – and I promise I will do the things I need to do to live as a better me.  Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t.  I am 4 M’s Bipolar Mom.