AfflictionAteHer

Episodes associated with mental illness are traumatic. It isn’t a topic that gets discussed, much, but I wonder if our current approach to treating mental illness – the medication, the therapy – lacks an important focus. I wonder if we should place an equal emphasis on rehabilitation, in much the same way we focus on rehabilitation for patients who have experienced head trauma.

I am too often a flower that refuses to bloom for fear of the sun, or for fear of a freeze. It doesn’t matter that’s it’s partly cloudy and warm outside; I remain resolutely closed. And why is that? When I was younger I tended to open with abandon. Every episode, when I was young, was going to be the last episode. It wasn’t until the episode that seemed it would never end that I lost my nerve.

It began the summer I turned 30. The Austin of that year was all thrumming heat, tropical flowers, vivid greens and blues and saturated, woody browns. Everything was the most everything anything had ever been in my life. The most beautiful. The most in control. The smartest. The fastest. The most successful. The richest. The busiest. The most in demand. Under the circumstances, I was convinced that this, finally, was what it meant to be a grownup; that everything that had come before had come because of a lack of skill.

It didn’t last, of course. The summer turned into a desperate fall, which led to rapid cycles of hard-edged mania and soggy depression, until all time turned into a mixed episode. I became a sobbing bag of fury, obsession, self-hatred, psychosis, impulsiveness, and suicidal ideation.

It lasted for 4 years.

I remember feeling so angry. I couldn’t seem to go all the way crazy, and I couldn’t seem to get better. My perceptions were skewed all over the place and so was my judgement, and that was overwhelmingly frustrating to me because it meant that nothing ever turned out the way I thought it would. I was hearing and seeing things all the time, things I could never find, and I didn’t know that they were hallucinations. Sounds of every kind were intensely irritating to me. I didn’t trust anyone. At all. I had lost any friends I might have made the summer I turned 30, and although I couldn’t stop thinking about killing myself I couldn’t seem to do that, either. And there was this intense agony in my body all the time, a kind of odd, terrible, horrible need to stretch out and run that stretching out and running did absolutely nothing to sooth. And I was paranoid — oh but I was paranoid. It wasn’t just that I believed everybody hated me. I believed everybody hated me for no other reason than that everybody was cruel and mean and awful and that they would hurt me if they could.

Interspersed throughout those 4 years of hell were hours, even days, when all of my symptoms were at bay. These respites were spent recovering in a kind of useless way because I knew the next onslaught would appear shortly. I was exhausted.

One night I walked outside and stood in the middle of my parent’s driveway. I was crying, and my fists were clenched tight, and I felt full of rage towards the idea that the rest of my life would be eaten by this affliction. “I will be better than this, I WILL BE BETTER THAN THIS” I said out loud (though softly). It was an incredibly histrionic moment for me, and I knew it was, which is why I had chosen to experience it in the middle of my parent’s driveway, sometime after midnight, with no one to judge me but me and what may or may not have been an imaginary angel hovering a few feet over my head, all bronze feathers and sympathy.

It wasn’t as if no one had ever prescribed medication for me before; I had simply never followed anyone’s instructions because I didn’t trust anybody. And yet my absolute determination to “BE BETTER THAN THIS” somehow gave me the idea that I didn’t have to trust somebody to try what they suggested. I didn’t have to trust a doctor to follow doctor’s orders, in other words. So I picked a doctor – somebody who at least looked like I thought a doctor was supposed to look – and for once I did as I was told. Because of the medication, I was able to build a bunker in my very own bed out of pillows, stuffed animals, and the complete works of JRR Tolkien and (eventually) spend entire weekends in my own apartment. One thing led to another, which led to another, and another, and eventually I found myself in what passed quite nicely as the place you actually do get to when you’re mentally ill and you’ve learned a few coping skills.

The problematic thing about what I think of as bipolar trauma is that it keeps recurring, though the period between episodes may change from hours to months, and the ferocity of the symptoms may vary unpredictably. I may not have visited with my big, bronze angel since then, but neither has that period turned out to be an anomaly. In fact, my life went out of control again quite slowly this last time, but no less emphatically.

By process of elimination, and by forcing myself to get back out into the world again, I have been forced to accept that there are some things I can no longer clearly differentiate between. I honestly don’t know the difference between, for instance, who means me harm and who is simply standing there, not giving me a second thought. I honestly don’t know how I am perceived by the world around me, and I’m not sure of my place in the world. I can pretend that I have my bearings for long periods of time, but I don’t have any idea if I am successful in that pretense. Therapy might give me some insight into my fears, but I am not aware of a therapy that might help me to train my brain to bypass the pathways damaged by my experiences.

I am forced to admit that I can’t simply choose to bloom again. When should I bend to the shade? When to turn to the sun? Without answers I’m afraid I will remain at the mercy of my own determination and the sympathies of angels, wherever they may be.

Popularity: 1%

Episodes associated with mental illness are traumatic. It isn’t a topic that gets discussed, much, but I wonder if our current approach to treating mental illness – the medication, the therapy – lacks an important focus. I wonder if we should place an equal emphasis on rehabilitation, in much the same way we focus on rehabilitation for patients who have experienced head trauma.

I am too often a flower that refuses to bloom for fear of the sun, or for fear of a freeze. It doesn’t matter that’s it’s partly cloudy and warm outside; I remain resolutely closed. And why is that? When I was younger I tended to open with abandon. Every episode, when I was young, was going to be the last episode. It wasn’t until the episode that seemed it would never end that I lost my nerve.

It began the summer I turned 30. The Austin of that year was all thrumming heat, tropical flowers, vivid greens and blues and saturated, woody browns. Everything was the most everything anything had ever been in my life. The most beautiful. The most in control. The smartest. The fastest. The most successful. The richest. The busiest. The most in demand. Under the circumstances, I was convinced that this, finally, was what it meant to be a grownup; that everything that had come before had come because of a lack of skill.

It didn’t last, of course. The summer turned into a desperate fall, which led to rapid cycles of hard-edged mania and soggy depression, until all time turned into a mixed episode. I became a sobbing bag of fury, obsession, self-hatred, psychosis, impulsiveness, and suicidal ideation.

It lasted for 4 years.

I remember feeling so angry. I couldn’t seem to go all the way crazy, and I couldn’t seem to get better. My perceptions were skewed all over the place and so was my judgement, and that was overwhelmingly frustrating to me because it meant that nothing ever turned out the way I thought it would. I was hearing and seeing things all the time, things I could never find, and I didn’t know that they were hallucinations. Sounds of every kind were intensely irritating to me. I didn’t trust anyone. At all. I had lost any friends I might have made the summer I turned 30, and although I couldn’t stop thinking about killing myself I couldn’t seem to do that, either. And there was this intense agony in my body all the time, a kind of odd, terrible, horrible need to stretch out and run that stretching out and running did absolutely nothing to sooth. And I was paranoid — oh but I was paranoid. It wasn’t just that I believed everybody hated me. I believed everybody hated me for no other reason than that everybody was cruel and mean and awful and that they would hurt me if they could.

Interspersed throughout those 4 years of hell were hours, even days, when all of my symptoms were at bay. These respites were spent recovering in a kind of useless way because I knew the next onslaught would appear shortly. I was exhausted.

One night I walked outside and stood in the middle of my parent’s driveway. I was crying, and my fists were clenched tight, and I felt full of rage towards the idea that the rest of my life would be eaten by this affliction. “I will be better than this, I WILL BE BETTER THAN THIS” I said out loud (though softly). It was an incredibly histrionic moment for me, and I knew it was, which is why I had chosen to experience it in the middle of my parent’s driveway, sometime after midnight, with no one to judge me but me and what may or may not have been an imaginary angel hovering a few feet over my head, all bronze feathers and sympathy.

It wasn’t as if no one had ever prescribed medication for me before; I had simply never followed anyone’s instructions because I didn’t trust anybody. And yet my absolute determination to “BE BETTER THAN THIS” somehow gave me the idea that I didn’t have to trust somebody to try what they suggested. I didn’t have to trust a doctor to follow doctor’s orders, in other words. So I picked a doctor – somebody who at least looked like I thought a doctor was supposed to look – and for once I did as I was told. Because of the medication, I was able to build a bunker in my very own bed out of pillows, stuffed animals, and the complete works of JRR Tolkien and (eventually) spend entire weekends in my own apartment. One thing led to another, which led to another, and another, and eventually I found myself in what passed quite nicely as the place you actually do get to when you’re mentally ill and you’ve learned a few coping skills.

The problematic thing about what I think of as bipolar trauma is that it keeps recurring, though the period between episodes may change from hours to months, and the ferocity of the symptoms may vary unpredictably. I may not have visited with my big, bronze angel since then, but neither has that period turned out to be an anomaly. In fact, my life went out of control again quite slowly this last time, but no less emphatically.

By process of elimination, and by forcing myself to get back out into the world again, I have been forced to accept that there are some things I can no longer clearly differentiate between. I honestly don’t know the difference between, for instance, who means me harm and who is simply standing there, not giving me a second thought. I honestly don’t know how I am perceived by the world around me, and I’m not sure of my place in the world. I can pretend that I have my bearings for long periods of time, but I don’t have any idea if I am successful in that pretense. Therapy might give me some insight into my fears, but I am not aware of a therapy that might help me to train my brain to bypass the pathways damaged by my experiences.

I am forced to admit that I can’t simply choose to bloom again. When should I bend to the shade? When to turn to the sun? Without answers I’m afraid I will remain at the mercy of my own determination and the sympathies of angels, wherever they may be.

Popularity: 1%