There Are Moments Of Lucidity In Our Lives

Posted on November 28, 2006 by Gabriel...

“…I do not understand why I must forgive their guilt. They have done nothing to atone for their abuse and neglect, and when I press an issue they rear up and demand an apology for my accusations.”

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“I wanted to die for so long / I never learned how to live /
This is not me / This is a shadow cast /
From a live body / From long ago.”

So you’re walking around your apartment… there’s a nagging feeling, like something’s dry but not dry. Like your clothes don’t quite fit but they’re the same ones you had on yesterday, and then they were fine. You can remember that. Your thoughts seem too subdued. Everything just seems light. Dry. That’s what you think. Something’s not right. And still you’re walking around your apartment, just a little lost, looking for something.

Ever have one of those moments where absolutely everything was uncomfortable? I’m having one right now. My pants are too tight around my legs, the chair is too lumpy, the light from the screen is too bright, I keep missing keys when I’m typing, the music is too jarring, the stove is too hot, the fan too loud, the base of my skull hurts — a light throbbing slowly bouncing from one side to the other, the smoke from the neighbouring apartment is seeping through, and I’m questioning everything I write. Backtrack and edit. Does this word work better than this one? I’m starting sentences but not finishing the thoughts. Everything is in the wrong place. And Tim Berners Lee is very lucky he’s not within arms length of me right now.

This is what I want to tell people, what I’m trying to write: My Life Is Easy In Your Head.

If you have attempted suicide, if you’ve tried to kill yourself… it sounds so trite. Suicide attempts are the end of a long road, they are not random. They are planned. People don’t just attempt suicide, they plan the scenario out to the last detail. Saying a Manic Depressive attempted suicide is like saying the Packers, after a week of drills, attempted to score a touchdown against the Seahawks. The jargon surrounding depression, especially manic depression, is trivial and it trivializes the disease. “BiPolar Disorder”? What the fuck is that? When have you heard a sober doctor say “you’ve got an Internal Ultra-Speedy Growth Disorder in your lungs” / “Oh, well, thank Christ it isn’t cancer.”

I understand there are differences, there are several different types of manic depression — BiOne’s go up more than down, BiTwo’s go further down, BiThree’s drink and use drugs a whole lot — but listing this disease as a disorder trivializes the severity and depth and corruption this disease has on us. Tell your doctors, it’s either BiPolar Disease or Manic Depression, we do not have problem acne. Think “Eating Disorder”. Sounds like a food allergy. But people with anorexia or bulimia have a serious mental illness. “Eating Disorders” are the number one Killer Mental Illness in Canada. Disorder that, bitch. No offence intended but dyslexia is a disorder, a serious disorder but one which can be ‘fixed’ with training and time.

Regardless. If you have executed a suicide plan you have to stop doing that. The more you try the more likely you are to succeed, even if, on that last try, you didn’t really mean to. So take your fucking pills and find some help. There’s about a zillion of us fuckers in this here Internet, find someone who will tell you to “stay alive, Goddammit, just stay alive.” Maybe we should have a buddy system. Maybe we should be using each other, or maybe we should find someone in our lives who will notice. Dammit, that’s the problem with this disease, it forces us to pull away from the people who could be part of a support network, then we use the fact no one is around anymore as proof of our isolation. We stop returning the phone calls and when the phone stops ringing it’s because no one cares about us.

In order to survive we have to tell friends and family that we have a disease, but the problem is the jargon surrounding the disease lists us as having a disorder… we are made trivial by the diagnostic research our loved ones perform over the Web, or through our doctor, or through us. Because disorders can be “cured”, or at least that’s the inference. “Oh, so my little baby has a disorder? Well, can I get the cure over the counter or will you prescribe something?” Actually, your little baby will go through several years of crippling suicidal depressions, she’ll self-mutilate, probably have two or three bouts of anorexia (a disease), her emotional growth will be stunted, if she’s lucky and her fourth suicide attempt fails there’ll be a space for her in an institution, otherwise she’ll likely turn to alcohol and then street drugs to self-medicate and she’ll be very fortunate indeed to see her twenty-fifth birthday. Your little baby actually has a disease which is going to require serious pharmacological treatment for decades.

You rage. I rage. There’s something about you. Most of the time things don’t happen at the proper speed. Things don’t happen on the proper level. People answer you too slowly. People react in a predictable manner. You forget words. You forget ideas. Sometimes it feels dry and quiet. It’s all frustrating. It all builds up. You rage. I rage. People don’t understand. They don’t understand that you have a disease. There’s no bloody bandage, no wheelchair, no crutch, no cane, no oxygen bottle, no hair loss. Just a person who sometimes speaks and laughs a little quicker than everyone else, and a person who retreats into themselves. They can’t see you sitting on your bed, one sock in your hand, the other still on your foot, staring at the wall, looking past it into yourself wondering ‘Why, Goddammit WHY, am I such a fucking clueless bastard of a failure?’ They cannot see you with the knife at your wrist.

Sometimes our disease feels comfortable. Sometimes it feels important. It isn’t. The only thing important about our disease is the need to medicate it into submission. This disease is so insanely sinister it will actually convince you, its host, that it makes you more creative, or more deep, or more self-aware, or more capable than anyone else. Our disease will even make you proud to host it. After all, didn’t ninety percent of the geniuses who ever put pen to paper have Manic Depression? Aren’t we all part of some Grand Cabal of Suicidal Societal Architects? You have the disease that turned Kurt Cobain into a legend. You suffer from the affliction that put Ernest Hemingway’s brains on the ceiling. Fuck, you’re basically one step away from actually being Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. It’s incredible of what this disease can convince you. Not only will it take away any community capable of protecting you, it then convinces you this is your fault, then it makes you proud to have it and prohibits you from seeking treatment, then… and this is sick, then it kills you by convincing you everything it has done to you has been your fault. Take The Fucking Pills.

TAKE. THE. FUCKING. PILLS.

Look, ask your Doctor about groups or organizations in your region, or find someone in your real life or here in your imaginary Internet one. Make an effort during the few lucid moments you have to save yourself during the corrupted moments you’ll ultimately have when you’re using your disease-imposed loneliness as a means to push yourself even further downwards. Take Control and Get Better. This disease is not us.

And, honestly, if you’re an American start looking at moving to Canada. From what I’ve learned being mentally ill in your country is like having no chickens in Uzbekistan: you’re completely fucked, you will starve and you are entirely dependent on your disease Allowing you to continue. Good freaking Christ, will you people please get a national healthcare system. Seriously, Canada is just a few hours away and we get all of your network and cable television… except HBO and FoxNews (I don’t know why either). You are allowed to move here, fuck there’s probably some Canadian government program that’ll pay you to move here.

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Classic, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Poetry, Punk | 21 Comments

I Went Looking For Tall Bridges Where There Were No Rivers

Posted on November 22, 2006 by Gabriel...

“…you can die tonight,
doesn’t mean you’ll smile tomorrow.”

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“I have this recurring nightmare.
In it I’m laughing.
That’s it.
It’s a nightmare because,
When I wake up,
I wish I were still asleep.”

Just before my collapse back in 2003 I was having ten separate suicide fantasy’s before breakfast. Everyday. It generally got worse from there. There is nothing you can do to prevent the fantasy’s from coming, they are a part of the disease and you know this because no one you know has them. Maybe, maybe, one of your friends had one complete fantasy where they could feel the knife moving across their wrist. One, brief exhausting moment which made them think about seeing a psychiatrist. But they don’t really remember it, and they never did get around to seeing a doctor about it.

For everyone else suicide is something to move away from, it’s their ultimate bottom end when absolutely everything has fallen apart, it’s a consideration and then a warning: “Sweet Fucking Monkey, I’ve fallen so far that I just thought about ending it all. Holy shit, I need a beer and some of mom’s pea soup.” But it’s rare to find even one person in your life who either had these feelings or is willing to admit to them. For those who have had them it was a single momentary lapse of reason leading to a single momentary glimpse at no tomorrows leading to a recoil back into reason. And no one who has fallen this far, who believes they’ve collapsed as low as they can plummet, wants to hear that it’s still a thousand steps straight down before finding the door that leads to the hole where your bottom can be found.

They don’t want to hear about your thirty suicide fantasies this week, because they know the only suicide fantasy they ever had really, really fucking hurt. “Actually, now that you mention is, it was the worst fucking second on the worst fucking day in my entire life, now get me some fucking pea soup.” They cannot understand that, for some of us, that one-second glimpse they had into a world without them, is the singular moment you and I get stuck in for minutes, days, hours, seconds, over and over and over and over again.

How can they know? Where can they find understanding when only 20% of people in this country have, once — one time — in their lives, suffered a Depressive Episode deep enough to seek medical help? That’s what it means when they flash those mental health commercials saying 1 in 5 people have been clinically depressed. Twenty per cent of the entire population have been seriously depressed once over an extended period.

Suicide fantasies are not you attempting suicide, they’re not even you attempting to work out the particulars of a future post-suicide funeral (“should she be crying, or wringing her hands?”), suicide fantasies are waking nightmares. They are the most recurring aspect of our disease, and the further we slide downwards the greater the frequency and the greater the risk for a very real attempt.

When I moved in with my brother I still had a little hope in my life, I could still see a few ways out of my situation. I still had one more deadline to meet. In three weeks I wrote the first half of an 80,000 word project. Every inch I moved I felt like I was crawling through mud. It was all I could do to find an Internet connection and send the fucking thing to my editor. She emailed back later that week to tell me she, and my publisher, were ecstatic (or at least ‘very pleased’ with it so far) and that was that. It was like everything I had left inside me just collapsed.

I honestly don’t understand how I survived. When I think about that time I see myself paralysed on his couch in the near-dark. On the occasions my brother would come home he’d make a “Jawa” joke because I was always wearing my oversized hoodie. He was working, but made barely enough to cover his cigarette costs and our rent. I had been unemployed for a year at that point and my savings was gone, the first two advances from my publisher had gone towards travel expenses and research for the project. The only money I had coming in on a regular basis was my lithium money from my mother, but she was begging me not to ask for anymore and I was spending it all on discount chicken parts and cigarettes. She was in semi-retirement at that point, working for the government, and the $120/month was a burden. I think it was more the phone calls at weird hours asking for cash than the actual amount.

My poverty wasn’t new (maybe this level was but I’ve been extremely shit-poor before) but the intensity and frequency of the suicide fantasies was insane. Every time I was alone or with someone else, sitting, standing, breathing, I was seeing my death, feeling my death, believing — absolutely evangelically believing — that I was going to die that day, that morning, that moment. I held knives to my wrists, I took long walks to relatively high bridges, on several occasions I was stopped by concerned police who usually offered to help in some way.

I have a photo I took of myself, it’s a mirror shot. I had just spent forty-five minutes staring into the sink, trying to decide between killing myself (pills, I had a lot of T3’s lying around) and getting a haircut. So, after I decided, I took a photo of myself. I don’t like it. Makes my cheeks look pudgy. Also, I think, I look like I’m about to cry.

When you’re lying down and there’s one five-pound weight sitting on your chest, it’s noticeable but you can still breath. Every one of those fucking fantasies is like another five-pound weight, then another and another and another and now it’s hard to breath and another and another and now it’s getting painful please take a few off and another and another and another and holy christ please i can’t breathe and another and another please it’s crushing my ribs and another and now we’ll leave it like that for a few days but i can’t breathe well there’s this pill but it takes two weeks to take effect please i’m dying… no you’re not, it’s just a fantasy.

You have suicide fantasies. I have suicide fantasies. There is only one way to make sure you don’t have suicide fantasies, TAKE THE FUCKING MEDICATIONS. You can’t talk them away, even with a Doctor, even with your family, even with your boyfriend, even with your sister, and you can’t avoid them with alcohol or drugs. Medication is the only way to stop from killing yourself in your head everyday in every conceivable manner. People can live with Manic Depression the same way people can live with cancer, but without treatment you’re living at the whim of a tumour and it doesn’t really know you — you know, the inner softer you — so what the fuck does it care? Medication is the only way to prevent the delusion of people understanding, through your death, the pain you feel. The medications are the only way to stop yourself from taking the knife and running it across your wrists.

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Posted in Bipolar, Classic, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Health, Humor, Humour, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Ottawa, Poverty, Publishing, Punk | 10 Comments

kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight

Posted on November 18, 2006 by Gabriel...

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“…really ain’t no excuse in me
hanging around in your kinda scene.”
Jimi Hendrix, “Manic Depression”

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“C.L. Grigg of St. Louis came up with a fruity concoction he named ‘Bib Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda’. A doctor’s testimonial promised ‘an abundance of energy, enthusiasm, a clear complexion, lustrous hair and shining eyes’. Mr. [Grigg] later came up with a punchier slogan ‘You Like It, It Likes You’ and a new name: 7Up. His ancestors took the lithium out of the soft drink 50 years ago.”

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“…kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”
Bruce Cockburn, “Lovers In A Dangerous Time”

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Recovery is about epiphanies — little truths made into strong emotions by the very fact we missed out on the frigging thing in the first place, which means we’ve been living in one direction when a simple truth would have had us going in the right direction.

Manic depression makes you confused, it feels like depth but manic depression is a very shallow disease, it’s ‘horizontal’ not ‘vertical’ like a cancer. When you get cancer you know where it is and roughly whether or not you’re going to survive it. Someone with our disease could, quite literally, be dead ten minutes from now (don’t do it) or we could survive wrapped up in a ball in a corner until we’re ninety-nine. Depression is a thin coating, it’s a thin sheet of reflective ice concealing an ocean. It corrupts our ability to Reason, and without that ability we can’t defend ourselves against the thoughts inside our heads, so we find excuses we can live with. People with our disease are excellent at rationalizing unreasonable behaviour to fit situations we can’t understand.

So. Small things would happen at work, change of managing editor or an emphasis on new editorial directions, and — even though I was in a good, well paying job, working with a few people who I could respect and have beers with — I would feel threatened because the disease prevented me from reacting rationally to these relatively minor situations. So, in a state of fear, I would quit and fuck off for the first available job, usually something I knew I would hate and where there would be no beer (my mother remembers these situations because I would call home with: “everybody freaking hates me, I can’t deal with these ignorant bastards!” a few days after telling her what a great job I had).

The last full time reporting job I had was in Toronto. It’s still the largest trade magazine of its kind (technology) in Canada, and the second largest in North America. As trade magazines go it was pretty frigging sweet. I had a desk, a computer, a phone, some taxi-chits and an editor who let me write about stuff I found interesting. I was late every morning, usually by an hour, and my stories where usually submitted ten minutes before deadline and I had to take at least one day off out of every eight because of a depression, but — dammit — that was cool because I was in the Cool Kids Group so I could hide my illness by pretending I was your basic Office Anarchist.

But then our little family-owned company, which published seven or eight magazines, got taken over by one of those huge conglomerates bent on total media domination you read about in fewer newspapers these days. Suddenly I had to deal with rumours of layoffs, new benefit packages to choose from, friends leaving for other newspapers, old bosses leaving, new bosses being introduced and new cubicle and floor designs (“Where’s The Motherfucking Printer?!?”). My epiphany, and this was ‘in hindsight’ two years in the making, was this: Of course I was going to freak out and quit, I had a major disease which I had let fester for twelve (at the epiphany point) unmedicated years…. so how the fuck else was I going to react to situations like that?

I was stunned for about five minutes. After I came to I started applying this New Concept to dating relationships which I had ended, and it fit. Every time conditions would change, I was out the door. Or, worse, I would just shut down and wait for someone to either fire me or leave me for someone not acting like a morose loner planning a high school shooting. Suddenly I realized, there were a million choices in my life the disease had prevented me from rationally making decisions on (if you know a woman named Illona, please apologize to her from me. It doesn’t matter if it’s my Illona or not, for what I did all Illona’s everywhere deserve an apology).

The disease makes you believe, unconditionally, that you are in charge. So when you’re staring into that reflective ice covering thinking it’s you making the decisions based on reason and deliberation in fact — unmedicated or newly medicated — every decision you make is corrupted by the disease.

Every decision I made from 1988 until 2003 was a left turn because I have a disease which kept me from understanding the gravity of my disease. When I left home to make my mark I was a (relatively) naive kid. I left my little adopted village and moved to the city. And now, eighteen years later, I’m back and exactly three blocks from the home I left. Not to be too brutal about it but that’s a long way to travel just to move two hundred feet. Something else I’ve recently learned: hometowns are great for having family around, but holy shit I hate having to see the ghosts.

All of which is is to say you must take the pills, take the pills everyday, take the pills no matter what, take the pills until they find a cure, take the pills if there is no cure, take the pills so it never seems rational to kill yourself, take the pills so you can live. When you remember you forgot to take them, get the fuck out of bed you lazy, sick bastard, walk to the frigging bathroom and take the damn pills. Take the pills because otherwise every time you go grocery shopping you’re going to run into the girl who took your virginity. Seriously, what the fuck is with that? Who’s running this freak show?!?

— God: “Hey! Mr. Mann! (back slap) Glad you’re starting to feel more comfortable with your self. Taking the pills? Great. Hey, look at that, you’re well enough to be writing again. That’s great. Yeah, that’s cool, cool. Yeah… hey! Isn’t that your first time over there? Didn’t you really fuck that up as well?”

Honestly, Christ, what the fuck is that?!?

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Classic, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Poverty | 7 Comments

How To Grow A Beard And Start A Revolution.

Posted on November 17, 2006 by Gabriel...

How To Grow A Beard And Start A Revolution…

Step One:
Let your beard grow. Actually I guess step one should be “be physically able to grow one.” Seriously though, stop shaving for six weeks. Mark it on a calender somewhere if you drink a lot.

Step Two:
Use shampoo, not hand soap, and rinse your beard really, really thoroughly. The soap, or lack of washing, is what makes it itchy.

Step Three:
After six weeks you can start trimming your beard — carefully — it took six fucking weeks to grow the damn thing so plan it out. And for fucks sakes, keep it off your neck. A beard is meant to conceal the evil in compliment your face not act as a hair transition from your forehead to your pubic area. Remember, it takes a few months until your beard is fully grown.

Step Four:
Sit back and wait for the checks to roll in. Yes, beards pay dividends.

Step Five:
Count the money, slowly.

Step Six:
Lay it out on a bed and nail your new trophy wife, Annette Bening, on all that frigging money.

Step Seven:
Buy the poor. That’s right, by now you’ll have enough money to buy all the frigging poor people.

Step Eight:
Make all the poor people grow beards, even the women and children… especially the women and children.

Step Nine:
Wait six weeks.

Step Ten:
Take your recently purchased army of recently-bearded poor people and any remaining funds and take jazz-dance lessons: it is vital you learn “jazz hands”, all the rest is useless. In fact just tell the teacher to only teach “jazz hands” to you and your army of bearded poor people, the rest of jazz dancing is just fucking retarded (note: if the check frequency has dropped off using a good conditioner on your beard will get the money flowing again).

Step Eleven:
Buy red jump suits for your entire bearded army of poor people.

Step Twelve:
If you’ve done everything right by this point you should have a whole lot of bearded poor people standing around, kind of bent at the waist and knees, with their arms outstretched just a little and bent at the elbows, flailing their hands while dressed in red uni-jump suits. If you don’t have this, or something just doesn’t feel right, just go back and repeat Step Six but this time really go to town with your trophy wife, Annette Bening… like seriously funky shit, like let her try a strap-on and you be the catcher, or midgets. Or midgets with strap-ons, I don’t know… Internet stuff.

Step Thirteen:
While your army of recently-bearded poor people are ‘jazz-handing’ in red uni-jump suits you have to be on some sort of podium, something just high enough so you can see the back row of your army of recently-bearded poor people so you should be, minimum, thirty or forty feet high.

Step Fourteen:
Stand perfectly upright, but really really still. Look out at your army of recently-bearded poor people without really seeing them.

Step Fifteen:
Wait. It will all become self-evident soon.

Congratulations!!

You’ve got the biggest beard, you’ve bought the poor, you’ve forced them to resemble your beauty, you’ve got them doing some seriously weird shit at your whim, Hollywood has-beens are tickling your penis, you’ve been gangbanged by midgets with strapons and now you’re ignoring the plight of your people. Mr. Chavez will be contacting you shortly.

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Posted in Entertainment, Fear The Seeds, Humor, Humour, Politics | 5 Comments

18-Years Off The Pills, Three Years On

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Gabriel...

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“[Manic Depression] is a disease, our brains are not capable of certain tasks, like turning emotions off, which leads to even more devastating problems like a lack of reasoning between right and wrong when it comes to our own bodies.”

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“There’s nothing amorphous about having no legs, or having no use of my legs. You’re a cripple. You sit for the rest of your life. You will never walk again. People ask “what’s wrong” and you point to the obvious. How do you answer when someone asks “what’s wrong, sunshine? Are you not feeling well today?” Do you point to your head and shrug your shoulders?”

Both are from my writings.

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I’ve had to negotiate between the trauma’s of my life to determine who I am. Every time I’ve been kicked down to the ground I’ve had to decide whether or not to get up, and what the consequences were of staying down. I’m not entirely sure at this point but I believe I’ve stayed down on at least a few occasions, at least until getting up was safe. I am not a morose loner, although I sometimes seem that way to lazy eyes. At some point I believe I was seen. I have won awards for writing; I have had two famous poets tell me to publish; I have a book deal; I have post-traumatic stress disorder and I was diagnosed with Manic Depression in 1988. I have spent many hours on the other side of the railing, but I’ve always come back. The question is, can surviving and soul-searching be done at the same time? The answer is: I’m running like a broken man.

This is what I want to tell people: ‘My life is easy in your head.’ Sometimes I sleep for hours just to pass the time, because I’m too depressed to move. Sometimes I stay awake for 36 or 48 hours just because I can’t stop. I have spent exactly half of my life trapped in the trunk of a car. There have been years where I could not move.

There is only one step a Manic Depressive can make to get better: make every sacrifice to take the pills.

People die. People have to cope with that person’s death. That’s life. Everybody goes through it, everybody will go through it again, and again and possibly again. People with the Disease we have do not have the capacity to deal with losses. We react differently to everything. We’re too happy, we’re too melancholy, always we’re too much. The pills restore that ability to regulate our emotions as Regular people have. Without that regulatory power we, Manic Depressives — you and I, can be crippled by day-to-day events. The wrong look from a teacher, the wrong word from a friend, the wrong feeling can tear us apart so completely that we spiral down into a depth of depression which should be unheard of. Being alone, or in a crowd of strangers or in the company of a friend or the hug of a Sister makes no difference whatsoever. As soon as that thought, that feeling, arises in our head we’re done.

And it’s the disease which puts that thought into our head. It’s the disease which makes that thought take over everything. It’s the disease which takes you from “I wonder why my friend didn’t call” to “I haven’t any friends at all”, it’s the disease which makes it rational to flow from sadness to loss to despair. You know that. So the only way to fight the Disease is to Fight the disease.

There’s nothing to take responsibility for, or over, except the pills. Why can’t you move today? It’s the disease. Why are you so tired that you sleep past important events, sleep for twenty hours? It’s the disease. It’s not your fault. People will blame you, they’ll make you feel responsible, you should have tried harder, you should have made an effort, you’re being antisocial and dark, why can’t you be more like your sister? And even if they don’t ask these questions, you will. But they can’t be answered, there are no answers, and you feel lost and responsible, which starts a spiral and you start telling yourself that dying is the answer, or at least showing people that you’re willing to die is the best way to MAKE THEM SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SEE WHAT’S GOING ON.

There are no answers, none, because they’re asking you the question and you’re NOT responsible. The disease is responsible. The disease turns grey to black, an event into a Tragedy, a question into an accusation. But you feel lost without an answer. Someone says, half mockingly, “well aren’t you Ms. Sunshine today” and you feel shame, shame that you can’t make the smile real. Shame that someone might be seeing your pain, and instead of understanding you receive mockery. They’ll tell you to take control of your life, walk the dog, get up earlier, get outside, as if the decisions to take part in physical and social activities were within your control.

But none of it is real, it’s all fake. None of it is within your control, it’s all out of control. None of it is you, it’s all the disease. And the only way to control the disease is to medicate yourself; is to do whatever it takes to make sure you take the fucking pills. Talking comes second. Talking is important, talk to someone who will listen and give feedback but not judgments. Don’t talk to friends, don’t talk to family. Friends and family, even if they’ve dealt with a friend or family member with Manic Depression in the past, have no understanding of the disease itself. They understand depression, they understand that if someone is depressed taking them for a car ride and talking things over will move that someone past their depression. But we’re NOT depressed, we’re not even Clinically Depressed. We’re Bi-Polar, Manic Depressive, Mentally Ill. This is a disease, our brains are not capable of certain tasks, like turning emotions off, which leads to even more devastating problems like a lack of reasoning between right and wrong when it comes to our own bodies. Friends and family can only grasp the basics of your Recovery: are you taking your pills? are you seeing a doctor regularly? are you getting outside at all? That’s it. All they need or want is Yes or No. Anything else requires Explanation, which you can’t do because you’ve only seen the disease from the inside out.

Maybe you saw a Law & Order episode, maybe you deciphered the lyrics to a Jimi Hendrix song. You have the experience, but not the knowledge. There are questions which only someone — a Good Doctor, can ask and — not answer — but give awareness to answers. There are things which only they, with their deep understanding of the disease, can understand and then impart that understanding to you:

You: “I only seriously thought of killing myself once this week.”

Doctor: “That’s sort of an improvement. Tell me what you mean about ‘seriously’ and about what brought you there.”

Friend/Family: “YOU THOUGHT ABOUT SUICIDE?”

Or maybe they lend that ‘all important ear of familial understanding’, which allows you to speak without saying anything. The points they interject will be well meaning, but meaningless. They will be trying to understand the disease through you, from someone who doesn’t understand.

There are times when I believe that being in a wheelchair would be easier. There’s nothing amorphous about having no legs, or having no use of my legs. You’re a cripple. You sit for the rest of your life. You will never walk again. People ask “what’s wrong” and you point to the obvious. How do you answer when someone asks “what’s wrong, sunshine? Are you not feeling well today?” Do you point to your head and shrug your shoulders? It requires an explanation. You have to stop and think: should I be glib? should I make something up? fake an excuse? do I tell them the Doctor says I’m Bi-Polar? what then? what if they ask a follow up question and I have to start explaining shit to them? You can’t just say “I’m a little depressed, and my brain chemistry doesn’t allow me to snap out of it like yours probably does. I’m not wired like you, or most likely anyone else in this room are, and you coming over here and making a point of my mood does not help me whatsoever, so could you please just fuck off.” Or, if you are rude, suddenly you’re in the position of having to make an apology.

You have to apologize for having a disease which causes you to have extreme mood swings. No one in a wheelchair, or with cancer, or with heart disease, ever has to apologize — or is made to feel like they must apologize — for being sick. But we do. Everyday for years — for a decade — for eighteen years I woke up and had to apologize for something to someone for a disease which was out of my control.

“I’m sorry I’m late for work.” “I’m sorry I missed our date.” “I’m sorry I haven’t been a good boyfriend.” “I’m sorry I seem like such a shiftless slob.”

“I’m sorry, but I have a disease which makes me depressed”. How many times have you told someone a variation of that one? Or maybe just: “I’m sorry, I can’t. I feel too depressed.” I’ve said that many times, to many people since 1989. “I’m sorry, I have a disease.” Why was I sorry? Why didn’t anyone tell me I shouldn’t feel ‘sorry’, that having a disease is not my fault? Because they, and I, had no understanding of what the disease was. What does “Bi-Polar” mean? What does manic-depression mean? Now tell me what “cancer” means. Tell me what Lou Gerhig’s Disease means.

Take the fucking pills, take them everyday. If you miss a dose, make damn sure you take the next one. If you miss two doses, take a dose as soon as that realization kicks in, if you miss three doses tell someone to make sure you take the next one: Understand that you’re in Trouble at this point. This is a disease which can be beaten into submission. There’ll be a cure within this decade, or at least better and more targeted treatments.

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I’ve made this post into its own page… feel free to leave a comment here, or on the “18Yrs Untreated” page.

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Posted in Bipolar, Classic, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Politics, Poverty, Punk | 8 Comments