Overcoming Mental Illness

So yesterday in a fit of hypermanic energy I wrote one of the most random posts I’ve ever written. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, a lovely little post full of spot on observations and theories about why it is so hard to ask for help. A topic close to my heart, considering I’d rather gouge out my own fingernails with a screwdriver than pick up a phone and dial someone who cares about me to say those four little letters.

I should point out that I have never actually gouged out my fingernails with a screwdriver, nor have I even attempted to do so.

What sparked that post was a conversation I’d had on the Wednesday, part featured in the post, and itself sparked from my utterly crazy weekend which had begun on Friday (as talked about in this post) and continued through Saturday night and all Sunday - which is what I’m about to talk about.

To back up my theory about why it’s stupid not to ask for help - especially if someone is there who would help - is that everything I’m about to talk about wouldn’t have happened if I’d just picked up the phone and said those four little letters.

Saturday

I’m having a rough day on Saturday. I’m hungover from my binge drinking session and resulting manic episode of the Friday night. My cheek hurts from a woman with a cracking slap, the second hardest I’ve ever received, but I deserved it! I’m a mite hungry but can’t think about food so spend the day sitting under the trees of the Staff’s Flag trying to recouperate and keep my moods in check. It kinda works, and eventually retire to the internet cafe for blog posting, email checking, Facebooking and MySpacing. Which is probably where I went wrong - the last thing you need when battling hangovers, the spiralling down from a manic episode and a potential serious depressive episode is something which could only trigger me. You see, I’ve written about triggers before, and I know what my primary trigger is - for both manic and depressive episodes - so I have to steer away from this if I’m not feeling 100% in control of myself. It gets difficult, but it is definitely doable.

You see I should have gone to see Prince Caspian instead - that would have helped. Alas, hindsight is such a powerful thing.

Instead I’m sitting at the internet cafe getting progressively worse and then BAM the trigger hits. Like a finger on a revolver unleashing the fatal bullet I spring up, sidle out and I’m away to do something stupid.

This is where I should have picked up the phone, hit a couple of buttons, and had a five minute conversation. I needed help. I didn’t want to bother someone. So I tried to deal with it all myself. If I hadn’t, then the following wouldn’t have happened:

• I wouldn’t have taken more than I should have done of anti-depressants and mood stabilisers in an attempt to numb the emotional pain. I REALLY want to point out that this occasion was NOT a suicide attempt, I would have taken far more than I did if it had been! It was merely me being unable to control my depressive episode, unable to control the pain and just wanting it all to stop. Living with emotional pain every day can be rough, can be very painful. It was stupid, VERY stupid, but for a moment there I thought it would work.
• It didn’t!
• Well…maybe a little.
• I became very weak and docile. I started loosing my grip on reality a little and hallucinating. Somewhat bizarrely that little worms with fedoras were burrowing around under my skin so I had to try and cut them out. That’s really the only hallucination I recall aside from a general slippage from reality into some etheral dark place.
• So as things got a little worse I decided - ummm, hospital - and managed to get my reasonably cute butt there.
• The woman who checked me in at the admissions desk of ER was a gem, a wonderful girl whom I would love to buy flowers, take out for a slap up meal, run her a bath, wash her hair and then give her the greatest all over body massage of her life. Not just because she was darned hot, and had scrubs on (a random kinky thing of mine), but because she didn’t - not once - look down on me, treat me like crap, or speak to me as if I was a naughty little schoolboy for what I’d done. Quite possibly the most wonderful hospital worker I have yet encountered.
• Once in, the ER guys did their stuff. I won’t go into the gory details. There were tubes and blood tests and wrenching and all that stuff…and then after a couple of hours I was lying in one of the beds dozily watching the pulse and blood pressure machine thinking ‘These gowns are wonderfully comfy, and your butt is truly a delight, maybe that admissions girl will come back, see it, and be rather taken by it, you might get something here!’ (I should point out the admissions girl didn’t come back, as far as I’m aware, didn’t say my naked butt in the gown, nor did I get any. Which was somewhat unfortunate.)

Sunday

• Early in the morning I’m moved to another bed and then the MH guys take over. We have a chat, a conversation, nothing I’ve not done before. I’m still pretty out of it so am very zen-like. They generally want to keep me in, I think, just to be on the safe side. I however don’t want to stay in because I start work on Monday and I need time to get myself sorted out. So I manage to convince the MH guys to let me leave (I am very good at pretending I’m far better than I am; years, over a decade of practice in fact!)
• So I saunter away from the hospital mid morning glad the worms are gone and that I’m in fresh air again. There’s nothing quite as nice as fresh air after being in hospital. I’m walking very slowly, feeling very tired, seriously want some company and a smiley face.
• Afraid to pick up the phone still I do the next best thing - track down David Tennant travelling across Midnight on the ‘net - and then promptly fall asleep and spend the rest of the day drifting in and out of conciousness.
• Sleep is good, especially for an insomniac.

See, all that happened to me on Saturday and Sunday just wouldn’t have happened if I’d simply asked someone for help. I know I did by going to the hospital, but if I didn’t have such a problem asking for help then this wouldn’t have happened, I would have been able to stop myself with the assistance of others.

I have hang-ups about asking for help, as I mentioned yesterday. It was doing this which began the long, dark descent into the seven layers of hell. Plus, I have this bizarre belief that I’m not deserving of help because of who I am, a grotesque individual who doesn’t deserve happiness in the way others are deserving of it, which in itself is a result of emotional abuse and the severe PTSD I’ve suffered from the events of last year.

It’s just no matter how grotesque, reviled, repulsive, hated or despised you are - YOU ARE deserving of help just as every other beautiful individual on this planet is. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, if someone cares about you, they will listen and assist in whatever way they can. Trust me, whatever blow it deals your self-esteem and/or pride - it’s much better than a night spent in the ER department, no matter how cute your butt looks in one of those gowns.

If I were an apple this is how I’d feel… 

…or in other words a pictoral reflection of my currently changing moods.

From LEFT to RIGHT
A. Fresh, new, juicy, delicious, magnificently edible. It’s insides perfect and wonderful in every way.
B. Loosing it’s freshness somewhat but still edible. It’s insides starting to degenerate.
C. Not something you’d want to eat, nor look at for very long. It’s insides are becoming mush.
D. You’d throw this away, wouldn’t you? It’s insides are beyond mushy, they’re just goo.
E. It’s dead, it is a deceased apple, it’s life lost and pointless. The goo is seeping onto the floor.
F. Definitely (and in every conceivable way) a deceased apple.

You see last night, brimming with alcohol induced mania I was definitely A!

Tonight I’m somewhere between E and F.

And with that cheery thought I shall bid you a goodnight because I’m going to bed.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll manage to claw my way to C or D.

Who the hell knows anymore?

It’s been nearly a year since I was sitting on a beach in Port Fairy burning myself with a flaming stick. A flame which ignited the breakdown and the destruction of everything I had been building for 28 and a 1/2 years.

When I think back on that night, the cool autumnal air breathing softly around me, I remember the tears which streaked my face as I held that stick with trembling hands. The dead mobile phone lying on the beach beside me, a name burned on the LCD panel in my mind. I wonder what would have happened if the battery had still been breathing? I wonder if the person I had wanted to call would have answered?

Would they have listened?

A year before I had been on the exact same beach. A whole 365 days since I’d roamed there, with the intent of dying there. It had been a different phone at the time, but as I sat with the knife held against my wrist it had sparked alive with an echoing ‘beep’ in the still night. A ‘beep’ which sparked alive a long forgotten piece of my soul; enough to drag myself from the beach and spend a fitful night shivering and weeping in a lumpy hostel bed.

In the 365 days which had passed I had managed to rebuild my life. I had fought myself back from hell and only a few weeks earlier had been standing on the metaphorical Butt of Lewis screaming “Ha!” into the wind…(yay for obscure literary references)…having battled myself from the brink of death into a position where I had the world at my feet. Everything was in place; depression had been beaten, self harm overcome, social anxiety had had it’s butt spanked (well, nearly, a few more slaps and it would have been in submission). I had just started working toward my dream of a diploma, a novel was a few edits away from being completed and another started, I had friends for the first time in six years. Aside from glandular fever, which was hardly my fault, I was ecstatic about how much I’d been able to achieve, how much success I had reached.

Then came the double whammy I’ve mentioned before: leukemia diagnosis and being dumped, in the same week. Two shuddering tremors which rocked my foundations - two tremors which caused the earthquake that collapsed all the work. The act of nature which sent 365 days of work crumbling to dust and drove me back to that beach, back to where I had nearly killed myself.

I can’t go back to that beach this year.

I can’t go back to that beach ever again.

The aftershocks of that earthquake kept rumbling all year, cost me everything; home, friends, possessions, dreams, hopes, desires, cravings…my future. They’re still rumbling now. The odd few things which have stood strong trying to defy the inevitable are slowly but surely crumbling away to nothing. I don’t know how to make the earthquake stop.

I wish I did.

I can’t think about how close I came to happiness without bursting into tears. Is this the curse of bipolar? That no matter how much work we do, how close we come to achieving our hopes, something in the brain just trips and causes everything to fall apart. Or is it just dumb fracking luck? I was a different person before the earthquake struck; I was happy, excited, passionate. I dreamt and hoped and believed. Sure, it was difficult to show this through the crippling pain of glandular fever, but I tried, oh I tried. It feels like I’ve never stopped trying, ever.

Maybe I was never meant to be happy.

Now, 365 days since those vicious flames licked at my flesh, 730 days since I sat with the knife wanting to end it, I’m left with nothing. The dust is settling to reveal only a collapsed heap of someone who nearly became. All those friendships I worked so hard to forge have become mere pixels on a Facebook screen who don’t even remember my name. All those hopes and dreams and passions I fought to hug and dance with are nothing but embers of dying light in a musky corner of my soul.

When I think back on that night, the dead mobile phone lying on the beach beside me, I wonder what would have happened if the battery had still been breathing. Would my words have been listened to? Would that have stopped the breakdown? Or was a complete mental collapse merely inevitable for someone who - should fate and others be believed - deserved nothing?

The phone I use now is alive, I keep it breathing, daren’t not to. I glance at it from time-to-time, occasionally hearing the haunting ‘beeps’ of times past or names shimmering on the LCD screen only in my minds eye.

I wish people could understand how devastating a breakdown is.

I wish people could understand how hard I was fighting.

I wish people could understand how hard I still am.

Every passing day sees my mood dip further and further into this pit of depression.

It enrages me that people can believe depression is merely a state of mind when so many people in the world are suffering intense pain on a daily basis. There’s no specific reason for my falling into the pit at the moment; my life’s as shit now as it was several months ago, but at least several months ago I was surfing along the wave of mania, and however scary that may be, at least it was a little more “fun” than this disparing bleakness.

There’s nothing good or exciting about my life at the moment. I wake up from a restless night, potter around with the blog (trying desperately to find the creativity and drive I had when I first started writing it), eat only ’cause I should (as I can barely remember the last time I felt hungry or enjoyed a meal), exercise, potter around, feel shit and then at some indiscriminate point in the early hours try to sleep only (as now) for it to be unsuccessful so I end up lying awake at five in the morning trying (as always) being attacked by small mozzie flies trying to escape the storm outside.

The weather always seems to reflect the mood.

I miss excitement, fun, passion and smiling. There is so much in life that I love and cherish, so much which does excite me but what people just don’t seem to understand is that this illness works against that excitement; it makes it virtually impossible to enjoy anything.

[Oh Yay! now Melbourne's on the news - that's gonna help the mood isn't it - remind me of somewhere I was blissfully happy once!]

Anyhoos, today is my “day out”! I get one a fortnight (due to money) so will be heading into the big bad city; got some personal business to attend to, musty bookshops to explore and perchance a cinema outing - and I can’t even remember the last time I went to the cinema!

What to say?

It’s been rather a painful week (what’s new?) and a bit of an emotional roller-coaster. I’m not in hospital anymore, I’m in a small hotel with no windows (unless you count the one that looks into a dishevelled store-room) and trying to work my way through the next few days as best I can, we’ll see how it goes.

Attempting suicide is always a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, then you get all that wonderful guilt to deal with, and when you’re already chock full of guilt and regret, it doesn’t help much, but hey, I’m still here (kinda).

I don’t really have the mind power to write very much today, there are lots of things I want to write about and I tried to get them down last night but I managed a grand total of seven words out of a sentance before giving up - so I’m kinda doing well writing as much as I have already in this post.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment and send me your thoughts, especially RaysinGyrl, Sarahc and Auchel. Your words were greatly appreciated and I will write more as soon as I am able to. Thank you :-)

Yeah.

That’s kinda all I have today, not too exciting, but will try to write more soon when I’m more with it.

Take care everyone :-)

I thought I was entering a manic phase today. Honestly. When I woke up this morning everything was just wonderful and exciting and my brain buzzed and hummed with ideas after ideas and I was skipping and dancing and exploding with ideas and invention. This continued for most of the day…so much like my manic phase in Adelaide it was unreal, but then it hit me…the lowest of lows, this eternal never ending pain of complete and utter isolated loneliness…and I realised it was just my brain playing a trick on me, just another of these insane mood shifts this goddamned mixed episode brings! C**t! So I’m now descending deeper and deeper into the abyss of the low and I just want it all to stop, that’s all I want, I just want it all to just stop. I want my brain to shut up, I want the voices to go away, SHUT UP, I want the ghosts to bugger off, I want it all ended. Can that happen? Am I allowed just a singular moment of peace or am I damned for eternity with this insane endless feeling of complete crapness? It doesn’t even matter where I am or what I do, who I love or try to help (not that I ever did, hence the use of the word try)…nothing seems to matter any more so I just want to go to sleep and perchance dream of happier times and happier things which will never again take place. What did I do that was so wrong to deserve this? That’s what I keep asking myself? I always tried to love people, always tried to take care of people, always tried to be there for them, always tried to share myself with the world and yeah I failed and fracked up and all that human stuff that human’s do but am I really such a horrible person to deserve this eternal nightmare that was thrown on me? Twelve months ago…twelve months…! That’s nearly a bloody year since the last time I remember being happy. Since the last time I remember feeling pleasure! Is that life? A year?? How is that life? Yep. Yep. Yep. Not a manic phase. Nope. Nope. Nope. This is definitely not a manic phase! Just a rouse, a deception. I just want the pain to go away. I just want to dream of happier times with Kathy and Grace and Sally and the Addy I so very nearly became. I just want one night of relaxed pleasure. Can I have that? Is it too much to ask? Or am I just that damned grotesque human being like she made me believe? I fracking hate this illness. I just don’t know how to fight it…any of them, and by frack I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard and keep on trying and I just don’t know what else to do. So now I’ve wasted yet more of your and my time I will depart. Until next time. Keep smiling, keep hugging, keep laughing, keep loving and keep passing those open windows. So remember; smile, sing, laugh, love, grope, kiss, fondle, shag, talk, LISTEN and levitate (when ya can) because that’s what life should all be about. Au revoir, adios, goodbye, sweet dreams - love to you all - who knows when I’ll get the chance to write again :-)

And so 2007 is slowly drawing to a close…as my clock goes (AEST) there is a mere 25 and a 1/2 hours left as I begin this post…and as with most people at this time I am thinking of three things:

1. So, what are my chances of a New Year’s pash…
2. Blimey, better get cracking on making some resolutions…
3. The internal-analysis of the last twelve months…

Well I can categorically tell you that my chance of a New Year’s pash are zilch (zero, nada, nought) unless I somehow manage to enter a manic phase in the next 25 hours 27 minutes - the chances of which are pretty slim! And what exactly is the point of making resolutions anyway?

My mind however has been mulling over the last object on this list with a kind of exasperated urgency. Voices, songs, screams and agonised yelps are haunting my every waking moment. The thing I find hard with my bipolar is getting all the ghosts to shut up, they’re just there, constantly, bickering away at my soul until I am nothing but a cowering wreck on the floor.

So let’s for a moment, just a moment (allow me that) forget that the events of the last eleven months happened. Let’s rewind the clock and take a peek at the year that wasn’t, a year that this time twelve months ago was going to be one of the best of my life, instead of the bitch year from hell it became!

[NOTE: From this point on everything not in italics is what could have happened if 2007 had gone the way I had hoped/whereas everything in italics is what actually happened]

…click here if you’d like to read more about my year that WASN’T/WAS…

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I phoned the suicide helpline…

…it is not the first time I have ever called them. The very first time I dialled this number was in April 2006 as I was having an incredibly bad day and didn’t know who else to phone. I was having relationship problems, my best friend had just celebrated her 21st birthday and I didn’t want to upset her, and my other friends…I just didn’t want to burden them.

So I dialled the helpline, which I had on speed dial since my suicide moment the month before. It rang…and it rang…and I cried…and I cried…and it rang…and it rang…and I threw the phone across the room because the bloody thing just kept on ringing and ringing and ringing and nobody answered! There must have been a lot of suicidal people that night! Suffice to say I was able to remain safe and well until those urges had passed, but not before resorting to self-harm for the first time in over a year.

The other most memorable being a moment in March of this year when I was incredibly close from slashing my wrists following my breakdown but was able to be talked down from my mood with their assistance and that of a friendly conversation with a friend.

I have phoned them on several occasions since then, not however before my attempts in May and October because on those occasions I just needed the pain to stop and was not willing to phone for help.

Things however got incredibly bad yesterday. After my atrocious Christmas Day and self-harm session that night (Ouch! Is all I can really say about that, still smarting) I wasn’t coping either Boxing Day or yesterday so after more self-harm which wasn’t achieving the desirable outcome of relief and oh-so-very nearly phoning someone I haven’t spoken to for months I pulled up the hotline’s number on the phone and dialled.

I knew the drill, would no doubt hit an automated queue first, so logged onto YouTube to download a video guaranteed to make me smile and have doubts, and waited for them to answer. It did take a wee while, but eventually I was chatting to a calming lady who listened to me through fitful sobs and occasional caterwauling as I explained my plans. She told me to get rid of the knives (which I didn’t do) and remove myself from the balcony area (which I did).

Once retreated inside I just sat on the floor and waited for the inevitable question. The one I dread and fear in equal heart pounding measure:

Do you have anyone you can call? A friend who can come and be with you?

NO!

I DO NOT!

I have no-one in my life. There is not a soul who could come and be with me to distract my mind from it’s suicidal urges! I fracked up you see and lost everyone!

Frack! I hate that question. I really do. It just serves to remind me how lonely and useless I am, how worthless and forgotten, which just doesn’t help the whole ‘maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I stayed alive’ argument my head was racing through.

You see this has been the problem this year, this is what caused everything to go wrong.

When my relationship ended in February it basically isolated me. Even though I could still contact some people I knew I couldn’t really talk to them because they were friends of my ex. As I had made the decision to not tell my ex what had happened (i.e. being kicked out of college as an indirect consequence of a text message she sent and also being diagnosed with CLL) out of a desire to protect her from any guilt, I was unable to talk to my friends about these things because I did not want her finding out indirectly. I also didn’t want to bitch to these same friends about my ex because I didn’t want to affect or influence their friendship with her. Does any of this make sense? Seriously, nothing makes sense to me any more! But then it didn’t really then either because Mulholland Drive makes more sense after a breakdown than anything going on in your head! The problem that I was (and still am) in love with my ex didn’t help either!

Isolation is a killer. It seriously fracks you up! With my social circle, network and group in tatters I had to seek out new friends - which after a breakdown is nigh on impossible, let alone for someone who suffers from social anxiety disorder and who’s had a breakdown.

So I have been without any real major human contact since March.

Anyone who has spent several months alone and isolated will know what I mean. You go nuts! You end up talking to yourself to keep yourself sane, or in my case, I talk to myself and Meadhbh which is seriously weird at times. I believe profoundly that had things been different in February and I not been isolated, then what I’ve been going through this year would not have happened…

Anyway.

So I don’t have anyone to call, so the woman chats with me for a while. Asks about my Christmas…self harm, loneliness and desperation. Asks about me…I’m a worthless lunatic, what’s there to say? Until we eventually agree to make a spoken contract, whereby I promise to phone her back tomorrow - i.e. today - which I am just about to do.

Whether or not I will speak to the same woman I don’t know, but she did seriously help yesterday. Which I guess brings me to a kindof point to this somewhat bizarre and rambling post: they are called helplines for a reason.

They help! Use them! If like me you don’t have anyone to talk to or there is no-one to be there with you to help you get through a bad moment - call a helpline!

Simple as that.

Well, now that it’s finally over, how was everyone’s Christmas?

I can honestly tell you that mine included:

• Sweet FA in the way of presents (not surprised)
• In terms of electronic wishes - three - one ecard, one email (a few days before Christmas) and one Facebook wall message. A big thank you to those people :-)
• Utter frustration that I was unable to view the Dr Who 2007 Christmas special.
• Two instances of self-harm (at approx 11pm and 1am last night) which has left me rather sore this morning as the 1am instance was rather ‘OTT’ shall we say.
• At least five hours of crying; including one two hour session in the middle of the afternoon.
• Feeling completely useless, worthless and a complete failure in every avenue of life.

Just your standard, run-of-the-mill Christmas then!

It was hard for me because of my memories of last Christmas. After travelling and emigrating I had not had a Christmas with my parents for seven years, and last year I got to spend Christmas with them. It was wonderful! We exchanged presents, chilled out in Melbourne, wasted an almighty $10 at the casino and watched Happy Feet at the cinema. Even though I didn’t get to spend Christmas with my girlfriend (she was with her own family) I was still able to speak to her and receive Christmas wishes from someone, as well as have drinks with friends in the evening following my day with my parents.

Which in contrast to this year - depressed suicidal cravings, complete loneliness and a knife and belt from Santa - was somewhat the perfect Christmas!

So here I sit on Boxing Day, reflecting on my wasted life, chatting and conversing with Meadhbh (who is driving me insane) and not really doing anything because I can’t actually move some parts of my body easily.

Seasonal Depression is a sad fact of life and can affect even those who are not already suffering from a mental illness. This seasonally affected disorder can wreak havoc for those not already coping. I, for one, am glad that this day has finally passed and once again am left hoping that next year the world will once again start remembering what the true spirit of Christmas is actually about - but as I’ve been hoping this for many years now, feel that once again I will be left disappointed by the ever growing apathetic society which the world is slowly becoming.

I truly hope that your Christmas was a lot more enjoyable than mine, and that everyone managed to survive it safetly and harmlessly…and don’t even ask about New Years next week! I don’t even want to think about that just yet!