Bipolar Disorder: My Gift, My Curse, My End, My Beginning
“I knew myself only after I destroyed myself and only in the process of fixing myself did I know who I really was.”
-Sade Andria Zabala
When I sit down to write, I load my pen, point it at my page, and blow its brains out.The moment I was born I asked for pen and paper. I’d seen things. I had a story to tell. If telling the truth were martial arts, I’d be a black belt. I’d always rather deal with the consequences of being honest than the consequences of being dishonest. Falling feels like flying until you hit bottom – so does writing.
I’ll begin by reaching down my throat, pulling out my insides and scattering them in front of my audience. I’m not an expert on mental health, addiction or suicide. I’m a survivor. I’ll dip my pen in the blood of my beating heart. If vulnerability is being stripped away of everything, then this is the nightmare I wake up anywhere, naked.
No one saw the signs when an elementary school teacher called my parents to let them know I’d spent the first two weeks of recess in silence, kicking rocks in a corner on the playground. In high school I’d always have a toke and a swig before plunging into my seat next to the other ‘gifted’ kids in advanced English Lit. I’m still an awkward second grader, and I’m still the good kid in the bad crowd and the bad kid in the good crowd.
My diagnosis came not long after my accident but I’ll get to that in a couple of paragraphs. Nearing the end of my twentieth year, the outside of my body celebrated that I’d soon be twenty-one but my insides were certain I would never see twenty-two. The accident happened fast, in slow motion. Driving in the rain at midnight, my foot became lead and I blacked out as it hit the floor of my Honda. Alive, I couldn’t tell if the impact was the end or the beginning. That my skull wasn’t shattered should have meant I’d become smarter. That I did not lose my eye should have meant I’d see clearer. In all the worst ways, this eye, and this skull, would never be the same.
Just down the street from Disney World, I walked out of a hospital with a few broken bones, a concussion, and a great conversation starter - 220 stitches where doctors put together what was left of my head. Years later I’d accept the scar as an expensive tattoo and a reminder that nothing is ever as bad as it could be. “It gives you character” people said to cheer me up. The prescriptions I was given for pain may as well have been Beyoncé’s new album because I collected them at the pharmacy window like I was accepting a lifetime achievement award for being a total asshole. The pills made my eyelids fall down and then gave me exactly what I wanted – to feel nothing at all.
I carried no passengers, did not hit another vehicle and no one else was hurt. It was years before I told anyone that the car crash was not an accident. I drove my car into the concrete and steel wall that guarded my apartment complex because I wanted to die more than I wanted to live.
Once I’d recovered, I declared war on my existence. I wanted the life out of me like it was Rosemary’s baby, three months overdue and chewing on my insides. I cried for no other reason than I was who I am. I signed up for acting classes, just so I could be somebody else, but I locked myself in my room and couldn’t even act like I cared. In darkness or light, sleep and sense escaped me. I spent days screaming at the top of my lungs, and nights wishing I could take back every word I had ever said.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, and then WHAM! That’s how depression hits –slowly, then all at once.
My life had become a bloody crime scene. I made attempts to leave the house; and when I did, I never got farther than the closest barstool. I watched people forget who they were, become who they hoped they’d never be, and leave behind who they knew they could have been.
Somehow I managed to keep my darkness under lock and key until one day I decided to swallow the key and turn the power off for good. After shattered relationships; substance abuse, strange, irresponsible sex; fist fights that I mostly lost, hospitalizations, an arrest, failed attempts at rehabilitation and an overdose, I was rejected, evicted and devoid of all hope.
I swallowed one hundred pills, washed them down with a gallon of vodka and sat on the couch. I should have known I wouldn’t fit in a coffin since I never fit in anywhere else.
I woke up in a psychiatric hospital. I was sure I was dead but no one wanted to tell me. I was conscious for just long enough to know I hadn’t made it to heaven. I felt like a fly that had been swatted. Tubes poked in and out of everywhere and obnoxious hospital machines beeped and buzzed. I had one fleeting thought, “F***, the third time will be the charm.”
Every second could have been a week or a day and when I finally came to, I was strapped to the steel frame of a decomposing mattress. The purpose of the brutal restraints became clear. I was in an institution way worse off than any you’ve seen on television, and the only person by my bedside was the nurse whose job was to make sure patients were stripped of their shoe laces upon delivery.
I was sure I was a lost cause, but someone begged to differ. He looked like a sideways mosquito. The skanky man in the white coat had to convince me he was a doctor and not a patient. I suspiciously answered his questions and the moment he shook my hand, my tendencies gave way to my diagnosis. It’s comforting to know that even though I might be crazy, I’m not unique.
Bipolar disorder is a motherf*****. I can’t think of a softer, gentler way to put it. It’s like I vigorously shake a bottle of champagne, pop the cork, spray it in my face, rejoice in the sticky mess, then slip on the residue and crack open my skull. It’s part Christian Bale in Batman, part Christian Bale in The Machinist and part Christian Bale in American Psycho. If you’re unfamiliar, one is a super hero and the other two are just messed up. Most days I can’t tell if I’m not myself, if I’m more myself than ever; or if I’m ten different people, I never know which one, and I don’t believe anyone who tries to tell me.
When I’m up, or manic, I swallow liquor and lighters, gargle gasoline, throw up fire, and watch my world go up in flames. I’m a legend. The MVP of the universe. I’m racing, standing in the winner’s circle at the Indianapolis 500, staring at a 42 car pileup just before the finish line, and it’s that moment I realize I’m the one who caused the crash.
When I’m down, I move through days like a fish on a line fights to regain its freedom, only to end up skinned, gutted, and dinner. I’m every Nine Inch Nails song on an endless loop. I’m a tightly wound guitar string ready to snap no matter the softness of the strum.
On the best day, bipolar depression is like I’m on an airplane and there is turbulence. At its worst, I’m on the same airplane, there is turbulence, the plane crashes, I realize I’m the only survivor – and I can’t feel my legs. After one particularly violent tumble down the rabbit hole, the nurse checking boxes on my intake paperwork recommended I write in a journal to begin my psychiatric vacation.
If you’ve made it this far you’ve surely thought at least once… “I. Never. Had. Any. Idea.” In the opening line of the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus tells us: “there is only one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Mental health aside, deciding whether or not life is worth living will always be the fundamental question of human existence.
I’m not ‘bipolar’ the same way a person can’t be ‘cancer’ or 'diabetes’. Bipolar is a disease; and it’s deadly. Half of those diagnosed with bipolar disorder will attempt suicide. Ten percent will succeed. With the help of doctors, medication, therapy and writing, I haven’t been one of them. Recovery is my oxygen so I breathe deeply, but sometimes still, I forget to inhale. When I wage war on myself, my family and friends are the first ones on the battlefield. The times I get nothing right, I write. My brother once told me if I don’t tell my story, eventually, it will tell me.
The most important thing about this essay is that I wrote it. I admit this is not the unabridged story; and things get better even though I barely mention it. As I sat down to write, I decided to leave crumbs and not the whole cake. Small slices are easiest to digest. As my fingers pulverized consonants and vowels, I tried to inject some humor to take the edge off, but the jokes never settled down and got comfortable. I can fill one thousand pages with stories like these. Thankfully, I can fill two thousand with stories about recovery and hope.
Nowadays when I smile the skin around my eyes crinkles. That’s how you know a smile is genuine - crinkly eyes.