Stigma and Shame

I’ve done a lot of talking recently about the stigma behind mental illness. It’s (relatively) common knowledge that I voluntarily went to McLean Hospital for a brief inpatient stay after losing my job and am now in a two-week partial hospital program involving intensive dialectical behaviour therapy. (The short version is that my doctor and I agreed that it would be a good idea to be able to get onto a good path to be able to appropriately cope with the high levels of stress.)

My parents were naturally a bit concerned that I was so open about my battle against my own brain — the stigma is still horrific — and while we’ve certainly made strides in accepting people who struggle with mental illness, we are far from “there yet”. My father gently cautioned me and said it has the potential to come back and bite me later on. Of course it does. Lots of things do, but this more than most, so his concern is well-placed.

That said, I have bigger fish to fry.

Today I received a diagnosis of bipolar II. For those unaware, bipolar type II is the form where one or more hypomanic or mixed episodes are present as well as depressive phases, but no manic episodes have ever happened, so it’s closer to the depressive end of the spectrum rather than the manic end. Bipolar disorder is usually poorly understood by people not well read on it, so I invite you to read more about it here: http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/bipolar-2-disorder

If you’re neurotypical, this is me-in-relation-to-you in a nutshell: I’m moody when I’m off my meds or not coping well. That’s it. My moods will shift around seemingly for no reason at all — to give you an example, I was up in Maine for a training weekend and someone said the word “objective”, which is a word related to my now-former job but otherwise contextually irrelevant, and I spent about an hour upset. I wasn’t even upset about my job — hell, I’m actually at peace with the fact that I don’t have it anymore for a number of reasons, primarily that it was a relatively amicable parting — but that’s how I shift. That was before I started a mood stabilizer, and while it’s not a wonder drug, the change has been dramatic and I’ve not felt this well in over a decade.

And yet the specter of what-if still hangs over me, insisting that this will follow me forever and curse me to a life of unemployability.

Of course it will follow me — it’s my brain. This is most likely never going to completely go away. I will always have difficult feelings and always need to use the tools I have to be able to appropriately respond to them. I’ve also found that others being aware that a shift in mood is a quirk of mine is extremely helpful in terms of understanding how to work with and be friends with me and that me going from happy to upset in under 3 seconds is not necessarily a reflection on them, it’s my brain working differently.

The sentiment I’ve received the most of, though, is that the people around me are proud of me for speaking up. And I’ve decided to continue with that. I am still a person of value and quite capable. I have recognised my problems and I have asked for help. I have owned my strengths and shortcomings and worked damn hard to get to where I am today, and I refuse to entertain the possibility of shutting up about it.

An estimated 21 million people worldwide have some form of bipolar spectrum disorder, not to mention the millions of other people who have some other form of mental illness. A significant portion of these people suffer in silence, ironically being that they are some of the people who need love, support, and community the most. The people at the highest risk of suicide are the people who are left poor and isolated the most, and even the ones who have sought help are labelled ‘crazy’ and seen as less-than — seen as the ephemeral Other.

I will not be one of those people. As one of my contact people at McLean said during a wonderful conversation, “the change has to come from the patients”. I am a psychiatric patient and I am getting well. I am taking charge of the most difficult thing I will ever experience. Ending stigma needs all the help it can get and I intend to commit at least some portion of my life to giving people with conditions like mine a voice.

I have bipolar II. I am a person with skills, intelligence, and value. I will not suffer in silence, I will not walk this treacherous path alone, and I am not ashamed.

Lilies, Part 2

The lily is dead.

Despite the care, the bloom came lackluster and lonely and died one night in the snow, flakes melting cruelly as the roots froze below.

There is not much to write about a dead flower that hasn’t already been said; water has no use and it would be yet more pointless to gild such a thing after its death.

As for me, I will have no more bouquets. My business has always been in fur and steel, and to fur and steel I will return joyfully. I will pull the lily’s roots and frame them as a reminder of the fragility of flowers.

And, and — to return to my own roots.

I Who Is Not I

The I who is not I is perfect stealth because of the faces she wears. Her hair is blue like mine but her face is painted at will, and sometimes she has no face at all when she wears the silvery suits. The I who is not I slinks in cotton and lace, cinches her waist, and moves with a grace dissimilar. The I who is not I peers over her spectacles smirking in the mirror and dreams of social subterfuge (contrast I, specters of simulation stripped). Yet underneath her false velvet is I who is I, made of steel.

Lilies

Today is the first time I have felt brave enough to write about him in anything other than brief mentions of profound sorrow.

At first we were light, playful, nakedly startled at our mutual discovery of the other. Tumbling over each other and ourselves came naturally, both with our words and with our bodies. We giggled over geeky tropes and conspired to climb mountains. We grabbed each other’s hands, seeing who could run faster, out of breath because we’d chain smoked so we’d have an excuse to keep talking.

His marriage initially made things uncomfortable, but as a powerful friendship developed, we chalked it up to growing pains. She and I are of similar minds, and we eventually commiserated passionately on everything and nothing at all. He spent hours pounding metal and came up with a lily in aluminum and copper. He smiled as proudly as it shimmered when I told him the defects didn’t matter — it was experimental like I was, and there will be no other like it. We made plans and mistakes, patching up the bruises lovingly, trying to squeeze into something that fit and noting when something broke in fits of excitement. The first time love spilled from our lips, I thought the moment peerless.

But even lilies wilt.

The storms that plague my head slowly flooded him, and our words were sharp like thunder and as volatile. Slowly the landscape around us burned, unnoticed by we who tried to protect the lone flower. I shivered against the rain, never realising that the lily was left dry and slowly withering. All I had to do was look down and water the lily, but I was busy looking up and cursing the rain.

We sat on his front steps on a brisk evening and he told me nothing was left. I, ever the atrociously-timed optimist, insisted it wasn’t so, and that I loved him and could improve. My heart broke at his doubt. Three weeks later, trying forlornly to talk about something, I plucked the blossom, saying that trying to save it now was futile.

We have only spoken passingly and awkwardly since.

I do not know if it will bloom again. Lilies are perennials and hardier than succumbing to a wayward kick, yet all flowers are delicate, and the roots have gone long neglected. Perhaps it will. But while the winter endures, I will hold the shriveled petals in my hands with nothing but regret for company.

Depression, Part 2

This is a post I made on a Facebook thread which I thought was descriptive enough to repost here. Redacted in one place to remove a friend’s name.

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Depression is a mental illness. It is not something we can ‘love ourselves’ out of, and it’s kind of horribly insulting to imply that that’s the case. You know why I apologise about my feelings?

Because I hate them.

I hate them because half the time hating things is better than not being able to feel anything at all, or feeling everything so painfully that I literally become an invalid because I can’t exist like a human being so I hide in my room and play mindless games that allow me to not think about the outside world for a while. I accept that these feelings exist, but that certainly doesn’t stop my brain from having them. As a friend said, it must be nice for the people who don’t have brains that have decided they hate them. Depression is a lot of things; rational is not one of them.

And this puts pressure on the people I’m close to because it isn’t really their job to know how I’m feeling today nor how to help me do things like get out of bed or do laundry or things that not-mentally-ill people can do without thinking. Feeling sad and depression are dramatically different. Everyone feels sad at one time or another.

But I am not just sad — I don’t remember what it’s like to not suffer from depression anymore. I don’t remember how it feels to be content or to wake up happy more than one day in a row. I don’t remember what it’s like to not have a low hum of anxiety over leaving the goddamn house or seeing a particular person at a party with whom I’ve had a spat or having someone watch me eat.

I love myself just fine — really, I do — but depression is an uglier monster than that. I will feel my feelings exactly how I want to, and if I feel the need to apologise, to say I’m sorry for how my revolting pit of despair might make you, the reader, feel, I am sympathetic to the fact that you may want to help but be unsure of how, I will apologise and I will walk away from that apology with every ounce of my dignity intact.

My experience with mental illness requires a lot more cure than love. It’s a start, but as much as my hippity-doo-dah side might want to believe love is all you need, sometimes you also need Prozac.

Depression

I’m getting canned tomorrow because of depression.

I don’t mean “I have depression”, “okay you’re fired”, because that would be douchey and also illegal and that’s not how my current company rolls. I mean I have struggled with it for at least five years, when I learned it had a name, and haven’t done anything about the performance hit because of said hating-of-everything-for-no-reason and there’s only so long I can stare into space wondering what the point of any of it is without someone not wanting to pay me to do that and sometimes produce test code.

Anyone who says depression is something you “just get over” is lying. It eats you alive. I spent nights sitting and staring at Facebook sobbing because everyone was so much happier and more adjusted than me and why was I even here and no one even likes me anyway and god I hate all of this happy bullshit all of you just go away god GOD WHAT IS THE POINT OF EVEN EXISTING and unfriending people at random because they were too happy. Oh and sometimes I ate things and then hid them when someone came around because I got upset when people watched me eat.

But this past week a thing happened.

I went out to Boulder, Colorado to see my partner and get away from stuff for a while. And .. I did two things. Well, three.

I started trusting him for real — like, if you want trust issues, I have a bucketful to spare. But something just finally let me trust that he’s an okay guy and he really does want the best for me and isn’t just going to ditch for shits and blah blah sappy crap.

I started taking vitamins.

And I climbed a mountain.

It’s a small mountain in Boulder; the elevation from base to summit is a rise of about 1,300′ and it’s a walk-up hike with a teeny bit of  scrambling involved near the top on some routes.

I am not a particularly fit woman at the moment (I just quit smoking and have been pretty sedentary for a while due to bad knees and also depression) so what is normally an hourlong hike took me four. My partner was saintly patient with my inability to go 15 yards without gasping near the top, and I almost turned around.

And then I stood on the top of this tiny little mountain and for the first time in years I felt like I had accomplished something and wasn’t totally worthless, and this adorable dog named Lola came up and licked my hand and let me scritch her behind the ears and smiled one of those doggy smiles that just melts you. And I felt like something thought I was great.

Seemingly sensing my accomplishment, my partner proceeded to point out loudly and comically that I climbed up THAT MOUNTAIN RIGHT THERE LOOK THERE IT IS THAT ONE THERE all week.

And .. now I’m home and I feel like I can be okay and accomplish stuff and not be a waste of space and it’s because of a mountain and a dog. Hilariously? The name of the mountain is Sanitas — in Latin, it means health or sanity.

It’s too late to salvage my current job, but I’m interviewing for others, and I just think maybe I’m going to be okay from here on out.

I don’t know — but to paraphrase Allie Brosh, I have hope where I didn’t before, and that’s a big step.