Have you ever heard or seen a word or phrase that made you feel intensely uncomfortable with who you are?
Until about eight years ago, I had never been on the receiving end of discriminatory language. And yet it managed to find a way into my white, straight, agnostic, charmed life. The first time it happened, I was walking through a shopping centre. The words assaulted me suddenly, shook the breath out of me: ‘PSYCHO BITCH’
I don’t have a best friend. I have several.
My first best friend and I shared the ages five to thirteen in a tiny village in southern Germany. We explored our world freely. The church bells and the colour of the sky were our only reminders of when to go home. We played in the woods. We watched frogspawn turn into tadpoles. We climbed trees. We built igloos and snowmen. We ate wild raspberries and blackberries straight off the hedge. We rode our bikes everywhere. Then, one rainy October afternoon, everything changed.
Where were we? That’s right. We’d left me in a state of catatonic depression. If you haven’t read Part 1 of this post, which dropped yesterday, I suggest doing so now.
The first time I slid into catatonic depression, my psychiatrist tried anti-depressant after anti-depressant while I was hospitalised. Nothing worked. I was still brand new to mental illness. Two months before, I’d suffered my first psychotic episode after the birth of my first child. My First Time
I had gone from mentally healthy for thirty-two years, to experiencing some of the worst psychiatric symptoms in existence. I felt as though I had entered a parallel universe. When ECT was recommended I had a sense of being at the end of the line. I didn’t know much about it.
(Please note – this post contains vivid descriptions of severe clinical and catatonic depression)
Let’s play a quick game of word associations: If I say Electroconvulsive Therapy or Electroshock Therapy, you think…What?
‘They still do that?’ is a common response. A half jokey reference to ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ is another. If you thought there was stigma surrounding psychiatric medications (and there is), ECT takes the stigma, myths, misinformation, and at times insults to a new level.
How do you make your decisions? Gut feeling or logic?
I am rational over emotional. Give me scientific data or a good pro/con list over intuition any day. I have no problem with risk, but I prefer it to be calculated rather than a leap into nothing with my fingers crossed. But not all questions can be answered with logic. Ten years ago, I wrestled with one that had no right or wrong answer: To have or not to have a second baby. Continue reading “Decisions”
I was laden with milk, my arms filled with the incredible warm softness of my five-day old baby. Snuffling, and startling into starfish arms every now and then. Pink velvet skin, translucent enough in places to see the faint network of blood vessels sustaining a life that a week ago had been completely reliant on me. My first entry into a psychiatric hospital was like many people’s first-time admissions. I felt I didn’t belong there.
There comes a moment in many of my conversations when I have a choice to lie or tell the truth. If I’m meeting a new person I don’t tend to lead with: ‘I have Bipolar Disorder’, unless it’s relevant. However, the longer I know someone, the more likely we are to reach that moment of disclosure. It came up within days of my discharge from a recent hospital stay. I ran into an acquaintance who asked how I was.
And there was a second, where it would have been so easy to answer with the expected: ‘Fine.’ Or ‘Busy’ And leave it at that. If it had been a person I didn’t know asking, I would have. But this was someone I see quite often. So, I gave an honest answer: ‘Ok, but I have just spent a month in hospital. I have Bipolar Disorder, and sometimes it flares up badly.’
‘Mum, can your Bipolar kill you?’
The ten-year-old asked me out of nowhere a year or so ago. And I had been well, for a couple of years at that stage. I always find, the longer I am out of hospital, the more of my life I reclaim, the harder it becomes to imagine ever getting that sick again. So, the instant answer that flashed behind my eyes was:
‘No, of course not darling.’
Because after all, the thought of dying is too horrible to bear, let alone articulate. But bitter, repeated experience with the pattern of my illness has taught me that while it’s good to be optimistic when I’m well, I know at some point I will get sick again, and while I am extremely fortunate to have access to excellent care, the nature of the illness means there is a small chance it could kill me.
Continue reading “Talking About Mental Illness With Children”
This lemon coconut cake is a marker. It is incredibly easy to make. You melt the butter and mix it with all the rest of the ingredients and bake it. The icing is also simple enough for a young child to make. And yet, four or five weeks ago – making this cake would have been impossible for me. I would have struggled to concentrate for long enough to read this beginner’s recipe. I’d have gone to the pantry or the fridge unable to remember what I was there to get – not just once, but again and again and again. I would have forgotten to add at least one of the ingredients, or to turn the oven on. And if I’d persisted with the process of trying to make this cake, I would have grown unbelievably frustrated with myself. If I had no experience with the signs that comprise my Bipolar 1 Disorder, I would have beaten myself to a pulp over my inability to perform a simple task. A task I could normally perform while on the phone, and with my eyes almost closed.
Imagine your life is a board game. Part of how well you do is down to skill, part is down to luck. Through sheer bad luck you land on a square that says: Mental illness – severe enough to need hospitalisation. You must exit the game immediately and sit out for an unknown length of time.
So, as of right now you have to stop work, and no you can’t give your boss any idea when you will be back. You have to move out of home and stop looking after your children, and no you can’t tell them when you will be home again. If you have a partner, any jobs you have been doing to run the household or look after the children will be handed to them. Too bad if they already have a full-time job. Everything in your life stops. For everyone else the game continues. Continue reading “The Rebuild”
Thought Food 