Silently Fighting

I haven’t had the chance to sit down and write that much lately with how busy things have been.

It’s been a bit of a crazy month, but I’m managing and I’m doing well.

It’s easy for me to sit here and write about how I’m doing, how I’m fighting to stay level and am neither depressed nor manic, I’m not angry nor irrational.

There’s so much that I want to write about, so much that I would love the world to understand about living with Mental Illness, but I have to confess; it can be exhausting and sometimes I don’t always want to be honest about it. Sometimes I want to look like a winner and announce that it's done, I've conquered it - be that success story you hear about.

November is a bit of a crazy month to begin with, and one that in my past has always been a triggering time of year for me. Over the course of the past year, one of my main focuses has been my own personal self-awareness. Time after time I have spoken to professionals and have been told that there is no cure for either Bipolar Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. Therapy and medications and lifestyle can help to control them, but I will live with them for the rest of my life although they may dull down and not be as serious as I get older. 

I have to admit that I kind of believe them to an extent. You see, first of all I’m a highly emotional person – things just seem to affect me more than the average person and I don’t know if I can or want to change that - to me, that is sometime that makes me me. Secondly, my moods will always have the possibility to spiral out of my control and send me on a rollercoaster ride of emotion. But here’s the thing; while my emotional regulation is a little out of whack, and I’m quite a bit more sensitive than the average Joe – I am learning to identify with, work with, and challenge these qualities – sometimes finding that they can even be an excellent warning system that I can use to my advantage.  

I want to stop right here for a second though and make an admission. I’m not perfect and I’m pretty sure that I never will be - there will be times that I will make mistakes, or have panic attacks or feel like a complete failure. 

But I’m working on me. I’m working on several things that have come up within the last year or two (or three or four) and I’m figuring this stuff out. It’s hard work – something that so many people don’t realise – because I have to know every piece of me, every reaction and every trigger. I keep journals… several of them that I use to track everything from the food I eat, to the sleep I get, to moods I experience, to the things I say and do. I need to know my patterns, know my limits and understand my emotional reactions. And then I also have to fight. I have to fight to prove that my frustration or anger or upset is legitimate and not the disorder, I have to fight to keep myself stable and stop my moods from shooting up or falling down, and I need to fight to keep learning about myself and what level really is.

This month has been harder than some I’ve experienced lately. While I’m still doing okay and remaining stable I’ve had quite a few things come up that triggered me – some of them catching me completely by surprise and other things that I already knew about and was watching for. And so I’ve watched as triggers hit me – recorded them in my journal and worked my way through them, adding new tools to the toolbox, ways to cope with the never ending fluctuation of emotion and threat of an episode.

This life, it is exhausting right now as I work to do what other people can do naturally, and I don’t always feel like sharing. But this is when I should share. Because right now, at this moment I’m a success. I’m fighting hard to make life liveable, to get to know myself and what I need to do to survive and to change the way I think. I’m learning to use natural methods and things that are within my control to manage and redirect myself when I feel things might be beginning to slip one way or the other.

So this is me being honest. I’m tired and I’m fighting, I’m learning and I’m growing, I’m alive and I’m well, I’m neither up nor down, and even though I sometimes still struggle, I’m also feeling the strongest I’ve ever felt. Nothing beats that feeling of strength and hope, the realisation that you can have a future and that it won't be defined by your Mental Illness. 

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Unmasked

Right now, in the present moment I feel naked and I feel vulnerable.

All through out the various stages of my life and specifically during my time with mental illness I have had a safety net of sorts - walls that I built up to keep people out, a mask that I wore so that nobody ever saw the real me. 

It was my comfort. 

It helped me function. 

As long as I was wearing my mask I was a normal, happy, healthy woman. I was a mom of four, a devoted spouse, a hard worker, a creative mind. Throughout the years my mask occasionally slipped up and revealed parts of myself to others through angry outbursts, isolated behaviour, or sudden decisions. Only during those times where my mask slipped would my illness spill out, let those around me know that something wasn't quite right. Fortunately it was usually easy to excuse... whether or not those close to me ever believed the act is a whole other question. 

Last November though, my mask fell off. Like the lid not tightly screwed on a bottle of Soda that has been shaken, my mood suddenly and violently came through and I made some drastic decisions. No longer able to handle it all, I attempted to end my life. 

Since then, the mask has all but disappeared. 

And it's an uncomfortable feeling.

For the first time in a long time, the real me is showing through. I'm struggling immensely with this because the mask had not only hidden me, it had become me. Now, in the months that follow I'm trying to rediscover who I am aside from my illness, who I want to become. But beyond that, everyone else now sees the mess that I've always been inside. Family and friends now know the struggles that I have been dealing with for years, the intense emotions and the mood swings have been revealed and although my family and friends have been nothing but supportive, it is one of the scariest things I have had to face. 

Walking back into my workplace. Walking back into my church. Walking into family functions. 

I feel like all eyes are on me, everyone knows the truth that I tried so hard to keep hidden for years. 

A day at a time I'm getting better, but some days are just harder than others. Some days I want desperately to put the mask back up and become what I was before that day in November. I want to pretend that everything is okay and that I have it all together. 

But I don't. It's time to face the truth.

It's not for those people who are finally seeing it though. It's for me. I need to rediscover myself if I'm going to continue fighting this disease. I need to find out who I truly am and hang on to that because I know first hand how easily things can fall apart again. 

I'm the only one who CAN fight it. So I'm slowly letting go, seeing the mask as it flutters from my body and drops into oblivion because I can't afford to put it back on or I might never win this battle.

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The Journey

I'm not much of a writer.
But this is my space to get out everything that I feel, that I experience and that I deal with on an everyday basis. A place for me to spit out my moods with the best descriptions that I can come up with, and a place for me to vent, cry, and scream my thoughts.
You see, I have bipolar disorder. Yep. It's true. I was diagnosed more than three years ago now, and while it was quite the shocker to be told that my moods are not normal... it was also a relief. I finally, after years of ping-ponging moods understood why. I could now understand why the periods of depression I felt could be surrounded by (mostly angry) highs and periods of little to no sleep. I finally understood how, with everything that I sometimes had going for me in life, I could still go through those periods of depression, of crisis and of absolute grief and despair.
But it's still not easy.
After my diagnosis the doctors tried me on a variety of medications to try and stabilize my moods. Some were mood stabilizers and sometimes there were anti-depressants as well. Unfortunately, as is often the case, it is a trial and error situation. Like most mental health disorders and treatments, what works for one person often will not work for another.
I admit that I became frustrated. Side effects (sleeping for 18-20 hours/day) or moods that yo-yoed up and down dramatically left me feeling like it didn't matter, the meds would never work. At the time I believed that if I just focused on knowing myself, and knowing my moods, then I could therefore control, or at the very least live with bipolar disorder without medication. And so I stopped. All pills were flushed down the drain and I took up a new exercise regimen, tried to eat healthier and watched myself closely. I analyzed my moods and learned really well how to mask the ups and the downs and how to keep a level facade.
It worked for a year. It worked until I hit a major trigger. It worked until we moved and I suddenly lost the support system that I had worked very hard to build up around myself.
And that is when I found myself sitting on the edge of a waterfall, talking myself down and attempting to end my life again.
I spent two weeks in the Psychiatric ward of our local hospital after that event. They found a brand new medication for me to try that so far has minimal side-effects and they set me up in the community with wellness groups.
Am I cured? Do I feel... normal, happy? Not yet. Do I feel better? Definitely.
And this is why I'm writing here. This is why I want to share my story and my journey.

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