Coming to terms with Bipolar – Part III

November 22, 2007 by Addy 1 Comment

Coming-to-Terms with BiPolar
Part III: My reactions

Why I suspected I had bipolar

Now, I said in my previous posts about bipolar that I have kinda suspected that this is what I’ve been suffering from. My first very real suspicions that something was somewhat amiss in the state of Addy’s mind was in March, when I attacked a kind little old lady with blue hair in a Safeway supermarket for accidentally running a shopping trolley into my leg. Now I didn’t slap her, throw a loaf of bread or squeeze mushy peas on her or anything I just kinda snapped and unleashed a torrent of grrrr-arrrrg words at her. Then I went home and cut my arm (this was by the way the day I talked about in one of my journal entries).

Now, anyone who knows me (I hope) would realize that isn’t exactly Addy behavior – I love humanity, sometimes a little too much – and after mentioning this to someone at the time chalked it up to my anti-depressants. This kinda kept happening on and off though for a while, these massive shifts in mood turbulating up and down at such pace and velocity that I could barely keep up. Some days utterly blissful as if on ecstasy, others unleashing verbal angry diorreah on people who in no way deserved it: a couple of close friends unfortunately suffered these moments, and that shocked me, as I had never treated them in this way before.

Earlier on this year I spent a couple of months in the mighty fine and beautiful city of Adelaide, and it was here that I just knew things were definitely not okay. My mood fluctuated badly throughout those two months, sometimes scarily so. There were things occurring beyond my control during this time – I was the victim of theft, having approximately 75% of my belongings stolen by some bogan in a launderette (including a very very sentimental ring which I will never be able to replace), family issues were awry with one hospitalized and another overdosing and ending up in hospital for several days (fortunately both were okay in the end), and all whilst I was trying to pretend everything was dandy so no-one had to worry whilst I clung onto the tattered remnants of my life.

Some days I would be happily skipping down the banks of the Torrens going ‘bloody hell this tattoo is stinging a little, kinda nice’; whilst others I would be sitting on Glenelg beach in the dark stabbing myself with sticks or just sitting in a numb state for hours on end watching the Adelaidians occasionally stare at me out of concern.

Often during the days I would experience this range of emotions to the point that it became uncontrollable; one day I was watching (the best damn comedy movie of the year) Knocked Off and ended up bawling my eyes out at the end from sheer sadness even though it was the happiest moment of the movie.

Another day, I got depressed in the second hand bookstore and ended up unalphabetising the entire fantasy section (which for someone who used to alphabetize his own book collection is pretty drastic) and took pleasure in secreting sexually charged books into the children’s section.

(Granted this isn’t really on a level of anything “serious” but secondhand book stores are like temples to me, and should not be desecrated in any way.)

Various things happened as the mood swings became harder to control, anger was spewed, heads thrown against trees and then…one Monday morning…let us just say that this week is something I would rather forget. Things were done, acts were performed, words were spoken, a massively uncharacteristic Addy stormed through Adelaide’s west-CBD and northern suburb like some cuddly-goth Pooh bear doped up on several forms of narcotics.

Then his mood changed once again, and the ever awesome David Tennant warmed his heart by talking about orange skies and he realized all that he had done and lost.

Licking the wounds and trying to rebuild my life by leaving the mighty fine and beautiful Adelaide and returning to Melbourne. His mood swings were less erratic, but still prevalent, and he beavered away with his chorus line of lemmings trying to eek out a place in the world of employment whilst striving to become an Australian Citizen. Dozens & dozens of job interviews and a citizenship refusal later he ended up, in late September, in one of those doooowwwnnnnn episodes and early October decided to kill himself.

I have to be honest though, a lot of this year I have handled these mood swings pretty well. Never really unleashing them on the public, always managing to swallow them around friends or pretend otherwise around people I know. I think that’s why it is so good that, finally, I have had this officially recognized.

Because it’s a medical condition, I can now get help.

It’s like if you suffer from diabetes – you need that insulin to help control things.
It’s like if you suffer form cancer – you need that chemo to help get you through.

With any illness you need to be diagnosed before you stand any chance of recovery.

What next?

That’s the question innit!

Obviously, medication is going to be taken. Now, I’m not particularly fond of medication as I’ve been doped up so much this year – but hey, I found something on one of the websites that said bipolar sufferers are less likely to find anti-depressants worked effectively. This could explain why anti-depressants never really worked for me in the past, regardless of the dosages I was on.

Obviously, despite what all the websites say, this is going to affect me heavily on a social level. Throughout this blog I have been condemning sections of society for their prejudice against people with mental illnesses. It however does happen and however tongue in cheek my two previous posts were on the subject – bipolar will affect relationships. I know from experience how much frustration hormonal mood swings can inflict (I think every man does!) so it doesn’t take a huge leap to realize how much frustration bipolar mood swings can inflict.

Obviously this is going to take time to come to terms with. Knowing a lot about depression, self harm, suicide etc a lot of those posts were easy to write as I kinda knew my stuff. These bipolar posts, nah, I’m writing them just as much for me to understand what’s happening to me than I am writing them to explain to other people.

So I guess patience will have to be used: both from me, and you my dear readers. I know how confusing being diagnosed with a new illness is, the time it takes to understand, come to terms with what is going on, and what needs to be done to overcome it. This is third time this year I have received such a diagnosis; the fun part this time though is I get to blaaahhhhh about it on the web as I try to capture and identify all those mood swings and ins and outs.

What I am going to reiterate though is that – once again – bipolar is not who I am.

I’m Addy, same old guy…and believe me; I’m saying that far more for me than everyone else!