Leave me my safe spaces, please...

The strange thing about being in the public eye... to a small extent is how often people read things you write that give no hint of the depressive side of the illness and assume you are "normal" again. What these people are ignorant of is that with BMD there is a conscious daily monitoring of mood scales and charting them on that -5 to + 5 scale and somewhere inside this scale is the range people call normal.

The other assumption is that if you are not dwelling in the depths of despair and writing about it, you can't be there when in actual fact the last thing you could find energy for at the -5 end is any time to string cohesive (or even non co-hesive) thoughts together as 'writing'. You are merely surviving of trying to disappear into the arms of Morpheus at every possible moment of that protracted period of illness. There is no today, tomorrow, later there is only this seemingly timeless 'now' that will never pass. One an only write this when you are rising out of the depth, and beginning to develop a degree of objectivity about the situation. The writing is innavriably about the past.

At the +5 end of the illness there is no time to write nor if there were would the writing be coherent or logical. Mania is also living in the now but with that added belief that there is a tomorrow and it will only be bigger, brighter and better. You thoughts race, you cannot type as fast as the thoughts occur and why would you? You can't sit still let alone 'capture' these moments of non-energetic motion.

Ah then there is the phase trying to reach that balance point, shall we say zero, instead of normalcy which is such a relative term. This is the point for me at least where I have pushed myself beyond what was a logical degree of pressure, attempting to overcome and surmount every obstacle thrown in my path, on all fronts. professional, personal, domestic and environmental. Words associated with mania and grandiosity are often attached to this phase.

My biggest problem is, like many manics I cannot and do not recognise this state in myself. To me I am not having grandiose plans and levels of attainment, I am simply pushing through to prove to somebody, usually myself that I can conquer everything the world throws at me, and not only conquer it do it bloody well. Just to prove to the world that those of us with mental illness can function at a very high level of productivity and intelligence. I carry the pressure of all BMD patients at this time. And that is grandiosity and delusion. It has been a very hard lesson to learn over the last few years.

Every time I begin a new job or work project I push myself ridiculously hard, and I even have enough self-insight tio know why. I will never be good enough for me... no matter how amny pieces of paper are framed on mhy walls, no matter how many times colleagues tell me how 'intelligent' I am. No-body gets it. I am not good enough for me.

And if you add to this a certain number of years being called lazy, work-shy (whilst plodding through studies as I cannot read fast and always feel stupid), unstable, irrational, over-emotional, irresponsible... those negative labels begin to take hold, especially if they are spoken with venon by people you live with, family or significant others. This is the damage thoughtless and ill-conceived words of criticism can have over a protracted period of time... on ANYBODY not just someone who is mentally ill.

These are the feelings of worthlessness that drive 'normal' people to plummet into unipolarity and hospitalisation. My gift is that I have bi-polarity and at times the excitement of riding the mania does allow me to produce good and valuable work... but not in toxic or negative environments. It's as if I am hyper-sensitive to dynamics between people and inside work places. I lose perpective on my own mental wellness states and lose complete capability for rational thought.

When something turns pearshape, my subconscous is screaming "get out... leave before it is too late", yet my bigger fear is returning home to condemnation and articulated words about "typical failure" or "incompetence". This being torn in both directions is what I have lived with for the last six years at least.

Yet, I know that by ignoring my inner self-awareness, mania will lead to the inevitable melt down, and then EVERYBODY around you has no time for the healing process. Apart from the medical teams and professionals who know the battle. I have just had one of he harshest 'talkings to' from my trusted General Practitioner who did not hold back. Knowing I had a virtually immediate appointment with my psychiatrist and knowing me better than I know myself... he told me stop pretending to myself that I am well or superwoman who could do it all... or not so much in those words but you get my drift.

He put in words what is actually my biggest fear, that I may be ill and not able to function under the levels of stress required in some jobs. For me that meant EVER AGAIN... yet as my Psychiatrist indicated, this was catastrophising and thus not a sensible framing of the future... again I am advised to live for the now and heal.

So off I go back to my PhD finding great solace and pleasure in writing and alone-ness and begin to chronicle this journey on the www. I am under the possibly mistaken belief that this blog will find readers who are in need of what I have to say about my experiences with BMD...

Yet what happens my ex-employers perceive the sudden onset of tranquility as a sign that I can function as a professional employee... even though I am an EX-employee, as they have a deadline and my melt-down did not help them, thus now that I seem better... can I just hunt through my computer files and find material I didn't provide them.

This from the woman who many friends knows does a complete hard drive reformatting EVERY time I come out of a crisis situtaion to give myself a metaphorical blank slate from which to begin life again... new day new life. I trash everything... reformatting all hard drives... I am now expected to find the old stuff (from where?) and get it to them asap as they paid out my holiday leave and sickness benefits so surely I must still be an employee open for contact.... Well no I am still very unwell and in the re-establishment of my health.

I am/was so unwell I couldn't even go on holiday relying so heavily on medical treatment at the moment.. . so i find the nearest place I can have a mental holiday (all less than 5 kms) from where I live but because I am seeking out places of beauty... I must be well and on holidays... When will I ever be strong enought to say... hey I like you guys personally but professionally FUCK off you are killing me (almost-literally).

Do not pollute my safe spaces with past toxicity... not from work, not from University, not from home... leave me heal.

Long, long restful blogging break but only electronically.

I have not forgotten my early promise to keep friends and interested parties up to date on my yearly ride on the Bi-Polar Mood Disorder Roller Coaster, but somehow pen and ink felt a safer space to allow my thoughts to wander where-ever they took me than here in Cyberspace.

I am now catching everyone up on what has been a unique and interesting period of my life. If there is one thing I can say it is that PhD studies, it is that creative writing and generally living in a twenty-first century world still seem highly incompatible.

I refer to the fact that I would consider myself as one of the most feminist women I know... yet the gender stereotype thing is so ingrained I cannot shake the usual female maladies.

You know the ones?

• Getting yourself between spouse/partner/ex and child to save male on male all out war zone (which others can screen out by not a BMD person susceptible to the slightest atmospheric changes and charges).
• Trying to absorb mood swings of adolescence/young adulthood, at the same time as dealing rationally with the frustrations of aging, hearing loss, hair loss, fragility and arrogance that "there is nothing wring with me, I can look after myself" after third return to kitchen from car, before driving off on short shopping/ medical trip. Hence increased anxiety (of the normal variety); my constant fear that in either mood neither males should be behind the wheel of a car, yet fearful of if they were at home, just how much worse life would be for me.
  
• Add to this my increasing less patient/pleasant dealings with so many debt collectors at the door and on the phone, plus filing all types of fiscally related legal documents gathered throughout a prolonged period of offspring deviant behaviour, whilst offspring still remains incapable of 'owning most' of the responsibility despite the fights of TOUGH LOVE! I still walk on eggshells fearing violence and prefer (for my own safety and sanity) the apathy, and avoidance through either laziness, ignorance, or reliance upon parent to fix... or simply a lack of development in the frontal brain cortex... Anyway, Mum does her best as if she were a 1950s prototype compliant little homebody.
• Did I really just confess that self-image?
  
• OMG... I can almost see myself in starched petticoats, full skirts, neatly hair-rollered and brushed out, complete with white frilly-pinny at picket fence... after having indulged in a afternoon sherry or two, a bex (or modern equivalent) and a 'good lie down' (Nanna nap thanks Barry Humphries!)
• Putting self last (especially indulging in the small pleasurable things that others see as being work-avoidance, or financially wasteful, or even malingering).
• Putting everybody's else's wellness/happiness/calmness/emotional stability first.
• Try getting a telephone message through when one householder is wearing noise reduction headphones and gaming solidly for the best part of forty-eight hours straight, attending class the next forty-eight, then golfing and sleeping the remainder of the week, whilst choosing cooking and house movement times between 2am and 6am!
• Add to this the older one takes the messages, doesn't write them down, or ignores the phone because a horse race is on. The' state of the art' phone having had the message listened to, then gives no audible hint that there is actually a 'saved' message. Thank goodness for email and txt or I would never hear from or about anybody.
• Finally add to this a tendency on the part of said BMD woman, to conflate global crises with local ones, mount political crusades against all forms of injustice and simply see significance everywhere others see none.I am tired and emotional, in the true sense of the phrase!
  

SOLUTION....time for a good long holiday.

But not for me the Peninsula Hot Springs and Massage, the Ella Bache full beauty regime, and the constant desire for copious good quality wines, champagne, new jewellery, shoes and clothes or the boxes upon boxes of Belgium dark chocolate... not even the wild manic rampant sexuality of full blown mania, my drugs and body image has shattered that little stress reliever.

No, it is sedate walks along Patterson Lakes with a good friend, a gallery visit or two, a Wheeler's Centre talk (free) but on DSP week to afford the train ticket, a wander through the Coolart Bird hide, and furtive out of control paperback book buying instead of paying pressing bills. (Even my meds can't seem to curtail that one). It's as if I am not alive unless I own and hold copies of women writers work from around the world. It's as if I am not truly a lover of literature and reading unless I at least accumulate a bedside stack for future indulgence.

My wellness regime... great. Let me just catch you up on that little saga. September, birthday month, Footy Grand Final and of course ageing, plus the inevitable plateau of weight loss on the lap band diet.... More exercise they cry.... more wine I crave... and a little cheese and bickies with that also... savoury of course.

Then comes Spring Racing Carnival.... no I didn't go or watch... but my dress size had gone up so even thinking of going to the Mornington Cup socially became a disaster in the clothes shops! Oh well let's just have a few more nightly 'non-nutritional fluids' and eat less real food just lots of Greek Yoghurt (good call that one... up goes weight further)....

DOWN SLIDES SELF ESTEEM.... straight to near-rock bottom depression at the very time I am supposed to be gearing up to return to study, whilst barely making ends meet on my own financial commitments (all of car, health insurance, funeral plan, home and car insurance.... you know all those little luxuries!).

Lifestyle tip for thinner people, it's cheaper to buy $2.99 bottles of Aldi wine than nutritious food! Bang there goes November and it's time for the usual Conference attendance that usually tilts my mood scales back upwards... but not this time... as there was no TAX REFUND TO SPEND GUILT FREE!

Despite the heaps of praise and encouragement and feeling accepted by coleagues from most Unis (except mine), I am drawn back to the world of the night people... in Wellington of all places! I told you about touching base with Richard O'Brien and my mind regressed to the exciting seventies in London, broke but happy and carefree (and most likely fully blown manic).
The theatre feels like home. I feel at home. I do not feel like an outsider or imposter as I do in the Uni... but unfortunately I must return home and face the accusations of money wasting, selfishness and malingering on my studies. the inner voice is screaming... just write the creative...get the novel finished, whilst the other voices are saying why bother, it's no fun anymore. I am not doing it for me anymore. I am doing it for a bloody bit of paper that for me might just prove useless in the current employment climate at my age.

Down and down I go... then wham!

Christmas in all it's dysfunctional glory. Why even try?

Because I have to stay out of a psychiatric ward as that would confirm negative professional opinion of my academic capabilities and personal lack of self determination. . Add to this tourist season, enforced hibernation and a mild case of agraphobia... well I held on with doctors propping me up despite a false accusation resounding in my ears.... "You know you always fall in a heap after Conferences"... implying that I am manic at Conferences, not simply stimulates and energetically charged with my mind in overdrive of thoughts and ideas... no I am thus abnormal, dysfunctional and downright certifiable. If this one voice only knew me when I was manic, the suggestion would not be thrown around in such a cavalier manner.

Luckily for me in February at the very end of a fraught beginning to the academic year along comes the timely onset of chronic and recurrent blood disorder, requiring medical attention, another hangover from an earlier era 'pernicious anaemia'... I assume it is similar to having a shorter bout of Chronic Fatigue Synnrome, one cannot even summon energy to do normal daily activity.

Beware the ides of March!

You see once you declare yourself publically as BP then watch out... do not be "too happy", or "too enthusiastic" as it could be concealing ideas of grandieur... yeah, sure get like Charlie Sheen don't I? Me with my Tiger Blood! Oh and don't get "too quiet or introverted"... that's not allowed either. One must not be sad for any reason (deaths, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, senseless road trauma.... you are NOT TO RESPOND TO THIS IN AN OUTWARD MANNER)

Can someone tell me how I measure the 'normal' emotions on an outside world scale?

Or can I only measure it on my own scale?

My own scale says time off, more yoga, more excercise, positive diet, alcohol cut down (severely), more art classes and more serene walks.

Bugger PhD timelines... I need to re-discover the joy of surviving to the age of 55 with BMD and enjoying who I am, warts and all. So F*** you world.

This time of year is mine, poverty or not... there's more to life than just getting by.

Part two: Letter to a troubled soul

I had to leave the first blog today as it could not logically be followed by the second part of my veg out moment yesterday. After, my son left to go to his mate's for a private wake, I sat and watched a doco I had taped. I did it because to be honest I wanted to feel good about myself by watching another person's very public downfall... as if to prove to myself that no amount of money in the world can buy happiness.

In another life, I knew this person. We both turn 55 this year and we met when we were both turning 21. There was a magnetism that drew people to this man and I was likewise attracted by it/him. I was often out and about in what I now see was my manic phase and his craziness, unpredictabilty and downright dangerous side was highly alluring. I saw something that I couldn't recognise or name at the time, but there was some sort of connection, at least on my end. A close friend years later said that 'no such connection existed and that I made it up'... but I knew and still do that there were inner demons driving us both.

At the time I realised that despite being charismatic he was actually quite despicable in his entrenched attitudes verging on the anti-social. But it was all hidden beneath a carefully constructed veneer of Mr Nice Guy, Mr Talented. The gay guys wanted to sleep with him and some (including my friend) was quite bitter about his heterosexuality, proclaiming that he wasn't promiscuous (to the point of mysogny) and that all us actresses were just fantasising about him.
Yet as they say 'in vino veritas'. When alcohol was allowed full reign (this other ignorant gay friend also proclaimed publically that this person was tea-totaller!! Rubbish!!!! I know different), some of his opinions and attitudes were positively frightening to me now as a mature-aged woman. In the seventies these attitudes were so anachronistic I chose to think he was just baiting everyone for a response and a little bit of 'drama'. How sad that I now see his beliefs expressed under the influence of grog and times of pillow talk, or when he felt at ease in his own bedroom/lounge space, he was actually letting everybody in. We did not realise that this young man was so deeply troubled.

Thus I moved on in my life and was quite happy to say to those willing to listen, "I knew him before...". I watched his meteoric rise with fascination and a sense of rejection. I was one of those women he deemed beneath contempt and not suited for marrying or breeding with (not that I wanted either at that stage). His rise to me was just party talk cred and cache. I now sit and cry over my ignorance and what has happened.

He literally deserves all the flack he is copping now. After all his money made him immune from criticism. No-one would stand up and say "NO"to this man. No-one said this was unacceptable, and his dysfunctional family (particularly father) allowed him a sense of the world is wrong and we the family know the truth... so trust no-one. Sounds so similar to a religious cult and indoctrination. Yet the demons were no assuaged. Money and privilege allowed him to self medicate with alcohol (perhaps drugs.... I have no idea as I have not met him in over 24 years) and nicotine.

He hid behind a mask of stability and family. Only when his one anchor said "enough is enough" and "I am leaving" did his world begin to disintegrate. This one woman who had sacrificed so much of her life to keeping this man in balance had finally walked away for the sake of their children.

Suddenly the demons have broken free and now I feel saddened and indeed pity. Somehow I also feel a traitor to my own beliefs. I do not condone mysogny, homophobia, rascism, anti-semitism, radical religions or right-wing political blind-spots... yet I still feel that connection with this man from all those years ago.

I sat transfixed and dispassionate as the cameras revealed the downfall of a flawed man... until the experts began speaking. I did not feel sorry for him when they spoke of his need for alcohol detox and rehab, nor admiration when learning of him reaching out to actors and singers at their times of crisis. I felt that this was simply enabling behaviour, such as the Yes-people around him permitted for over 30 years.

Then one psychiatrist came on and made the comment that she believed his behaviour was consistent with Bi-Polar Mood Disorder!

KERRR CHINGGGG!

My heart is bleeding for him now. When we were both 20 we could not have known that the manic craziness was part of mental illness. We were both undiagnosed. I lived for over twenty years unaware that I was ill, until after a number of failed attempts at suicide (all designed presumably as calls for help) I was finally and correctly diagnosed and medicated.

My life had to virtually fall apart and be at rock bottom before I could accept that I was in fact ill, and would have to decide on living medicated (and muted) for life or living the risk. I still grieve for the manias and do not miss the 'black dog' yet I know it is the price to pay for the highs. Inow understand how such a man could have kept this crisis moment at bay, by being 'protected by wealth' and his destructive behaviour 'enabled' by people in whose financial interest it was to keep the commodity rolling along.

"You poor lost soul. I feel empathy now. At 55 you have to face losing almost everything before you are given the opportunity to be 'set free' by medical intervention."

"I can now see the connection I felt all those years ago, when no-body else could or would, not even you."

"See this as an opportunity. Not simply for the pseudo trendy detox and rehab stints, but the hard yards of psychotherapy and quest for wellness. I hope that you can have around you a few very trusted spirits who will accept no B/S and call it for what it is. It might mean challenging long held belief systems and your own contradictory behaviours. However, this might just free you of a damaged childhood and past, not of your making. No excuses. Your behaviour and rants cannot be undone by the words, "Sorry". They must be faced head on, with courage and strength and the willingness to pull apart all the previously accepted givens. Sometimes our families are not the safe spaces in which to do this."

"I wish you luck and one trusted friend at this time of crisis, and wish I could extend the hand of empathy and understanding across the globe... but I cannot as you are so isolated."