Is it better to know how to live a mentally well life and forget due to BP or never know mental wellness at all?
Every week or so I have coffee with a friend who has BP1 like me. We met through a group and have become good friends. We talk about overcoming our shared illness some, but mostly we talk about living day to day, being useful and productive in our lives. There is one vast difference between my friend and I that it took a while for us to figure out.
The difference is my friends BP came on in their mid 20’s, this allowed for them to receive good parenting and education up to and including a master’s degree. It was during his graduate program that BP struck and destroyed his life for the next 25 years. In my case I can never remember I time when I did not feel the symptoms of BP and have been in and out of some type of mental health care since my early teens.
So at approximately the same time in life we embarked on the path to mental wellness. Me, who never had experienced mental wellness before and my friend who had a pretty solid upbringing in a mentally well world. We get together fairly regularly to compare notes. We are both taking a similar approach in overcoming our shared illness, after passing through a phase on concentrating on our illness, we have both changed our focus to a strict concentration on mental wellness. Our search for ways to achieve mental wellness.
Which comes back to my original question. Is it better to have had mental wellness and forgotten it due to BP or is it better to never known mental wellness at all?
Aside from the fact that I envied my friend for a while because there was a base to build on that is easily seen once a stable mind was achieved, I do not know. My friend is often frustrated by the fact that they should know this stuff and doesn’t, sort of like the frustration of a dementia patient who feels they can and finds out they can’t. Whereas for me everything is a new experience and I just have to let go of the old thoughts that blocked my way to mental wellness.
http://www.bphope.com/topics/discussion/early-onset-bp-vs-late-onset-bp/
This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. I was diagnosed in December and a lot of this is still new to me, and getting my head around everything is such hard work. It exhausts me within itself.
Before Diagnosis: My life was just depression and mania. I was either in bed not moving only getting up for work so that I could pay my bills (and going to the loo and occasionally shower etc) or I was so hyper I was doing everything and anything and never accomplishing anything. But that was my life. I knew this life. It had been my life for well over a decade. I had created a life around this. Going out when I could, staying home when I needed to. The food I had in the flat was only food that I could snack on. There was nothing in the house that I actually had to cook except for sausages. There is something about sausages that no matter how ill I get I always wanted to eat sausages. So I had frozen sausages and cocktail sausages, so that I always had them to eat. I knew how to hide it. I had my ways of dealing with it. I would use tramadol and alcohol to faze out of life for a while, I would cut myself to cope with getting up the next day and try and help me to sleep for a night. All I wanted was for people to leave me alone, not notice what was happening to me. I would get to a point were suicide became an option, I would try and would always fail. About a month after this I would start cutting less and moving on the up. This was a slow moving up, still cutting, still taking the drugs and alcohol. All in all I was self destructive. But I understood this life, this is what my life was. It made sense to me. I wasn't happy or content but I understood my life and what was happening to me. I felt safe.
During Diagnosis: It took a long time to triate my medication to the full dosage, this was around March time. From December to March was a rocky time for me. I was up and I was down and struggling constantly. I had a psychiatric doctor (pdoc) and a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) and they did offer me support and I felt as though I could get better. In January I had a fugue state day where I had no idea what I was doing that day but ended up by a railway line, couldn't get to the line because of a fence and a huge padlock but I had tried, or so the police told me. My life was based on my bipolar, trying to get well. I couldn't work, so I was stressed about money as I was on Statutory Sick, housing benefit and council tax reduction. It was awful. I applied for PIP but only got awarded that last month, after fighting for it since November. During this time I felt like I was not a good person and that I had failed in every sense of the word. It was through a good friend and my CPN that I started to realise that it wasn't my fault. It was just part of who I am. I have had people walk out of my life due to my diagnosis including my Boyfriend who I actually had real feelings for. Something I had never experienced before.
After Diagnosis: I had one period of 'stability' that lasted maybe 3 weeks. It was an odd feeling, not wanting to stay in bed and not wanting to do everything and anything. I got up, I was productive and could do things and actually achieve things properly. I was on top of my cleaning, on top of my course... it was good. Then the mood swings started again. The depression isn't quite as bad but the mania is worse than it's ever been. I am up for two months, previously just a few weeks. At the moment I seem to be manic through the day and depressed at night. I have no idea how to handle this 'new' life of mine. I don't know how to live. I'm so confused. I don't like it. My medication means I don't feel hungry so I have to force myself to eat every day and if I don't think about it I can go a couple of days without eating. I try and take an apple to work so I at least eat that each day. Something healthy. I am now as thin as I was last time I was really ill. I am afraid to get close to anyone because I know that my illness will hurt them, because I can't stop saying things I shouldn't and I don't trust myself to stay faithful. The other night, after 2 days of not eating, took some tramodol and then had a lot to drink. I felt so good. I hadn't forgotten just how much I love that feeling. Now it's all I can think about. More than I am thinking about cutting myself again. It's all I want to do. I have to be careful though, if I run out of tramadol I am going to struggle to get more. I do not feel like I am getting better, I am hyper aware of everything. My sexual appetite is rampant, and as much as I want to sleep with almost everyone I see I can't stand the idea of someone touching me. I feel the pressure of 'being well'. I can see people treating me as if I shouldn't get ill any more, medication has made me well. If I show any sort of sliding people start wondering if I'm taking my medication, why am I getting ill again, and then they just constantly watch me, waiting for me to slip up. There is a whole group who believe that I will never get ill again.
So was being diagnosed worth it... at this moment at time, no it wasn't. I can't hide my illness any more, I have to learn to do that all over again. I have an advantage by the fact I do not see the same people every day. I get to do something different every day so I can hide stuff a little easier. But people who know me can see it. I don't think it was worth it, it wasn't worth it at all.
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