Monthly Archives: September 2011

When you say…. I hear….

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A huge hurdle to jump when you’re intellectually normal yet emotionally skewed, is actually hearing and believing what other people are telling you. We bipolar and depressive sorts tend to be predisposed to introspectiveness and, as a result, we often filter messages through our distorted lens, projecting ideas that were never intended. It’s something friends and family of bipolar and depressive patients need to be aware of. You may have the best intentions, but those intentions might become completely twisted around in our minds. Here is a list I’ve paraphrased and compiled from my own experienced. Even on the side of remission, I still sometimes have to combat the misconstrued filtering I’d grown accustomed in the height of my illness.

When you say: “I’m too busy to spend time with you;” I hear, “I don’t care about you enough to make time for you.”

When you say, “Go tell your psychiatrist. I can’t help you;” I hear, “Go tell someone who only cares about you because you pay them to.”

When you say, “You’re being selfish when you harm yourself;” I hear, “Just die, for all I care. You’re a terrible friend anyway.”

When you say, “You’ve got nothing to cry about. My life is way worse than yours and I don’t cry;” I hear, “Suck it up. You’re not as important as me.”

When you say, “You’re beautiful;” I hear, “I’m only saying you’re beautiful out of pity. I really don’t mean it.”

When you say, “I’ve got my own problems and don’t want to see you. Don’t take it personally;” I hear, “You’re really not important enough to me for me to want you in my life.”

When you say, “I can’t handle your chronic, failed suicide attempts anymore. I need some space for an indefinite period of time;” I hear, “It would have been better if we never met. You can really kill yourself this time.”

When you say, “Stop dwelling on the past;” I hear, “Your story isn’t important.  No one cares. Block it from your memory. Burn all that will remind you of it. Most of all, don’t tell it, write it, or sing it. No one wants to hear anymore.”

When you say, “Whatever you do professionally, don’t tell prospective employers why you were ‘temporarily disabled’ and always, even on the hottest days, wear long sleeves to cover your scars;” I hear, “In order to make it in this world, you must mask your flaws. No one’s going to accept you for who you are, so be the person the world expects you to be. Pretend you don’t even have scars.”

Dream Life

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Have you ever kept a dream journal? I don’t mean the sort of journal where you scribble details about things you hope to achieve in life. I mean a journal in which you record the dreams you remember from your sleep.

I was introduced to the dream journal idea when I was about 10-years-old and my teacher had said that, if we wrote down our dreams each morning for about a week, we’d start to remember them better. It wasn’t really an assignment, per say. It was more like a suggestion. But I took hold of the idea and carried it to fruition.

Dreams have always fascinated me for as long as I can remember. In fact, when I was around 5 or 6 years old, I had dreamed I was crying and woke up crying. However, the me in my dream looked a lot like the characters from the Little Miss children’s books and I couldn’t remember why I was sad.

Later, I would have the occasional nightmare. They didn’t happen very often, but when they did, it was difficult to go back to sleep. The intriguing thing about my scary dreams was that I’d developed a sort of self-awareness in them before things got terribly bad. So my dream-self was able to say directly to my sleeping-self wake up! it’s just a dream! And I would awaken before any dinosaurs ate me or sinister-looking grown-ups abducted me.

Most of the time, though, sleep was (and still is) wonderful. As a child, I’d spend my last waking moments fantasizing about the adventures I’d longed to partake in while I dreamt. Now, as an adult, I awake and wonder what all those bizarre things I’d dreamt the night before were trying to tell me.

I confess I put too much stake in my dreams to brush them off as meaningless rubbish left over from the day before. They may not necessarily be prophetic, but the they do convey to me bits of who I am and how I inwardly feel about people and places (at least that’s what I’d like to think).

In my dream life, I’ve often felt a distinctive duality between my spiritual life and my emotional life. Those two parts of me regularly overlap in my waking-life so it’s really not surprising to have a variation of them in my dreams as well.

Recently, in the magazine publication Brain World, there was a feature article on “The Science of Sleep and Dreams.” Inside the feature, author Mridu Khullar Relph wrote:

“What goes on inside your brain when you’re dreaming? Well, as it happens, no one really seems to know exactly…

The scientific theories come down to the following: Your dreams are expressing repressed childhood longings; they’re sorting through the garbage of your day-to-day existence; or, finally – the one scientists are most recently exploring – they’re just random brain pulses and have very little significance whatsoever to your life choices as a whole.”

I have been on a significant journey of self-discovery lately. It has manifested from my intensive effort to transcribe my old journals and make them more accessible to myself and those with whom I wish to share these intimate thoughts of mine.

In the process, I realized that my dreams were among the most prominent, recurring themes throughout my personal writing. By dreams, I mean descriptions of things my mind remembers from my sleep. Of course, there is quite a fair share of the other kind of dreams as well (meaning my hopes and aspirations). But I’ll write about those some other time.

Taking advantage of some of the great technological features included in Microsoft Word, I conducted a “search” for all occurrences of the word “dream” starting with entries from 2002 all the way up to the present (with a few gaps because I haven’t transcribed everything yet). After isolating entries about the dreams of my sleeping-life in a separate document, I began to analyze each one with the perspective I have now (a much more distant and foreign perspective) of that time period with the memories of the events and emotions surrounding my younger self.

Context – The Mozart Journal

In a journal I dub “The Mozart Journal” (because it was purchased in Salzburg and features a small picture of Mozart and then a snippet of his music notation. Mozart is not a key figure in my writings) are the entries recorded between August 2002 and February 2003. It’s probably the most intriguing period of my life for me to analyze because it well-describes the internal frustrations, joys, hopes, and fears I carried with me during the trials and tribulations of studying abroad and living alone in France.

I have made multiple correlations between these dreams and the last journal entry which marks the day I abandoned my studio apartment and, in a heightened manic state, set out on a spiritual quest of sorts culminating in an involuntary hospitalization far from the city where I’d been studying.

I had no idea that I was a danger to myself. In November of 2002, I began a dream journal. A month prior, I’d been secretly suicidal following the death of my grandmother and the agonizingly painful loneliness the loss perpetuated. I actually did slit my wrists in the solitude of my room, but the blood spilt from those superficial cuts went away. So I hid my pain as best I could.

In November, I vowed to change and began to nourish a faith in God – a faith that may have precipitated both my salvation and my downfall both at the same time. Nevertheless, the unmitigated faith I clung so desperately to in those days was the closest thing I felt I had to friendship and love.

I did not consider myself to be clinically depressed at the time. In fact, considering my circumstances, I thought my tears to be extremely normal. I mean, within a mere three months, I’d experienced the loss of a loved one, the chill of loneliness and isolation, and, after the theft of my wallet, my first close brush with genuine hunger. In fact, even now it’s hard not to justify feeling sad and lonely in those conditions.

Extracts from dream journaling:

November – December 2002

November 15, 2002

One of the aspirations you have when trying to learn a new language: that one day you will know it so well that you’ll be dreaming in it. This, of course, was a happy dream. Poung was a student from Vietnam in my French as a Foreign Language class. He spoke a little English, but, as always, I made a point to insist on speaking French with him.

Last night I dreamed all in French. I don’t remember everything. I know that I spoke a lot with Poung and, walking back from the tramway, I had to go down a steep stairway and cross a little stream which I’d hoped I wouldn’t fall into, but I did anyway. I was covered in dirt and water, humiliated but not physically hurt.

November 16, 2002

It’s not often I have prophetic dreams, but this one I can look back on and definitely say my subconscious was trying to hint at something.

Two dreams stayed sketched in my mind. In one of them, I came home early and, not surprisingly, everything had changed and all my friends and family were surprised to see me. I explained to them I couldn’t finish in Montpellier. It had become too hard.

I went to Flagstaff in my running clothes and stopped by my old room to visit Melanie (an old friend and former roommate). She showed me how everything had been remodeled, but how everything was much nicer too. She had many friends visiting her and many cats as well. I, myself, had Kisses (former family cat) along with me. But as I looked around at the changes and thought about how in France, I’d longed for home, I realized at last I should have finished my stay in France because I missed so much the language and the culture and there was much I still hadn’t learned.

November 23, 2002

Here my mind is carrying in it this fear of losing the language I’d worked so hard to learn: French. I’d heard, and even met, several Americans who used to be fluent in French, but lost their ability to speak it when they were in the States and no longer used it.

This time I went to England for a while and then came home. When I came home, I longed to speak French again! My sister and I went to some sort of social event where there were a few French guys, but, aside from being cute and speaking French, they weren’t that interesting. I, however, was happy to speak the language I liked so much.

I went home for a bit, talked with friends and family, but, as it was only for a holiday, I kept emphasizing how I’m going back to France. I think all this is due to the fact that I talked to my family yesterday and I fear so much as of late that I will lose the language when I go home. Going home is a reality I will have to face, but not yet.

December 4, 2002

This is the last time I write about dreams in this particular journal. There are no more until I return to the United States in 2003. I have changed the names of key figures in this particular entry, but I think this dream illustrates, in no uncertain terms, my painful lack of connections with other human beings. I could do without romance, but a lack of friends seriously crippled me. I kept pictures of those friends and family who were most significant to me back then and posted them along the wall so I’d always think of them. At the same time, there was an inner conflict trying to convince myself that being away from my friends was the best thing for me and, moreover, the best thing for them.

I went to Strasbourg at last and saw my friends. However, Alfred merely greeted me, asked how I was doing, and then left. There were two other girls whom I didn’t know who were there, also richly desiring his attention and he preferred to give it to them, not me. Charlotte, too, was busy, but I can’t remember why. Guillaume never showed up. I shrugged my shoulders and hung out with Ashley and the other NAU girls.

All of them were sad because they were already going home (referring to the study abroad students who’d only come for 1 semester). So we stood around in a circle with other foreign students who were going home and shared stories. At last, Ashley was trying to remember a song she said I’d taught her, but I didn’t remember teaching her. I did know the song (it was a Judds song) and I tried to sing what I could remember, looking around for Alfred because I desperately wanted him to hear the words and understand. The song was Love Can Build a Bridge.

Soon everyone went their own ways and I found myself with an older woman who was pushing a stroller and walking with a bit of a limp. She said in French, “C’est dommage qu’après avoir fait une voyage si longue Alfred a choisi de ne pas passer ses temps avec toi.”

I smiled and said that life is just like that I guess. She went on to say that Guillaume never came because there was some sort of fight between him and Alfred.

We ended up walking and talking for a long time until we arrived at some ancient ruins in the Egyptian desert. I paused for a moment because I suddenly realized we’d been speaking English together. I expressed my concern, my fears of forgetting the language, and we proceeded to speak in French.

I dreamed much more that night. In fact, I was haunted by strange dreams all night. This one, however, was the most worthy of being written.

 To be continued….

Two Sides to the Story

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Summer, 2002 , I wrote this in my journal:

Loneliness can be chilling at times. You feel invisible and you feel your only escape is for someone to come rescue you.

Throughout the darkest depressions, the feeling of loneliness seemed to overwhelm me. Much of the intensity of that emotion was tangled up in my distorted view of myself and the world around me. Allow me to try and see those years through the eyes of an emotionally healthy, caring friend.

Though I am not able to feel what she is feeling, I can see that she is easily brought to tears. It’s not always clear to me why she is sad. Her life is not perfect, but it is most certainly not as hopeless as she seems to think it is. Yet no matter how many times I tell her she’s beautiful, no matter how hard I try and convince her of her worth to me, she won’t accept it.

As I watch her slowly destroy herself, I become exhausted with constantly having to rescue her. I completely isolate myself from her sometimes because I feel it is the only way to maintain my own sanity. What more can I do? It’s like every measure I take to bring her back to reality is futile! If I expend any more energy just to have her kill herself anyway, how will I be able to live with myself? I can’t help her anymore, but I hope she finds someone who can help her.

That’s how I imagine my closest friends felt while watching me disappear deeper and deeper into a profound, suicidal depression. I’ve never been the healthy friend trying to reach out to someone caught in the destructive web of depression. But I can speak with intimate detail the horror of falling into depression.

How can a person express herself when there are no words for her own suffering? Being caught-up in the darkness does not easily translate into words. Some people believe that creativity and beauty emerge in the midst of emotional turmoil. But that is not entirely true. The beauty is more likely to grow from the memory of the pain. But major depression or mania will overwhelm the people who suffer from it to the point where sometimes we can’t even make it out of bed.

My own darkness felt like this:

There was pain, both physical and emotional, like a ship’s anchor attached to my heart, pulling it to the floor, stifling the ability of my chest to rise up and down with my breath. Nothing seemed to lift the ever increasing weight I carried inside. And how could I make it clear to anyone what I was going through and the urgency with which I needed it to go away?

All hope for my future became obscured by the emotional darkness. I remember laying alone in bed as tears trickled silently down my cheeks. Miserable and terribly lonely, I’d call everyone I knew – sometimes over and over again. But, seemingly without fail, my calls would drop straight into the voicemail. Maybe before the age of caller ID and cell phones I’d have been able to accept “no answer” as no one being home. But since cell phones travel with their owners, I was sucked into the delusion that I was being abandoned by my friends.

The thought of a never-ending loneliness suffocated me. Not only did I imagine a future without a husband, but a hopelessly empty future without friends. I mean, family was obligated to take care of me – but it wasn’t enough.  When felt  the sting of my friends steadily walking out of my life, they each took a part of me with them. Darkness becomes most unbearable without the love of a friend.

Without the steadfast love and encouragement of a friend, my will to live diminished and the thought of dying began to comfort me.  Adopting a tragic and morose view of existence,  I began to envision my suicide as a sort of noble and romantic sacrifice. After all, I truly believed other perceived me as: useless, burdensome, and causing others as much if not more pain as I was experiencing. I never chose to be born, but death was a choice I still had. Then the suicide attempts began to increase as did the hospitalizations.

Suicidal people  are largely misunderstood and therefore not taken seriously. The things I’ve heard over the years include:

“You’re just doing this for attention.”

Oh really? If that’s all I’m destroying myself for then this is a pretty sick way to do it. Perhaps, if you can’t help me, you could send me someone who can help?

“You’re not just doing this to yourself, you’re doing this to all of us.”

True. This is a selfish and irrational way to deal with life. But you don’t know the extent to which I feel this pain. Sure, your life is likely more difficult than mine, but I’m still not you. We could experience the same series of tragedies come out with completely different wounds. Don’t compare me to you or anyone. It’s not fair.

“Suicide is the cowardly way out.”

Maybe it is, but the pain is unlike anything I’ve ever dealt with and, despite my desire to have someone hold me until it goes away, the more serious and painful this becomes for you, the less you want to spend time with me.

Most of us (hopefully) will not succeed in committing suicide. But when we live through an unsuccessful attempt, our friends and families will too often write-off the failure to die as a selfish and childish act of manipulation. Unfortunately, that only makes a suicidal person more determined to be “successful” the next time.

To read more about depression, self-injury, suicide, and hope, I recommend this site:

To Write Love On Her Arms: Facts

 

 

Prehistory and Making History

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I had intended to give you a break from the serious stuff now and share what I’ve learned about France’s language and culture. This is a generic email I sent to my friends in my pre-blogging days about my travels with Fleuriane around the region of Dordogne in France. I was 22-years-old and had never been hospitalized. The world was at my feet and you’ll probably note that in the tone of this email. I give this disclaimer: I did quite a bit of revision before posting this to my blog tonight. Believe me, when this was initially sent out, it was full of flaws. I thought a cleaner version would be easier for my readers to take in. You’re welcome.
 
 

Subject: Pre-history and Clara making history

Date: Saturday, July 6, 2002

Well, everyone, I was going to hold back and write this email tomorrow because I’m actually quite exhausted from my first week of traveling with Fleuriane, but hearing from many of you energized and inspired me.  So I will write and any spelling or grammatical errors you can just attribute to my fatigue and the fact that my fingers are still adjusting to the French keyboard.

Our trip began on Tuesday, late in the morning (sometimes I can be a little bit slow when vacationing – even more so now that I’m in France and don’t have to worry about classes yet). We managed to get on the road and rolling in time to see some interesting things, but we failed to plan for unpredictable weather.  Instead, Fleuriane and I had optimistically packed our bags exclusively with summer clothing only to be rained upon subsequently spoiling our original plan to camp in a tent all week too.  So we spent two of our nights in cheap hotels.  It could’ve been worse, granted the first one was a bit noisy and we dared not use the sheets for fear of whatever strange and disgusting things previous guests might have done in them.

I also saw my first French movie in a French movie theatre.  Astérix & Obélix : Mission Cléopâtre. I laughed even though I didn’t understand everything. Sadly I doubt if it would ever find its way to an American movie theatre because it’s based on French comic book  characters that the majority of American’s have never heard of.  Still, there were a lot of actors I recognized from other French movies I’ve seen.

To spare you from the boring stuff, I will tell you some of the other highlights of the trip during which we saw many beautiful castles and Medieval buildings and caves.  Yes, caves.  This is what Dordogne is known for.  It is the region where the well-known Lascaux cave was found, however it is now closed to the public.  Not far away, though, there is a very impressive and meticulously done reproduction of the cave cleverly named Lascaux 2 and we were fortunate to visit that.  It was very cool-looking, but knowing that it was only a copy of the robbed it of its splendor.

I was most impressed with Gaume, the last of the caves where visitors can see the original, prehistoric cave paintings.  But it’s still so protected that they only except 100 visitors each day and Fleuriane and I were fortunate to be among them.  I imagine that one day this cave, too, will be closed to the public. But at least it will remain embedded in my memory.

Among the castles and Medieval buildings we saw, I fell in love with a quaint town called Sarlat, which, according to my travel book, was of little significance until I think the 1960’s when it’s buildings, dating from the 13th century, were restored and making it a tourist attraction and the backdrop for some well-known movies, including Ever After (I’m told).  Fleuriane and I imagined how it would be living near the town center, perhaps in apartments across from one another so that we could shout at each other from our windows as we’d observed some Sarlat  residents doing .

There were some new cultural experiences I enjoyed. One was canned duck, or canard in a can as I prefer to say with my best Texas accent (but Fleuriane doesn’t like my little combo of French and English in that phrase, so I don’t say it much anymore).  Yes, we being the poor students that we are brought all our food with us, most of which was given to us by Fleuriane’s grandma.  Each day we bought a baguette and, as long as it didn’t rain, we would eat outside.

On our way too and from we met up with Fleuriane’s best guy-friend whom she hadn’t seen for a long time. With genuine enthusiasm, she introduced him to the American hug.  I enjoyed watching his stunned reaction.  On the way back to Fleuriane’s village, we visited her friend and joined his family for dinner.  They were all from Algeria so we ate couscous and were entertained by some of their traditional music afterwards.  It was beautiful! Once more, I found that, for the first time since my month in Annecy, I wasn’t afraid to speak French with them. Their kindness and hospitality seemed to dissolve my inhibitions.  I think I shocked Fleuriane a little because I’d been so shy on this trip when it comes to speaking French.  You know, having only had 2 years of the language, it can be a bit intimidating to suddenly be immersed in it, but I’m learning and Fleuriane is a tremendous help.  Since all of our tours were conducted in French, she was kind enough to help me understand anything that I couldn’t pick up.

On our journey home tonight, Fleuriane told me that road trips like this weren’t normal for French people.  She told me that usually they find a favorite destination and spend their 4-week vacation there.  The reason she did this for me, she said, was because I took her on road trips and the US – well, that and by her own admission, she’s “not really French”.

We have a whole month in which we will be traveling throughout France and parts of Germany, Austria and Italy.  That trip, however, will be by train and I expect the experience will be completely different, yet just as unforgettable.

There are so many more stories I could tell, but I suppose I will reserve them for my personal journal and leave all of you to experience your own lives, wherever you are at the moment.  Fleuriane and I embark on our next journey Monday.  For the next month my emails will be scarce, but I will try and keep in contact as much as possible.  Take care and stay cool!

Luv, Clara

 

Mania: A Self-Analysis (Part 2)

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Analyzing My Manic Episode

Handwriting from my last days in Montpellier

Final exams began about a week or two after my winter break. I prepared for those exams as if my life depended on it. It was almost literally “eat, sleep, study” every single day; no time for a social life. But there was one exam I wanted to pass more than anything! It was my only class I had with the native French speakers. My other classes were with French language learners, like myself, from all over the world. But this class I practically had to beg to be part of. I wanted to prove to myself I could hack it. Besides, the added challenge would help me improve my French.

The exam was scheduled for the sixteenth of January. It was a text commentary for a history class. I woke up before sunrise that day and walked to the university. On my way back, I knew a tremendous weight had just been lifted from my shoulders.  By the seventeenth of January I had finished all my final exams. There was little left to do but choose classes for the upcoming term and begin to “officially” make the most of my time in Montpellier.

I sent a generic email to my friends and family on January 21st, 2003 under the heading: The Boiling Point. To express my anger and frustration, I described my preparation for final exams:

…I had my exams, one in particular which loomed over me as if to say not passing it would mean the end of the world. So I confined myself to my room and to the library for the next two weeks except to go to class. I went through 400 or so years of human thought as if it were a mystery to be solved…After cramming my head full of dates, philosophers, and events, I landed at the same conclusion as always – technology and the construction of society have all changed, but the hearts of men haven’t. They are still greedy for money and power and will do what they can to suppress other ideas for the end result of this [greedy] goal…More on this in my upcoming book….…I’m angry, frustrated, and confused, but just having these emotions will get me nowhere. I gotta do somethin’ ‘bout it! They may have put this bird in a cage, but she’s not going to stay there. She will fight. She will be free.

My friends, 6 months is not enough. One year is not enough. Nope. It’s all just beginning.

 

In my time between finals and the new semester, I began organizing my memories in a kind of scrapbook. In the beginning  of the scrapbook, my writing is short and concise. But towards the end the writing almost overpowers the photos. The book is not finished. It represents a mind that was too unhinged to have any real control over its creative endeavors.

On January 27, 2003, I wrote another generic email in which my delusions of grandeur are clearly revealed.

I have registered for the next semester, fitting all my classes into the grand scheme of mine, which won’t be completely revealed for another 20 years or so when I am a little more than the legal age to run for president of the United States of America…

However this week I’m on vacation. Ah, but no, I’m not going to travel to any far off lands. I have a lot to learn and do here (the unwritten part keeps it flexible because I’m still young, my ideas change frequently). Once more, it’s a beautiful day today! So beautiful, in fact, that I can wear my summer clothes again and you know what I feel like doin’? I feel like dancing!

Living alone, isolated from other humans, served only to encourage the mania.  I wrote my emails at a nearby internet café. There was an hourly charge to use the computers, but I didn’t care. Being able to write something to several people at once was an amazing technological advancement and I intended to make full use of it! January 29, 2003, I wrote the following email:

I just wanted to inform all of you that I’m a little hesitant to turn my cell phone on because there’s a lot to do this week and, much as I hate writing this, I’m not sure if I have much time for a social life…

…this is my main project, among other things, to organize my photographs in a journal, in English, so that one day, when I’m not around to share the stories, at least the memories will last…

I forget the name of the writer who said it, but it is said “the pen is mightier than the sword.” I don’t know if any of my words inspire any of you, but I know that if anything lasts, it’s the written word and, if anything changes people, it’s our ability to pass on our knowledge to others in hopes that it will cause them to think….

As my illness progressed, the other symptoms of mania became more apparent. I wrote about the flight of ideas and loss of sleep yet was never aware of anything wrong with me. How could there be anything wrong? I was absolutely brilliant! and the people to whom I sent emails were responding  with such overwhelmingly positive feedback they actually encouraged the madness.

January 31, 2003 

Mozart Journal 

I cannot sleep. I’m tired and its two in the morning and I cannot sleep. I’m not sure if it was my neighbors fighting next door or simply the waves of thoughts running through my head. Perhaps it was a combination of both….

January 31, 2003

Subject: Knowing who you are 

…Something strange happened to me in the wee hours of the morning this morning. It doesn’t often happen, but when it does, you have to make the most of it…

When I woke up, my head was so cluttered with thoughts that I couldn’t go back to sleep. What’s worse is that the sun hadn’t risen yet and, when I checked my clock, it was 2 AM. I tried to force myself back to sleep thinking, if I don’t get my rest, I won’t be able to function normally tomorrow. But I just couldn’t and thus grabbed pen and paper and wrote….

Hyper-religiosity 

Another important factor in my mania was the presence of a spiritual belief system. After my grandma died, I started to read my Bible daily and went through the entire New Testament. I had also been attending a Pentecostal-style church in Montpellier and really enjoyed it. For the first time in my life I was part of the minority faith and, through the strength and courage I saw in the believers from France, I felt genuinely compelled to renew my own faith and, quite literally, be re-baptized.

On the Sunday morning of February 2nd, 2003, my need for sleep continued to decrease giving me enough time to walk to church instead of taking the tram. Before I left, I wrote in my journal while listening to music by Christian singer/songwriter Twila Paris. I wrote with unwavering certainty:

God has been shaping me in every aspect of my life, even when I didn’t see him. I believe so strongly today that I am willing to die. I know what those words mean. I’ve been trembling all morning long because of it. God has been speaking to me. Let the continuing days of my life be lived as a testimony to this conviction.

I returned from church, charged with emotion and ran my fingers across the photographs of friends and family I’d taped to my wall. Then I felt something I’d never felt before or since. I felt a fierce trembling throughout my body and my mind immediately registered it as the presence of God. So I reached for my journal on my bed where I’d left it and quickly sat at the table and began to write. Scarcely had my shaking hand begun to put pen to paper when I lost control of the pen and dropped it. Then I felt a gentle yet powerful force push me toward the ground. There was no audible sound aside from my uncontrollable sobs and the Twila Paris song The Time is Now, but just the same, I felt a message impressed in my heart that somehow conveyed that God was both loving and powerful and that he was with me. Of all the distorted thinking resulting from stress, depression, and mania, this is the one portion I’m still hesitant to discount as delusional or a hallucination. But, I digress.

This was the turning point. As if I were heading straight to my own martyrdom, I began preparing to leave Montpellier. And yet, unconsciously I’d observed a malady within me and noted it in my journal.  That very same day, I wrote my final email from Montpellier.

February 4, 2003

Mozart Journal

I’m starting to become ill, but it is my hope that, whether it is a passing illness or something worse, it too can be used for God’s glory.

February 4, 2003

Subject: That which is worth dying for.

Dear Friends,

A lot has been happening in my life that many of you won’t understand right away, but I pray that someday you will. If you had asked me to write this 3 days ago, I would have been too afraid. The spirit which speaks through me is not a spirit of timidity. It’s a power stronger than any nuclear weapon and deeper than our minds can imagine. It penetrates people’s hearts in ways that we cannot understand, even and always speaking in love and gentleness…

…What I wrote you is not normal. People do not automatically put all their emotions and thoughts on the line so that the world can see them…

…I’m not here to start a church or to tell you to go to mine. I’m also not telling you that this is an easy choice. In my life I will be called names and laughed at. I may be beaten for what I believe, thrown in jail for not being silent, tortured, or killed. But this does not matter to me anymore. The same God that gave others strength to endure as given me the same strength….

I wrote my final journal entry from Montpellier a day later. By February 6, 2003, I’d been admitted in the psychiatric hospital.

In the haste of my final day in Montpellier, I tossed my passport into the river, symbolically shedding my nationality and becoming a citizen of God’s kingdom. I tried to enter the church to be re-baptized before I left, but the doors were locked. Fearful of being caught and forced to stay, or worse, to be sent back to the US, I tossed my cell phone into a vacant lot. I went back to the apartment one last time, packed a small backpack with changes of underwear, some perfume, an extra shirt, some water, an apple, and, most notably, a Bible. For a brief moment as I took my last descent down the apartment stairwell, I thought of saying goodbye to my neighbor who was playing guitar and singing. But decided against it thinking he would only try and stop me.

The journey from Montpellier to my final destination in Thuir, France (near Perpignan), is its own story. It involves walking, hitching a ride, and ultimately being discovered by the border police near Spain. It was traumatic but could have been far worse.

My first two days at the psychiatric hospital I discovered there was little to do but wait. So I wrote two letters to my “Brothers and Sisters in Christ” as if I were on equal footing as Paul of Tarsus,  the first Christian missionary and author of most of the New Testament. But anyone who’s been raised in the Christian faith can see how theologically unsound the writing is, not to mention my fractured sentences. I was almost thoroughly convinced the apocalypse was at hand, the anti-Christ lived in the United States, and my parents had immigrated to England. I thought I was being held in the hospital by the “enemy” and, after refusing my first dose of medicine, I was quite certain the forced injection I later received was a lethal injection and waited patiently through the night for God to take me “home” to “heaven.”

The medicine I was given was a strong anti-psychotic that quickly took the edge off my manic episode and, although, it still took me a significant amount of time to accept my diagnosis of bipolar disorder, it is now abundantly apparent to me that I have, without a doubt, suffered from full-blown mania.

Racing Thoughts Meet Pen and Paper

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I have not met my goals in terms of maintaining this blog and for that I apologize. Perhaps I lack the mental drive to create and hold to a tight schedule. Perhaps it’s the day-to-day distractions imposed on me by a lovely yet meddling family seemingly in constant need of my attention. Whatever the case, I’m most certain you can come back at me with more than double my complaints and yet not feel so stressed. Such is life. I can no more change my mood disorder than I can my height or who my parents are. In short, it’s useless to make a comparison between you and me, so let’s not.

Regardless of your current state of mental health, there is one facet of bipolar disorder that seems to fascinate us all and that is: mania. Mania meaning the upside to manic-depression (or bipolar disorder). Even in the company of others with bipolar disorder, it is entertaining to exchange stories of full-blown mania for no two are alike and they almost never fail to have some sort of hallucinatory and/or mystical element making them almost magic in our minds. At the same time, our stories are often restricted to being told to the mental health providers and others with our diagnosis. But, I firmly believe that the more commonplace our manic stories become, the less the stigma preventing us from discussing it will prevail. Here is part one of the self-analysis of my mania.

Mania, a self-analysis: Part 1

Mania: Friend or Foe? 

You have heard it said that mania is a seductive illness; that it enhances the brain and it’s ideal for evoking the creative spirit. Its powers reach far beyond the artificial “high’s” induced by illegal substances. Mania is an irresistible temptation and, though many artists crave it, few experience it. If you are of the privileged few who’ve been touched by mania, your creative masterpieces will make you immortal!

But I tell you, as someone who has experienced the powerful grip of mania, I know first-hand that it is just as dark and deadly as its alter-ego, depression. The difference between the two lies in mania’s deception. A manic person will feel an intense rush of euphoria and, convinced she’s invincible, will think nothing of putting herself in harm’s way. What she doesn’t realize is that it’s all in her mind. In reality, she is still as vulnerable to pain and death as everyone else.

In addition to the deception, mania has an inconvenient expiration date marked by a morbid depression. If after the extreme moods fade you still crave a manic high, you’ll be wise to note there is no guaranteed method for inducing it.  Believe me, I tried to induce many a manic episode in my younger days, but my efforts were in vain. Mania comes and goes in its own time. In fact, in may only come once in a lifetime. But once is enough to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

The first manic episode I experienced is so clearly documented there’s no question I was in the manic phase of bipolar disorder. Like many bipolar patients when they have their first breakdown, I was young, about to turn twenty-three. In my case, I had the added novelty of being in France at the time.  I’d been in Montpellier for roughly six months but had also spent the three months prior to that traveling around France and her neighboring countries.

Having been a compulsive writer since my early adolescence , I have the luxury of being able to return to my manic episode nearly a decade later via journals, day-planners, notes, letters, and even the emails my parents were kind enough to save for me. These writings from my youth keep my memories fresh and allow me to go back and re-evaluate that time in my life from a new, better informed, perspective.

Throughout my many journals, I have referred to the place of written expression as my “friends.” After all, my journals have never judged me. They have absorbed my thoughts in moments when my world felt cold and empty. In my most agonizing loneliness when companionship felt unattainable, my journal stayed by my side.

The Key Ingredient to Mania

There is no cure for bipolar disorder. Our best hope is to learn to manage it and, as any mental health worker will tell  you, it is important keep your stress level low. Unfortunately, stress is rarely planned and students studying abroad are exposed to stress from the day they set foot on foreign soil. Just the basic challenge of acquiring a new language and adapting to a new culture can be extremely overwhelming.

I had already been traveling in and around France for three months before I arrived in Montpellier. Though I hadn’t mastered the language yet, I was confident enough in speaking French to want to speak it as much as possible. But first I had to suffer through a month-long introduction to French university life tailored to the Americans. It felt like a “mini-America.” To me, it was like taking twenty steps backward from my goal of becoming fluent in French.

Although I was forced to take classes and go on excursions with Americans, I managed to build an invisible wall between them and me. I refused to fraternize with these “stupid Americans” who would rather speak English than French. I opted instead to isolate myself from them, breaking from the crowds and turning the excursions into solo adventures.

From day one in Montpellier, my stress level began to rise. For starters, without any form of social structure to support me, I learned my grandmother had died and mourned without a shoulder to cry on. Meanwhile, I’d been using running as a coping mechanism. I even began training for what would have been my second marathon, until an unanticipated knee injury forced me to give it up.  On top of that, my wallet was lost (probably stolen) and, being too prideful to ask for money, I postponed asking my parents for help until my cupboards were almost empty and going to bed hungry became a nightly occurrence.

Amidst the disparity and depravity,  there was little comfort in the outside world. I lived in a tiny, studio apartment, starving for human companionship. Hardly a day passed when tears were not shed.

Thankfully the hardships of my first semester in Montpellier didn’t last forever. By the time Christmas rolled around, I had enough money again to travel and no longer worried about how I was going to pay for food. Reuniting with old friends in Strasbourg as well as my distant cousins in Belfast and an American friend in London, revived my joie de vivre. I didn’t want another semester of sadness, so I vowed to make my last semester the best semester ever!

However, there was just one more hurdle for me to clear: final exams. Why the French had them after the break instead of before was beyond me, but I was going to give my all regardless.

These exams may have seemed ordinary to most people, but for me, passing them would mean several things. First, I was kind of on academic probation before arriving in France and reluctantly sent by my home university more or less on the honors system. Also, my parents had clearly stated they would not visit me in France unless I passed the first semester and I very much wanted them to come so I could show off what I’d learned. The academic pressure from the home front was excruciating!

To complicate matters even more, under the French academic system , all my grades that semester were determined solely by how well I did on my final. Everything was riding on my final exams! On top of that, I knew I wasn’t good at taking exams, but I couldn’t fail this time. So, I dove into my studies with a single-minded determination unlike anything I’d experienced before.

Mania Begins

In speaking with psychiatrists, psychologists, and fellow bipolar patients, I’m often confronted with a sense of awe at how well I remember the details leading up to my first hospitalization. I attribute my above average memory in this case to my multitudes of writing. But I also have to take into account how deeply I was persuaded that  I’d had a religious experience. It took a very long time for me to be convinced I might have been through anything else.

Going solely by my writings, there are three key sources where it is possible to find, unequivocally, my progression toward full-blown mania. These three sources include: my “Mozart” journal, my emails, and the writings from my first hospitalization.

Symptoms of Mania

Before I continue, here are the symptoms of a manic episode as found on the website for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH):

Mood Changes

  • A long period of feeling “high,” or an overly happy or outgoing mood Extremely irritable mood, agitation, feeling “jumpy” or “wired”

Behavioral Changes

  • Talking very fast, jumping from one idea to another, having racing thoughts
  • Being easily distracted
  • Increasing goal-directed activities such as taking on new projects
  • Being restless
  • Sleeping little
  • Having unrealistic belief in one’s abilities
  • Behaving impulsively and taking part in a lot of pleasurable, high-risk behaviors such as such as spending sprees, impulsive sex, and impulsive business investments.

 Source: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/complete-index.shtml#pub3