I wish there had been some way for me to predict that I would become mentally ill, some time to allow me to prepare for it. As it was, realising that I was not "normal" came as something of a surprise.
Nothing serious happened to me as I was growing up, though I have always been somewhat inclined to melancholy and nostalgia (I blame The Lord of the Rings - try reading that at a formative age!). I had one nasty little incident of depression when I was fourteen and my best friend decided she liked someone else better than me. I fell into depression then, and that marks my first occasion of self-injury. I wrote letters to problem pages and to some sort of mental institution asking for help, though I did not receive any, and I did not go to my GP. While deeply unpleasant, it passed, and I put it all down to teenage hormones, although looking back I fear it was the first sign that I was going to be plagued with similar problems later. Things went on as normal for some years after this - if I had bad times then I do not remember them.
Then I went to university. In some ways this did me a great deal of good - I recovered from a shyness that had all but paralysed me for years, learnt a great deal and made new friends. Unfortunately it was at university that I became rather badly ill. My first year I lived in a flat with five others, all but one of whom I got on with. Unfortunately the one I did not like more or less turned my flat into the block 'party flat', constantly full of loud music and drunkenness. I like parties, but my home is my retreat, my quiet place and it is unusual for me to invite anyone to enter it. Never having that sense of sanctuary and always feeling the outsider because I rarely joined in lowered my mood. I grew slightly depressed, thought of dropping out, and became too isolated from others. [1] I was glad when that year ended, and I moved somewhere else.
The next year I decided to share with another student I knew, a fellow theology student who I knew from classes. We advertised for a third flatmate, and found one with relative ease, and moved into a pleasant flat with very good views of the countryside. This turned out to be one of the bigger mistakes I have made. What I did not know was that this student had a drinking problem, something that got worse and worse throughout the year. It started off with his arguments with his boyfriend and with that boyfriend asking me to hide bottles of wine from him, which I thought merely paranoid. They argued more and more, and the arguments progressed from verbal aggression to violence - once my flatmate kicked a door in, bled all over the floor and passed out into unconsciousness so deep I thought he was dead. He broke up with that boyfriend and seemed to grow calmer, though he made a tart of himself around the town for a while. Then he met a new boyfriend, a lovely, gentle man who I became good friends with. However, my flatmate continued drinking, and continued to get aggressive towards his partner when drunk (and he was soon drunk all the time), often reducing him to tears. We tried drinking at his pace to use up the alcohol - it didn't work. We tried hiding the drink - it didn't work. We spoke to his mother but she couldn't do anything. When he drank, there would come a time when it was as though a light switched off behind his eyes, leaving him in a mindless void of anger and suspicion. I offered to find him books, a priest to help him resolve the conflicts he had between his faith and his sexuality, but it didn't help. He continued to be violent towards his boyfriend (who would barely defend himself against the attacks), and grew suspicious and aggressive towards me. Then I realised that I am a coward, and did not wish to be attacked, and I took to sleeping away the days and spending my nights in an internet cafe. I withdrew a great deal, hid in my room, and got depressed. I found myself crying for no reason, gave up writing out of a duty to deny myself pleasure, and began to cut again. Most of all I remember watching holiday programmes on the TV and wishing for an escape. [2]. One night I had to barricade myself in my room as he had gone mad and everyone else had left, but I had nowhere to go. I went to my GP, who diagnosed depression, and gave me anti-depressants. They helped me a little, but the external cause of this attack was still there. My studies suffered and eventually I required assistance to pass that year of my course. It was at that time that the head of my college told me I was mentally unstable and unfit to lead others, a comment which still rankles, even though it was prescient.
Finally that terrible year ended and I went back to my parents for the summer, and recovered. They never knew how bad it had been.
Then I decided to live by myself, and have my sanctuary. The next year was excellent, and I enjoyed myself very much.
My final year was a disaster, and no one's fault but my own badly-made brain. Things were fine until after Christmas, when I felt the familiar bleakness. This time, I thought, I will be prepared, and took myself off to my doctor, once again going on the anti-depressants. When I, shamefaced, admitted that I had been semi-regularly cutting myself with razor-blades I was offered the chance to speak to someone else. This turned out to be a psychiatrist, who I was to see regularly for the next six months.
I did not get better this time, but worse. I got more and more depressed, and cut myself more and more. I wrote, but everything I wrote was strange and I can no longer understand it. Nothing seemed real anymore and, fittingly, that time itself no longer feels real to me. I could not cry, but felt sadness like a heavy object on my head, something I could not escape from. I fantasised about death all the time.
The depression was only lightened by strange, exultant times when I imagined myself the best person who ever lived, and it was as though everything was gold, and I thought my heart might burst with joy. Time seemed to flash by and everything could be accomplished in an instant. I thought of Emily Dickinson, and her lines recurred to me often:
These are the Visions flitted Guido --
Titian -- never told --
Domenichino dropped his pencil --
Paralyzed, with Gold --
I was happy with those times, they were the only thing that lightened the depression. My psychiatrist was not so happy though, and it was then that he diagnosed me as bipolar (manic-depressive) [3] and put me on medication to stabilise these 'little manias' which I so enjoyed.
These happy times were few and fleeting, however, and the depression grew worse than I had ever known before. I no longer was aware of myself even as I was self-obsessed. I went to see my friends still bloody from recent injury, talked wildly of visions and the way things appeared to me. I drank all the time to try not to see.
I decided to die, and took two overdoses. I wound up in hospital overnight, hooked up to machines and subject to the disapproving stares of nurses; evidently seen as mad - it was simply assumed that I was under the care of a psychiatrist, even though that is not common in Britain. I was threatened with forcible admission into hospital but managed to avoid it.
All through this time I had long talks with my psychiatrist, the contents of which I was unable to recall even as the words left my mouth. [4]. He continued to switch medications, alter doses, seeking for the magic combination to make me better.
I had to inform my college that I had, in effect, gone insane, and they were good about arranging exceptions for me should I fail my exams. I could not revise, even though I was somewhat obsessed by religion I had come to see the hand of God in the streets rather than being able to argue about the significance of the atonement!
Finally the fever abated. We found a mixture of medicines that helped a little. I took and passed my exams by some miracle, even without studying. I left university and recovered in a boring little town where all I did was read and attend the Jobcentre. I remained unemployed and leading a medicated and regimented life for the next two years.
I am still on my medication, still have bad weeks, months, days. I will probably never be free from it. I recently stopped my medication, but grew worse and restarted it. And I may ask for my dose to be increased again soon, as I feel myself teetering on the brink once more. But I have stopped self-injurying, and started a new future. I am not the person I once was. My new university calls me 'disabled' and I must see my doctor every three months. I have a stain on my medical record and the stigma of mental illness will follow me forever. I have already been warned that my illness makes me untrustworthy and I may always require supervision in case I get ill again. I only hope that I can live a close-to normal life. This is not what I planned and it still seems like someone else's life.
But, we must play the hand we are dealt; what other choice do any of us have.
1. This was rather galling, as I have always prided myself on self-sufficiency. "I need no one but myself", and have alawys thought that I prefer solitude. Unfortunately, as I have discovered, too much solitude makes me ill.
2. The flat itself was less than pleasant at this time, as we were being harassed by local children who through bricks through our windows, and shouted and swore at us. We had the local police station number on quick dial, but they could not catch them.
3. Diagnostic criterea for Bipolar II, which is what I have, can be found here as well as many other places online.
4. They must have been fairly odd though, as he wrote to my new GP that I also had "personality difficulties". Whatever that means.
© Dubhóc MacEògainn, 2005. Images used from Aon-Celtic Art, gratefully acknowledged.
