I use my writing to resolve external issues, ask questions, comment on what I see around me, but I seldom write about what I feel inside, where it really matters. There is a pattern of judgment in everyone’s life, judgment made by outside forces who believe they see/know the “real” me because it’s easier than actually knowing the “real” me. I know, however, that I am yin and yang, a light side and a dark side, because I know how hard it has been for my life to be shaped by what used to be called manic depression syndrome, but now seems to have morphed into bi-polar disease.
My childhood was, just as most other people’s childhood, a roller coaster of emotions. I was never an easy child, nor a well-loved child, nor a particularly well-liked child. I knew from an early age that I didn’t fit into most social situations, but that was easy to understand as I grew up with parents who were also alienated from an easy fit. I could look into the mirror and see that I didn’t fit into the “pretty” child social circles, and I also could look within myself and know that there were some serious internal issues that I did my best to hide, but that scared me to death. I desperately wanted to be a normal child, a laughing child who had friends, as well as siblings, who would accept and love me regardless, but I had no idea how to be that child. I wanted a close family, a loving family, a fully functional family, but the years taught me that few children have that family, while many, many children learn to live with what life provides for them.
I don’t remember much from my childhood, but I do remember being sick once, in my bed in the house on Mission Street, which means I was very young. My mother came to check on me before I fell back to sleep and woke up in a field of flowers, dressed in a beautiful little girl’s dress that was starched and blowing in a gentle breeze. There was such a sense of absolute freedom and love surrounding me that I stayed in that field for what felt like hours, running, playing, dancing, singing, and smiling and laughing. I awoke, back in my bed, very sick, with a high fever, and life continued. That one single memory remains the only time in my entire life to date that I have ever felt entirely free just to be – or loved unconditionally.
More often, I remember the rages: my own; my mother’s; my siblings’. I remember running away, scared, hiding. I remember the man at the beach who sought me out, talked to me, and tried to make me go with him. I remember the man who stopped me one time as I walked home from Kearney’s, carrying a box of things she had so kindly given to me. He, too, wanted me to go with him; perhaps his offer was genuine and sincere, but he scared me, so I ran away and hid from him. I remember far more darkness than sunlight, far more fear than love, but it was not until after my father died that I remember the manic depression that became the controlling force in my life.
Teaching has been my salvation, a venue where my manic side thrives, providing me with energy to get through thirty-five years of days filled with hundreds of students, changing classes, changing course content, mountains of papers to grade and deadlines to meet. It also cursed me with alienation from my own family, from a spouse who did not deserve my inability to love, and from children who learned how to accept my compulsions and question my fevered constant movement as I ran a race against myself just to make it through another day. The frenetic whirlwind of energy was a symptom, a coping mechanism, a better alternative than the crashing blackness that descended when my life was too quiet, too empty, too introspective.
Of course, I’ve crashed; I’ve crashed big time. It was inevitable: no one could keep up the frenetic whirl of activity that I used instead of a life, including me. I retreated into intense depression after my father died, depression that manifest in excruciating migraine headaches. A collapse occurred during college, brought on by so many factors about my life that I simply could no longer control, contain, nor confront. There was a long stretch when I just worked myself into exhaustion so I didn’t have to bring reality to the surface and face what an absolute sham my life was from beginning to end, but, eventually, I crashed again.
And then, one summer I was selected to attend a Shakespeare experience in Maryland and received a grant to cover expenses. That felt like such an honor and I was beyond excited about participating, but not everything that begins well ends well. In the middle of the night, one of the other participants broke into my room and assaulted me. He wanted sex, but that did not happen; perhaps it would have been easier if that’s all it had been because the middle of the night is still my panic time. I shared that experience with a friend, but no one else, because when I reported it at the time, I was told that because “nothing happened,” I should just move on.
[Recently, when I was called for jury duty, the case involved a rapist who broke into a woman’s home in the middle of the night and assaulted her. Because, in her effort to save her son from harm, a son who came into the room to help his mother, she screamed at the rapist that he could do with her what he wanted as long as he left her son alone, the rapist was actually pleading consensual sex. In a flash I was reliving my own assault, an assault that occurred 25 years ago in real time, but happened again instantly in my own memory. The hardest thing I’ve done in a really long time was to return to that courtroom and wait for my name to be called, so I could plead with the judge to excuse me from service.]
It helped when I was honest about what a mess my life was and finally set both myself and my ex-husband free with a divorce from our marriage, as well as our relationship, but that was merely a postponement, not a cure, for the darkness inside me.
In 1997, I imploded, an implosion brought about by people I considered friends, a trust that was sorely misplaced. This time, the depression that preceded the implosion almost won as I no longer had any reason to continue to exist. No matter how much I worked, no matter how hard I worked, I was doomed to failure because that’s what the person wanted when she made me the focus of her own dysfunction. She was relentless and I was literally unable to stop her because I kept trying to fix it, to make it all better, rather than defending myself. Before I fully accepted that my actions/ reactions had no effect on her relentlessness, it was too late. I still experience PTSD symptoms from this time in my life, but I’ve learned to remove myself at the first sign of personal attack, rather than stay around and become the bull’s eye of someone else’s target practice.
And, for whatever reason, after this total implosion, my manic/depressive cycles lessened and became almost unnoticeable, as well as very manageable. Although I’ve used medication in my past to help me level my life, diet, exercise, and adequate sleep seem to work just as well as chemicals.
When my mother died, I had no idea if remorse or relief would be my reaction, but I knew it would not be grief – which is not a good commentary on my relationship with her, but it is accurate. Manic depression is organic, but it’s also triggered, and my mother was my biggest trigger. When my sister stepped into my mother’s shoes before mom’s body was even cold, as they say, I reacted the only way I could to protect myself and my sanity: she’s out of my life. There is no contact because there cannot be contact if I am to survive. The popular saying is that God never gives us more than we can handle, but explain suicide to me, the last desperate attempt to survive that which we cannot handle. Believe me, I know how close I can come.
I’m waking up in the middle of the night, my mind seeking answers that aren’t there. I have lived in fear of myself and my life for so long that I have no idea how not to live that way. When I’ve tried to join back in, to trust that it’s okay for me to have a life, it’s bitten me in the ass, sometimes in an almost comical way – including the time I decided to accept the invitation to join a bowling league and ended up in the ER with a shattered shoulder and a cracked collarbone! However, on my recent birthday, I vowed that I am going to take strong, positive steps to try what may pass for more normalcy and see how it goes. My clock is ticking, and I don’t want to leave with regrets for the shoulda, woulda, coulda that I’ve allowed to control my life.
I have spent money without feeling devastatingly scared that I won’t be able to pay my bills, especially to finish off the backyard project by hiring people to help me, rather than giving into the uncontrollable compulsion to do it all myself. I took a trip to a state I had wanted to visit since I was a child and read a cowboy story set in Wyoming. I had a party, which may not seem like a big deal, but it is to me for personal reasons I don’t feel comfortable sharing publicly. I actually had a great time: no bad memories from the experience. I’ve decided to go to Greece, a place I’ve always wanted to see in person, and when I asked a friend if she would go on the cruise with me, she not only agreed, but is genuinely happy to go with me. I bought a ticket to see some favorite entertainers from my youth who are performing in concert at a local venue. And, I’ve been getting out and doing things that are positive reinforcement, rather than only those things that need to be done.
So far, so good, but I’ll admit that I’m still holding my breath while waiting for the other shoe to drop.
For some people, I’m simply doing what everyone else does all the time, but for me, it’s big steps for me to do what I want, rather than what needs doing. In my past, there have always been negative consequences to the times that I’ve done what I wanted to do, rather than what needed to be done, so I stopped doing them. This time, however, I’m going to assume that it’s all good and go for it. If there is an adverse reaction, well, I cannot say that I don’t have experience with that and, evidently, I can survive.
