Sputnik

As you probably know from reading previous entries, I suffer from Bipolar disorder or so the medical mad men say. I will indulge in some idiosyncrasy token manifestations for your educational pleasure. It took me an extremely long time before I ever got the courage to explain to anyone what I was living through, for many reasons. Firstly, I am from a very prude-like family where mental illness is not something you discuss openly; everyone expects you to pretend everything is perfect in a perfect world. Taking your anti-psychotic medications with your morning juice pretending for yourself and for others that they are merely vitamins and to go about your day like that elephant in the room never existed. The stigmas for the mentally ill are very much alive, as they were back in the bunkered down 1950’s. I am here to tell you I will no longer stand to be scrutinized, deemed inferior, ill-judged, scorned, or ridiculed for something I can no more be held accountable for than the color of my skin. Instead of having rancid thoughts, if we as a whole opened up to reality maybe we can rise from the dark ages together. It was more than a year after being formally diagnosed that I finally fell out of the stigma closet with my own family. I had lived with only my Mother and Father knowing the truth and hiding the truth for so long, exhausted from tiptoeing around, afraid I might drop the ball. That heavy ball I carried everywhere distracting others from the truth finally dropped and shattered to a millions pieces haphazardly. I condemn only myself for the marionette show I performed for so long, but I do admit it was not without outside influences. The day my puppet unsystematically combusted came while preparing dinner for my entire family one evening. I had a melt down, threw food, and spewed obscenities from all the anxiety I had held in for so long. I could do nothing, but run out of the room out of embarrassment and shame. That ball I had been balancing was only the beginning I am sad to say. Not only did my Mother lie to cover up what was really lying beneath the surface, saying that I suffer from small anxiety attacks and never completely came clean to my family. She never came to comfort me, or to check on me what so ever, I felt like I really did not belong. I spent hours secluded in my room and leaving them to live their imaginary fantasy lives. Half-heartedly when I did get the nerve to face my family everyone had gone, I was left wondering if they really cared or if they were finally going to recognize that I hid behind stained glass windows. Forcefully I lived in that closet by scrutiny from my family and our society, until the day, I could not hide it any longer. In one of my many episodes of mania, I chopped my hair practically all off. In doing this drastic action, I had to explain myself, because this was not like me at all. I cut and chopped until my hair was less than an inch long. In the hysteria of it all, I could not lie anymore. I was ready to face the firing squad and I no longer cared what happened in the end. Even then, I felt like I was a disgrace because no one understood what it meant, no one daunted the notion to open that door with me, and I could not talk to anyone about it. It was as if I had simply asked to pass the butter at the dinner table, nobody thought twice to open his or her arms to me. They ever so carefully looked the other way as though they all had blinders on and only cared to call me out when I did not “perform” cordially. Secondly, they were so ashamed they did not believe what I was telling them, even after I received three different doctor’s opinions with all the same answers. It was hard enough being told that my entire life’s ups and downs, highs and lows could be summed up to one thing, Bipolar and that one thing I was no where near ready to accept. When in the cycle of mania the hair cutting is only the beginning of the compulsions I cannot control. I have turned to drugs, alcohol, cutting myself, pulling my hair out, beating myself, punching or destroying things, digging my nails into my skin to the point of drawing blood and biting myself. None of these things am I proud of, I do not enjoy the acts nor do I willingly think about doing them. These utterly dark acts and thoughts derive from somewhere deep inside that I really have no answer how to explain to the fullest and withstanding them are damn near impossible. Something inside is like a blood-thirst you cannot quench until the mind is satisfied with its desires. You can feel the energy running through your veins and nothing can subdue it or make it go away. There is no release till you relentlessly follow through with it, and the moment the act is finished a serene calm takes over and all the pain, sadness, and the mental and bodily ramifications slowly fade into the darkness that once was. Be it a true form of happiness or not, in that moment of weakness you will sell your soul to the devil for an escape because your mind sees no other way through. I hope in this arduous voyage we partake in together, that if you so happen to know or coincide even in the most indirect ways with someone suffering from mental illness, that in quandary judiciousness you will be the one to convey compassion and not the one to turn a cold shoulder.

Chasity